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More Than A Blog, An Experience

FTC: Bloggers must disclose payments for reviews

Advertisers, celebrity endorsers and even some internet bloggers will be held liable for false statements they make about products as part of a crackdown by US regulators on deceptive advertising practices.

The new rules on the use of testimonials in advertising, released by the Federal Trade Commission on Monday, also say that anyone who endorses a product, including celebrities and bloggers, must make explicit the compensation received from companies. In an effort to hold companies and endorsers accountable, the FTC guidelines state that businesses and reviewers will be liable for any false statements made about a product. If a blogger receives a free sample of skin cream and untruthfully claims it cures eczema, for example, the company and the blogger could be held liable for false advertising.

» FTC GOV - FT [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Behemoth Blogs Taking Over The Web

In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books, Michael Massing articulates a point made so often about the Web that it's nearly catechismal. Blogs, he says, have torn down the power structure of old media. "Decentralization and democratization" are the law of the land, offering “a podium to Americans of all ages and backgrounds to contribute.” This is a notion that bloggers and web gurus have been touting for years. In his 2006 book, An Army of Davids, for example, “Instapundit” blogger Glenn Reynolds argued that “markets and technology” empowered “ordinary people to beat big media.” And this June, internet sage Clay Shirky assured an audience at a TED event that the old model, where “professionals broadcast messages to amateurs,” is “slipping away.”

» The Atlantic [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?

Just about everyone, from the general public to news executives, has an opinion about the future of journalism. Now, the Federal Trade Commission is stepping into the debate.

The commission is planning two days of workshops in December — titled “From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” — to examine the state of the news industry.

More often, the F.T.C. tends to organize workshops related to consumer protection issues like mortgage fraud. But Jon Leibowitz, the F.T.C. chairman, says the agency has taken a look at other industries, through workshops on hospital competition, food marketing and the patent system. Journalism’s future falls in the agency’s purview, he said.

» NY Times - FTC [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

FOE "feed over email" - U.S. tests system to break foreign Web censorship

The U.S. government is covertly testing technology in China and Iran that lets residents break through screens set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet.

The "feed over email" (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes, said Ken Berman, head of IT at the U.S. government's Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is testing the system.

» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Read it quick: this article will self-destruct in eight hours.

Computing and communicating through the Web makes it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview; a lost or stolen laptop can expose personal photos or messages; or a legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating or just embarrassing details from the past.

Vanish is a research system designed to give users control over the lifetime of personal data stored on the web or in the cloud. Specifically, all copies of Vanish encrypted data — even archived or cached copies — will become permanently unreadable at a specific time, without any action on the part of the user or any third party or centralized service.

For example, using the Firefox Vanish plugin, a user can create an email, a Google Doc document, a Facebook message, or a blog comment — specifying that the document or message should "vanish" in 8 hours. Before that 8-hour timeout expires, anyone who has access to the data can read it; however after that timer expires, nobody can read that web content — not the user, not Google, not Facebook, not a hacker who breaks into the cloud service, and not even someone who obtains a warrant for that data. That data — regardless of where stored or archived prior to the timeout — simply self-destructs and becomes permanently unreadable.

» Vanish / Washington edu [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Help test "caffeine" google's next-generation search

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search. It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Some parts of this system aren't completely finished yet, so we'd welcome feedback on any issues you see. We invite you to visit the web developer preview of Google's new infrastructure at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and try searches there.

Right now, we only want feedback on the differences between Google's current search results and our new system. We're also interested in higher-level feedback ("These types of sites seem to rank better or worse in the new system") in addition to "This specific site should or shouldn't rank for this query." Engineers will be reading the feedback, but we won't have the cycles to send replies.

Here's how to give us feedback: Do a search at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says "Dissatisfied? Help us improve." Click on that link, type your feedback in the text box and then include the word caffeine somewhere in the text box. Thanks in advance for your feedback!

» Google [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Beyond Newspapers v Bloggers

Blogging has gone beyond the snip-it-and-comment approach that riffs on the journalism of others while doing no conventional reporting of their own in the sense of gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. The commentary has broadened into a concern with subjects that newspapers are no longer interested in.

» Public Opinion [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

A Hollywood Blogger Feared by Executives

“Did you see what Nikki just wrote?” That would be Nikki Finke, a well-traveled newspaper reporter who has found her moment as a digital-age Walter Winchell.

In the three years since she started Deadline Hollywood Daily, a daily blog about the entertainment business, her combination of old-school skills — she is a relentless reporter — and new-media immediacy has made her a must-click look into the ragingly insecure id of Hollywood.

“I really don’t see covering Hollywood as all that different from covering the Kremlin or the federal government,” she said. “I’m always fascinated by closed societies that don’t want prying eyes.”

