Gartner's approach to blogging

Gartner, the IT analyst company, has some blogs on their site authored by their analysts. Even better, they have very specific terms and conditions including reserving the right to edit or delete comments. They are very well done and official-looking. Other similar: Jupiter: http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/ and Shore: http://shore.com/commentary/weblogs/ (pointed out by BestBizWeb E-Letter from InfoToday and Find/SVP)

Audience, Structure and Authority in the Weblog Community

Link to an article by Cameron Marlow of the MIT Media Lab to be presented at the International Communication Association Conference in New Orleans Friday (5/28/04). Compares frequency of occurence in blogrolls with frequency of occurence as permalinks in blog post content. Pointed out by Many2Many found via Topix.

InfoWorld: Blogging behind the firewall

5/21/04 by Chad Dickerson "InfoWorld's internal Weblog started as an experiment. Already, it's indispensable What a difference a few Weblogs can make. In January, I wrote about the importance of leveraging the inherent simplicity in technologies such as RSS for enterprise information-sharing, and I mentioned a particular effort I had in mind: experimenting with a simple intranet Weblog. Mentioning a future effort in my column tends to solidify my own commitment, so we set up an internal Weblog system driven by Movable Type. Then, in response to a later column, I got quite a bit of reader e-mail asking me for more details on our use of Weblogs because that anecdote just scratched the surface. Consider this installment a closer peek behind the scenes here at InfoWorld. "

Taipei Times/The Guardian: Inside information being revealed on the Internet

5/24/04 (pointed out by Topix) Discusses software developers at the big companies blogging what they're working on... could lead to release of proprietary information.

ZDNet TechUpdate: Social Computing: Getting Ahead of the Blog

4/20/04 by Mike Gotta (pointed out by PR meets the WWW) Long article but provides some detailed policy/planning tips for external corporate blogs.

Washington Post TechNews.com: Microsoft's Gates Touts Blogging as Business Tool

5/20/04 by Reed Stevenson (Reuters) "REDMOND, Wash. -- Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates often takes the stage to talk about the future of software technology, but on Thursday he also told top corporate executives that Weblogs and the way they are distributed can be used as business communication tools." Yes, well. As far as I can tell there are only two .Net blogging packages and neither is up to the quality of the ones written to be independent of platform.

A Personal Information and Knowledge Infrastructure Integrator: Edmonds et al.: JoDI

K. Andrew Edmonds, James Blustein, and Don Turnbull. Journal of Digital Information, Volume 5 Issue 1 Article No. 243, 2004-05-12 Pointed out by L.E. Abstract "The Next Big Thing is being grown organically, cultivated by software developers and pruned by personal Weblog publishers. The rising Weblogging space of the Internet is looking more like traditional hypertext than the Web of the 1990s. The ways in which Weblogging has evolved beyond the previous limitations of the Web as hypertext, and the ways Weblogging is evolving towards common-use hypertext destined to play a critical role in everyday life, will be explored. We have a vision of a universal information management system built on extending the traditional hypertext framework. In our utopian future, everyone will use tools descended from today's blogs to structure, search and share personal information, as well as to participate in shared discussion. We begin by expressing a vision of common-use hypertext for information management and interpersonal communication. This vision is grounded in the rapid evolution of Weblogs and known issues in information systems and hypertext. The practical implications of who will use these systems, and how, is expanded as usage scenarios for Weblogs now and in the future. After recapping the current issues facing the Weblogging community, we look to the long-range implementation issues with optimism. Our system is forward-looking yet realistic. The activities the system will support are extrapolated from recent developments in the online community, and most of the sketches of implementation are based on current approaches. It is of more than passing interest that the features we extrapolate were all described by Nelson as early hypertext ideals. Of particular interest is that the features are now being implemented because of perceived immediate need by communities of interest"

Signal: Weblogs Weave a New Communications Hub

May 2004 by Cheryl Lilie (v58 n9, pp.69-72) Discusses Navy trial of Traction weblog software for project management.

