Saturday, January 08, 2005



A dead soldier's family tries to retrieve his email: This sort of begs the question; have you made arrangements for your email after death? If you were to die today would you want your family to read your email?

The Blog, The Press, The Media: They Think No One Is Watching: Conduct Unbecoming
Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands?

For anyone interested in technology, US politics or the media, 2004 was the year of the blog. During the 2004 election those seeking the grubbiest dirt in American politics turned not to CNN, but to the likes of Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan and Daily Kos. Bloggers played a pivotal role in the downfall of Dan Rather, the veteran US reporter and presenter. And Webster's made "blog" its word of the year. But beyond the hype, is there money to be made from this increasingly popular internet trend?
Certainly some think so. BlogAds is an online agency that allows businesses to buy advertising space on blogs. Prices range from $2,200 a week for the top spot on the hugely popular DailyKos.com down to $10 apiece for hundreds of smaller weblogs. The draw for advertisers, says Henry Copeland, Daily Kos chief executive, is clear: "A blog like Daily Kos gets around 2m page impressions [full pages viewed] a week. We help advertisers to reach these."


Niche appeal of the blogging business [Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands? Blog Like No One is Watching ]
• · Young Web whiz blogs his way to big bucks: A 24-year-old Portland blogger has turned a home-grown Web project into big bucks. In 1999, Brad Fitzpatrick launched an online posting site using money he saved from mowing Portland lawns. It grew into LiveJournal.Com, one of the earliest sites for creating personal blogs - online web diaries. Six Apart, TypePad buy Danga Interactive
• · · The medium may be new but the impulse is timeless. When Peter Griffin, a communications consultant and writer, heard of the tsunami on December 26, his first instinct was to ‘‘pack my bags and rush.’’ But he stayed on in Mumbai, setting up the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami weblog. The blog has got over a million visits through Tuesday, creating a piece of net history. Relief blog records a million hits ; [Tsunami blogspot ]
• · · · George Lakoff urges Democrats to pay closer attention to language The framing of political battle for ideas ; [Business Web logs are double-edged A leaked corporate speech has surfaced]
• · · · · Crusading journalist John Pilger grew up in a household that was, as my mother used to say, absolutely committed to the underdog Conscientious objector ; While the sea may have killed tens of thousands, western policies kill millions every year. Yet even amid disaster, a new politics of community and morality is emerging. The other tsunami ; The Asian tsunami has dominated the media for several days because it is a simple but dramatic story that broke between Christmas and New Year, usually the deadest time of all for news The issue is our humanity, not God's divinity ]
• · · · · · The world turns to citizen journalists for eyewitness accounts and more as the crisis continues to unfold. Taking Tsunami Coverage into Their Own Hands ; [Digital cameras blew the lid off Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and exposed a major scandal, and now with the Asian tsunami disaster people with digital cameras and video recorders have delivered the first and most vivid accounts from the scene Blogs' offer the world a fresh view; There cannot be many babies named after disasters Beating the odds, a baby boy called Wave ; As Bill O'Leary sees it, a little knowledge would have gone a long way to saving lives. Through sea sense or sixth sense, one brave Australian sailor's actions saved dozens of lives Survivors thank man who read the waves ]