Blogs - Weblogs

Menstuff® has compiled the following information on "Blogs" - weblogs.

Moreover Technologies Launches First Enterprise-Grade Weblog Search
See Me, Blog Me: Turned on by online opinion sites? Then get ready for Web video journals
10 Things We Learned About Blogs

See Me, Blog Me: Turned on by online opinion sites? Then get ready for Web video journals


Boston-based music-video producer Steve Garfield, 46, is no ordinary blogger. Instead of simply posting his thoughts online in a chatty weblog like millions of others around the world, he links a Canon GL2 digital video camera to his laptop and uploads short clips of protest rallies, traffic short-cuts and even news events onto his personal Internet site.

Garfield belongs to a small but growing legion of video bloggers, or vloggers, who are turning the Web into a medium in which someday anyone could conceivably mount original programming, bypassing the usual broadcast networks and cable outlets. "My last entry was a news story about a local ice rescue, and this July I'm going to cover the Democratic Convention," says Garfield, who posts one or two new clips every month. "With cheaper digital cameras and cell phones that can also shoot video, more and more regular people like me will start becoming citizen-journalists."

Video blogs don't require sophisticated equipment, just a PC or a Mac, a high-speed connection and a digital video camera as well as a hosted weblogging service like TypePad and, if you want, editing software such as Final Cut Pro or iMovie (the latter is free with most Apple computers). For really spiffy professional results, it makes sense to invest in tools like Serious Magic's Visual Communicator, a TelePrompTer-graphics-backdrop package that provides network-news — style production values for $199.

While millions of text-driven blogs have blossomed worldwide, there are only a couple hundred video blogs out there. To sample some, check out Japanese slacker vlog avoidinglife.com, music-video blog sxsw.com/music or the Drudge Report — like compendium of diary vlogs vidblogs.com. Hollywood celebrities are also plunging in: Adam Sandler's personal site offers regular video messages from the comic.

Source: Jeffrey Ressner, Jeff Jarvis, an early champion of vlogging and founder of BuzzMachine.com, a blog that deals with politics and the media, sees great potential in the phenomenon. "Vlogs are a weird, new kind of way that people can document their lives," says Jarvis. "It has the potential to be the farm team for new talent used by big, mainstream media. Suddenly anybody can become an Andy Rooney." Or better yet, an Edward R. Murrow. Turned on by online opinion sites? Then get ready for Web video journals www.time.com/time/archive/preview/from_related/0,10987,1101040419-610076,00.html

10 Things We Learned About Blogs


Radio had its golden age in the 1930s. In the 1950s, it was television's turn. Historians may well date the golden age of the blog from 2004—when Merriam-Webster.com's most searched-for definition was blog. How long can it last? Who knows? Here's what we discovered about the new medium this year

Blogging Can Get You Fired

When Delta flight attendant Ellen Simonetti, 30—a leggy blond and self-styled "queen of the sky"—began her blog, she thought it would be fun to post pinup snapshots of herself in uniform. Delta wasn't amused and promptly fired her. Undaunted, Simonetti retitled the blog Diary of a Fired Flight Attendant and detailed her legal battle to get her job back.

GO TO: queenofsky.journalspace.com

Bloggers Get Scoops Too

After book editor Russ Kick read that the U.S. military was clamping down on press photos of coffins coming back from Iraq, he didn't just pen an angry rant on his blog, the Memory Hole. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request—and embarrassingly for the Pentagon, was mailed a CD from the Air Force with 361 coffin snaps, which he promptly posted. The national press, which hadn't thought to ask whether the military had pictures, beat a path to Kick's door.

GO TO: thememoryhole.org

Bloggers Keep News Alive

So your blog hasn't succeeded in getting national attention for your pet issue? Don't lose heart. Just blog, link and repeat. It worked for conservative bloggers like Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, who trumpeted the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's claims this summer, as well as for liberal blogs like Daily Kos, which investigated evidence that President Bush wore a wire in his first debate. Some of the issues had questionable merit, but persistent bloggers made the subjects tough to ignore. Say it enough times online, and someone is bound to hear you.

GO TO: Instapundit.com , dailykos.com

Bloggers Can Be Titillating

In May a blog graphically detailing the sex life of an anonymous Capitol Hill staff member prompted D.C.'s most intriguing game of guess-the-author since Primary Colors. Jessica Cutler, a.k.a. Washingtonienne, was later outed and fired by her boss, Ohio Republican Mike DeWine, for "inappropriate use of Senate computers." (Her site is not for kids.) In another sign of the times, her first postfiring interview was with Wonkette, another Washington blogger.

GO TO: washingtoniennearchive.blogspot.com , wonkette.com

Bloggers Can Be Fakers

Plain Layne, a highly personal blog supposedly belonging to a Minnesota lesbian named Layne Johnson that drew thousands of fans over 3 1/2 years before mysteriously disappearing, was revealed to be a hoax. Hundreds of fans helped track down the real author, Odin Soli, 35, a male entrepreneur from Woodbury, Minn. Later in the year, fake Bill Clinton and Andy Kaufman blogs became hits.

GO TO: plainlayne.dreamhost.com , billclintondailydiary.blogspot.com

Bloggers Make Money

Earn a living in your pajamas! Online ads (along with Google's automated ad server) allow popular bloggers to go pro. Joshua Micah Marshall of talkingpointsmemo.com, a political blog, says he makes $5,000 a month from banner ads—enough to hire a research assistant.

