Skin Deep: 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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Comment is free: Libby Brooks: Pre-teens are increasingly being deluged with the message that an alluring appearance ought to be their ultimate goal
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Early on at Rojo  I wanted to encourage future employees to blog.  As long as there are clear rules about what you can and can't blog its not really a problem is it?  Blog about what you love about Rojo !  Blog about what you think is cool in the industry!  Just don't blog about anything we haven't released yet (without permission).  The running joke is that its company policy that you *must* have a blog.  Our CEO  has a blog and of course I have a blog (you're reading it right now!). I'd link to all of the blogs of our Engineers but I don't want anyone to hire them away!  After hearing about Google firing  an employee for blogging I was a bit upset.  I love Google.  They're a pretty good co ...
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Life & style: Pick of the week gallery: Where would fashion be without needless extravagance?
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Blog: Taking product placement to a new level, the popular Web serial will feature a Neutrogena scientist as so-called branded character. Bloggers have varying responses.
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Standing on the edge of the blogosphere, you can see some pretty strange sights (and sites). Pillows that look like they are stained with blood, a debate about national borders and journalism ethics, and even one site commenting on the staff salary levels of another (now that is odd).For blogs like Valleywag and Gawker, risk-taking is routine -- even part of their reason to exist. It's obvious when they post about George Clooney's medical record that they are stirring up controversy. Other sites -- such as the less commonly known Daily Awesome or the video blog Rocketboom -- take risks by posting pictures and video clips that traditional media would never touch. A few tech blogs are risky in that they are not afraid to call something ugly, confusing, or useless (see Daring Fireball).Here are some of the riskier blogs on the Web, along with a few examples of what makes them that way.Dooce  A classic blog in the sense that it really is a daily journal of the owner's life (including kids, illness, finances and husband), Dooce.com is controversial only because it's honest about the mundane. Posts about mental illness, skin cancer, sex, Mormonism and other subjects are sometimes over-the-top -- in some cases, causing virulent reactions from readers. Interestingly, in the comments for the more unconventional posts, such as this one, where the blogger is wearing a shirt about meat, the comments are generally supportive and sympathetic.Gawker  This Manhattan gossip blog (and publishing home of blogs such as Gizmodo and Kotaku) doesn't necessarily view itself as controversial or vengeful, but posts tend to be filled with gossip. "We're not trying to be inflammatory," says managing editor Choire Sicha. "We definitely get a lot of mail, some of it a little frightening, when we discuss race, ethnicity and religion."Boing Boing  One of the most unusual sites on the Web, Boing Boing just recently updated its design (it's now much easier to read) and has recently started posting video blogs. They cover a wild variety of topics, from giant squids to privacy rights to Christian comic books, usually with a keen eye for exposing anything misleading or naive.Posters such as Cory Doctorow (a science fiction writer and former Electronic Frontier Foundation director) and founder Mark Frauenfelder cover the dark side of the media, covering unusual gadgets and toys such as a Tonka truck cutlery set."Once I blogged photos of pillows that looked like pools of blood,"says Frauenfelder. "My timing was bad, because it was the day after the Virginia Tech shootings, and some readers thought the photos were of dead students. I posted it before I realized people might connect the two. I got a bunch of angry e-mails. I took the images down right away, but a few people remained apoplectic."Valleywag  Valleywag is essentially an investigative reporting blog that "outs" companies that do dumb things, or at least the shenanigans of people at really popular corporations (such as Google Inc.). One recent post about a Google employee who claimed to invent AdWords led to a series of scathing comments from readers and a rebuttal from Google employees. ("The reviewer on Valleywag needs to go back to school to learn to read," said one commenter.)Part of the risk-taking nature of Valleywag is that the site reports on well-known company officials and other bloggers, not just untouchable Hollywood celebrities. A post about Robert Scoble, in which he was Photoshopped to look like a troll, makes a jab at his claims about not seeking high traffic.Your Daily Awesome  Another unusual site, Your Daily Awesome is risk-taking in that the images are sometimes mesmerizing and jarring. On more conventional sites you probably won't see photos of Buster Keaton riding a donkey, big whites sheets used as a backdrop for real trees or "brain maps". Scans of old books like the environmental classic What On Earth Are We Doing? and dreamy landscape photographs (shot in a large aquarium tank) are also common. In fact, the images are often inspiring because they are so rarely featured on any other sites.G4 TheFeed  Focused mostly on gaming, G4 -- TheFeed is prone to post techie gossip and game rumors, gadget news and unusual tech toys. It's usually a good source for information about game cancellations and news. The site posted about the Bungie North America split from Microsoft, for example, before some of the other game news outlets."Because G4TV.com's TheFeed blog has a heavy gaming focus, anything we post about the 'console wars' between the Xbox 360, the PS3 and the Nintendo Wii elicits an immediate, contentious and emotional response from our readers," says Robert Juster, G4TV vice president of new media and interactive. "We've been angrily accused of being on the payroll of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, often by different readers reacting to the exact same post."Other risk-taking blogs:Gary Weiss  Gary Weiss isn't really a blogger -- he's a print journalist and book author -- but his blog is incisive and often cutting-edge when it comes to Wall Street and tech companies. Posts about Overstock.com caused a stir not only with company officials, but also with readers and other reporters.Rocketboom The only video blog in our list, Rocketboom tends to report on the "other side" of the news, the unconventional stories that mainstream newspaper and television avoid, such as a report in July on the fence/wall constructed around Israel.Share Sleuth  Another investigative blog, Share Sleuth focuses on stock fraud and the illegal practices of companies, partly as a way to guide investors. Recent reports on Xenthanol even led to a Wired Magazine feature story.Daring Fireball  For an Apple-centric site that reports on new products and software to the Macintosh faithful, Daring Fireball is also not afraid to take the company to task on software foibles.
