Google Data

The New York Times ran a good article about this cool blog project: Bless Me, Blog, for I've Sinned.

One online confessional, though, breaks the mold. At PostSecret, found at postsecret.blogspot.com, the confessions are consistently engaging, original and well told. How come? The Web site gives people simple instructions. Mail your secret anonymously on one side of a 4-by-6-inch postcard that you make yourself. That one constraint is a great sieve. It strains out lazy, impulsive confessors.

Postsecret is worth a look.

Peter Chianca did too much next-blogging and it nearly caused him to expire. If you don't believe me, check out the title of his latest article: Musings on blogs go from bad to verse. That's almost as bad as Who Let The Blogs Out? Oh, and here's his blog which is quite good: The At Large Blog.

Q: What do you do if you're a high school student and the administration shuts down your journalism program and school paper? A: Speaking Underground.

We believe students' rights to exercise responsible free speech should be encouraged and not stifled. The Speaking Underground forum was created in an effort to keep students' voices from being silenced by school authorities. We invite you to study the documents on this website. Please contact the Pebblebrook administration, as well as Cobb County School District officials and encourage them to rescind the decision to remove journalism classes at Pebblebrook High School.

Via Kottke.

So that Bay Area Blogger Meetup arranged by KRON4-TV that we posted about over the weekend is the real deal. We recieved an email from the Online News Editor:

You thought it was a hoax but it's the real deal... the KRON4-TV Bay Area Blogger Meet-Up. There's now a tile on the front page at http://www.kron.com with a link to the evite you received. In addition, if you call the KRON4 switchboard at 415-441-4444 and ask for the Bay Area Blogger Meet-Up hotline, you will hear my greeting and get the chance to RSVP for the event.

We are very excited about this opportunity to listen to the Bay Area blogger community about ways we can be a part of this personal media revolution. We hope to develop ways to produce great content for both blog readers and television viewers.

Please invite all Bay Area bloggers to the Meetup on Saturday, June 11th, at 12:00Noon at the KRON4 Studios at 1001 Van Ness in San Francisco....

And please update your blog so everyone knows it's not a hoax.

Here's the invitation.

This chump has unraveled the secret of getting good distance when sliding in your socks and he's using his blog to tell us all about it.

The actual reason you can slide further is much more complicated. What these people forget when they're arguing that running faster will make you slide further is the fact that I also weigh a lot more than I did when I was 6. So, in my opinion, these two factors cancel each other out.

Interesting theory, chump. I will take that into consideration. Also, remember not to do the sock slide on splintery wooden floors. Ouch. Better to go with the polished surfaces.

Update: It is the Nike iD Blog Contest. Still, "information superhighway?" I thought we were using words like "ecosystem" and "sphere" these days. Anyway, the Dunk Low Parque ID customized by FatLace appears to be in the lead.

Am I crazy or did Nike have a sneaker design contest aimed at bloggers yesterday and now it's called an Independent Design Contest with the phrase information superhighway thrown in for a little retro flavah? The URL still has the word blog in it and I originally spotted this in Kottke's remaindered links where it was titled Nike iD asks 20 bloggers to make sneaker designs. I drafted the post yesterday for posting later and now I'm all mixed up. Nevertheless, if you want to vote on sneakers, just do it. Which reminds me, I should have gone for a run today.

I just got this evite along with 278 other Bay Area bloggers. Not sure if it's a real deal or not—are there such things as party spammers yet? Get a whole bunch of folks to show up somewhere and then try to sell them some junk? Anyway, I've been to one or two sparsely attended blogger meetups but I have a feeling this one could be crowded. So if you're a Bay Area blogger and you're looking to meetup with other bloggers next month, here you go:

KRON4 television is hosting a meet-up of Bay Area bloggers at noon on Saturday, June 11, 2005. Snacks will be served and we'll have a little memento for attendees. There's no agenda other than helping facilitate this meet-up. We recognize the significance of the personal media revolution, and we want to listen to what you're saying. We think this is a good way to start.

Maybe I can round up some Blogger folks and we'll crash that event. (If it's the real deal.)

You knew foodblogging was a whole big thing, right? That's what I thought. What you might not know is that they're doing something different over at Press For Change Publishing and I like it. Partnering with great blog writers to compile new books and paying them a much higher percentage than a traditional publishing house. Interesting. Their first book is called Digital Dish and it's a collection of writing culled from the better food blogs.

Digital Dish is a book of astonishingly original food writing. It is a compilation of the best writing from 24 different food blogs across five seasons. The authors are true innovators in food writing and in cooking. They have been nominated for and have won food weblog awards and best weblog writing awards. They have been covered by major food magazines like Gourmet. They have been interviewed in newspapers like The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Guardian in England. They create and write about food in ways that nobody else has.

The book launch is today at 11:30AM at the Berkeley Farmer's Market and Sunday May 22nd at 4PM at the Lafayette Bookstore if you're in the Bay Area and looking for something to do. If you'd rather just surf through blogs, that's fine too. Here are the blogs featured in Digital Dish. I've helpfully arranged the links for you in a cloud-like fashion:


C'est bon!

Hi AdWords API developers,

The API will be unavailable from 9pm to 9:45pm PDT tonight (5/20/05) for routine AdWords system maintenance. All ads will continue to run as normal, but you will not be able to perform any API operations during this time. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Best,
Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager

We're gearing up for another round of usability testing over here at BloggerHQ and could really use your help. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and are interested, please see these details.

We've not yet translated the Blogger into Swedish, but Aktuellt has helpfully explained the whole signup process - complete with screenshots. (Tack så mycket, Martin!)

Update: Blogger Buzz reader Daniel S. wrote in and gave us the real link for adding your blog to the Answers.com database: I'm a Blogger - Add Me! Thanks Daniel!

I got this email this morning and it sounded potentially neat. However, the page they directed me to has an Internal Server Error so I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Dear Biz,

I wanted to let you know about a great resource for you and your blog: you can now add yourself into the Answers.com database!

Answers.com, the Answers-based search engine, is now accepting entries and submissions from blogs. Here are the details:

Find all blogs featured on Answers.com at www.answers.com/library/bloggers. Or submit yourself at the same URL. If approved, your and your blog will receive your own Answers.com page and be linked into other Answers.com pages where appropriate.

Then, feature your Answers.com page on your blog. If your name was George Washington, the URL would be www.answers.com/George+Washington. (In other words, www.answers.com/firstname+lastname). Show all your readers the new page extolling your work.

If you have any questions, or want to learn more about how you and your blog can be featured on Answers.com, please don’t hesitate to contact me. And if you do register, please drop me a note and let me know that you did.

Best,

-- Alan

The FotoFlix folks have posted a few tutorials regarding their Blogger integration:

• How to Blog a Foto
• How to Blog a Flix

We love seeing fun uses of the Blogger API like this; more third party Blogger-related apps are listed in Blogger Help.

Evhead points out that this Reuters article seems to be downplaying a bigger story about blogging.

I don't exactly understand what they're measuring there, but the gist of the piece seems to be that, in a matter of a couple years, blogs have only become just as important as mainstream press in politics. Not moreso. We repeat, they are not more important at this time. So let's not let those bloggers get to big for their britches.

The title of the article is Study: Blogs haven't displaced media.

Time to check in with Chris, our rock star UI engineer touring with his band in Europe. They actually let him play in a church? That's gotta be breaking some kind of etiquette.