I Didn't Write That... You Can't Prove Anything
Posted by Sam at 3:52 PM

Blogging about your crummy job? Blogging about your moron of a boss? Blogging about your moron of a boss while at your crummy job? Hmmm... maybe you ought to give Reporters Without Borders' Handbook For Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents a read (the handbook covers anonymous blogging... see how I tied that all together in the end there? You're welcome).

From the site, "Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest."

The handbook is free, available in a downloadable PDF format, and should prove to be an interesting read.

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Self Medicating With Blogs
Posted by Sam at 11:59 PM

eMarketer points us to an article concerning bloggers (really!?), and some noteworthy blogging statistics. Among the most fascinating, is the notion that bloggers are using their blogs (whether intentionally or not) as a form of self-therapy. And sambot says, "Why the hell not?" In fact, sambot's personal blog, cleverly titled "sam bot dot com," is really just a glorified repository for his self-therapy sessions... which clearly, are very needed seeing as he refers to himself in the third person.

Honestly though, psychologists have been highlighting the benefits of keeping a journal for decades. The component that makes this form of journaling significant however, is simply the public aspect.

I'm not a psychologist (again: really!?), so I cannot say this for certain. However, I can see psychological merit in blogging to the public. From a therapeutical standpoint, it can be a truly cathartic experience to shout something into the blogosphere... even if one shouts anonymously.

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Blog Search
Posted by Sam at 2:37 PM

Google is a phenomenal search engine. This, for the most part, is an undeniable fact. I don't know how they do it... well, I guess that I do... but when I search for something obscure and google presents me with 15,000,000 relevant links in 0.04 seconds, I think to myself "there is a god." (perhaps even a gooooooooood... haha, get it? goooooooooogle!).

Today, google let loose Blog Search (it's still in beta, but no less functional than their widely used web search engine). With the proliferation of blogging in general, Blog Search is the next logical step for any search engine company to take... especially one that owns the massively popular blogging service, blogger... of which yours truly is a happy member.

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The Jocks of The Blogosphere
Posted by Sam at 1:05 PM

There is an interesting article running over there at the Blog Herald, about the "The demise of the geek bloggers." It's definitely worth giving a read, but in an effort to feed the commentary here on sambot::blogging allow me to offer up (my interpretation of) the gist of the article:

Back in the day, when blogging was new to the scene, the technology had just recently been developed and not yet streamlined into the mass commodity that we see in mainstream culture today. The only bloggers that could effectively use the medium were the ones who understood the technology; the geeks. So logically, geeks were the ones who were blogging and of course, they were blogging about geek things. Now, with services like Blogger, and Live Journal, and the ten zillion others, blogging has hit a critical momentum point. The ease of use allows the non-geek to blog along side the best of 'em. And now that the non-geek is blogging, the blogs tend to have non-geek related themes.

Clearly, when mainstream culture absorbs anything, every aspect of it becomes mainstream and, by definition, becomes less unique. Blogs, once reveled as a niche thing, are now a mass commodity. And their topics that once dominated the culture have fallen to niche level. Really, it's an odd paradox.

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