Mapping Weblog Geography

Tools that map weblogs by geographic location can enhance communication as bloggers see the real-world connections between themselves, according to "Get caught mapping" in Guardian Unlimited. A London bloggers tube map shows bloggers in relation to the nearest subway stop.

The Bloggers' tube map puts a sense of place back into cyberspace. By doing so, it has the potential to help a group of people doing things online recognise themselves as a real world community and build closer links.

. . . When the net first went mainstream, people talked up cyberspace as some sort of alternative global space . . . . Where you were in the real world wasn't supposed to be that important.

Now, things are beginning to move in the opposite direction. People are beginning to see that location is important . . . . A location-enhanced web will get people out of the house and give them new ways to interact with the world around them. The net might be a tool for localisation as much as for globalisation. . . .

"The revenge of geography" from The Economist mentions weblogs only in a paragraph but offers a comprehensive list of new technologies that create connections through geography - geocaching, location-based encryption (very interesting) and location-based information services delivered through cell phones.

Google's Sergey Brin Talks Google AdWords

Google's Sergey Brin talked Blogger AdWords in an interview with Esther Dyson reported on by Jeremy Allaire. Excerpt (via Scripting News):

The major focus now is getting Blogger into their [Google's] infrastructure, including their ad infrastructure, which can really improve both the user experience of ads in Blogger as well as the contextual linking of blog content to ad content.

I've been watching the AdWords posted atop ThesisBlog to determine whether keywords in my posts drive Google's AdWords selection. Right now the AdWords are . . .

Visual Log File Analyzer
Easy log file analysis in minutes. See your site's traffic. Free trial

Your Turn On The Soapbox
Come blog with us on just about any topic. We're open 24 hours a day.

. . . which is interesting because just a few moments ago I was checking the deservedly low Extreme Tracking usage statistics on my infrequently updated Fulwider's Food and Travel blog.
I'm heading toward the conclusion that it may be my surfing habits, not my blog posts, that are determining the AdWords atop ThesisBlog.

Blogger Bias Research on Chemical Weapons Stories

Blogger Bias Research on Chemical Weapons Stories
Andrew Baio just posted a short study on how bias affects news story link selection on weblogs.

Recently, I noticed that several webloggers that discussed the suspected chemical weapons plant found in southern Iraq on March 24 weren't mentioning those claims turned out to be false, even after the story was retracted . . . .

I thought this particular example would be an interesting case study to study how bias affects story selection on weblogs. So I searched Technorati for weblogs that linked to the four most popular URLs . . . about the chemical plant. Starting with a list of 148 weblogs spanning the socio-political spectrum, I located the relevant entry on each site and searched for followups or updates.

In brief, here are my findings. 113 weblogs linked to the original story, but didn't follow up with another entry or correct their existing entry in any way. 28 weblogs linked to the original story, and later posted a correction or other addendum. 7 weblogs only linked to the story after it proved to be false, but didn't link to it when the news originally broke.

If you look at the sites, it appears that conservative weblogs tended to only link the original report, liberal weblogs tended to only link to the correction, and mixed and group weblogs linked to both.

More interesting reading is found in the comments added to the post, written by some of the bloggers Andrew studied.
Andrew is the son of a fellow student in my Mass Communications Theory class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She (Andrew's mom) has her own weblog, but didn't tell me about it even though it's quite interesting. Promoting her son ahead of herself: You've got to respect that.

Harvard Weblog Project Moving Along

Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society has an interesting project going. Among other things, they're going to host weblogs for anyone with a harvard.edu e-mail address and host weekly in-person discussiong meetings about blogging.

I hope someone blogtranscribes the weekly meetings.
(Via Scripting News)

School Superintendent Uses Manila Blog Software

The Kern County (Calif.) schools superintendent uses Manila weblog software to power a beautifully designed and full-featured site. (via Scripting News)

Bryan Bell designed the site and has this to say: "This completes the transition to Manila we started 2 years ago. The homepage was last on the list, because we decided to do it back to front. We converted every department in the organizations and nearly all of our client schools. I must have trained 300 people on how to manage their Manila site."

BlogSpot AdWords Update

The AdWords now above BlogSpot-hosted ThesisBlog are (topic background here):

Hosting
Business Web Hosting Solutions for Small Businesses. 24/7 Support!