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Robert Cox wants to bring some professionalism to the blogosphere.
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By Mike Dougherty, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.  Jun. 22--thingsthatwere.blogspot.com   I love old stuff, and this blog has scads of pix of old stuff that once was. Some of it is still around. Lots of it isn't or is in a serious state of disrepair. Pretty cool stuff. Check it out.
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Jeff Jarvis, whose mind occupies the intersection of mainstream media and the blogging world, perhaps more than any other person, is having a conference in mid-October in NYC to bring together people from both worlds to present constructive ideas for working with each other. Me, my feet are firmly planted in the blogging world, but I've spent a lifetime reading and watching MSM, starting with the NY Times at the kitchen table with my parents and brother, when growing up. Some of my fondest memories as a child were our discussions of the days events, and the Times was our common structure. Everyone in our family read the newspaper, often from cover to cover.  As Jarvis councils us, never mind the mistakes, what can we do to make things work better? And I have a couple of proposals in that direction that I will try to present at the October 11 conference. In all cases, they involve the MSM opening up more to include not only the ideas of blogging, but also the bodies of the bloggers.  1. I've said it many times before, it's worth raising again. Any newspaper or radio or TV station with a good reputation in its community could embrace the fresh ideas of the bloggers in their community by offering free blogs to members of the community, who may be new to blogging. I suggested this to the Times in 2001 -- when a person is quoted in a Times article, a few days after the piece runs, contact them, and ask if they'd like to have a NY Times hosted blog. There would be no control over what appeared on the blog. It would have a nytimes.com domain (something like bullmancuso.nytimes.com). Build an aggregator, something very much like Twitter (which is after all, a river of news, not exactly a new idea, heh) that shows all the new posts from members of the community. Encourage (but don't require) your editorial people to read the blog posts. Let whatever happens happen.  2. Here's a new idea that I haven't proposed before. Open your newsroom to bloggers. Set aside a half-dozen desks for people who blog in your community, people you've gotten to know, and provide them with wifi, a water cooler, your coffee (no matter how bad it is) and chance to work alongside your editorial people and (very important) with each other. It's an incredible thing when bloggers get together in a physical space, the sparks can really fly. Now imagine what could happen if those sparks got flying between the remaining editorial people in a professional news organization and the bloggers. I believe the secret of scaling the news is right there, you just have to open the door and see what comes in.
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If you want people to think you're way cooler than you actually are, why not claim to be a guest blogger at one of the revered weblogs in the blogosphere? Here's a handy guide to crafting your horrible lies. Commentary by Lore SjÃ¶berg.