CIO Magazine: Making I.T. Work: The Virtues of Chitchat

5/15/04 Michael Schrage "That said, the blogging phenomenon has intriguingly useful implications for IT. I have to ask myself: Why wouldn't it make sense for an IT project manager to post a blog—or "plog" (project log)—to keep her team and its constituents up-to-date on project issues and concerns? Is it inherently inappropriate for an individual to post constructive observations about a project's progress? IT organizations that can effectively use blogs as managerial tools (or communication resources) are probably development environments that take both people and their ideas seriously. " and "So plogs can and should be different from blogs. Different organizations have the opportunity—I would now say the obligation—to explore how best to marry this medium of expression with the insatiable need for better managing communication, coordination and collaboration with IT and its clients. Frankly, I think plogs—like project leadership—represent an investment in professional development. That is, if a developer or manager or customer support rep can produce plogs that attract interest, raise awareness and foment change—well, that's a skill that deserves recognition and reward." (pointed out by Steven C., and by Topix, so now I've subscribed to a new feed)

OJR article: Scholars Discover Weblogs Pass Test as Mode of Communication

Pointed out by Garrett Roundtable discussion with several academics researching various aspects of the blogosphere.

WWW2004 Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics

New York, May 18th 2004 Page links to pdf files of accepted papers:

• How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere? Kathy Gill
• Automatic Collection and Monitoring of Japanese Weblogs, Tomoyuki Nanno
• Implicit Structure and the Dynamic of Blogspace, Eytan Adar
• BlogPulse: Automated Trend Discovery for Weblogs, Natalie Glance
• Personal Knowledge Publishing Suite with Weblog, Ikki Ohmukai & Hideaki Takeda
• Mapping the Blogospere in America, Alex Halavais
• Blogs as "Protected Space", Michelle Gumbrecht

Pointed out by Lilia Efimova

Discovering the iceberg of knowledge work: A weblog case

Lilia Efimova, Telematica Instituut, The Netherlands Submitted to[and accepted by] OKLC 2004, http://www.uibk.ac.at/congress/oklc2004 "The term knowledge work has been used for decades, but to date there is not much understanding what knowledge workers do and how this work can be improved. This paper contributes to the development of our theoretical understanding of knowledge work by exploring use of weblogs for professional purposes: as personal knowledge repositories, learning journals or networking instruments. We draw on the results of a weblog adoption study to explore knowledge worker activities and to propose a framework for analysing knowledge work. Keywords: knowledge work, personal networking, personal knowledge management, weblogs"

Dave Pollard's Blog Functionality Scorecard

Pointed to by Blog Drivers Waltz

Blogger has a new look and feel

Pretty cool. I'll have to see about the comments feature. I've been using an add-on.

Wired News: How the Word Gets Around

5/7/04 by Daniel Terdiman "The blogosphere has a strange ability to push a seemingly obscure idea into the forefront of people's minds in a heartbeat. How this happens is a bit of a mystery. Sam Arbesman wanted to know how it works, so he created a meme and set it loose. The Brandeis University senior had been reading various studies that looked at historical data on the way information works its way across the Internet. But he was more interested in seeing if he could figure out, in real time, the trajectory of a meme once it hits the blogosphere. So he came up with a plan to find out. He called it the Memespread Project. "

Semantic Blogging from HP

Applying semantic web ideas to blogging technology. Also, using semantic blogs for bibliographic management. The idea is to allow for better sharing and annotation. Also, to better show relationships between articles ("refutes", "supports", "provides evidence for", etc.). (Pointed out by Gary). Gary also points out this explanation of the use of a semantic blog.

Washington Post: Media's Most Wanted Today Is Blogger From Iraqi Prison

By Ellen McCarthy, Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page E01 "For three months, Joe Ryan kept an online diary detailing his sometime dangerous, sometimes tiresome work at Abu Ghraib, the prison outside of Baghdad. The dispatches, titled "Joe Ryan Iraq Diary" and hosted on the Web site of KSTP-AM, a St. Paul, Minn., radio station, caused little stir -- until reports of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The radio station says Ryan works for CACI International Inc., a U.S. military contractor based in Arlington."

Increasing reliance of Law.com on blawgs

Law.com has a newswire that covers all areas of law practice in the U.S. More and more articles are linking to blawgs that acted like news services picking up local stories of interest. Blawgs are also discussed for "extreme niche marketing" and solo lawyers.