No Limit Hosting $9.95
8 years in biz, own our own data center, control panel, no usage cap

Please let me know which AdWords you see. E-mail jmfulwider at hotmail dot com.

Blog Talk at PC Forum

There's interesting blog talk, upon which I may comment later, in Cory Doctorow's transcript of the Social Software panel discussion at PC Forum 2003.

Blogger Gets Mailblocks to Change Its Terms of Service

Blogger (and Traditional Journalism columnist and frequently misspelled last name owner) Dan Gillmor got the new "guaranteed spam free" e-mail provider Mailblocks to change its terms of service, which allowed the company to spam its customers (!). Founder Phil Goldman responded and acted roughly two days after Gillmor's first post appeared.
Mailblocks' updated privacy policy still looks a little spam-friendly to this legal layman.

Technorati Notifies Bloggers (Me, Anyway) of Stupid Errors

Technorati proves its uber-goodness every day. The latest example: Technorati's link cosmos for ThesisBlog shows inbound links from my restaurant reviews and travel stories blog, Fulwider's Food and Travel. This is not, as one might suspect, intentional shameless self-promotion. It's shameless stupidity; I've been accidentally posting ThesisBlog entries to Food and Travel. Didn't pay close enough attention to my w.bloggar editing window. I'll delete the erroneous entries soon, which should bring ThesisBlog's inbound links rating down to an accurate two. (Thanks for the links, Doc Searls and Newsisfree.)

BlogSpot AdWords Update

Some new developments on the BlogSpot AdWords front (topic background here):

Doc Searls reports he's seeing the same AdWords in the banner ad atop ThesisBlog each time he visits.

The AdWords I'm seeing when I visit ThesisBlog have changed again. They're now:

Free Software Downloads
Many free software programs for download to your computer.

Blurty Free Web Journals
Get your own online diary for free. Meet friends in Blurty communities.

Doc Searls talked to Google co-founder Sergey Brin about whether the BlogSpot ads are indeed AdWords. Doc reports, "He said yes. I also asked if Google was after a kind of holy grail: Advertising people might actually demand; and he said yes (in a few more words) to that, too."
Here's hoping Doc posts more regarding his conversation with Sergey.

Employment, Not Censorship, Stopped Kevin Sites' Warblog

Rebecca Blood has this well-reasoned commentary on CNN's demand that its employee, Kevin Sites, stop his independent warblog:

Freedom of the press . . is freedom from interference and censorship by the government--not a freedom guaranteed to reporters from interference by the news agencies for which they work . . . .
Kevin is in Iraq as a member of the press corps at the behest of his employer, CNN. They are paying his expenses, and they are the reason he has been provided with press credentials allowing him access to the people and places he is reporting on. . . .
. . . Does Kevin's contract contain a non-compete clause? If so, his weblog is in direct violation of his contract. Does his contract specify that any and all work pertaining to his field, performed by Kevin while in the employ of CNN, is the intellectual property of CNN? (Don't laugh--I know of two people in two different professions who were asked to sign such a contract as a condition of employment.) If so, Kevin's warblog is in direct violation of his contract. At any time has Kevin been unavailable to CNN because he was working on his weblog? If so, this is a work performance issue, and CNN has every right to insist that he focus on his job instead of his personal site. . . .
There are issues here, but from the information available, censorship and freedom of the press are not among them.

AdWord-Watching in a BlogSpot Blog

Doc Searls offers an interesting suggestion in this post about my post on Google AdWords:

I wonder how much the adwords will change on John's blog as more link to him, or as the subjects of his blogs change, or as the searches that lead to his blog change? It'll be interesting to watch. Adword-watching in one's blog might turn into a kind of sport, no?

Indeed it might. I'm hesitant to begin another daily blog-maintenance task, but Google's AdWords on BlogSpot sites like ThesisBlog do bear watching given all the "what does this mean" speculation about Google's acquisition of Blogger.
So, today I see these two ads when I view ThesisBlog:

Free Software Downloads
Many free software programs for download to your computer.

Unlimited Web Templates
Download hundreds of templates and thousands of graphics for $24.95!

