2:16 p.m. Talked to Rebecca Blood, who wrote The Weblog Handbook. She thinks that bloggers take themselves too seriously. She has her own little taxonomy of blogs, breaking them out into Filters, which are mostly links to various items discovered on the Web; Blogs, characterized by short remarks and observations, and Notebooks, which have longer items, sort of mini-essays. In my experience, too many Weblogs combine aspects of all three to break them out into categories. It’s just blogs, is all. She agreed with just about everybody else that eventually the form will be so common that it will be past remarking about, like e-mail.
August 14, 2002 5:12 p.m. Jennifer, one of our interns, had an interesting experience. She contacted someone writing a personal Weblog called escribitionist. Coincidentally, our graphic designer, Dan, who was looking at blogs for ideas for the story layout, came across the blog, and noticed that the author had posted an item about being interviewed for NEWSWEEK! Someone is blogging our reporting in real-time! Hope Time doesn’t see this and get any ideas.
August 13, 2002 2 :10 p.m. Two interns here are now helping out, along with a couple of people from bureaus. That should take care of those stray 400,000 blogs. Discovered Ray Ozzie’s Weblog, and spoke to him about how it’s suddenly his new passion. Happy to see that an entry in his blog links to my book. Also spent a lot of time with Meg Hourihan (megnut) and Ev Williams (evhead), who did original blogger software. Their simple tools really helped the form take off.
9:29 a.m. Rented “Waking Life” last night. Now I understand why it wasn’t included in best-animation category in Oscars. Maybe it needed a Randy Newman song. Best parts were the serious discussions of cosmology, which seldom appear in animated feature films. In any case, it won’t make my favorite 100 movies, which I’ve helpfully posted for your edification.
8:05 a.m. I feel better this morning.
August 12, 2002 11:01 a.m. Off for the weekend. Where is none of your business. (Wasn’t the report on my health enough personal information for you?) Anyway, don’t look for any more until I’m back to work next week.
10:40 a.m. Article in New York Times idea section says that there are now 500,000 Weblogs. Can this be? I always seem to see the same hundred or so, and they’re all linked to each other. Will have to check out the other 499,900 somehow. Who are these people?
August 9, 2002 3:34 p.m. Been feeling sick all week and still not feeling that great. Like you care. That’s blogging–my personal biological state is now your problem. I want to go home (finished my column) but still have to do Conventional Wisdom. Hackett’s away. Where’s Alter?
11:15 a. m. Got the go-ahead to do blog story for next week. Great, now I’ll spend all weekend trolling the Web. Wonder who I should talk to. Definitely Dave Winer and Dan Bricklin. Also should call Glenn Reynolds and ask him if he’s made any money.
