bloggers

New Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents

Reporters Without Borders has come out with a new version (Update: I am a year late with discovering this book see RSF release article) of its Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. The handbook offers practical advice and techniques on some easy and some quite complex issues.

Everything from how to create a blog, how to make entries and get the blog to show up in search engine results. It gives clear explanations about blogging for all those whose online freedom of expression is subject to restrictions, and it shows how to sidestep the censorship measures imposed by certain governments, with a practical example that demonstrates the use of the censorship circumvention software Tor.

The handbook is very useful on many levels so blog about it to make sure it gets out there.

Posted on by mklang

The death of the blog (again)

The demise of the blog is a common call but they are still around. In a recent version Paul Boutin, in an article entitled Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004 in Wired Magazine writes:

Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.

His argument is interesting but based on the premise that individual bloggers cannot effectively compete with the top blogs in the world today. Therefore since you cannot beat the top blogs in the number of visitors it’s not worth writing.

This is wrong in so many ways.

His arguments are based on the assumption that all bloggers want to compete in that manner. That they want to have the most visitors. If they do not desire this then they should not be there. This is like telling a person that he or she should not bother jogging since he or she will never win the New York marathon. There are other values involved.

In addition to this the belief that only established media will ever be the biggest fails to take into account the rise of all successful new media products from reality tv to fashion blogs – these were not predicted and still they manage to overturn the typical view of what content should be.

Posted on by mklang

Swedish young women blog

Confirmation about the people behind the blogs comes via Media Culpa who is attending Internetdagarna in Stockholm. A report from the World Internet Institute shows that among 16-18 year-olds it is almost three times as common for girls to blog than it is for boys and in the 26-30 year age group it is even more than three times as common for women to blog.

This confirms the views of Media Culpa who has studied the state of Swedish blogging over time (check out the report BlogSweden 3) that shows young women dominating the Swedish blogosphere.

swedeninternet2008

Posted on by mklang