Interestingly, when I highlight just the "Free Software Downloads" text to copy it into my w.bloggar window, I get taken to the ad's target site. But when I highlight both ads at the same time, nothing happens. There doesn't seem to be an "on mouseover jump to target" functionality, as I've held my cursor over the ad link for a while and nothing happened.

ThesisBlog readers: Please let me know which ads you see atop this page. E-mail jmfulwider at hotmail dot com.

Thanks, Doc

Doc Searls kindly linked my post on BlogSpot ads, giving me my first and only inbound link listing on Technorati.

Curiously, ThesisBlog's Cosmos listing lists the inbound link, but reports there are "0 Inbound Blogs, 0 Inbound Links to ThesisBlog >> Research on Weblogging."

Glenn "InstaPundit" Reynolds on Warblogging

The first-hand stuff is great. It's unfiltered and unspun. That doesn't mean it's unbiased. But people feel like they know where the bias is coming from. You don't have to spend a lot of time trying to find a hidden agenda.

-- Glenn "InstaPundit" Reynolds, via this Washington Post article, via this boingboing post.

Actually Useful Ads in BlogSpot

Doc Searls points out that the banner ads on BlogSpot sites (like ThesisBlog) contain Google AdWord-like messages that actually pertain to things which interest the blog's owner. For example, in the ad running right now above ThesisBlog (when I view it, anyway), the top item is "Free Software Downloads." I've been looking recently (mostly unsuccessfully) for freeware and shareware to use on my Dell Axim X5 PDA. Mousing over the ad, I get a tooltip saying "go to www.downloadalot.com." Kind of them to tell me in advance where I'm going; I might just click.
Says Doc: ". . . I believe they risk achieving a holy grail of sorts: advertising consumers . . . actually want."

Doc links back to a prescient thought of his from 1997:

Esther Dyson says the big challenge today is not to add value but to subtract garbage. Most advertising is garbage. It's hard to imagine a less efficient way to communicate, or one that wastes more time and materials. Even direct mail, presumably one of the most personal and efficient forms of advertising, is so unwelcome and wasteful that its nickname ? junk mail ? is a synonym for garbage.

The BlogSpot banners have subtracted garbage in at least these ways:

They're light on graphics

They describe their offerings succinctly

They don't rely on annoying animated GIFs, Flash animations, or sounds

Google rose to prominence in part on the strength of its no-nonsense, quick-loading front page. It sells text-only ads (AdWords) I (an active advertising avoider) have clicked on repeatedly. There may be a downside to Google's increasing influence over Web advertising, but I haven't seen it yet.

BookFilter: MetaFilter for Dead Trees

Some folks today launched BookFilter, which the first post describes as:

Just like MetaFilter except we discuss books instead of Metas. Yeah, I know they don't discuss Metas there. They discuss Iraq.

Aptly targeted humor aside, BookFilter indeed looks to be exactly like MetaFilter, only it filters just one topic -- books, primarily the dead-tree editions of the same.

It's powered by FreeFilter, a tool with an eponymous MetaFilter-like site that promotes itself and notes the existence of other MetaFilter clone-generating tools.

As if the MetaFilter links were not piling up enough already, care to guess where I found the link to BookFilter, a MetaFilter clone powered by software that creates MetaFilter clones and is advertised on a site that's a clone of MetaFilter?
On MetaFilter.

Heritage Foundation Sending Reports to Bloggers

Rebecca Blood says the Heritage Foundation is sending her and other bloggers information about its studies, which take a conservative policy view. I'll have to disagree with her opinion in her post on the matter:

I'm also of the opinion that both the product marketers and the idea marketers are vastly overrating the level of influence weblogs have attained.

To the contrary, they're catching the beginning of a very large wave. Weblogs have at least two value propositions that will make them increasingly popular and influential. One, they filter the Web so readers need not wade through a list of news sites to find information of interest to them. (Notice how short my Daily Web Reading list is; if I didn't have Slashdot to point me to Wired stories, I'd have to read Wired each day.) Two, they serve as an outlet for people to express their love of everything having to do with themselves.

Further, weblog publishing will increase to a degree not previously seen -- for better or for worse -- when America Online launches its own weblog tool later this year.

