Help! I got this weird e-mail addressed to info@colderbythelake.com the other day in my mailbox (the subject head saying “Urgent order needed........reply asap........”). “Goodday,” it ran. “ This is Prince.i heard of your product from a magazine and i am interested in purchasing your  store, so i will like to link me through to your site.i will like inform you that i will be paying with CREDIT CARD,so if you are still interested in selling your items, i will like you to get back to me via my mail box,hope to hear from you soonest.  Best regard, Prince Deen.” Now why should an e-mail ostensibly meant for a minor and obscure comedy theatre group in small town USA and holding its next big ‘no smoking’ event in the “historic NorShor Theater in downtown Duluth” land up in my mailbox? Is digital space turning into Theatre of the Absurd and e-mail, a joke in atrocious taste? Any suggestions anyone?

IN THE NEWS. Blogs. Blogs. More Blogs.

In a recent blog meet at Harvard, Alex Jones who heads Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, said that "one (unfortunate) lesson that mainstream journalism can teach blogging is that credibility is fragile and mainstream journalism has lost too much of it in recent years," according to Jeff Jarvis of Advance.net, who was attending the conference and writing about it on his Weblog, Buzzmachine.com. Ed Cone, a participant, saw the meet “as a chance for a handful of bloggers who get journalism and journos who get blogging to explain this real slow to the journos who don't get it yet."
Webcast: iopforum.harvard.edu. Read Weblog comments about the conference here: conventionbloggers.com. P.S.: PubSub Concepts, a company filtering and monitoring Weblog content for news feeds, reported it is now tracking 8.1 million Weblogs, half of which are active. In other words, thee are now 20 per cent more Weblogs than PubSub had tracked two months ago. At pewinternet.org is the Pew Internet & American Life report on the state of blogging.   

SONY SPONSORS BLOG ($75K). Big step in commercialization.

According to Advertising Age, Sony Consumer Electronics recently agreed to sponsor Lifehacker.com, a Weblog launched by Nick Denton's Gawker Media concentrating on "downloads, Web sites and shortcuts that actually save time" for three months, at $25,000 per month. The deal between a blog and a global marketer marks a new milestone for the commercialization of Web logs, commented Ad Age. adage.com. Other sponsored blog deals by Denton include Jalopnik.com for rabid auto enthusiasts originally sponsored by Audi Motors, Age of Speed, a short-lived blog featuring original films and "speed-related trivia" (Nike Inc.) and now travel-related Gridskipper (Cheaptickets). AT&T, Walt Disney, The New York Times and others have in the past spent money on Denton's sites because they “wanted to be associated – branded – with the next, new, cool thing". Denton's sales pitch to would-be sponsors? "The people on blogs are talking about your products and are early adopters." problogger.net. Also: micropersuasion.com.  Recent related QuiteATake.com coverage hindustantimes.com (‘”ENTERPRISING” BLOGS. Must-read article.’).

FORTUNE’S #1 TECH TREND, ’05. Blogs, what else?

In ‘Why There's No Escaping the Blog’, David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth’s counsel to the business community in brief is: “Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product – or destroy it. Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore.” The article covers the blogosphere pretty well in about 3652 words. fortune.com. Noteworthy quotes: “A few companies like Microsoft are finding ways to work with the blogging world – even as they're getting hammered by it. So far, most others are simply ignoring it.” And: “Of course, it's difficult to take the phenomenon seriously when most blogs involve kids talking about their dates, people posting pictures of their cats, or lefties raging about the right (and vice versa). But … the discussion of business isn't usually too far behind: from bad experiences with a product to good customer service somewhere else. Suddenly everyone's a publisher and everyone's a critic.” Also: “It all sounds like so much insanity: a worldwide cabal ready to pounce on and publicize any error a company makes. Yet it's not as if corporations are just sitting ducks. For one thing, not every negative voice is that influential.” Finally: “As big companies try to maintain a delicate balance, it's often the smaller players who are nimbly working blogs to their advantage.”

SEE ‘BLOGUMENTARY’. 65-minute documentary on blogging.

An independently financed documentary about blogging produced by Chuck Olsen in the belief that "blogs are the next stage of ... something" was recently screened at the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota. Dan Gillmor ("We the Media") said that blogs are just a piece of what he calls a global conversation in the discussion following the screening. "This is an early and still cruel tool. In five years, we'll see blogs as one element of an ecosystem," he added, according to Garrick Van Buren’s notes. Olsen's blog post of the screening: blogumentary.typepad.com.

THE AVIATOR. Up there with bloggers as Oscar favourite.

‘The Aviator’ starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese is he blogosphere’s favourite to win the Best Picture in 2005 at the Academy Awards. In a survey of entertainment- and movie-focused Weblogs, a review of 325 online film-industry watchers found 50 percent thinking it would be the hands-down favorite to win. "Studio execs and entertainment insiders watch very closely what people are saying online," said Pete Snyder, CEO, New Media Strategies, a firm that monitors blogs for businesses wanting to know what's being said about them. The bloggers' runner-up (31 percent) is Clint Eastwood's ‘Million Dollar Baby"’. newmediastrategies.net. Had the so-lobbyist for India’s ‘Shwas’ taken the relatively inexpensive blog route instead of wasting resources on the conventional route, perhaps they could have done far better.

KEEP NO SECRETS. Bloggers’ credo.

If AskJeeves was hoping to create a media and investor ‘tsunami’ with its announcement of the acquisition of Bloglines, the free Weblog and directory service and its database, bloggers have smashed them to smithereens. Word of the buyout is no more a secret. Mary Hodder, on her Weblog, Napsterization.org, let the cat out of the bag last week. google.com. 

KNOW LITTLE. GAIN MUCH. Search users are like that only.

A Pew Internet & American Life project survey found that people were “extremely positive” with results they got from Internet search engines but didn't seem to know how they make money. Deborah Fallows, Senior Research Fellow at Pew who authored the report on the project, said users were "strikingly unaware" of the financial incentives that affect how search tools perform and present results.  Only 38 percent knew the distinction between paid and unpaid results and around 70 percent thought that search engines are a "fair and unbiased" source of information, she added. pewinternet.org.

GMAIL GOING ‘JANATA’? Prep for a general rollout, maybe.

Is Google expanding the availability of its free e-mail service? Many Web loggers, including Neville Hobson at WebProNews.com, reported receiving 50 invitations for Gmail accounts. "Does this indicate preparation of some kind of general rollout" for the invitation-only service, he asked in his post. Hobson's blog is at  webpronews.com. Another recipient of the Gmail invitations was Josh Hallett, a Web site developer in Florida. "Do you think Google is trying to ramp up usage before the official launch?" was his blog commentary.

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