Life is Healthy

A story published Thursday the UKs BBC News has ornithologists swooning. A spectacular bird long thought extinct was spotted by a lone kayaker in the Big Woods of Arkansas—he said "the creature did not look quite like anything he had seen before." So he contacted the right people and it was confirmed on video within a month. This article is amazingly blogable because it seems like every paragraph is worth highlighting and clicking BlogThis!.

"This is huge, just huge. It is kind of like finding Elvis."

"It's like a funeral shroud has been pulled back, giving us a glimpse of a living bird, rising Lazarus-like from the grave."

"For those of us who tenaciously cling to the idea that man can live alongside fellow species, this is the most incredible ray of hope."

MediaDailyNews reports that a man has died of starvation because he was addicted to commenting on blogs and forums and couldn't be bothered to eat. From I Link, Therefore I am:

"He was glued to his computer 24/7," (his wife) said tearfully. "He was so afraid he was going to miss an opportunity to contribute a comment or start a discussion, that he just stopped eating." She added that Wanamaker's last words were "OK Picard, stick that in your pipe and smoke it..."

Freakonomics is a new book by two guys named Steve and they have a blog.

So please don't take our word that Freakonomics is a good book. Don't believe the good reviews either. Feel free to make up your own mind -- you can poke around a good bit here, on this very website. Maybe you will decide that Freakonomics is, after all, a piece of trash. We cherish your right to think so.

Spotted during my morning blog-surf: This art group has installed viewing platforms outside of some gated communities in Los Angeles and posted about it on their blog.

On April 24, 2005, Heavy Trash volunteers deposited bright orange viewing platforms in front of three Los Angeles gated communities; Brentwood Circle, Park La Brea and Laughlin Park. The purpose of these viewing platforms is to draw attention to the phenomenon of gated communities -- the fastest growing form of housing in the United States.

The folks at FotoFlix just wrote in to let us know that they've added Blogger support to their photo-sharing site.

"We're really excited about reaching out to the blogging community; I believe we streamlined the process to make it very user friendly. Within two clicks you can have a new post from FotoFlix on your blog."

The Ultimate Blogger is a 6-week competition between 12 people to be the best blogger in order to win a $500 dollar prize package. Each week consists of two challenges and two eliminations. The person or team that wins the challenge is safe, forcing the other players to vote someone out of the game. The last blogger remaining will be crowned The Ultimate Blogger and win the prize package.

The Contra Costa Times editor Chris Lopez has started a blog that lets us peek into the inner workings of a newspaper with posts like this one that gives us a preview of the next day's front page. Neat! (Via)

FeedMesh is a project that aims to share sources of feeds (like the ones Blogger produces). The folks over at PubSub are gathering support behind the project so that products which rely on feeds can "focus more on service rather than competing for the number of tracked feeds."

Seems like a good goal.

Check out this video clip of Jeff Jarvis giving a rundown of the political blogosphere — he mentions longtime Blogger-user Tony Pierce!

NoodlePie has begun compiling a list of Vietnam Blogs. Looks like there a bunch of great writers there, and photos too.

[via No Star Where]

The tech folks at the University of Southern Florida are using a bunch of open-source tools and webapps to operate a neat blogging hub.

WordPress powers the blogs, Planet powers the aggregator, and Gallery powers the photo galleries. The blogs also support linkblogging via del.icio.us, and photo-blogging from Flickr.

Slick!

[via PhotoMatt]

I've been using Adium for ages, but just realized today that their News section is powered by Blogger. Adium is an awesome open-source IM client for Mac OS X...

Remember how we announced the launch of a cool new feature and then, (pysche!) we took it down for a bit? Well it's back up now and it's strong like bull. Here's a refresher on that feature: Can I recover a lost post? The short answer is yes. We save your post to a browser cookie as you're typing so if your browser quits, crashes, closes, etc., then you just click "recover post" when you get back to the new post screen. In a blink, the post is back.

Note: Eric thought I should point out that we auto-save the first 3k of your post. If you're writing a long essay or book chapter, you can use the "Save as Draft" button.