GO TO: talkingpointsmemo.com

Most Bloggers Are Women

Men may have taken the lead in the early (read: geeky) days of blogging, but that's not the case now. According to a survey of more than 4 million blogs by Perseus Development, 56% were created by women. More bad news for the boys: men are more likely than women to abandon their blog once it's created. Call blogging a 21st century room of one's own.

GO TO: blogsisters.blogspot.com

Candidates Love Blogs

O.K., so Howard Dean never wrote his blog. But his campaign workers posted a surprisingly intimate online diary of life on the road, and Dean had collected $20 million in contributions via the Internet alone by the end of January 2004. It didn't take long for other politicos to catch on. When New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer announced that he was running for Governor this month, he did so on his blog.

GO TO: blog.deanforamerica.com , spitzer2006.com

Pets Have Blogs Too

It started as an in-joke among feline-friendly bloggers: why not post pictures of their cats every Friday afternoon? Friday catblogging became a hit, and soon even NASA was playing along by posting pictures of the Cat's Eye nebula.

GO TO: carnivalofthecats.com

Anyone Can Do It

Blogs wouldn't be such a democratic medium if they weren't so easy to set up. The most popular service, Blogger, owned by Google, boasts features like push-button photoblogging. Microsoft has launched a trial version of its own blogging service.

GO TO: blogger.com , spaces.msn.com

From the Keyboards of Stars Satisfying both the fan's appetite for arcana and the entertainer's need for self-promotion, the blog — or Web log, to the uninitiated — may just be the ideal... ri.clickability.com/ri?action=viewRelatedItem&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.time.com%2Ftime%2Farchive%2Fpreview%2Ffrom_related%2F0%2C10987%2C1101041018-713215%2C00.html&title=People&fromUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.time.com%2Ftime%2Fpersonoftheyear%2F2004%2Fpoymoments.html

Meet Joe Blog [Jun 13, 2004]

Why are more and more people getting their news from amateur websites called blogs? Because they're fast, funny and totally biased ri.clickability.com/ri?action=viewRelatedItem&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.time.com%2Ftime%2Farchive%2Fpreview%2Ffrom_related%2F0%2C10987%2C1101040621-650732%2C00.html&title=Meet+Joe+Blog&fromUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.time.com%2Ftime%2Fpersonoftheyear%2F2004%2Fpoymoments.html

Moreover Technologies Launches First Enterprise-Grade Weblog Search


World first real-time weblog search to offer enterprises access to high value information

Moreover Technologies, the leading provider of aggregated online business information to enterprises, today announces that it has launched the first real-time weblog search tool for the enterprise. The product harvests information from over 75,000 hand selected, business-critical weblogs in real-time and enables corporate users to gain access to the high value news, commentary and consumer opinion that resides within weblogs.

Weblogs, or "blogs", are frequently-updated, private websites with a chronologically dated 'log' format. They take the form of personal commentaries on a diverse range of topics, from the writer's own life to their observations on business, politics and world events. This highly individual content can provide businesses with invaluable insight into perceptions of their business as well as highlighting news and information that is of particular interest. Blogs are increasingly becoming a key part of the media mix, both in terms of content creation and consumption. There are over 3 million active "bloggers" in the US and, according to the Pew Internet Report, approximately 8 million Americans visited blogs to find Iraqi war coverage.

To overcome the issue of the variable quality of blog content the team of human editors at Moreover Technologies assigns each blog a ranking that corresponds to the reliability, integrity and caliber of the blog thus enabling users to instantly identify high value information. Additionally, each blog is tagged with a wide range of metadata including, but not limited to, the number of incoming and outgoing links to it as well as the blog's status in the wider blogging community.

The aggregated blog information is also available to users as pre-configured or customized topical 'feeds' that provide users with access to relevant information as it appears online. Blog content will also be made available via Moreover’s ci-metabase product - a complete and constantly updated XML feed of all information harvested by Moreover - allowing a completely customised solution for the enterprise.

Jim Pitkow, CEO, Moreover Technologies, said: "Weblogs are increasingly being recognized as an important source of business-critical information. Blogs highlight the news that matters as well as providing instantaneous commentary and opinions on a wide variety of topics and events.

The addition of blogs to the content we already harvest again demonstrates our position at the forefront of aggregated, online business information. By looking for information beyond traditional news sites, Moreover can offer businesses a truly comprehensive service ensuring that our clients receive the information that is important to them wherever it appears and as soon as it appears."

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For more information on this product, please contact their sales department

For PR enquires contact: Patrick Herridge, Mantra PR, E-Mail or +44 207 907 7809

About Moreover Technologies:

Moreover Technologies is a leading provider of online aggregated business information. Its technology searches more than 5,500 hand selected news, corporate or government websites and discussion boards as often as every 15 minutes for new content. This content is then categorized and fed out to users - giving them a real-time insight into the news and issues that matter to them.

Headquartered in the San Francisco and the UK, Moreover Technologies serves blue chip customers, including Hill and Knowlton, CitiGroup and Microsoft.

Source: w.moreover.com/main_site/pressroom/presspages/9-22-03.html  

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