» New York Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Google Engineering Director Spells Out Vision for the Future of Digital Books

Google Books engineering director Dan Clancy spelled out the vision at a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Clancy stressed the importance of making it possible to buy the digital books in traditional bricks-and-mortar bookstores, as well as online.

"Right now the physical bookstores are a critical part of our book ecosystem," he said. "A huge amount of books are bought because people go into a physical bookstore and say, hey I want this, I want that. It's a mistake if we think of our future digital world as digital means online and physical means offline. Because if that happens and 10 percent of the world goes digital, that's going to be really hard for all the bookstores to sustain their business model."

Dan Clancy comments:

People look at the settlement [with the Authors Guild and the AAP] and think that that is Google's vision for what the future looks like for books. And in fact the settlement is what we figured out for these predominantly out-of-print books, so it's more about the past. And in fact we've done a lot of thinking about what is the role we want to play going forward in a digital book world, for new books.

There are [three] things we put as requirements.

One is I believe people want their books stored in the cloud.... For most people, your library is something that you don't pull books off all that often, but when you need it, you want it to be there. That's where a cloud really works. You're not going to actively manage it, but you want to make sure that five years from now, [it's there].

Number two, I think it's critical that there's diversity of choices in terms of retailers that you work with.

Now one of the things with the cloud is that the consumer needs to trust that the person who's providing the cloud will be there. So you don't trust the cloud to some new startup that you've never heard of, or some small local bookstore, that you love to go to.

But right now the physical bookstores are a critical part of our book ecosystem. And in fact a huge amount of books are bought because people go into a physical bookstore and say, hey I want this, I want that. And I think it's a mistake if we think of our future digital world as digital means online and physical means offline. Because if that happens and 10 percent of the world goes digital, that's going to be really hard for all the bookstores to sustain their business model.

So part of our model is to figure out we're going to syndicate for our partner program all of the books we sell that are new, so that any bookstore can sell a Google edition and find a way that people can buy them in bricks and mortar stores as well.

And then finally, our model is you should be able to read on any device.... Our model is some people will read [our books] on a laptop, some will read them on the phone, some people will read on their netbook, and some people will read on their e-reader. And we'll work with any reader provider that wants to make it so they can get their books from the Google cloud....

So the principles of our future world is trying to build this world where there's lots of retail players, read on any device, but it's still stored in the cloud. And as we talk with publishers and booksellers, I think this is the right model, because we're trying to make what would be an open model that encourages competition

» Blog2 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Will anyone pay for anything?

The idea for Revenue Bootcamp held on the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, Calif., developed earlier this year after some people realized that upcoming conferences focused only on "social media . . . basically gathering eyeballs, but nobody was talking about monetizing people . . .," Guy Kawasaki explained in his opening remarks.

» Revenue Bootcamp
» Building43 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Twitter launches '101' business course in benefits of microblogging

Twitter is a communications platform that helps businesses and their customers do a number of useful things. As a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you've had a great--or disappointing--experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

» Twitter 101 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

BlogBrowser (tm) dot com

Through this portal you can access a growing range of Blog Browser
brand services.

Brand Name / Trademark: [ BlogBrowser ]

RSS (file format) / Really Simple Syndication

RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by news websites and weblogs. The abbreviation stands for one of the following standards:

• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
• RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1)
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

RSS provides short descriptions of web content together with links to the full versions of the content. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using a news aggregator.

Usage

RSS is widely used by the weblog community to share the latest entries' headlines or their full text, and even attached multimedia files. (See podcasting, broadcatching and MP3 blogs.)

In 2004 and 2005, after several years of use by early adopters, use of RSS spread to many major news organizations, including Reuters, the Associated Press and the BBC. Under various usage agreements, providers allow other websites to incorporate their "syndicated" headline or headline-and-short-summary feeds.

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled webpages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is now common to find RSS feeds on major web sites, as well as many smaller ones.

Client-side readers and aggregators are typically constructed as standalone programs or extensions to existing programs like web browsers.

Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access. Some aggregators syndicate (combine) RSS feeds into new feeds, e.g. take all football related items from several sports feeds and provide a new football feed. There are also search engines for RSS feeds like Feedster, Technorati, Pluck or Plazoo.

via [ BlogBrowser ] [ Simple Blog Browser Application ]

Wanted: Blog Talent - Opinion Leaders/Writers

Are you ready to become an online leader of a community of people who share your interests? Every Blog Opinion Leaders's mission is to create an simple, intuitive and gratifying experience for people interested in this topic.

The Perfect BlogBrowser Writer/Editor has...
- A true knowledge of and a passion for this topic
- Commitment to creating informative, "what you need to know" posts
- A dedication to building and updating a comprehensive links directory
- Strong writing and editing skills

via [ BlogTalent ]

Atom (standard)

Atom is an XML-based document format and HTTP-based protocol designed for the syndication of Web content such as weblogs and news headlines to Web sites as well as directly to user agents. It is based on experience gained in using the various versions of RSS. Atom was briefly known as "Echo".

