Category Archives: Weblogs

Greensboro in the Limelight Again, Damnit

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The next big confab for bloggers will be this Friday and Saturday in Greensboro.  ConvergeSouth has shaped into a nice event, and I can only imagine the amount of effort the volunteers have put into it.

There’s a nice Quicktime video on the Converge South site that features most of the prominent Greensboro bloggers who were instrumental in pulling together this event, and more importantly, putting Greensboro on the new media map. 

It’s enough to make this Winston-Salem boy very jealous, but hey I’ll be there anyway.

Reading List October 4, 2005

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  • Important Stock Tip (The Post Money Value) – A venture capitalist thinks the news of desktop applications’ demise is greatly exaggerated.
  • Web 2.0! = A Check (The Post Money Value) – The new-new thing is getting old.
  • It Just Doesn’t Matter (Patrick Eakes) – Patrick doesn’t care about major league baseball anymore (not that he hates it, he’s just indifferent), and I’m with him there.  It was great seeing the Expos turn into the Nationals and see my kids and my friends’ kids really get into it.  But this year’s Nationals were lightning in a bottle because they had to play with kids and re-treads and because Washington had baseball-starved fans in a long-neglected market.  Once the money kicks in and the Nats begin to look like the Mets or the Braves it will be harder to get excited.  From national pastime to irrelevance, what a shame.
  • Blogs and Marketing (The Lex Files) – Lex Alexander points to a report on how well some ads campaigns are doing via blogs, and thinks that it is good news for the Greensboro News & Records "Hometown Hubs" effort.
  • The Road to Greenville (A Little Urbanity) – Greenville, SC offers some great lessons in urban planning.

Reading List October 3, 2005

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  • Geeks and the Technology Feedback Filter (The Post Money Value) – Geeks have a hard time communicating in laymen’s terms, and that’s a problem.
  • The Tower of Babel Has Fallen (Moore’s Lore) – Is the internet about to be broken up into "alternate, regional, and national authorities, replicating the
    stupidity of the old monopoly telecomm system, and preventing all but
    the elites of various nations from reaching one another?" Dana thinks so.
  • Internet War Begins…in the US? (Moore’s Lore) – A private company has established its own DNS root server for a proprietary domain name.  Apparently this is bad, and is a bad omen for the internet in general.  I’m not smart enough to know, but I trust Dana’s judgment on this one.
  • Business Blogging != Executive Blogging (The Long Tail) – If you think business blogging is all about the CEO writing missives then you’ve got it all wrong.

Reading List September 30, 2005

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Reading List September 28, 2005

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  • I Am a Broadband Liberal (A VC) – Fred Wilson is a liberal and proud of it.  Any bets on how many comments he gets on this post?
  • Wikimania (A VC) – Fred’s really liking his JotSpot wiki as an organizational tool.
  • Apple Veep Responds to Blogger Outcry (MicroPersuasion) – An Apple VP responded to the criticism of the Nano in the blogosphere and main-stream media.  Jeff just wishes Dell would learn from Apple.
  • NYC Mayor Bloomberg Rewrites Opponent’s Blog (MicroPersuasion) – Mayor Bloomberg’s staff caught an error on his opponent’s blog and cried foul.  Just goes to show that it’s not enough to blog, you must blog well.
  • Seeing the Forest for the Flood (Jeff Jarvis) – An examination of the Katrina "story" and the exaggerations, corrections and perceptions that came with it.
  • The Chrystal Meth/"Purpose-Driven Life" Coefficient (Freakonomics) – Did you know that the woman who was held hostage by an escaped murderer in Atlanta gave him her stash of chrystal meth after reading passages of "The Purpose-Driven Life" to him?  Now that’s a strange trip.

Reading List September 27, 2005

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Reading List September 23, 2005

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  • Reed’s Law (A VC) – Some serious math jockeying as it relates to the calculating the value of networks.  Put on your beanie, cause you’ll need it to grasp this one.
  • Web 2.0 Doesn’t Does Exist, eBay + Skype, and Network Scale Economies (BubbleGeneration via A VC) – Okay, you’ll really need the beanie for this one.  It’s the basis for the A VC post I linked to above, and it’s basically about the math behind the network effect.  I think I get about 10% of it.
  • Blogonomics (BubbleGeneration) – We think of blogs as free, but they are not.  As the author points out it takes time and effort to find new blogs worth reading and that is a "cost."  That’s why most peoples daily reading ossifies.
  • Complaint Letter of the Year (Puree Soiree) – Only a Brit could write a complaint letter this good…or bad depending on how you look at it.

