Category — Blogging News

The Reader’s Choice Poll for the 2007 Performancing Blog Awards are now open for voting and there some local blogs in the running for an award in 10 of the categories.

Congratulations to the following Australian nominees.

Best Overall Blog
Nominee: ProBlogger

Most Influential Blogger
Nominee: Darren Rowse (ProBlogger)

Best Blog Design
Nominee: North x East

Best Blog Typography
Nominee: Freelance Switch
Nominee: North x East

Best Blog Name
Nominee: Skelliewag

Best New Blog of 2007
Nominee: Freelance Switch

Best Blog Podcast
Nominee: Freelance Switch
Nominee: On The Pod

Best Writing/Blogging Blog
Nominee: ProBlogger

Best Food/Health Blog
Nominee: The Food Pornographer

Best Education Blog
Nominee: Teaching Generation Z

Voting is open from January 3rd through January 10th and the winners will be announced on Friday January 11th.

Good luck to all these nominees. It would be great to see some of these bloggers pick up a gong as there are some fantastic blogs in this list. So go show your support to your fellow Australian bloggers and give them a vote.

Nominations are now open for the 8th Annual Weblog Awards.

Previous winners of the Best Australian or New Zealand weblog category were:

2007 The Breakfast Blog

2006 Loobylu

2005 What’s New, Pussycat?

2004 Loobylu

2003 Loobylu

So go spread the love and nominate your favourite Australian blogs at http://2008.bloggies.com

You have until Friday, January 11, 2008 to nominate your favorites. Then 3 panels of 50 randomly selected voters will be involved in the 2nd round of voting to determine the finalists in each category from the list of initial nominations. Then voting will open again on January 22 to decide the overall winners which will be announced in early March.

A complicated voting process but it certainly provides worthy recognition for a blog that gets through it with the honour of an award.

Story found via Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ.

Forbes’ list of the Top 25 Web Celebrities has been revealed and Melbourne blogger Darren Rowse from ProBlogger made the list coming in at #25.

Congrats!

Anyone who is interested in potentially making some cash from their blog but hasn’t read ProBlogger should go have a look. Everything there is to be known about blog monetisation among many other things like writing tips and blog management ideas is there. All his posts are based on experience and success while being presented via an unromanticised view of how much hard work is required to make problogging a full time job.

Link blogging about blogging. Because I like it.

1. Very sad news this week with the Alive in Baghdad blogger being found murdered in his home. Laurel Papworth has a superb post that provides further details and gives some personal perspective to the situation.
1. On Monday just past, it was the the ten year anniversary of when Jorn Barger coined the term “weblog”. He spoke to Wired Magazine and gives his Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers.
1. One of the ABC blogs, Dools Gold by comedian Scott Dooley, is the fourth most viewed page on the ABC web site.
   
   This is one of my fave blogs under the funny folder in my RSS reader. Admittedly, only Scott Adams’ The Dilbert Blog and Dools Gold have been subscribed to in that folder but it is still not surprising to me that it gets excellent traffic. I’m also certain ABC’s entertainment/gossip blog The Shallow End is one of the most popular pages on the ABC web site.
   
   It is encouraging to see that blogs are becoming popular at the national broadcaster. Because the flow on effect for the rest of the Aussosphere is that people uncertain with what blogs are will experience them at the ABC then maybe look into reading other blogs and might even consider blogging themselves.
1. Best. Spam. Comment. Ever.
1. Search engines have been releasing their annual search trends in the last week or so but now BuzzLogic has announced their list of the hottest topics in the blogosphere this year.

I’m always annoyed at statements like blogs have never completely lived up to their early hype as written in an otherwise good opinion piece about blogging in today’s Sydney Morning Herald by Sam Roggeveen, editor of the Lowy Institute blog.

I’ve been blogging and following everything that is the blogosphere for 5 years. So I read with interest the posts and articles during the phenomenal growth period when blogging started to take off. To me, the overall feeling towards blogs by bloggers in the early days was nothing but excitement at observing this personal publishing platform be embraced so quickly and passionately by so many.

I really don’t think there was ever an exaggerated publicity to pump up blogging to be something it was not. This is shown when a Google search of “blogs will replace newspapers” brings up a lame 17 results and when “bloggers will replace journalists” displays an even more a pitiful 11 results. I’ve always felt the hype surrounding blogging of what blogs could do was nothing more than a overly defensive myth perpetuated by those outside of the blogosphere.

While the exciting concepts of organised citizen journalism initiatives and problogging that Roggeveen mentions as evidence of blogging’s failure are both still growing in Australia. I think these are a poor basis to judge blogging’s success.

