I know, it’s been months. This was intended to be a resource for bloggers, especially new
bloggers; with links to lots of tools and toys. It still has those
links, but being rarely updated, is rarely visited. But that’s about to
change.

Blogging Blog is going to be a
group blog. Three other bloggers have agreed to contribute, and more
may join in the future. Look forward to some fresh ideas and energy here. I’ll be adding folks to the sidebar, and they’ll be introducing
themselves soon.

In the meantime, a bit of blogging-related news: Stewart and Caterina, of Flickr fame, are on the front page of Newsweek! They are so cute, and folks who have met them assure me they are just this cute in person. This article, about Web 2.0, or The Living Web, is really quite well done; it explains things well and seems to grasp the essentials:

"It’s clear that the Web is structurally congenial to the wisdom of
crowds," says James Surowiecki, author of a book ("The Wisdom of Crowds," naturally) that argues that your average bunch of people can
guess the weight of a cow or predict an Oscar winner better than an
expert can. . .

MySpace, Flickr and all the other newcomers aren’t places to go, but
things to do, ways to express yourself, means to connect with others
and extend your own horizons. Cyberspace was somewhere else. The Web is
where we live. . .

My favorite is a quote from Caterina, about the culture of generosity:

. . . the most remarkable thing about Flickr is that the willingness to post
pictures publicly—so ingrained in Flickr culture that you have to opt
out to avoid it—creates a panoramic effect. Fake calls it "the culture
of generosity," but knows that for some people, shedding privacy like
that is a stretch . . .

Caterina and Stewart’s generosity has been apparent at Flickr from the
beginning; it’s that open-heartedness that has won my loyalty there.
That, and their sense of humor (Flickr has the hiccups.) This openness — to blogging, to sharing, to mashups
— is an ongoing issue at Flickr, especially with new members — and an
issue bloggers must struggle with as well: how much to share; how much
to keep to oneself; how to [realistically] relinquish control of what
one sets loose in the world.

More — much more — later.

[Crossposted to Watermark]