Reading List September 22, 2005

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  • Transparency Please (A VC) – Fred Wilson doesn’t want John Roberts to be confirmed as Chief Justice because he didn’t answer questions about his personal opinions on matters that may come before the court.  Fred’s tired of all the obfuscation in DC, as am I.
  • Surreal In-Flight Programming (Rexblog) – Rex writes a post about how some of the passengers on the JetBlue flight that was having landing gear problems yesterday were watching the whole thing unfold on their TVs. (JetBlue has screens on the backs of all its seats and provides free satellite TV).
  • Who’s Grass is Greener? (Gotriad) – Which city has a better social scene, Winston-Salem or Greensboro?  A resident from each city debates that issue, and interestingly the Greensboro resident likes Winston-Salem better and vice versa for the Winston-Salem resident.

Reading List September 21, 2005

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  • Maybe You Should Decide (Micropersuasion) – Steve wonders if he should float pitches on his blog so readers can help decide what he should publish/run.  BusinessWeek is wondering the same thing.
  • WSJ Steals Our Story, Again (paidContent) – Rafat Ali is ticked off that the Wall Street Journal picked up a story he broke and didn’t attribute him.  Go get ’em Rafat.
  • Google Defends Self on Blog (John Battelle’s SearchBlog) – Google is being sued by Authors Guild and defends its position on its blog.
  • Who Will Audit the Red Cross? (Moore’s Lore) – Dana Blankenhorn would like to know if how the Red Cross is doing in response to Katrina.  Stories about problems are beginning to surface and he rightly asks if their true and if anyone is keeping an eye on them.
  • Google Flattens the World (Moore’s Lore) – Dana doesn’t think Google’s recent moves are aimed at taking on Microsoft, rather they are aimed at taking on the entire computing-telecommunications complex.
  • Guilt the Gift that Keeps on Giving (Michael’s Corner) – Via Patrick Eakes I found this Greensboro-based blog and I’m now a subscriber.  Michael’s take on guilt as a parenting tool is really making me think. 
  • Continued Demise of the Old Media (The Third Rail) – John Trainer thinks the New York Times has screwed up: "’All the news that’s fit to print’ just doesn’t work any more.
    It wouldn’t have been so difficult for you to plug yourselves into the new mainstream – the Washington Post did it by creating blog links that referenced most every blogger who, in turn, referenced one of the Post’s stories. Too liberal, too conservative, that’s not the question. Just simple tit for tat. Engagement, not detachment. The public is now apparently demanding ‘All the news that fits, we print.’"
  • True Genius: Kevin Murphy Wins MacArthur "Genius" Award" (Freakonomics) – Kevin Murphy is a colleague of Steven Leavitt’s and Steven isn’t bashful in his praise of the man who was recently named a MacArthur Fellow.
  • Exploding TV (Jeff Jarvis) – Jeff talks about the Viacom deal to buy iFilm (same story broken by Rafat Ali, and not properly attributed by WSJ).  According to Jeff it’s a "media changing moment."
  • Surprising Partners: Adding Blogs to an Existing Non-Profit Community (Global PR Blog Week) – Another very informative article from the online conference for the PR community.  This one focuses on the online community building efforts of the March of Dimes.
  • Blogs and Press Releases (Global PR Blog Week) – Shel Holtz argues that blogs can’t and won’t replace the venerable press release.  He doesn’t think they should, either.
  • Porn Site Offers Soldiers Free Access in Return for Photos of Dead Iraqis (Online Journalism Review) – The title’s pretty self-explanatory, but the OJR makes it even more interesting by taking a hard look at the role that the porn site is playing.  The thinking here is much more involved than you would expect.

Reading List September 20, 2005

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  • Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web (PDF file, via A VC) – Seth Godin has posted a PDF guide to blogging and it’s free.
  • Alacra Wiki (via A VC) – Alacra, an aggregator of premium business information, has a wiki.  Could be useful on the work front.
  • Wikis (A VC) – This is a good look at the value of wikis and provides links to some good wiki info.
  • Adding Your Voice to the Conversation: Why CEOs Should Blog (Global PR Blog Week 2.0 via Doc Searls) – This article provides a nice perspective on CEO blogging and also gives lots of useful links to corporate blog resources.
  • Corporate Blogging 2.0 (Blogwrite for CEOs) – Debbie Weil thinks that the 2,000 employee blogs emanating from Microsoft provide a window in the company’s true soul. Microsoft even has it’s own Deep Throat. Me thinks Debbie may be right.
  • Minipreneurs (Trendwatching.com via Jeff Jarvis) – This newsletter piece pulls together a bunch of disparate information to highlight the trend towards consumer selling via eBay and many other services.
  • Banned Books Week (Library Boy) – This post is about the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week. Among the top 10 most frequently challenged books in 2004 is Maya Angelou’s "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and John Steinbeck’s "Of Mice and Men."  Sheesh.
  • Spam Blogs (A VC) – Fred Wilson is finding more spam blogs now that Google has entered the blog search game.