At the Thursday night blogging confab at the Berkman Center, the question of how to define blogs briefly surfaced in a meta way. It reminded me of a page I’ve wanted for a long time, but apparently haven’t wanted enough to build.

The idea is that most living terms are impossible to define cleanly. We do much better by pointing to some examples that everyone agrees “If these aren’t ___s, then nothing is!” (This is part of the rejection of Aristotelianism built on Eleanor Rosch’s work in prototype classification, but that’s an example of a different color.) So, if you wanted to explain to someone what a blog is, what would be a reasonable set of examples to which you could point? These aren’t necessarily the award-winning, big time blogs. In fact, they probably shouldn’t be because, by definition, the award winners aren’t typical. You’d want the list to include a good range of types and styles.

What would you put on a list of prototype blogs that would give a newbie — or a journalist — a good sense of the nature and range of blogs?

BTW, here’s now not to define a blog:

“A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web.”

This would be slightly amusing if it didn’t come from Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association, and Dean of Library Services, Madden Library, California State University, Fresno

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Chapel Hill bloggers have started using MeetUp to get together in the real world. Given the success of the Berkman weekly blogging meeting, it seems like a great idea. Good luck to them.

A search at MeetUp on “blog” turns up interesting results: 450 meetup groups for LiveJournal, 34 for Persian Blogging, 54 fgor MovableType, 3 for Video Blogging. It’d be interesting to see how many meetups spawn group blogs… [Technorati tag: meetup ]

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RageBoy points to the Microsoft Internet Explorer Weblog where someone named Dave — “the guy responsible for IE” — tells us Microsoft will release IE 7.0 before Longhorn and that it will kick butt somehow. There are 544 comments.

I assume that IE 7.0 will mercilessly rip-off Firefox, which is exactly what should happen. But Firefox escapes the leapfrog paradigm because its friendly development environment — and the commitment of so many talented developers — means that features get added whenever anyone has a good idea. In fact, here’s a suggested mouse gesture for use within Firefox:

It’d open an instance of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

[Technorati tags: firefox ie microsoft]

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I’m leading another discussion at the Berkman Center this Wednesday. This time the topic is:

Netty Friends

There’s no doubt that we’re forming relationships over the Internet that feel something like friendship. But are they different enough from real-world friendships that they need their own term? How are they different? Are they better or worse? Is there a version of Gresham’s Law
at work here: Inferior Net-based relationships are driving out good real-world ones? Are there gender-based differences? Come to an open discussion this Wednesday…

It’s open to all. 6-7:30pm on Wed., Feb. 16, at the Baker House (map). The pizza it is free. [Technorati tag: berkman]

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Alex Primo at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and his research group have released a prototype of Co-Links. It allows readers to add links to any word on a page. A single word may have multiple links. The user can either go to one of the linked pages or see metadata about it. It’s a cool idea. You can try it here..

It’s available as open source software. [Technorati tags: colink hypertext]

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From a new report Pew survey:

We just got the results of the survey we took between January 13 and February 9 and for the first time asked a question to find out how many American adults have iPods or MP3 players. The answer is 11% — or more than 22 million of those who are age 18 and older. It’s safe to say that there are several million more MP3 players owned in the teen world, but we did not survey teens in this poll.

Holy cow.

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Schismatik, a new music label, has launched. It seems to me to say the right things, and to say them emphatically. But I’m not yet 100% convinced. (The company blog is here.)

Schismatik gives to the artist half of the price of a downloaded album and half of the profit on the sale of a physical CD. They expect the price of either to be $8, and the highest cost of manufacturing a physical CD to be $2.25. Obviously that’s much much more money going to the artist than in a standard label contract. But why 50% and not 40% or 20%? What service is Schismatic providing that justifies its cut? It doesn’t record artists. It doesn’t promote them beyond putting their work up on a site. It doesn’t give them an advance. The CDs are manufactured on demand so there’s no inventory cost and, essentially, no risk on Schismatik’s part. So, is 50% the right amount? And is $8/CD the sweet spot? I don’t know.

I think Schismatik’s attitude toward copyright is enlightened (= they agree with me), but I wish they addressed it more forthrightly. The term “copyright” does not show up in their FAQ, not even in the question “Do artists at Schismatik own their own material?” A: “…the artist always owns all of their music. The only powers granted to Schismatik are the powers to sell and license (non-exclusively) the artist’s product.” Artists can terminate their contract at any time and get a copy of their master tapes. And artists can simultaneously sell their music any other way they want without having to tithe Schismatik. So it sure seems that there’s no phony baloney going on with copyright. Fantastic. I wish they posted a copy of their standard contract, though.

BTW, the label is donating half of this month’s profit to American Jewish World Service for Sudan relief. Of course, how much profit is a label going to make in its first month of existence, with seven bands on its roster? This offer actually raised, not lowered, my cynico-skeptical antennae. Yes, that’s how jaded I’ve become on the Internet.

It’s entirely possible — even likely — that my concerns are unfounded and unfair, and that I’m being unrealistic about the “business model” that’ll work. But 50% seems like a lot for getting listed on a music portal.

I claim no expertise and am way open to being wrong about this. In fact, I’d love to be wrong. I’m so sick of the incumbents and thus feel crappy about worrying out loud about what seems to be a noble-hearted newcomer. A few tweaks to their FAQ might settle my doubts…

Schismatik replies in the comments section.

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Mitch turns weblogging back to its (arguable) origins as a commented log of sites the blogger has visited. It’s like del.icio.us with context.

This augments and does not replace — heaven forbid! — Mitch’s regulah blog.

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JD Lasica pastes Garrett the Copyright Totalitarian Ferret Who The Kids Love right in his snot-filled little nose.

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Waxy points out that The O.C. (apparently it’s a tv show) had a character use the phrase “A9.com’d,” referring to the a9 search site.

A9 is doing an extremely cool thing with its views of city blocks, but the denial by A9’s CEO that the O.C. comment was a paid product placement rings hollow. I mean, does Donald Trump deny that Nescafe paid “The Apprentice” lots of money to get mentioned maybe 150 times the other night? Being as honest and ethical as The Donald sets the bar pretty low, A9! [Technorati tags: product placement a9]

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