Customer Reviews

Blogosphere: Best of Blogs

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Some tens of thousands of new blogs are estimated to come online each day. So where should you start reading? One answer is offered by this quick guide. The authors are experienced bloggers who have surveyed a gamut of blog topics. From entertainment to hobbies to politics and beyond.

In any given area, the suggested blogs in the book are of course only a tiny sampling. Albeit these are usually the most frequented blogs. Take popular music. For news on it, only 4 blogs are given. But the authors readily concede that much more could be done. An entire book's worth on each topic. Still and hopefully, this book will suffice to get you oriented in the blogosphere.

Product Rating: 4.0

Pros: "Provides comprehensive links to a decent cross-section of blogs I had yet to discover..."

Cons: "Parenting blogs? Not interested. `Geek chic' topics like science, and technology would've been more appealing?"

The Bottom Line: Somehow Buzzflash.com became Bussflash.com in the index! Not enough thumbnail screenshots either.

Best of Blogs is a guide to blogging penned by Adrienne Crew and Peter Kuhns; Adrienne is a licensing professional and is the co-editor of LAist.com (a group blog from Los Angeles), while Peter is a published computer book author and publishing consultant. Their observations are well-matched, and both praise the valuable input received from friends while compiling this book.

Everyone should enjoy this quirky guide. The book is divided into three unequal sections (30 pages, 226 pages, 64 pages). Part 1 is succinctly on-target; Crew defines blogs, Kuhns offers a history of the format, and together both explain how blogs are rearranging mainstream media. They also teach you how to find blogs on the internet with specialized search engines.

Search engines devoted to blogging that Crew and Kuhns mention are: Bloglines, Blogpulse, Feedster, PubSub and Technorati. One other tool for finding blogs (that's not mentioned in Part I) is Ice Rocket, recently unveiled by Dallas Maverick's owner Mark Cuban. Mark had the good fortune to unload Broadcast.com for a billion dollars before the tech bubble burst in the nineties.

The blogosphere -- as explained by Crew and Kuhns -- is an example of Grass Roots Communication. Due to the "freedom" and "freeness" of blogs, the medium is a great social leveler. Anybody with access to a computer can use a blog to organize a movement, or communicate with an international readership, for little or even no cost at all.

Of course, Part II excels at delivering a vast set of blog listings that fall into very specific niches of male/female interest. Running 5 recommendations per page (on average), Crew and Kuhns delve into a wide latitude of blogs that cover fields as disparate as Blogs of Seven Continents, Current Events, Entertainment, Environment, Hobby, Parenting, Politics, and Pushing Blog Boundaries.

For the many suggestions, let me thank you Adrienne and Peter. I've been an internet user since 1990 and although I've browsed a majority of sites that you've endorsed, I haven't heard of a quarter of these. Nevertheless, I think you miscalculated by concentrating on Parenting & Sports for 46 pages, when focusing on Science & Technology blogs would've sufficed.

Believe me, I admire Baseball Crank and Braves Journal, and I'm positive that all US men have ogled that Anna Kournikova website multiple times, but did you really have to stoop so low as to recommend blogs about Cricket, Indy Racing and Soccer? Well -- I guess there's an upside -- at least you didn't shill for punk Golf sites!

Let's be honest. There aren't any women picking up Best of Blogs for "parenting tips," or cooing about "baby blogs." Are there? I know women absolutely love that hearts and flowers cruft, but does it belong in your blogging book? Perhaps you should examine what really happens on the blog boards (corporate and government censorship, rampant flaming) and proffer a simple scorecard for handling such issues?

On the off chance I'm wrong about Parenting & Sports being improper hooks for the Best of Blogs demographic, I apologize. But generally speaking, I think anybody that picks up this book is looking for something far geekier. They're probably looking for blogs about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Concept Cars, Dinosaurs, Electron Microscopes, Journalism, Mars, Ribosomes, Robots, Singapore or UAVs.

Good as Best of Blogs is, I think the Kuhns Crew could've pumped up Part III with more gusto. That mediocre section delves into how to build a blog, and it covers boring topics like how to attract readers, create a blogroll, design your pages, manage your comments, name your blog and snoop on your readers using sixteen helpful tools.

Summing up, I think Adrienne and Peter did a respectable job with what they were trying to accomplish in Best of Blogs. The reason I picked this book up was because I got tired of surfing the same websites; I did manage to find several new favorites, and other items I'll be try out next time I'm on the computer.


The Book:
Best of Blogs,
Que

ISBN:
0-7897-3526-1

Pages:
320 Pages

Rating:
4 Stars

Visit the Official Websites:
www.blogsbestof.com
www.quepublishing.com
www.pearsoned.com

Keywords:
Austinist, Biz Stone, Chicagoist, Dooce, EFF, Feedster, Gizmodo, Hurricane Katrina, Intermediate, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Lifehacker, MySpace, New York Social Diary, Onion Routers, PubSub, RSS, Search Engines, Typepad, URL Fan, Valleywag, Weblogs, Xanga, Yahoo!

This little book covers how to blog and who's blogging in a compelling and entertaining style. Although I spend plenty of time surfing blogs, I was delighted to find new topics that hadn't occurred to me, like food and beverages blogs and crafts. The technical details are accessible and clear and the lists are lovely tip-of-the-iceberg tastes of what is out there. Whether you're new to blogging or an old hand, this book is a packed with fun.