The internet has allowed amateurs to directly rival professionals in opportunity, talent, quality and price, says Mark Penn — and not just in the field of journalism; bedroom musicians, artists and authors are all shaking up their respective fields with some serious competition.
Blogs
A girl always remembers her first time: a tribute to GeoCities
Yahoo has finally pulled the plug on GeoCities. Though most will say “good riddance” to the home of eye-searing fluro text, badly animated GIFs and never-ending Midi tunes, Ruth Brown looks back fondly on the site that popped her HTML cherry.
The (Dis)Information Age: how the internet is making us stupider
Despite the rhetoric of “openness”, the internet is actually making us more narrow-minded by allowing us to filter what we read to suit our own viewpoints, says a new book by academic Cass Sunstein. How else can you explain the absurd ideas of the “birthers” gaining a foothold?
25 bloggers you should read (but probably don’t)
Mediaite has put together a list of the “most talented and influential bloggers” who often fly under the internet’s radar. It’s a great list full of must-reads, though we’d contend that the likes of Andrew Breitbart and Michael Arrington hardly count as “underrated”.
Watch the blistering growth of social media in real time
Australian social media expert Gary Hayes has put together a neat flash app that shows the growing number of blog posts, tweets, YouTube videos and more being posted every second, in real time before your very eyes.
Are independent political blogs dead?
With the leading political blogs increasingly backed by big media outlets, are the days of needing only a PC and an opinion to be an popular online pundit over?
The evil genius of Gawker’s Nick Denton
The latest move of Gawker Media blog empire monarch Nick Denton is to let readers post videos and pictures and tag their own comments, effectively turning the site into an anarchic version of Facebook.
Vegemite’s new name unites the internet in contempt
Kraft has finally found a name for its “new” Vegemite — and it’s so horrible, the entire internet has gone into snark meltdown.
Bloggers who are really, really, ridiculously good looking
Fashion models are not typically known for their powerful intellects or English language skills, but a number of catwalkers are shattering the stereotypes online with their interesting, and sometimes even eloquent, blogs.
Snap! Stalk your way to fashion blogger fame
Want to know how to get yourself on a blog like Garance Doré’s? Refinery 29 have put together some hints for getting snapped by the biggest fashion bloggers. It helps if you live in NYC…
The musical history of the mp3
This decade will go down in music history, not for the tunes created but for the technological changes. Mp3s have reaffirmed that the music industry is about more than just capitalism, writes Eric Harvey.
Skank blogger to sue Google
Blogger Rosemary Port is planning to file a $15 million law suit against Google after the web giant publicly outed her as the author of a controversial blog called “Skanks in NYC”.
No comment for NSW Liberal twits
Want to tweet your office politics? Then don’t join the NSW Liberals, who’ve just passed new policy banning members from using blogs or social networking sites to make public statements about the party.
Where are Australia’s female political bloggers?
Why is the Australian political blogosphere such a sausage-fest? asks Possum Comitatus. Where are the dedicated Australian women political bloggers of the likes of America’s Wonkette or Pandagon?
The happiest day on the internet
New software searches blogs and tweets in the US to gauge the ‘happiness’ level of society. So far, President Barack Obama was responsible for the two happiest days ever.
TIME’s top 25 blogs for 2009: the good, the bad, the inexplicable
TIME magazine has once again ranked named their most and least favourite blogs for the year. We take a look at who made the cut.
The top 25 eco-wonk blogs
The Wall Street Journal has compiled its top 25 economics blogs for the overly wonkish among us.
Ruddblog: populist masterstroke or full of fail?
I really want to like Kevin Rudd’s new blog. I really do. For Australia’s sake I want to be able to say that government is finally getting Web 2.0. But I don’t.
MetaFilter: 10 years of the best of the web
The Globe and Mail speaks to Matthew Haughey, founder of community blog MetaFilter, which this week celebrates 10 years of wrangling interesting bits from around the web with contributor meet-ups across all seven continents — yep, even Antarctica.
Old media leads the blogosphere by 2.5 hours
Researchers have found that traditional news outlets lead the blogosphere by 2.5 hours when it comes to breaking news, after analysing 1.6 million mainstream media and blog sites were in real-time. They have created this lovely chart with their findings.
The writing renaissance will be blogged (tweeted, Facebooked)
Those who would never write letters (too slow and anachronistic) or postcards now send missives with abandon, from long thoughtful memos to brief and clever quips about evening plans, says Anne Trubek.
Six pieces of News Ltd we’d like to see behind a paywall
News Ltd CEO John Hartigan is absolutely right: the more News Ltd content that is moved beyond a paywall, the better. Here are some articles we’d like to see there.
Wave hello to Google’s latest project
Google’s Wave can feed blogs, web pages and Twitter — it’s a new way to create content that’s collaborative and live. And most importantly, it’s a new way to make news.
Larvartus Prodeo / Thursday, 20 August 2009
A blogger posts inflammatory comments online about a Vogue model. A court then insists the blogger be identified, so the model can sue for defamation. What if that happened in Australia? Would it change what people wrote online?