Like I said, Overhyped, but blogs are here to stay is worth a read but it is a shame that the writer felt he had to disparage blogging before getting down to worthwhile commentary about how blogs have evolved into a useful tool for the political process.

Something which surprised me back in April when I first started the hunt to add more Australian blogs to the blogs.com.au index was that I saw a number of “couple blogs”. These are blogs where two people in a relationship would set-up a blog so they could both record everything about their relationship. I had no idea these existed.

Even though I’m a blogging evangelist who believes people, large companies, small businesses, charities, journalists, teachers and politicians should all blog. I felt less than enthusiastic about these blogs because there was something about couple blogging that felt a little too personal to be announced to the world and archived. You know, the Internet being forever and all. It just made me question if things didn’t work out in that relationship whether both people would want that recorded online in 1, 5 or 10 years time.

The recent example of a New York tech couple, Jakob Lodwick and Julia Allison, who set up JakobandJulia.com, made me doubt my original feelings towards the subject. Right up until the point it exploded in a ugly mess of nasty posts making the cynical jaded bitter commitment phob inside of me rejoice that couple blogging really was fraught with danger.

Even though it was started with clear boundaries via a Memorandum of Understanding and things blogged along quite well for the first two weeks. Cracks started to appear when Julia ironically posted that she was annoyed about being informed of things in her boyfriend’s life only via his blog. It then went downhill very quickly with unpleasant back and forth posts.

It was interesting to watch from afar but had that uncomfortable feeling like having to overhear couples bitching at each other in the line at the supermarket. Clearly I could have avoided it by not adding it to my feed reader but that would mean I would not be an observer of sensational subjects. Still, I’m hopping these blogs doesn’t infiltrate into the blogosphere in any large number. I just would not have the time to voyeuristically keep up with them all

Stephen Collins, a Canberra based freelancer who deals with the Government has an interesting chat about Government 2.0 in the latest episode of On The Pod with Duncan Riley.

For those unable to spend 48 minutes listening to the whole podcast and are most interested in blogging, there is a great chat between 5:35 - 10:15 about the discussion paper into the possibility of the Federal Government starting a blog to facilitate the discussion of policy.

Meg Tsiamis has a full run down of the people in the running and how to vote.

It’s the last day of voting so go show some support and vote for your favourite Australian bloggers.

Radio producer NatalieV (who has an always engaging blog - The Scratching Post) has sent me a link to the audio of a blogger we’ve previously featured at The Local, John Birmingham, who is talking all things blogging on Brisbane’s 4BC radio.

Scroll down the page, click on the John Birmingham interview link and a media player will pop up to stream the audio. It’s an annoying listening set up but is well worth the effort as it is interesting and entertaining to hear the thoughts of what an experienced writer has to say on the subject.

It has been good to see a trend in both positive coverage of blogging and acknowledgment of bloggers in the Australian media recently. Has been very little up until this year, so is quite encouraging to see it presented in a way that will expose blogs to new audiences.

Book authors blogging
I should note that Birmingham along with Max Barry are the only big time Australian writers that I know of who sincerely make the most of their online journals with truly interactive blogs.

A couple of examples. Barry, who is a hilarious writer of corporate satires recently asked for and received some phenomenal mock ups of some soft drink cans to be used in the film adaptation of his book Syrup. While Birmingham regularly ask for help with details of things to be included in his books, does collaborative writing projects with his readers or seeks contributors for fan fiction festivals.

More writers should watch these two and learn a thing or two.

Blog posts about blogging. What more could you want?

1. A brilliant post by Melbourne’s Lelia Thomas about the annoyance of bloggers who make their money by telling others how to make money through blogging. Was something I heard a lot during breaks at the Australian Blogging Conference.
1. Mike has some great advice for people concerned that their blog isn’t popular.
1. A trends report, What’s Next, has predicted that blogging will be extinct by 2023. Download the 1MB PDF File for full details. Sourced at John Lampard’s disassociated.com.
1. The Australian bloggers behind the hugely successful Blog Action Day give a behind the scenes look at how they made it such a success.
1. Is good to see that the Sydney Morning Herald’s new weekly lift out, “The List”, has a column featuring Australian bloggers. No link as it’s only available in the deforestation edition, sorry. Rock concert photoblogger Daniel Boud was the first Meet the Blogger. Congrats.
1. While the enormous size of the blogosphere and finding your own place within it is on Meg Tsiamis’ mind. Chartreuse displays his consistent wisdom in a post that can help you get noticed.