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I just figured something out, and it's the kind of thing that's best said publicly, even though it's likely to: 1. Be misunderstood and 2. Upset some people. But since it's all about this blog it really is best to air it here. First what triggered the epiphany. I was over at Loic Le Meur's house in San Francisco yesterday having lunch with his family and friends. We were all drinking wine (very good wine of course), enjoying the view, and talking about this and that, when the subject turned to Mike Arrington. Loic said that Mike told him that we used to be best friends. I couldn't figure out what that meant, because our friendship was the business kind of friendship not the personal kind. What does it mean to best friends in that way? And how does that relate to having a blog? It never occurred to me that friendship meant that (here's the epiphany) that I would only say positive things about Mike's business. It didn't occur to me until I heard Loic's side of a blog-fight that I saw happen from a distance, with Sam Sethi, Mike and Loic.  Complicated? You bet. Too complicated. An unspoken deal that I never agreed to. When Mike was starting TechCrunch, I pointed to his blog all the time, with glowing phrases. Because I was truly impressed with what he was doing and because I wanted to encourage other people to do it too. I wanted people to write about technology products based on how they used them, not based on alliances, investment, posturing of execs, the crappy stuff that means almost nothing to users, and imho is just a substitute for actually understanding the technology. Mike was approaching products the way I felt they should be approached. Hence the praise. Fact is, my opinion of Mike, as a person, hasn't changed much in the last couple of years. He has a personal charm and charisma that not everyone finds appealing, but I do. I like hanging out with the guy. However, that doesn't mean that if my opinion of TechCrunch, his business, isn't uniformly positive (and of course these days it is actually fairly negative) that I will withhold it. But it's also part of Mike's way of dealing with people that he sees criticism as betrayal. I just don't see it that way. I've had the shit kicked out of me so many times, and as a programmer I understand that criticism is necessary to perfect a user interface, even to get the damned thing working, that even when it hurts, I have to push the hurt aside and listen to what people are saying, and try to respond to it. Professionalism demands it.  Anyway, one of the reasons I want to write this now is that I've written about Loic's business here a couple of times in very positive terms. I don't want anyone, esp Loic, to assume that this will always be so. If they get in the way of other creative people, or otherwise act as a poor example of entrepreneurship in technology, of course I will write about it, and will say what I think. I would expect Loic and people at his company to take what I write to heart, and consider it. My feelings won't be hurt if they don't do what I say.  Same as when I said Facebook sucks. Or when I criticize Techmeme. This isn't in any way meant to reflect on the quality of the people at Facebook (some of whom I know to be outstanding people of high principle) or Gabe Rivera who I know to be a very smart and competent and honorable person. It's possible to critcize someone's work and still admire the person. My epiphany is that a lot of people who thought were my friends, didn't understand this very basic thing about me.
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Evan Sims has posted some of his first impressions on the latest version of one of the most popular pieces of PHP blogging software on the web - WordPress 2.3.   So as many of you are certainly well aware, the long awaited Wordpress v2.3 was released today after a long series of betas and release candidates. 2.3 has had the blogging community foaming at the mouth for one reason: tags.   He spends a bit explaining what these tags are and what they're useful for before getting into the actual experience with the new update. He talks about issues he came across (updating/replacing plugins with ones of the new version) and the updates he needed to make to his theme to allow for his customizations to still work as planned.
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We take a look at some of the edgiest, most provocative blogs on the Web.
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New site doses social networking with literate lists. Plus: Is
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Blog: Blogs: they're here. They're read. Get used to it.
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There's a mini-debate going on about whether podcasting is a success or worth it, or whatever, I'm not sure exactly what the issue is, but it's framed this way --> if you can't get advertisers to hitch a ride on your podcast then podcasting is not worth much if anything.  I'm having a slow Friday so far, it's cloudy and chilly here in the Bay Area, we're in the January doldrums, so I thought maybe I could liven things up a bit by saying both sides of this argument are full of shit wrong. Let me explain. My phone doesn't have a business model. Neither does my porch. I still like having a phone and a porch because they help me meet new people and communicate with people I know. Same with my blog and podcast. Meanwhile... There's another mini-debate about bloggers playing pranks at CES. The Gizmodo guys ran around with some gadgets that turn TV sets off. At CES is this a big deal because much of what goes on there is TV. They were being assholes, interfering with people's ability to do their jobs and make a living. As a result bloggers get a bad rep.  The problem is that they're not bloggers, they're reporters and they work for a company that's not a blog, it's a publication. Publishing stuff on the web with blogging software says nothing about the people and what they write.  A blogger is person who has an idea, expertise or opinion who wants to convey that to other people. The unedited voice of a person. What makes a blogger interesting is that they do something other than writing a blog. If all you do is write a blog, and if you want or need to make money from your blogging, it's really hard to distinguish what you're doing from what professionals who don't use the web (are there any left?) do. Same with podcasting. I do a podcast from time to time because I want to say something. Whether I can run an ad on my podcast means nothing to me because I would never do it. And if I went crazy and let someone put an ad on there, it would only be to reciprocate for them having hosted the podcast, as a way of paying for the podcast itself (I'm contemplating doing exactly that right now so I had to include the disclaimer). I would never burden my podcasting with the task of supporting me. It's not why I podcast. We keep having this argument. Amateurism is good and there's lots of it. Professional writers and broadcasters probably have a place, I don't know, it's not my problem. But let's be clear blogging and podcasting exist independent of a professional's ability to eek out a living using the tools of blogging and podcasting.  Now I'm going to try to get some work done.  See also: Podcasting News, Mashable.
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And other assorted gadgets and goodies Tech Digest From the makers of Tech Digest, Shiny Shiny, eBay blog Bayraider and the cool new blog for blokes Brandish.â¦