Beauty Blogs Come of Age: Swag, Please!
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As more women turn to blogs for advice on beauty, and magazines like Allure and Glamour have started their own beauty blogs, the cosmetics industry has stopped seeing bloggers as bottom feeders.
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Bloggers are scoring rich paydays by   turning their online diaries into books, but some publishers   say the craze could fizzle out with a glut of new titles   destined to yield disappointing sales.
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Looking at the steam coming off the mail in my inbox this week, I definitely need a place to lay low for a while. One reader kindly recommended Geek Cruises, where I could work on my tan and my Perl programming skills at the same time. He also thought it would help my love life but I'm not so sure. The brochures are full of guys with goatees and laptops -- not exactly my idea of The Love Boat.
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Gunning for a bite of the photo-sharing cherry Fotolog has joined the long list of photo-sharing social [cough] networking websites to be snapped up by a media company hungry for a slice of the Web 2.0 pie.â¦
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A gorgeous tablet PC, a folding bike that looks very cool and a pair of definitive noise-canceling earbuds are just a few of the latest and greatest from the Gadget Lab blog.
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In March 2002, I made a bet with Martin Nisenholtz about the relative importance of weblogs and the New York Times. I was and am a blogger, and Martin worked then, as he does now, for the Times. For the actual terms of the bet, read the piece on the LongNow site, and a story I wrote to announce the bet. A few comments.  1. It seems now is the time to decide who won the bet, if either of us did. 2. The world that I hoped would come about did not. While blogs have broken many stories, they have not, in general, turned into the authoritative sources I hoped they would in 2002. When the blogosphere resembles journalism it's often the tabloid kind.  3. I wouldn't mind losing the bet. That is, I wouldn't mind if the Times fully embraced the web, and I suspect Martin wouldn't mind if blogs rose to the quality of the Times. 4. If the bet had been held a year later, it seems there would be a pretty good chance that Martin would have won the bet because they recently took down the firewall at the Times, allowing search engines to index the full content. In the past, articles would remain visible for a couple of weeks then you'd have to pay money to access them. I believe they have a special deal with Google and other crawlers that allow them to get past the membership wall. For most of 2007 the Times articles were behind the firewall, and were less likely to be pointed to (which is how they rise in rank at Google). 5. It certainly is fun to speculate, but the decision about who won belongs exclusively to the Long Now Foundation. They have to decide who determines what the top stories of 2007 are, and imho they should consult with search experts to determine how to do the queries. Apparently it makes a difference how you do it.  But ultimately it's their decision. 6. Whether Wikipedia has more or less results seems to be a sidebar to the bet, which only talks about blogs and the Times. 7. Another interesting sidebar is rich media. In 2002, before podcasting had taken hold, before YouTube existed, it would have been hard to forsee the story of the South Carolina beauty queen, or the Don't Tase Me Bro guy. Questions about the future are always framed in the context of the past. Did the question Martin and I asked have any value in 2007, or did it just say something about the world of 2002?   Update: Paul Boutin who arranged the bet, apparently in conjunction with Google (I didn't know this) in 2002, weighs in.
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Readers remark on cyber mugging, tree hugging, and de-bugging. Plus: Links to our most popular blog posts.
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We take a look at some of the edgiest, most provocative blogs on the Web.
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Several companies are custom-decorating laptops -- even with your own graphics. Is this just a fringe fad or the newest place for creative self-expression?
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Web 2.0 companies, observe how Loic rolls his product out. It's done personally. Not with a big bang, but with nurturing, one user at a time, at first, then it will fan out, but it will always have the personal touch, because it began that way. In contrast, giving an exclusive to one press person or one blogger can be much less effective. It may get you on top of the ladder for a moment, but the glory fades fast, and then what? And your first impression is in the hands of someone else. What if he or she doesn't like you or your product? (Or worse, if they have a conflicting interest, I've seen it happen.) You could get sandbagged. Most PR firms show you how to do the big bang rollout, because that's all they know. But even the greatest promoters, with the most press credit (I'm thinking of Steve Jobs) won't rely exclusively on the press to carry their product. They guide it, they put their personal signature on it, they create an experience. No doubt in the next few days there will be a lot of rollouts because of the Web 2.0 conf in SF. The only ones you'll read about here, with any positive juice, are the ones that roll out with personality.
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Please quote me on this Stob There's another of those lists of supposedly amusing/sage/cute adagesÂ going around, bouncing from blog to email, accumulating fresh contributions and occasional edits and doing all the meme-ish things that memes do. This one differs from all the others that you have deleted irritably from your email inbox in that it includes a contribution taken from this very column.â¦
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Whether it's the latest miracle ab exerciser, a get-rich-quick scheme or a weight-loss supplement, many of those call-now-and-order products hyped on infomercials and TV shopping networks are nothing more than tacky junk. Separating the rip-offs from the useful gadgets isn't always easy.
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In the latest Book 2.0 dust-up, a startup helps bloggers self-publish in hardcover. Is it just vanity publishing, or a warning shot for an old-fashioned industry? By Jeff MacIntyre.
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Want to add some bling to your portfolio?
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First a caveat. You don't have to agree with me, this is my opinion, and my blog, and that's what blogs are for, they're places where, if you happen to have an opinion, you can put it. This is the mode of a blogger with comments. Defensive. Yuck!!  If you say in your comment that I'm dishonest, I will delete your comment. That's the only tool I have to work with until my new friends at Disqus give me the feature Wordpress has that allows you to queue up every post in moderation when blog comments get flamey. This technique tells the honesty-attackers in no uncertain terms that they should take their attacks somewhere else.  So if your comment got deleted it's because something in your comment required a response from me (or someone else) that says basically "I am honest." I just save us all the trouble. No need to defend myself if the attack is gone.  You may think I am dishonest, you can even say so (but be careful to be sure you're right, and have the courage to put your name on it, only cowards make personal attacks anonymously) and do it in your space not mine. Here, I want comments with ideas and information. It's okay to disagree with me, the people who say that all they did was disagree are wrong. I never delete a comment just for being disagreeable. I delete them if they challenge my honesty. I really don't like that, I think the people who do it are creepy.  Okay, good. Glad to get that out of the way.
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Do you suffer from no-links angst too? Aaron Pratt of SEO Buzz Box writes about &#8220;circular linking patterns&#8221; and how A-list bloggers form their own &#8216;link cliques&#8216; and eschew their own advice of linking out to quality content for the sake of some friendly backscratching. He&#8217;s talking about the &#8216;elite&#8217; SEO bloggers and I think it would [...]
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For those who have started their own business or are thinking of doing so, thereâs inspiration, comfort, camaraderie â as well as nitty-gritty advice â online.