« December 02, 2002 | Main
| December 04, 2002 »

December 03, 2002

Santa Pundit: The Blogger's Christmas Shopping Catalogue
: As a public service to generous (and greedy) bloggers everywhere, here is the catalogue of blog booty. (There's so much good merchandise, you need to click on the "more" link to get it all):
- The Tony Pierce Busblog book: freeze-dried blog brilliance now appearing on paper.
- A signed Tom Tomorrow cartoon.
- Anything from Gizmodo (and the Gizmodo Gift Guide).
- A Hiptop.
- WeBlog from Meg et al.
- Ken Layne's Dot.con, imported from Australia.
- Very nice NYC Blogger shirts (I'll be buying myself one).
- Buy your favorite blogger a BlogAd.
- BoingBoing Good Germ t-shirts and more.
- Blogger bags, mouspads, mugs.
- A donation to Movable Type.
- Little Green Footballs T-shirts, still a work-in-progress.
- James Lileks' The Gallery of Regrettable Food.
- Any CD from New York bloggers' favorite band: Gogol Bordello.
- Glenn Reynolds' latest: The Appearance of Impropriety, a book; or Mobius Dick, his band's album; or the Nebraska Guitar Militia, a local NRA, I think.

- Rebecca Blood's Weblog Handbook.
- From the blogger's favorite network: FoxNews calendars and even a flannel nightshirt.
- From the print version of FoxNews: New York Post personalized headline product.
- From the blogger's favorite resource: Google pens, hats, shirts -- go search for it here.
- Frighteningly cute blog-bear graphics.
- Kathy "RelapsedCatholic" Shaidle's latest tome.
- Any of Christopher "RageBoy" Locke's many books.
- Dave Weinberger's Small Pieces Loosely Joined.
- Andrew Sullivan's Love.
- Mickey Kaus' book (slightly used).
- Bill "DailyPundit" Quick's many e-books.
- A PDF by Clay Shirky.
- Emergence by Steven Johnson.
- Peter Maass' Love Thy Neighbor.
- Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas.
- Douglas Rushkoff's many books.
- Virginia Postrel's The Future and its Enemies.
- Mark Steyn's The Face of The Tiger.
- ThinkGeek stuff and more stuff.
- Tickets to Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine.
- Howard Rheingold's SmartMobs.
- Photodude suggests these fine figures.
- A subscription to Shift.
- A subscription to the New York Sun.
- Full of the Christmas spirit as I am, I'll even plug Salon premium.
- Or I'll sell you an autographed first edition of Entertainment Weekly.
Ho, Ho, Ho.

: If I forget anything, let me know.

: Add this:
- "Friends don't let friends blog drunk" -- a full line of fashion from Paul Frankenstein.

: Hear that? It's Ken Layne singing the blogging Christmas carol.

LINK | Comments (4)

First blog on the block
: John Hiler of Microcontent News has started a Cityblog for New York and he sent me email asking my reaction. Well, blogs being a glass house, I'll respond publicly with two words (well, actually one, since the Internet killed the space bar):
CitySearch.
I've spent eight years working in local online and that whole time, people acted as if CitySearch were a killer ap. Well, killer is right. It killed capital.
There's no question that entertainment listings are useful. Only problem is, you use them only when you use them. If you're not going to a movie tonight, you don't need the movie listings (or theater listings or poetry listings or whatever).
I faced this, too, when I created Entertainment Weekly. Unlike People, which could be fueled by the bodily fluids of the stars (i.e., I didn't know she was shtupping him... I didn't know they're getting divorced already... I didn't know she was sick/addicted/drying out.... Too bad he's dead....), Entertainment Weekly was driven instead by the needs of each reader: If you don't want to be entertained this week, you don't need Entertainment Weekly. It's the guide problem.
CitySearch faced that -- its traffic was always tiny compared to my sites, which had news and sports and community galore, not just listings.
CitySearch also faced the economic reality that local entertainment advertising is hard to sell and harder to collect. Restaurants require way too much effort to sell (and they are notoriously bad at paying). Movie advertising is all national, not local. Theaters and such don't spend. Books aren't lucrative, book readings less so. And poetry? Hah! Let me say that again: Hah!
There isn't much of a business here in this slice of a niche.
And there is lots of competiton -- in newspapers, in alternative newspapers, in their online services, in movie sites, in venue sites, in restaurant sites, and so on. Google is a competitor.
I know local and I know entertainment and I know how tough they can be.
Ah, but that is where Hiler's effort may be different because -- like Nick Denton's Gizmodo -- costs are relatively low; the profit hurdle isn't as high. And Hiler is doing a good job listening to his audience, who will be sure to be appreciative -- though that audience will be smaller because this one market is only a corner of the still-small blog world.
So will it pay? That is always the question with blogs, isn't it?
I do think there will be more and more local blogs that will add up to a whole: blogs about local issues, blogs about local sports, and so on.
I know of another exciting local blog project but won't spill those beans yet. Stay tuned.

: David Galbraith adds his view as does JD Lasica and ditto Glenn Reynolds.

LINK | Comments (2)

Europeans are just so... so... so Old World
: Nick Denton takes on Glenn Reynolds over European anti-Americanism.
I grew up with anti-anti-Americanism. My parents -- in the only instance in life in which I can think that they ever sounded like or agreed with Howard Stern -- said the French were ungrateful swine after the world wars and that's why we kids didn't see Europe until we were grown and paid for it ourselves. This is ingrained in the American DNA more than you know.

LINK | Comments (1)

News happens
: Asparagirl finds herself amid the news. The more people publish online, the more we'll find witnesses to news publishing their own accounts.

LINK | Comments (1)

Sick
: Afterlife telegrams: a dying person memorizes a message for an already dead person. Only $10/word. [via that Russian site that lifted Glenn Reynolds' blogroll]

LINK | Comments (1)