Those who have studied the "hypodermic theory" of mass communications may appreciate Blood's turn of phrase in guessing the Heritage Foundation's purpose in sending these updates: "[to] inject their viewpoint directly into the blogosphere."

Thoughts in the early and mid-20th Century that mass media messages had a direct, "hypodermic" effect on audiences have since been disproved. But I believe Blood is right that Heritage wants to inject its message into the blogosphere. At the very least, it should be successful in gaining mindshare as like-minded bloggers, eager for material with which to update their blogs, repeat its message verbatim. Further, its message will spread even on blogs maintained by bloggers elsewhere on the political spectrum, as they post contrary opinions and link to the material with which they disagree.

In earlier media forms, this kind of instant, direct access to a group's message wasn't available. See something you agree or disagree with on television or in the newspaper, or hear it on the radio? You had to go search for additional information. But with the compulsive hyperlinking inherent in most blogs, the additional information -- often an interest group's unfiltered message -- is just a click away.

BlogTalk: A European Conference on Weblogs

Over 65 papers are slated for presentation at BlogTalk - A European
Conference on Weblogs, which is both a site and an event scheduled for May 23-24 in Vienna, Austria.
The pile of material I must read grows.

And It Does Work!

things magazine's "links in new windows" code worked flawlessly on ThesisBlog. The magazine credits the code to randomwalks.com.

Links in New Window Tool in Blog Sidebar

Update: (03/20/03 11:06 a.m.) Rebecca Blood tells me Randomwalks.com "pioneered allowing users to choose to open weblog links in a new window in january 2000, according to my archives http://www.rebeccablood.net/archive/2000/01.html."

---

things magazine offers the first instance I've seen in my brief blogging research of a links sidebar with a "links in new windows" checkbox. Handy; saves Windows users from right-clicking to get the Open in New Window context menu option. I'll have to see whether the code will work on ThesisBlog.
The blog, "a bi-annual journal of new writings about objects," also offers a clean, pleasing design, though the light-blue linktext may be a bit too hard to see against the white background.

Social-Network Mapping Tools

This Slashback entry on Slashdot offers a list of links to social-network mapping tools under the entertaining headline, "Why meet people in real life?"

Quickly Locating Groups and Group Leaders with E-mail Analysis

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard have found a way to quickly identify "communities of practice" within an organization -- that is, people who have similar beliefs and goals and work together to achieve them. Further, the researchers' algorithm, run "in a matter of hours" on a desktop computer, can find leaders of these groups. This excerpt from the paper's introduction, contained in this .PDF document (296KB), do a better job than the abstract (available in HTML here) of explaining understandably what they've achieved at HP:

. . . The method uses email data to construct a
network of correspondences, and then discovers the communities by partitioning
this network in a particular way . . . . The only pieces of
information used from each email are the names of the sender and receiver (i.e.,
the ?to:? and ?from:? fields), enabling the processing of a large number of emails
while minimizing privacy concerns.
We describe an experiment performed within our own organization, HP Labs,
using nearly one million email messages collected over a period of roughly two
months. The method was able to identify small communities within this 400-
person organization in a matter of hours, running on a standard Linux desktop PC.
In addition, we utilized the network of correspondence to identify leadership
within these communities.

Are Weblogs Mainstream Yet?

Mark Glaser analyzes the mainstream media's analysis of whether blogging has gone mainstream:

It's only a matter of time before someone comes out with a parlor game edition of "Are Weblogs Mainstream Yet?" The media have been playing this game for months, and despite so many headlines hinting that indeed, weblogs are now mainstream, the text of such articles seems to beg off from that notion.

Traditional-media journalists are hedging. Glaser theorizes that someone big like Saddam Hussein or Michael Jackson has to start a blog before the traditional media declare them mainstream. How about Barbie? She's been around since 1959, not nearly as long as Saddam (born 1937), but for just slightly less time than Jacko (born 1958). And she has a weblog!

Blogosphere Panelists

The Live from the Blogosphere panel discussion held way back in February featured the following panelists, who maintain these sites/blogs:

Mark Frauenfelder, boingboing

Heather Havrilesky, who must have the penis-enlargement industry up in arms because she uses the URL tinylittlepenis.com for her "rabbit blog."

