I've been doing startup since 2001. Startups are an all-absorbing preoccupation, leaving scorch marks where there used to be six-packs of time stacked neatly three high and five deep. This has been especially true while working on a tech startup during a tech funding recession.
So I've missed some salient portions of the first four years of the new millennium. It's a little like being in prison for several years, I guess, it takes some time to adjust.
One of the things I intentionally ignored was the hugely popular, net-based spleen vents variously called blogs, web logs, plans, diaries,...
I knew they were there, I've visited friends' and others blogs on occasion over the years, but I made it a point to never linger.
Now, I'm starting to add some menus to the personal bookmark bar and stick some links to various different kinds of web logs. I'm ramping up my blog awareness, studying and bringing up the necessary tech to deal with the crushing load of processed blogium streams directly into me wet sensory gear.
I've been getting most of my news from web sites since forever, and recently I've noticed that there no longer is any appreciable functional difference between the web site maintained by Fox News or the New York Times, and Boing Boing. I branch from news.google.com, but sometimes I read what people have seen and comment about, and branch from there.
I am thrilled that the blogs are there. There are quite a few official news sources like the cable network venues, the old newspapers, broadcast networks, and the wire press seem to be marching to drums that I can't hear. They pay attention to things I don't care about. They maddeningly leave out details where such things are important.
Mailing lists are more voluminous than individual blogs, but then you could read a hundred blogs and not get the gist carried by a single short thread on a mailing list.
Web logs add value. Good authors talk about what information isn't yet available and might be out there. They add perspective. This sort of thing is often drowned in mailing list threads as they drown in flame and bluster.
Like some mailing lists, they sometimes lead the contents of white papers and journal articles by months. Finding and reading the right blogs for this sort of thing is very difficult, there's so much vacuous chibi-talk in some logs.
So hey, staying on top of the web log scene has become very important. What content do I need? What content do I want? I don't want the same stuff from friends that I want from a colleague, a true hacker...
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