You already know that a Blog is fancy Net-speak for Weblog, a frequently updated compendium of interesting news culled from around the Web. You know that a "Blogger" is one who creates such an index, and that "Blogging" is the art of surfing the Web, compiling links for the benefit of others.
And because you know this, you know why there’s always someone in every office or at every cocktail party who can tell you about the students busted for snorting Kool-Aid or the Death Clock. There is always someone who knows which celebrities got their starts in porn movies, and has the latest scoop on the library censorship battle. This person is a frequenter of Blogs, a phenomenon that has been quietly growing for some time, and is poised to be the latest cool-thing-to-do on the Web.
Blogs, Blogs, Everywhere!
There are now more Weblogs than ever (they’ve spawned press coverage on BBC Online, and the NPR show The Connection). As a result, you can now find more stuff on the Web more easily than ever. And if there is a single overriding sense one can get from a perusal of Weblogs, it’s that there is a lot of stuff out there. Let’s take a look:
One of the more popular Weblogs is at robotwisdom.com (and I say "more popular" only because I’ve seen more links to this site than other Weblogs. For a more accurate assessment of Weblogs’ popularity, check out Google.com’s Weblog directory, which lists them according to number of incoming links). Robot Wisdom gives an exhaustive daily list of slightly quirky news bits. Recent gems include gossip about Drew Barrymore’s father (from whom she is estranged), opening testimony from survivors of the Waco disaster, and a particularly sweet installment of the Alison Bechdel cartoon "Dykes to Watch Out For."
In case you can’t satisfy all of your aching curiosities on Robot Wisdom, check out Lindsay Marshall’s Weblog, Bifurcated Rivets. Among the nifty links here is one to the Half Bakery, a chronicle of strange product and technology ideas (think reactive tattoos that change with time, love PINs to look up potential mates’ interests, and polarized window blinds that make it impossible for neighbors to peep). There’s also a link to a symphony for dot matrix printers.
On Stacey’s Weblog I was intrigued by a link to the Lurid Paperback Cover of the Week, which features categories such as Women in Bottles, and Nurses. Mark Monlux, the creator of Lurid Paperback, also has some pretty nifty interactive Flash animations.
Through the Looking Glass
Traipsing on down the cyber road, we find Jim Romenesko’s Obscure Store and Reading Room. Jim, as you may know, also runs a news site at medianews.org, and he has his finger on the pulse of a lot of Web weirdness. His compendium of daily news items includes the titillating real-life headlines "Woman Jailed for Spending Cash Wrongly Put in Account," and "Possible Bogus Priest Makes Off With Big Crucifix." This site has links not only to about a gazillion other Weblogs, but also to what must be every gossip column on the Web, celebrity and otherwise. Dirt mongers rejoice.
Among Jim’s handy media links (you can never have too many places from which to cull your obscure factoids) are greenmagazine.com, an online ‘zine not about the environment, and nerve.com, a sex-themed ‘zine that is so successful it recently launched a print version, which is kind of like the chicken coming before the egg.
On the Weblog portion of the site Fresh Hell, I learned that British Telecom is claiming to have a patent on hyperlinks dating back to the 1970’s, and they’re thinking of demanding royalties from a bunch of U.S. Internet Service Providers. A group of Americans plans to sue British Telecom over the preponderance of broken links on the Web.
On memepool.com, which, unlike the Weblogs above, lists links submitted by multiple folks, I found a link to UglyPeople.com. This site offers way too many pictures of people both tragically ugly and merely strange looking, but, as with the Monica Lewinsky debacle so long ago, I was unable to look away. Memepool also directed me to urbanlegends.com, which debunks myths from both the digital and analog realms, and Dot Fossils, a comprehensive history of classic video games like DigDug and Qbert.
Librarian.Net is a Weblog about, well, what other Weblogs are about — finding information — except this one adds links to articles about the plight of librarians, online and off. Examples include a link to a Salon.com article on something called the "Ecstacy Anti-Proliferation Act of 2000" which aims to limit access to information about illicit drugs, as well as articles about the ongoing battle over library censorship.
Other notable Weblogs include the very readable Pith and Vinegar, and Follow Me Here, which links to articles on the latest protest against Nike, the print run of the fourth Harry Potter book, and Courtney Love’s recent rant against the music industry.
And if you just can’t get enough of all the stuff out there, by all means hie thee to Weblog Madness, perhaps the most staggering example of the mass of idiosyncratic information available on the Web today. And the next time you gather around the water cooler be prepared to impress your fellow workers with interesting factoids, wacky tidbits, and cool data.
Read more by Andrea Dudrow.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on June 26, 2000
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