Who's who in the blogging world

A simple guide to the A-list bloggers is a wonderful tongue-in-cheek introduction to the “big names” of weblogging. Choice quotes from the ones I read:

Dave Winer: “In the beginning was the Blog, and the Blog was with Dave, and the Blog was God. The same was in the beginning with Dave. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness (everyone but Dave) comprehended it not.”

Doc Searls: This new meme here, that new meme there. Here’s some pointage to back and forth between this person and that person on this issue. DIY Journalism. The powers of Big Media have been forever broken!! Power to the People. Linux rules! Linux makes a great hamburger topping. Blogs, there is no us and them. It?s all us. Weblogs are the highest form of audience content. Weblogs are the highest form of evolutionary development. Printwash, Searlsowash, but NOT Googlewash, no no. Google is God. If not on Google it doesn’t count.

Ben and Mena: We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. We are cute. Blogs rule. Moveable Type rules. We are cute. We are cute.

Anil Dash: You can’t ignore wheat. Links. Weird Links. Cool Links. Links about Links. Links. More Links. Index of Links. Link Indexes of Link Indexes Indexed. Ben and Mena inside gossip. Moveable Type. Radio sucks! Dave Winer is a smushed toad. Winer is a Whiner. I work in Marketing. Moveable Type! Journalists are the Devil, they only ever rewrite Press Releases. Just who do they think they are anyways? Bah Humbug! Bloggers are the future.

Robert Scoble: I am nice, reasonable, normal smart type, not always given to the usual Blog Groupthink. I am not like all those other Bloggers. So why I am a Blogger? I am just gaming this meme. Link to friends. Link to more friends. Link to other friends. Link to these friends. Link to more friends. Link to my boss, he’s way way cool. Hey, didyah know, I used to work for Radio Userland. And I used to plan Tech Conferences, I know every Geek in the world! They all like me.

Cory Doctorow: Check out the guest blogger! We bagged Dvorak! Blogs have power! Guess old John C. knows old media is DOOMED. “Amazzzing Graccce, I onccce wasss blllinnnnddd butttt noooowww I seeeeeeeeee…” Whooooo! My first novel is out! I love me. I write weirdly chaotic makes-no-sense Sci-Fi stories about a not-to-distant future, or maybe the future is now. But since it is all Sci-Fi I get away with all this random un-defragged sheer-chaos. Look at me! I write Sci-Fi. I won all these awards! I won the John W. Campbell Award! Yeah yeah yeahhhh! I am special! I like Disney!

(via Robert Scoble and Dave Winer)

Getting personal

An interesting article in the NYT today about the pros and cons of getting personal with weblogs, something I occasionally struggle with. My site tends to be somewhat dry much of the time, but while I occasionally toy with the idea, I’ve never been too sure if I want to “open up” more in such a public medium.

I’m not likely to make a dramatic shift in the tone of this weblog — I’m naturally fairly private and reserved, and not likely to go into any sort of no-holds-barred expose — but there are definitely times I consider broadening the scope of what I write about. Maybe I’ll head that direction at some point, maybe I won’t, I’m not too sure. It bears consideration, however.

Of course, since I just edited this post three times, and almost deleted it, things may stay just as they are. ;)

(via Paulo)

Beginning blogging

Eric Barzeski over at NSLog(); has an excellent list of tips for anyone just getting started in the weblogging world. I’ve discovered all of these at one point or another over the years, but things definitely might have been simpler if I’d had this available back when I started. Of course, back when I started (further back than my archives go, unfortunately), we didn’t have things like MovableType to help us out…

(Via Jeremy Hedley)

Do you blog? Why?

My thesis is an attempt to fill in the void in academic work about blogs. Previously in articles and commercial books published about blogs (Rebecca Blood’s books and the O’Reilly book, for example), why we blog has been researched using personal experience, with a few indepth interviews, or by analyzing websites. None of these three ways can come close to providing as accurate a depiction of the blogging population — who we all really are, why we blog, and how we’re using our blogs — as a survey.

(Via Wil)

Apple bloggers?

There’s been much discussion recently regarding Microsoft bloggers, i.e., people who work at Microsoft and blog. I read a few of them (both because they’re good blogs, and because of the whole “know your enemy” philosophy [grin]).

