This is the companion blog to “The Rough Guide to Blogging,” available now (Fall 2006).
Tomorrow morning I’ll be on NBC 11’s “Bay Area News” program at 10am. They do a series every Monday highlighting recommendations from independent book sellers in the area, Quills. I’ll be on the regular news show to discuss the book. Wish me luck.
Apple is notorious for driving their fanbase “b-a-n-a-n-a-s” with their highly anticipated bi-yearly announcements. Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches usually deliver new products and features that make the world a better (and prettier) world to live in. Today was no different as new iPods were released, along with upgraded versions of iTunes and iMovie. More surprises are in store and even if you’re nowhere near Jobs, you can still listen in or watch the keynote speech via the efforts of dedicated bloggers.
“When the world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, the web changed with it.
While phone networks and big news sites struggled to cope with heavy traffic, many survivors and spectators turned to online journals to share feelings, get information or detail their whereabouts. It was raw, emotional and new — and many commentators now remember it as a key moment in the birth of the blog.
When four planes were hijacked on a sunny fall morning, easy-to-use blogging services were still few and far between. Yet many who witnessed the horror of the attacks firsthand took to the keyboard to talk with the world.
Horrified Americans used e-mail, instant messages, any available communication tool. But weblogs meant large audiences, not just friends and family, could read those stories from the scene.”
-Birth of the Blog, Wired Magazine-
girlondemand.blogspot.com is the blog of an anonymous published author who focuses on print-on-demand books. We should thank her for having the energy to wade through the often god awful world of self-published books.
Many bloggers have a dream to make it big by publishing their own novel. Here’s someone who’s paying attention to that dream and in certain cases, helping that quest along. Thanks POD Girl!
In an article from Information Week, it’s said that free hosting services and blogging software helped to push up the overall number of new web sites on the Internet last month. (Whether this is a good or bad thing, you can decide for yourself.)
“The popularity of blogging services, particularly those of Google and Microsoft, has driven an increase of more than 4 million Web sites since last month, an Internet services company said Tuesday.
The number of Web site increased more than 4 percent to 96.9 million, according to a September survey by Netcraft. The number of sites has soared by 15.5 million since June.
Two trends are responsible for the growth: the popularity of blogging services and the heated competition between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft has had ‘huge growth’ in its Windows Live Spaces blogging/networking service, adding 1.3 million hostnames last month, Netcraft said. Google had a gain of 459,000 hostnames, primarily at Blogger. Both services are offered at no charge.
Free hosting services in general have driven site growth. In the first five months of the year, the Internet added an average of 2.75 million new hostnames per month, Netcraft said. Since June, the average has nearly doubled to 5.4 million sites per month.
Recent gains at free hosting services have begun to outpace growth at paid services, Netcraft said. While the two services are not often comparable in terms of the kind of subscribers they attract, the trend is still worth noting.”