Evan Williams, who's still maintaining EVHEAD even after Google bought his company, Blogger.

Susannah Breslin, whose The Reverse Cowgirl's Blog seems to have a politics and sexuality theme going on, at least as far as I can tell from the logo depicting a black-clad woman, whip in hand, riding a pink donkey backwards.

Doc Searls, who offers the eponymous Doc Searls Weblog.

Tony Pierce, whose busblog loaded slowly today, eschews capitalization, and seeks $10 donations from 1,600 people to get Tony a car.
At first glance, EVHEAD and Doc Searls Weblog seem to offer the best hope for links to weblog research.

Metafilter Named Best Media Blog

Forbes Magazine named the community-moderated blog Metafilter the best media blog out there. Metafilter is on my never-miss daily read list with Slashdot, but is it the best? You can vote on Forbes' poll here.
An interesting item for thought in Forbes' first sentence about its media blog ratings:

In a way, almost every Web log, or blog, is somehow about media. The links that make them interesting to read invariably come from somewhere else.

Strikes me as pretty true. I use weblogs to find news and information I don't have the time to locate myself.

Differing Weblog Popularity Explained

Clay Shirky has this intriguing explanation of why some weblogs rise to the top while others draw very few readers:

. . . Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality.
In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.

Dead-Tree Edition Update

A while back back I posted a bibliography of dead-tree edition books about weblogs. Turns out these books haven't achieved much in the way of market share here in Lincoln, Nebraska. The local Barnes & Noble (the better-stocked of the two in town) had none of the books. Nebraska Wesleyan University's library had none of them. The city library had one of them. The labyrinthine Love Library at my own University of Nebraska-Lincoln had one of them.
So, a month and a half from my literature review due date, I've read none of the literature available in book form.

Barbie Has a Blog

Cynically veiled marketing through blogs has reached the unattainable dimensions of America's favorite dress-up doll. That's right, Barbie has a blog. Her March 15 entry:

Being the fashionista -- with great legs -- that I am, I was thrilled to hear that miniskirts are back in and a "must-have" for spring! Awesome.

She's shallow and conceited. Next post: "Math is hard!"

Blogs Make the Headlines

Here's a good summary of how webloggers brought down Trent Lott:

It's safe to assume that, before he flushed his reputation down the toilet, Trent Lott had absolutely no idea what a blog was.

He may have a clue now. Internet opinion pages like Instapundit, run by University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, and Talking Points Memo, from leftie political columnist Josh Marshall -- were among the first to latch on to ABCNews.com's brief item on Lott's racist comments during Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday bash.

And they kept focusing on Lott's hateful past -- until the national press corps finally had to take notice.

The Note

The Note, the well-read political gossip weblog put out by ABC News, is "temporarily" ceasing publication. The explanation:

First, we suspect that the amount of strictly political news ? the kind of stuff that is the meat and starch of The Note ? is likely to dramatically decrease in the coming days.

. . .

Second, as regular readers know, The Note is consumed with things such as Jack Oliver's speaking schedule, the metaphysical importance of the middle initials of Mark Barabak and Kit Seelye, and other inside stuff that seems like it can wait a bit before we begin covering them regularly again.

. . .

Third, coverage of the possible war is going to require the bulk of the assets of ABC News.

Mind Your 2's and 3's

I learned a lesson about checking flight confirmation sheets carefully. Arriving at my Midwest Express gate, I handed my crumpled itinerary printout to the clerk whom I'd just convinced to stop programming her electronic sign and help me. She started doing the classic rapid-fire all-typing, no-talking that gets travelers everywhere worried they'll be sent to Timbuktu, not Toronto. Then she handed me back my itinerary and pointed at the date. I looked bleary-eyed at the "Friday" printed right there.Afterr a long day of fighting through some nasty Washington, DC weather and security delays, I honestly wasn't sure what day it was.

"Today is Friday, right?"

"Look at the date."

It was 2/28 that night at Reagan National. The itinerary had me leaving on 3/28.
Mind your 2's and 3's, folks.

Scary note: Two federal security screeners missed the date discrepancy and let me into the departure area. Anyone clutching a Cinnabon bag as fiercely as I was should have been stopped.