Category: Internet

Scott Knowles name-checks me in Corporate Blogs Make Personal Connection, talking about how corporations could improve their customer communication by connecting to related blogs:

A hypothetical example: Take Lowe’s, the home improvement store. Why not create an entire section of their website dedicated to stories their customers tell about home improvement? Mom at Home, Creating Home Decor, Jarrett House North and other blogs discussing home improvement projects could be integrated into the Lowe’s site. Not only would Lowe’s engage their customers but will help build their own network of blogs. It’s not a closed system, but capitalizing on an existing one and helping to build upon it. Of course Lowe’s should hop in the game with a couple blogs of their own from their experts.

The advantage to Lowe’s: They not only become associated with their customers, but they become highly entrenched with them. The more they are honestly engaged, the better their brand equity… or brand value.

Huh. So what’s the advantage to me? I’m not sure I’m ready to shill for a home warehouse. And, after all, in addition to being a homeblogger, I’m also a peaceblogger. Wouldn’t Lowe’s think twice about pointing to me?

Maybe I’m just grumpy about being hypothetically co-opted by a home improvement store’s marketing plans. But I think that there are real risks to any corporation that would reach out to include their customers’ words and thoughts in this way. Are they prepared for potential backlash if a customer Googles me and discovers that I’m a slightly left of center liberal who doesn’t think the administration is doing the right thing? Or even that I can’t lay bricks?

Whew. A huge deliverable (far huger than it had to be) off my desk; a blocking task on three major objectives cleared; no meetings for the rest of the afternoon. There’s a lot of stuff going on in blogland right now that I want to note while I can.

First, the fun one: John Robb points to GetContentSize, which shows you how much stuff your readers have to download to get to your content (my interpretation). This blog (static version) is 36.13% content. By way of comparison, Slashdot is 28%; Scripting News is 29.89%; and John’s own weblog is 32.76%. By way of further comparison, Mark Pilgrim’s is 34.17%; I suspect it’s relatively low because Mark only has one article on his home page, meaning that there is a lot of header text etc. delivered for a single article payload.

It seems William Gibson drives a Jetta. And says he would “prefer a fully-loaded Passat to any Mercedes or BMW.” Not because they’re so cool, but because he has “never wanted to drive a car that anyone would have any very strong opinion of.” Hey, I have very strong opinions about my Passat, thanks. But I understand the desire for anonymity behind the wheel.

Esta: will they or won’t they? Pointer to WaPo article about the ongoing mating drama regarding the National Zoo’s giant pandas. And there’s a webcam! Quoth Esta, “Like Friends, but furrier and more graphic!”

Yesterday afternoon Weblogs.com broke 2000, not 8 months after it broke 1000. Any bets on how long it will take to break 3000? Or is this upspike due solely to the war and will this stand as an all-time high water mark? —As always, you can download the total historical record in convenient, Creative Commons-licensed Excel form here.

Aaron Swartz writes at the Google Blog that he’s going to start a new topical blog, this one about everyone’s favorite paid-listing engine Overture:

Today is the Google Weblog’s last day. It’s been fun writing it, but it’s time to face the facts: Google simply isn’t relevant in this day and age. Sure, they were good and popular once, but now they’re nothing but a pale shadow of their former self.

The real action is over at Overture, which is quickly gaining the hearts and searches of the Web community. The techno-elite have Overture.com as their start page, and often use the verb “to overture” in their sentences. There really is no place for Google in this world, which is why this will soon become the Overture Blog.

Hee hee. It’s a joke, right, Aaron?

Dave: “On this day six years ago I started Scripting News. Welcome to year seven of my humble weblog, and praise Murphy.…UserLand Software started in April 1988, fifteen years ago.”

Heartfelt congrats to Dave on this propitious anniversary. Scripting News was what inspired me to restart this page in earnest; I was unaware that there were any other blogs around when I began. And (as I’ve written before) the first version of this website was written in Frontier… and it’s still running in Frontier today.

Of the posts in Blogdex’s top ten today, #1 is an ad for the Columbia House DVD Club; #3 is a tie between six stock listings on Netster and something called NAQ; and #13 is a 34-way tie (probably more, but I couldn’t bring myself to click Next) between different discounthotels*.net listings.

I smell some changes coming to the authentication process at Blogdex.

Reposting from earlier today, during the blogoutage: Happy birthday to Brent Simmons, author of NetNewsWire, who turns 0x0023 today. (For all you Microsoft Excel users out there, that’s =DECIMAL(“000023”).)

Well, not really, but he did have someone in a chat room ask him to take his shirt off in front of the camera.

A note before I start this: sometime, someday, I will have to dig up, re-key, and post the poem I wrote that was at least partly about the death of Charles Bukowski. (Re-key because the Jaz drive that I saved a lot of my UVA files to is a piece of crap.)

Tony is sounding a little down on his blog tonight. So I channeled Bukowski at him in a comment, which I reprint here in its entirety. Read it, then go give him some love:

I’m not sure that Bukowski never whined. You could, if you were feeling uncharitable, interpret his works as one long cry for help. Or you could do what I think it is you do, and interpret them as a celebration of where he was, and the joy of being able to write, and the perplexity that the rest of life wasn’t that simple. It’s like he says, “you get so alone at times that it just makes sense.”

A toast to Bukowski, who would have known exactly what to do about this war: switch the radio to Mahler, open another bottle of wine or three, and go screw some broad.

And with that, I’m off to sleep.

I had to leave work quickly owing to illness (better now, thanks). I spent the afternoon in bed and am just now catching up with the keiretsu. Who, actually, have been mostly pretty quiet recently. Of course, anywhere else in the world spring doesn’t mean drenching rain so they’re probably all outside.

• Esta has gotten a potentially renewable scholarship to the seminary. That’s my sister!
• Greg points to an unintended consequence of the Bush Doctrine (i.e. strike first when you see evil or a potential threat, and to hell with the international community): Turkey is getting ready to march into Iraqi Kurdistan.
• Tin Man: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that bombing is going on there.“ And he’s having fun (if that’s the right word) with his new computer: “Someone better invite me out this weekend, or I might not leave my apartment.”
• Tony Pierce: “i am for this war because i look forward to the bush administration showing just as much attention to all the other portions of the world where there are tyrannical leaders, human rights tragedies, and oil rich nations that were also deeply involved in 9/11.
  i am looking forward to the bush administrations being just as courageous in dealing with these global terrors.” Also (the man is on fire today): Bounce Wit Me. Featuring George W. Bush’s war, to the words of Jay-Z.

• Doc Searls notes that Kevin Sites, the CNN blogger in Iraq, has “stopped blogging for now.” Or, more precisely, has “been asked to suspend [his] war blogging for awhile.”
• Dave offers pictures of a warm spring day in Cambridge, Mass. Of course there’s still snow on the ground there. Still, I miss watching the crews on the river.
• And here, locally, I’ve found another UVA blogger, Ian T. Fisk, also known as the modern day founder of the Yellow Journal.