Mark Cuban wrote that newspapers, and The New York Times in particular, are making a mistake by publishing blogs. But blogs are really an extension of newspaper reporting.
Archive for the 'Blogs' Category
Bits: What I’ve Learned as a Blogger for The New York Times
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 19, 2008
Posted in Blogs, Media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »
PaidContent vs. TechCrunch: Two Visions of Blogging
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 19, 2008
There’s no love lost between Rafat Ali, the founder of PaidContent, and Michael Arrington, who runs TechCrunch. Mr. Ali is building a new-age trade media company, while Mr. Arrington wants to replicate the more emotional blog world on a vast scale.
Posted in Blogs, Technology | No Comments »
Rapid-Fire Posting
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 19, 2008
I have enough things to feel guilty about in my life, without my blog being added to the list. For a couple of months, I have been bookmarking articles I want to blog about, and the list is ridiculously long now. Much as I want to share my thoughts about each of these interesting articles, I have way to many other things I want or need to be doing, so I have not gotten around to writing about them.
So, I am going to clear the backlog. I’m just going to post the bare minimum of commentary about these articles while linking to them and recommending them. That’s it. Not enough time right now for carefully considered insights.
So, I do recommend reading these articles, and each has made me think, opened my eyes, or challenged my world view or understanding. But I’ll leave the insights to you, the reader, while I try to empty my queue of recommended reading. Take a look, and I hope you find them to be worthwhile, too.
Posted in Blogs | Tagged: articles, Recommended Reading | No Comments »
Blogging Is Just My Hobby
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 6, 2008
The headline pretty much says it all, “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop,” as the quite young profession of blogging has lately experienced high-profile and early deaths. The bloggers themselves were not so young, but they were not so old, either.
Many professional bloggers are essentially piece-workers, getting paid by the post. And speed is the key to success, since the first blogger who breaks a story gets the glory. Miss out on being first, even if it’s the middle of the night, and the rewards are much smaller. It’s a high-pressure profession, and now professional bloggers are asking whether Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs, Career, Health, Human Interest, Media, Web 2.0 | Tagged: blogging, Blogs, Health, mortality, stress | No Comments »
Why You Should Be a Good Citizen
Posted by Ted Hopton on April 1, 2008
What does it mean to be a good citizen? Perhaps it is my upbringing, or the few months I spent in the Boy Scouts, but I associate good citizenship with helping others. Perhaps the election season provoked this line of thinking, but the political and governmental aspects of citizenship are not what is on my mind today.
Instead, I am thinking of citizenship in the broader sense of being a member of a community. It is commonly accepted that we humans are social creatures, and the communities that we form and join are fundamentally important parts of our lives.
When I juxtapose those two ideas above, about good citizenship and the role of communities, I reach the conclusion that those who help – “good citizens” — are greatly responsible for Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs, Web 2.0 | Tagged: citizenship, community, helping, social networking | No Comments »
The World Is My Oyster
Posted by Ted Hopton on March 26, 2008
I have to plug a new blog, “The World Is My Oyster,” being written by one of my fellow Costa Rica travellers, Kimsan (aka, El Heuvito). It’s fun to read, but take it with a grain of salt, as my friend likes to tell a good story and doesn’t let little things like accuracy slow him down. That’s part of what makes it so much fun to read, after all.
Truly our trip to Costa Rica would not have been the same and surely would not have been as much fun without the light-hearted and adventure-loving Kimsan. His blog reflects those same qualities and I recommend it to you!
Posted in Blogs, Costa Rica, Outdoors, Travel | Tagged: Blogs, Costa Rica, kimsan ting, the world is my oyster | 2 Comments »
So Many Sad People
Posted by Ted Hopton on March 18, 2008
I guess I should have known better. I read and listened to Barack Obama’s speech on race and was impressed. As I wrote in my most recent post, I thought it exhibited real leadership.
Then I read the NYT account of the speech’s reactions among bloggers, and then I read the comments posted by readers about that article (there were 178 at that time, but I only made it through about 40). And now I feel depressed. For all of us — and there are many of us — who found Obama’s speech to be powerful and genuine, there are still many sad and bitter people who could only find negative things to say about it.
I could call them names, and many unflattering ones come to mind. But that’s not my point here. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs, Politics | Tagged: barack obama, hope, Leadership, Politics, presidential election, race, speech | No Comments »
Persistence, by Seth Godin
Posted by Ted Hopton on March 17, 2008
Seth Godin’s blog should be on everyone’s blog reader who cares about marketing. Here’s a great post, in it’s entirety, because it is so short (many of his posts are this short, to-the-point and thought-provoking):
Persistence isn’t using the same tactics over and over. That’s just annoying. Persistence is having the same goal over and over.
Gotta love it. Cuts right through the usual thinking and offers new insight that’s so obvious I wonder why I didn’t think of it before I read it.
Posted in Blogs, Marketing | Tagged: Marketing, persistence, seth-godin | No Comments »
On Happiness, Part 1
Posted by Ted Hopton on February 22, 2008
There’s a post in the Big Think Blog titled, “Question of the Day: What is Happiness?“
Our question today is one of the most fundamental we face in our lives — just what constitutes happiness and how do we go about achieving it. It is a question that has been pondered since the very beginning, and as far as we’ve come in understanding of the nuts and bolts that underpin happiness, right down to the neurological processes that govern it, we may be no closer to a complete answer. And, so, it is left to the philosophers, poets and each and everyone of us through our own reflections to make sense of what is happiness.
More interesting to me than the written portion of the post is the embedded video. Big Think is an intellectual version of YouTube, and I like the answer to the happiness question in this video clip “of Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert’s, who studies the science of happiness.”
Posted in Blogs, Human Interest | Tagged: Big Think, Dan Gilbert, happiness | No Comments »
Blog Power! Even the TSA Can Change
Posted by Ted Hopton on February 19, 2008
Have you heard about the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) new blog? It got lots of press, and lots of ridicule. Many claim it is just a public relations (PR) stunt for an agency that’s as lowly-admired as the IRS. Some held out hope that the TSA would actually listen to the comments people posted on the blog. But the hopeful ones are in the minority, from what I could see.
Well, it appears the TSA already deserves some props. Here’s an excerpt from, “TSA changes practice based on passenger blog comments“: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogs, Travel, Web 2.0 | Tagged: Blogs, TSA | No Comments »
