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05 Feb 2010 16:19

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Tech: TechCrunch proves that tech gossip blogs have ethics, too

  • In some way or another, a line was crossed that should have never been. At this time, I do not want to go into details, but I will publicly say that I am truly sorry to my family, friends, TechCrunch, and especially the tech community.
  • Former TechCrunch writer Daniel Brusilovsky • Regarding an ethical error he made as an intern for the site. TechCrunch reports (in an apology) that Brusilovsky reportedly tried to barter coverage on TechCrunch on multiple occasions, which is a definite no-no when it comes to journalistic behavior. TechCrunch chose not to reveal his name at first due to his age, but Brusilovsky apologized for the matter himself. Good idea. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

04 Feb 2010 09:48

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Tech: For teens, old hotness: Blogs. Not hot at all: Twitter. Hot: MySpace?

  • 73% of teens use social networking, a number that keeps going up
  • 18% of teens blogged in 2009, down from 28% in 2006
  • 70% of teens own a computer, most of those being laptops
  • The most popular site for teens? MySpace still, surprisingly. Facebook is generally more popular among adults, and just 8 percent of teens tweet, even though 19 percent of adults do. The average teenager is the modern equivalent of a ’90s AOL user. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Oct 2009 19:03

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Politics: The fine, very important, art of staying on point on your blog

  • The idea here is to give individuals a better way to monitor their electricity usage, with the eventual goal set at 40 million installed meters over the next few years. Great idea, guys – or you know, you could just advise people to turn stuff off when they aren’t using it, or not use energy they can’t afford. Just sayin’.
  • Engadget blogger Darren Murph • Describing the new “smart grid” technology that Obama’s pushing to implement over the next few years. We have a lot of problems with this statement – we understand the politics behind it, and while it’s a valid point (the program is quite expensive), it CAME OUT OF FREAKING NOWHERE on a technology blog which almost never talks politics. To us, it seemed completely out of place and off-message, to the point where it derailed any useful commentary about the post in the site’s comments section. It became less about the devices and more about what Murph said. This is a dangerous thing in blogging. While there needs to be a degree of feeding into people’s expectations, and a degree of breaking them, if you change the game in the middle like this, it can completely turn readers off. If you have commentary on your site, make it an integral part. Are we barking up the wrong tree here on this? • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

17 Jun 2009 21:50

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Politics, Tech: You’re lying to yourself if you think you’ll make money blogging

  • Google ads pay almost nothing. Banner ads are worth almost nothing, and the market for advertising has cratered with the Great Recession.
  • Blogger Jake Seliger • Who combined the main points of two articles we recently posted about to make the argument that we’ll never make money blogging. But it doesn’t mean we won’t keep trying. Because we’re crazy and apparently aren’t sure how to stop. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 3 Comments • Permalink

09 Jun 2009 10:58

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Tech: Bloggers who get bored leave a trail of broken dreams behind

  • I was always hoping more people would read it, and it would get a lot of comments. Every once in a while I would see this thing on TV about some mommy blogger making $4,000 a month, and thought, ‘I would like that.’
  • Judy Nichols • Who ran a site called “Rantings of a Crazed Soccer Mom” before she got bored because nobody was actually visiting her site. Nichols isn’t alone by a long shot. 95% of blogs get ditched for similar reasons, or because their authors get too busy. In case you’re wondering, that won’t happen to us. We spend too much time on this to get rid of it. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 3 Comments • Permalink

31 May 2009 12:11

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Politics, Tech: The evolution of the art of writing in the age of blogs

  • Philip Greenspun of MIT argues that, before the Web, you could either write books or mid-sized articles of four to five pages. Publishing was constricted. source
  • When the internet first came about, he argues, it allowed for long articles – 20 to 30 pages – to be easily printed. But short bites didn’t make sense online. source
  • His argument concludes that blogging solved the biggest problem of the media age – now people can easily write short. Well, that’s what we’re doing, anyway. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

22 Jan 2009 18:24

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Tech: Need inspiration, bloggers? Time to get Plinky.

  • A service designed to give you ideas. Everyone who’s ever blogged has dealt with it; lazy blogger syndrome. But a startup created by a former Google staffer wants to make it easier for you to avoid it. If you need a couple of ideas, check out the just-launched Plinky, which combines social networking (along the lines of Twitter) and brainstorming (in the form of prompts and answers) for the win. Hopefully you’re not sick of social networking yet. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

11 Jan 2009 17:59

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Biz, Tech: An ode to an absurdly ambitious idea: The Printed Blog.

  • It’ll be fun to see them try to pull this off. Someone needed to combine the philosophy of Digg with a print product, right? And these guys are all about it – it appears that they’re not newspaper people, even, but smart people with a good idea (and hopefully, money). One interesting thing to note is that they plan to ultra-localize the content they distribute, with the possibility of 100 print editions in Chicago alone (!). Watch out for this one. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink
 
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