This is an update to a previous post: Video Blogging? We said we'd tell you when there's something to try out and here it is: The Google Video Upload program has launched in beta. This is from the FAQ:

The upload program lets you submit videos electronically to Google Video, as long as you own the necessary rights (including copyrights, trademarks, rights of publicity, and any other relevant rights for your content). Just sign up for an account and use our upload tool to send your videos to Google. The program is still in beta so you won't see your videos live on Google Video immediately.

Google Sightseeing takes you to the best tourist spots in the world via Google Maps' satellite imagery.

Does your dog have a blog? Buster has one. Check out his entry from two days ago:

Today the sun was out and it was in the 70's. I was playing outside in a big field. Like always when its warm outside. Well, I decided to break my 2 month drought and go number 1 and 2 outside. Everyone was saying how good I was and I got a treat.

Dogster founder Ted Rheingold isn't one to rest on the success of the sites. "We expected the sites to be popular but never anything like this. With all these passionate members why not make more fun and convenient features for them, such as diaries, leaving treats or our hotel booking system dedicated just to pet-friendly establishments. In fact almost all new features are driven exclusively by what users tell us they'd like to see next. We're a very young dog and we're gonna learn every trick they ask of us."

Photo courtesy: Kristal.

Waiting for a smoothie in his Blogger tee. That's good stuff.

The world's first Contagious Media Showdown is being hosted by Eyebeam. Sometimes one offbeat blog post is all it takes.

Do you have what it takes to corral enough traffic to win the cash prizes? Can you make the next Dancing Baby, All Your Base, or Star Wars Kid and ride into the sunset with the bounty? This is your chance to prove you are the best in the West.

$2,000 Grand Prize
$1,000 Alexa Prize
$1,000 Technorati Prize
$1,000 Creative Commons Prize

Blogging as an Effective Fundraising Strategy has got some good blogging tips and advice.

You will be so what? Frustrated? Wrong! You won't care because all you need to do is start it up again and click "Recover post." Blogger now auto-saves as you type. (We just launched this feature today so you may need to reload you new post window to see it.)

Update: Blogger Help article on recover post.

Update#2: We noticed a bug in the wee hours of the night that could annoy some users so we've temporarilly disabled the recover post feature. We're fixing it now.

Update#3: Recover Post is back and better than ever!

Sometimes I visit Alexa to see how my blog is doing according to the Alexa elves and while I'm there I check out Blogger.com to see how they think we're doing. Today I noticed a huge jump towards the end of March.

There's a little Thursday morning debunking going on over at Shellen.com. Specifically on the video blogging front. Blogger is not launching video posting this week. Believe you me, we'll point to Google's video submission experiment when there's something for you to try out.

I like this quote from the latest Knowledge@Wharton piece:

Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter puts blogging right up there with the printing press when it comes to sharing ideas and disseminating information. "This is not a fad," says Hunter. "It's the rise of amateur content, which is replacing the centralized, controlled content done by professionals."

The Annotated New York Times tracks blog postings that cite articles published by The New York Times. (Via Waxy)

Digital postcards from a mobile phone: "While I recognise that some people have a tremendous range of opinions on a wide variety of topics, as well as a burning desire to see those opinions published online, I have been much happier as a blog reader than as a blog writer - until now."

Apparently inspired by Clocky, the robot-clock for people who have trouble getting out of bed, ibiblio ProductLabs have invented Bloggy, a mobile, autonomous blogging robot.

Are you too tired to blog? Do you not have enough to say? Bloggy solves all your problems by blogging for you! From the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep, Bloggy will follow you around and record all of your events to share with the world! With Bloggy, you'll never again worry about having a boring blog.

Eric posted this link to our Blogs of Note blog which only gets published in the sidebar of the Blogger dashboard: David Duchovny is blogging about his new movie, House of D. I thought it was worth another mention. Here's the film's description at IMDB:

By working through problems stemming from his past, Tom Warshaw (Duchovny), an American artist living in Paris, begins to discovery who he really is, and returns to his home to reconcile with his family and friends.