Paradigms...where shift happens!

Now that's interesting...

In my last entry I said that I was no longer going to send out e-mails announcing something new here and that I had added a subscription link. So far two people out of the 100 plus people on my notification list have taken advantage of that. I know that some of you have the site bookmarked instead. So that I can get some idea of how many people read my ramblings, would you be so kind as to send me a short note at [email protected] and let me know whether you are using a bookmark or using a subscription service. If you use a subscription service I would love to know which one. I use Bloglines to track the blogs I read but I chose Feedblitz to use on my blog because the enrollment steps are a bit less complicated. I'll be looking forward to hearing from you. Your e-mail response will not put you on any list other than my Paradigms Good Guy list which serves only to make me feel good.

No solicitations for vitamins, body part enhancement or other personal issues will follow as a result. If you need any of those products, the knowledge of that need falls dead center in TMI land as far as I am concerned.

Thanks in advance for your help on this.

Check out Dooce's blog....I think you'll enjoy it.

Too much?

As I slogged through this past weekend, I began to wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew. All of a sudden I find myself with not only three separate blogs to write for but a web site project, River Voices   I'm trying to get up and running.

Ideally, I would like to post daily on all three blogs but I know there is no way I am going to keep up with that, at least not with the kind of quality material I want to offer. It would of course be somewhat easier if anyone of the three blogs were throwaways, places where I felt as if I could just throw up some angst-laden piece or rant about something in the news to fill the space but that's not the case.

The regular list of folks I send this one to are friends for the most part and you all deserve the best I can put together. The one about Fredericksburg is for a different audience, sort of a home town, sitting around on the porch kind of thing. That one I hope to maybe go commercial one day after it builds a bit of a following. The one for the newspaper of course is out there for all kinds of people and other than a few of them I have no idea who they are but they deserve my best effort at quality content as well.

So that's my whining for tonight and no, I would not like any cheese with that whine...just a more productive brain. I guess it boils down to a matter of making myself work at it a lot harder and finding out just what I can accomplish.

So there may be a bit more time between new posts but I'm still alive and kicking and still determined to keep on with the best I can bring you. But I can't promise that I won't double post when I think I can get away with it such as with the link below.

For a piece that is a great deal less self indulgent and therefore perhaps more interesting to read check my posting got today at the Free Lance-Star site.

New Blogs in the Burg

Maybe it’s too soon to judge.  I should give them more time to “get it”…this blogging deal, I mean but the signs aren’t promising so far. Our local paper has finally started a blog section on their web site, launching 5 new blogs since December 8^th.

Recalling some e-mail exchanges I have had with one of their general assignment reporters about the role of blogs in journalism, the wailing and gnashing of teeth must be deafening down there on Amelia Street. As painful as it might be to admit I was wrong, the product I see is pretty disappointing so far. 

Of the five blogs they have so far, two show nano-promise. The other three are more like after-thoughts as in “Oops, forgot to throw something up on the blog today! I better pound out a few lines to post.”

They seem to be working on a way to subscribe to the blogs through RSS feeds but there are no feeds that Blog Lines seems to recognize. For me, that means I have to wade through multiple ad-bloated pages to get to the blogs.

Comments on the blog postings? Forget about them unless you want to register as a user. I'll give it up to the "register monster" for some content but not for this.

 

Alive & Thriving, Part Deux

Susan's comments on my post regarding blogs is very interesting to me although I'm not sure I agree. Susan is no newbie to blogging and is the author of the very fine blog  Illusive Life but I see a great deal of sense in Gary Goldhammer's  comments about the dynamic of blogs shifting from novelty to utility.

In fact the Technorati  numbers support the continued exponential growth of the blog world with 19.6 million blogs being curently registered and 70,000 new ones added each day which equates to 1 new blog per second. The growth rate has been such that the number of blogs is doubling every five months. Tim Porter has a really interesting Power Point presentation with these numbers on his blog First  Draft 

The interesting twist that may support Susan's comment and Gary's view in a way is that only a bit more than half of the new blogs are still active after 90 days. That seems like an awfully high drop out rate to me but perhaps the 45% that drop off the active list are reflective of Gary's thesis of the shift from novelty to utility.

Blogging is alive and thriving...

...at least that's the message I get from two posts that I have read in the last couple of days. In Below The Fold , Gary Goldhammer, talks about the first age of blogging, "the age of novelty" coming to an end and  points toward what is the next step, the utility phase. On her blog Mena Stott  of SixApart fame dealt with the need for more civility in blogging at a conference in Paris.

Individual perceptions of civility will certainly vary. That said, blogs won't fulfil their promise as a productive communication utility if they rely on deliberately inflammatory postings. Such an approach will generate comments to be sure but since this is a virtually unregulated medium, credibility will depend in part on self restraint in language and content. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.....