Life is Healthy

Blogger user Jeremy Blachman has a great Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, for his writings on Anonymous Lawyer; here's a snippet:

"It used to be that if you wanted to know what it was like to work for a law firm or a beauty magazine, you had to have a friend on the inside. But now that everyone can publish online, we can get these incredible glimpses into worlds we might otherwise never get to see. People across the world can share stories, commiserate and connect with each other. Potential employees can see beyond the marketing pitches."

One night the gifted young pianist Jeremy Denk accompanied Emma Bell in Mozart and Debussey songs, and also played Bach's Third English Suite. He's a powerful, intelligent musician, as severe in Bach as he is sensuous in Debussey. He is also a blogger, of all things.

- Alex Ross, The New Yorker, August 29, 2005

Pencil Revolution is a blog about pencils. "Wooden wisdom." Nice. I like the list of famous pencil users including Leonardo da Vinci, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Key, John Steinbeck, Henry David Thoreau, and Vincent Van Gogh. Impressive.

Blogads is having a Logo Contest and they hope you (the bloggers) can help. $1000 to the creator of the new logo and $300 to the blogger whose post refers or inspires her or him.

Do you use BlogThis! ? Ever wish you could customize how it works? Ken Dyck had some good ideas and decided to do something with them. Check it out: XBlogThis!

This handy little JavaScript link lets you use the regular BlogThis! window, but with some extra options: blockquotes, Technorati tags, and customizable link text. So if these are things you typically add to your posts, then XBlogThis! is what you need.

And while I'm here plugging our clever users, I'll just mention that we keep a whole list of cool ideas like this that people have sent in, over in the Blogger Hacks section of our Help site. If you're itching to do some neat stuff with your blog, take a look over there and see what you like. And if you come up with something brilliant of your own, let us know!

Scott Dunlap wrote in to let us know that his blogspot-hosted A Trail Runner's Blog was voted Best Health and Fitness Blog by Forbes Magazine.

Nice work, Scott!

BW Online is running some surveys.

For the next five days, we're running a series of surveys that give you the chance to vote on the best Web sites and services, whether they're for work, for home, for fun, for the greater good, or just for getting things done. We'll keep a running tally.

Jennifer Garret is going to read a new blog every day for 100 days. That's the idea anyway.

I'm trying to broaden my horizons, so I'll go to blogs that may not immediately scream JenGarrett -- but I'm not going anywhere that promotes any kind of love for the Yankees. There has to be a line somewhere, people.

Communication Nation: "Communication is one of the most important skills anyone can have, in business and in life. As individuals and as a species, I believe we will be both happier and more productive if we can improve our ability to communicate. This blog is dedicated to that effort." (Via Evhead)

There have been some good questions sent in about the new Flag feature. One thing we've seen is the worry that blogs could be removed because of accidental or repeated voting. Or even just because some people considered a blog to be distasteful. There a couple reasons why this won't happen.

From a technical standpoint, we are able to detect when multiple votes come from the same source. We prevent against ballot box stuffing.

But most importantly, we're not automatically removing content based on the flags. We're using the feedback from Blog*Spot readers to help assess what the community has noted as potentially objectionable.

In the cases where objectionable content has been identified, the most common action is for the support team to "delist" the blog. This simply means that the blog is not promoted in areas of blogger.com like Recently Updated - but it's still viewable on the web. The content is not blocked or removed in anyway when the blog is delisted.

To clarify, our primary concern is to avoid promoting objectionable content in places like NextBlog or the Dashboard. In no way are we automatically removing such content.

We've just introduced the option to require word verification for comments. This option (off by default) gives bloggers a tool to prevent the automatic creation of comments by nefarious ne'er-do-wells (e.g. spammers).

Features like comment captcha and flag as objectionable are not complete solutions to the problem of spam. But they are additional tools that can help address it.

Have you ever found yourself clicking the Next Blog button over and over again only to come across a blog that wasn't exactly to your taste? Maybe it was politically incorrect, potential hurtful, or just plain gross? Well, one person's vulgarity is another's poetry. Or something like that. When it comes to judging which is which, things can get a little tricky.

Work Blog - A Third of Your Life, All of the Time is a blog from Work Magazine. It's a good blog and they have this thing that lets you search for a new job on the sly while you're at work. It's called the Sneaky Bastard Worksheet and it's job search results as a spreadsheet.

We've got this new thing. It's a free plug-in for Microsoft Word that works with Blogger. We call it Blogger for Word. Catchy? Maybe. Useful? You bet. With this little number, you can work in Word like you normally do and then save your document as a post to your Blogger blog. Once you install the plug-in and restart Word, some buttons will appear. These buttons allow you to publish, edit, and save as draft from within Word.

Cloudburst Mumbai: "News and links to news about the cloudburst on the 26th July, 2005, and its aftermath." (Via BoingBoing)

Hey you, with the camera. You've been posting tons of photos with Blogger Images. Good work on that. I liked the one with the baby and that one of your friends at the party was fun. But that one with the two Russian guys dressed up as... nevermind. The point is, I thought you might be interested in knowing that issue number three of JPG Magazine is out.
This issue is called "Fabulous" and it features work by photographers just like you.

The Nonprofit Blog Exchange "will be a day (or whatever is decided) where nonprofit bloggers will exchange blogs. This is for any blogger who works for or with mission-based organizations." Good idea.

There's a Family Guy blog with posts from writers, directors, interns and others that work on the show.

Word on The Internets has it that Eric and Kathleen were married by blog. Apparently, there's a little known law governing informal marriage in Texas. For a marriage to be legal, the law requires a public declaration of the marriage with local witnesses. Since there are blog readers in Texas, Eric and Kathleen's public posts meet those requirements. Here's Kathleen's explaination. Congratulations you crazy kids. (Via Kottke)

Sometimes I can sense what people are thinking. It's weird. However, when it comes to improving Blogger a more scientific approach is recommended. To that end, we've come up with a short survey that will help us help you. If you sign in to Blogger and follow the user survey link in your Dashboard, we can get to know a little more about you and what you want from us.

Also, we're offering $500 gift cards to three lucky respondents. As if you needed an incentive to fill out a Blogger survey. You love those.

Lucas writes in to say:

I hate your Blogger Mobile Jingle!!! It's SO catchy that I haven't been able to get it out of my head!!! Who makes these things?!

I recently read and article on opportunities on how bloggers can make money. I was wondering if I created a blog through your web site if that will prevent me from benefitting financially?

Identical twins Cameron and Damien Barrett from Brooklyn, NY are long-time bloggers using a blog to try and up their chances of getting cast on CBS' hit show, The Amazing Race.

This site, therefore, is a grand experiement. How much influence can we generate from the blogosphere and fans of the show? Will we succeed in getting the casting directors to take a second look at our audition tape? (Some estimates put the number of tapes they receive each season is upwards of 20,000 to 30,000.) Do we have any natural advantage because we are identical twins and long-time bloggers?

The Nonist has published (in PDF form) an interesting little pamphlet called What Everyone Should Know About Blog Depression.

There is a growing epidemic in the cyberworld. a scourge which causes more suffering with each passing day. as blogging has exploded and, under the stewardship of the veterans, the form has matured more and more bloggers are finding themselves disillusioned, dissatisfied, taking long breaks, and in many cases simply closing up shop. this debilitating scourge ebbs and flows but there is hardly a blogger among us who has not felt it’s dark touch. we’re speaking, of course, about blog depression.