Got me thinking, though — what about ‘Apple bloggers’? The only one I know of off the top of my head is Dave Hyatt, who works on the rendering engine for Safari. Any others out there I should know about?

geek*muffin

Ladies and gentlemen (or, given my readership, mayhaps that should be lady and gentleman?) — please stop by and welcome my good friend Kirsten to the weblogging world.

I give you: [geek*muffin]!

This describes the beginning of geekmuffin. I am the flawed, the utterly imperfect, screwy wannabe-god of this blog, a nearly-clueless fucking idiot trying to make something that at least works, sort of.

bear with me until i graduate from idiot to underling, and this place won’t look so pre-made.

(Now I just have to hope she doesn’t smack me upside my possibly well-deserving head for jumping on this so quickly….)

Dreamblogging

Where does the dream stop and the blog begin? ;)

Bizarreness. In dreamland last night, I was in the midst of a very pleasant time flirting with a girl (who looked suspiciously like Xeni — extremely odd, as I’ve never even come close to meeting her, and only know of her from her contributions to BoingBoing), when she stopped to jot down a couple notes on a scrap of paper. I caught a glimpse of the paper, which was titled “blogging ideas,” and midway down was written “did he see that I linked to him yesterday?” So, then the dream bounces over to BoingBoing and I start checking the guestblog in their sidebar (really, it wasn’t Xeni, I swear I’m not some psycho net-stalker — the dream girl had a different name, one that I can’t remember anymore as the dream fades, though) to see where I was mentioned.

That suddenly switched to a bizarre sequence where apparently Cory (BoingBoing’s webmaster) had given one person the main column, another person the guestblogger column, and had told them that the “best” blogger would get a permanent paid spot as the primary BoingBoing blogger. The two of them then immediately posted this, and then started alternating between throwing links up and slamming each other in an effort to take the top spot. After this went on for a while, things got so intense and spiteful that Cory took back over both blogs, admitted his mistake, and closed down BoingBoing.

Then my alarm went off.

Own yourself

An excellent article from Anil Dash on some of the side effects of Google’s ability to find anything — and anyone.

Every time there’s a resurgence in general-audience (non-techie) interest in Google, as after Newsweek’s recent Google fawning, the issue of privacy in a presence of a pervasive and permanent record rears its ugly head. People who aren’t technologically savvy don’t realize that statements don’t fade away or remain in confidence on the web; The things we say only get louder and more widely known, unless they’re completely trivial.

We’re all celebrities now, in a sense. Everything that we say or do is on the record. And everything that’s on the record is recorded for posterity, and indexed far better than any file photo or PR bio ever was. It used to be that only those who chose career paths that resulted in notoriety or celebrity would face having to censor themselves or be forced to consciously control the image that they project. But this faded as celebrity culture grew and as individuals are increasingly marketed as brands, even products.

Google’s ability to track people down often can be truly amazing, though admittedly, it does pretty much require you to have a somewhat unusual name or e-mail address to use for the search. For instance, Googling for ‘michael hanscom‘ does find me, but not until the sixth link, and even then it’s just my name buried within Phil‘s FOAF file. However, Googling for my online pseudonym of ‘djwudi‘ brings up link after link related to me, either posts here on my site, or comments I’ve left in various other places around the web.

What to do about this ability to be ‘found’ on the ‘net? Well, the best things to do may just be to accept that nothing you put on the web is truly private, and become active in taking control of what information is out there, as much as possible.

I own my name. I am the first, and definitive, source of information on me.

One of the biggest benefits of that reality is that I now have control. The information I choose to reveal on my site sets the biggest boundaries for my privacy on the web. Granted, I’ll never have total control. But look at most people, especially novice Internet users, who are concerned with privacy. They’re fighting a losing battle, trying to prevent their personal information from being available on the web at all. If you recognize that it’s going to happen, your best bet is to choose how, when, and where it shows up.

That’s the future. Own your name. Buy the domain name, get yourself linked to, and put up a page. Make it a blank page, if you want. Fill it with disinformation or gibberish. Plug in other random people’s names into Googlism and paste their realities into your own. Or, just reveal the parts of your life that you feel represent you most effectively on the web. Publish things that advance your career or your love life or that document your travels around the world. But if you care about your privacy, and you care about your identity, take the steps to control it now.

To that end, I think I’ll be picking up www.michaelhanscom.com soon, most likely pointing it here. Comments to other sites, where previously I’d use ‘djwudi’, I’ll probably start using my real name now. As long as I’m me, in a world where incredible amounts of information can be found with just a few clicks of a mouse, I might as well take control of who I am.