Sunday, March 20, 2005
Bobbing for Blogs
What a wasted Saturday (and now Sunday). Made the four hour round trip to Indianapolis last night to take in the nightlife. Took a 2 hour nap at a rest stop on the way back. Today I’m catching up on my PVR’d TV -- I’m watching “Magnificent Seven” for the first time from begining to end, and it becomes obvious that “A Bugs Life” is a remake of sorts. Of course “Magnificent Seven” is itself is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's “Seven Samurai.”
Anyway I promised some blog reviews, so I have been surfing blogs for the most part of my lazy day.
Observation One: I’m not much interested in random blogs.
Observation Two: My blog is probably not as good as many of the average blogs I find so uninteresting.
Surfing Blogspot
After having visited over a hundred blogs at blogspot.com here are the ones I felt like sharing (though not necessarily giving them a glowing review). It should be noted Blogger and by extension Blogspot claim to have passed the million blog mark. That would have to be close to about a third of all blogs on the net if true. Anyway, I suspect I will have to search more like a few thousand blogs on Blogspot to find the real gems. On the other hand, there is something engaging about just clicking on the next blog button and be whisked away to someone else’s attempt at immortality.
Evil Twin Phil Liked its clean layout. Seems to be posting often, but having started fairly recently.
Ignorance is Bliss Very professional eye candy look. The owner mentions using a new “skin” so perhaps there is less to credit here. The anti-war message is a bit at odds with the teen cartoon look. Some might enjoy this site.
You Color My World. The neon on black color scheme is hard to ignore. A professional look, but of the teen Japanese girl kind. Lots of Leet-Speek (I mean l33t5p34k), web shorthand, and lower case “i”s. This is a site where the look totally dominates content, but if you use omg and lol a lot, this site might be for you.
On to BlogHop and its Top Blogs page
Soul To Squeeze Eye Candy, but I may go back and copy some blog references and HTML tricks. Not an English site, but with English comments and copied cartoons.
Much Ado About Me Eye candy anime look. Has a good list of other blogs worth a look and some blog-rings. I’m surprised my random blog searching didn’t find any blog-rings. Not so surprising to find them in a highly rated site I suppose. I will have to add a blog set of links to my side bar.
Enough To Go By A very hip looking site, looks like a labor of love from a music industry insider. If you are under 30 and into the music scene give it a go. Not overly Leet, but a little.
Coffee Achiever Very professional look personal blog/diary, links to a photo-blog as well. If you are among a certain class of blog-surfer voyeurs this site might be for you.
Blogstreet’s Top Personal Blogs
This fish needs a bicycle Very professional personal blog/diary. I see some of my earlier journal entries at Slashdot were very much like this in style. I will probably try to get back to a more intimate personal style. Another site for those that like glimpses into personal lives.
Anne… straight From the hip Another well-done personal blog/diary site.
Better Living Through Blogging Professional and uncluttered personal blog/diary. This probably is the style I hoping for when I started Bare Naked Larry, but have found I don’t have the discipline for frequent medium sized posts.
Summing up
Random jumping with Blogger or Blogspot will take you to a lot of vanity blogs (like my own) and also a lot of Splogs -- a contraction of Spam and Blogs that I’m sure I have not invented (though not seen before). The Next Blog button that Blogspot puts on these pages makes this the easiest way to jump through blog space, but it is of course tied to sites maintained by Blogger and Blogspot. You may not get to the best sites quickly this way, but you're giving a lot of people a look that would never get exposure so it feels very egalitarian.
BlogHop has a Best Blogs listing as rated by the viewers. When I started to type this entry (Saturday night) I had no votes for my blog on BlogHop. Today (Sunday) I have two votes: one “love it”, one “hate it”, nothing in between. Surfing Top Blogs with BlogHops Best Blogs page will keep you clear of splogs and quality will be high, but most seem to lack some elusive soul that makes a good blog.
I’m cultivating a love-hate relationship with Blogstreet. It is unclear to me that BNL will be accepted as a listed blog, a search for “Bare Naked Larry” currently returns nothing. There is a personal blogs directory with 1040 listings. So this would appear to be an elitist site (and I want in damn it). All the sites listed here are very slick and professional. This Modern World is listed Number one and WIL WHEATON DOT NET is listed at number two. The first is the site of a professional cartoonist, and the second the actor who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and who has turned his Second String Star Trek status in to a sort of Geek Sheik. At number 13 is The Mad Prophet Blog, which I won’t link because it shows what is wrong with Blogstreet. This blog was only maintained for a short time and then put on permanent hiatus. It is mostly an anti Bush anti War harangue -- BUT with lots of other sites and blog links. The message here is it isn’t how good your site is, but how many incestuous mutual links you get across domains.
In the future I will have to visit and list with other Blog sponsors as I (in Slashdot lingo) Karma Whore, but for today I am done blog-surfing. This post really should have been labled "Bobbing for Blogs: Part II," since I did this exercise once before with Slashdot Journals. The Original (early 2004) Bobbing for Blogs
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