The completed Atom specification was submitted to the IETF for approval in June 2005, the final step in becoming an RFC Internet Standard Implementors are urged to wait until the spec is finished before deploying it, so that interoperability problems are minimized. The latest Atom data format and publishing protocols are linked from the Working Group's home page.

Before the Atom work entered the IETF process is referred, the group produced "Atom 0.3", which has support from a fairly wide variety of syndication tools both on the publishing and consuming side. In particular, it is generated by several Google-related services, namely Blogger and Gmail.

As well as a replacement for RSS (the "Atom Syndication Format"), the Atom Project is producing the "Atom Publishing Protocol", with a similar aim of improving on and replacing existing publishing mechanisms, such as the Blogger API and LiveJournal XML-RPC Client/Server Protocol.

via [ BlogBrowser ] [ Simple Blog Browser Application ]

Creating And Publishing Weblogs

Since their introduction, a number of software packages have appeared to allow people to create their own weblog. Blog hosting sites and Web services to provide editing via the Web have proliferated. Common examples include GreatestJournal, Pitas, Blogger, LiveJournal, DeadJournal and Xanga.

Many more advanced bloggers prefer to generate their blogs by using server-side web applications such as Nucleus CMS, Movable Type, bBlog, WordPress, b2evolution, boastMachine, Antville and Serendipity to publish on their own website or a third party site, or to host a group of blogs for a company or school. Such programs provide greater flexibility and power, but require more knowledge. If they provide a Web interface for editing, server-based systems make it easy for travelers to create and edit text; many travelers like to produce their travelblogs from Internet cafes while they travel around the globe.

In addition, some people program their own blogs from scratch by using PHP, CGI, ASP, Perl, or other server side software. While these are much more difficult to create, they add a maximum potential for creativity.

Two features which are common to blogging are "blogrolls" and "commenting" or "feedback."

A blogroll is a list of other blogs that are linked separately from any article. This is one means by which a blogger creates a context for his blog, by listing other blogs that are similar to his/her own, or blogs the blogger thinks may be of relevance to users. It is also used as measure of the number of citations a blog has, and is used to rank "blog authority" in a manner similar to the way that Google uses hard coded HTML linking to create "page rank." Still another use of the "blogroll" is reciprocal linking: bloggers agree to link to each other, or link to another blog in hopes of getting a link in return.

Another central, and sometimes controversial, aspect of blogging is the use of a feedback comment systems. A comment system allows users to post their own comments on an article or "thread." Some blogs do not have comments, or have a closed commenting system which requires approval from those running the blog. For other bloggers, including several very prominent ones, comments are the crucial feature which distinguishes a "true" blog from other kinds of blogs. Commenting can either be built into the software, or added by using a service such as HaloScan. If a blog has regular commenters, this is referred to as the blog's community.

Tools such as Ecto and w.bloggar allow users to maintain their Web hosted blog without the need to be online while composing or editing posts. Enhancements to weblog technology continue to be developed, such as the TrackBack feature introduced by Movable Type in 2002 and subsequently adopted by other software companies (e.g., Userland) to enable automatic notification between websites of related content—such as a post on a particular topic or one which responds to a post on another blog. bBlog has gone as far as implementing threaded trackbacks on comments, and comments on trackbacks.

Blogs with features such as TrackBack are credited with complicating search engine page ranking techniques. Integrating these into search engines has proven to be a challenge, and has been used to deliberately "push" page rankings. However, as one Google executive remarked, it is the search engine's job to find the ways that a website represents a "vote" for another website.

Web hosting companies and online publications also provide blog creation tools, such as Salon, Tripod, Bravenet and America Online, which calls its subscriber blogs "journals."

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One of the pioneers of the tools that make blogging more than merely websites that scroll is Dave Winer. One of his most important contributions was the creation of servers which weblogs would ping to show that they had been updated. Blog reading utilities, such as Blogrolling, use the aggregated update data to show a user when their favorite blogs have new posts.

Welcome To BlogBrowser (tm) dot net

A weblog about the interests, the curiosity, the passions, of weblogs. BlogBrowser reveals the smart edge of the culture: style, sites, things, and trends that intelligent, successful, and independent readers want, need, and ought to know about. It has no limitations other than the imagination and intelligence of its writers. BlogBrowser is less restricted, less predictable, than any other blog and has as its single goal to thrill and challenge its readers.

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Keyword Tags

BlogBrowser (tm) dot com / Weblog Guide And Simple RSS Reader

• Minimal blog reader which supports RSS and Atom feeds

• RSSFilter / RSS Filter
• XMLFilter / XML Filter
• AtomFilter / Atom Filter

tags: blogbrowser, blog browser / blogbrowser