While there are a hell of a lot of blogs and blog readers, blogs aren't even close to being a mainstream phenomenon the way email is. It'll happen. And here are some guesses (note: guesses) about what they'll look like when they do. [David Weinberger]
Some interesting points here. 2 and 3 (the rise of group blogs, and blogs as discussion) are why I keep meaning to get round to setting up a weblog for friends to post to. The sort of stuff that goes round to a pretty arbitrarily selected bunch of people ("look at this site", "here are some pictures of event X") could just as easily go on a group weblog in a more inclusive, and searcheable, way.
Another "I'm getting round to it", but this time I'm getting round to it today, just as soon as I stop writing this, is setting up a weblog (or set of weblogs — not sure yet) for a research project I'm involved with. This project is using remote sensing data in river modelling, and exploring how much can be done with recently available data and a minimum of site visits. I'm not involved in that side of things, but we need to have a record of the problems encountered by those doing the modelling work as they go along. I want to get them to jot down a quick paragraph every time they encounter a situation which would have been easier to resolve if some more metadata was available. This merges group blogs, blogs as discussions, time-limited blogs (point 6, limited to the duration of the project). It might or might not be closed circulation; I'd prefer open, but since it's not me who will be blogging, we'll have to see.
Comments