That's one of the predictions I make in this week's final Blogspotter column. Read on for my full forecast for blogworld's second decade.

Thanks for reading over the past 89 weeks. I'm heading off to Illinois soon to edit Time Out Chicago. If you're ever in town, pick it up for the lowdown on what to see and do.

Meanwhile, please sign up for the free Alternative Source podcast and check out Tom Sowa's great .TXT blog, which will continue helping you navigate the online world.

And most of all, I hope you enjoy a warm, relaxing and happy holiday season.

The New York Times recently profiled Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's official blog, Personal Memos.

But this week's column goes a step further, exploring Ahmadinejad's Twitter page and reprinting a recent day's worth of posts.

After you finish reading them, please sign up for the free Alternative Source podcast.

On the 10th anniversary of Alta Vista's Babel Fish launch, this week's column looks at three free translator services that can give readers access to blog content in multiple languages.

Links to mentioned sites:

Yahoo Babel Fish
Microsoft Translator
Google Translate

And speaking of cool free services, please sign up for the Alternative Source podcast.

Wired delivers a fascinating story about efforts to find backpacker Nicole Vienneau who disappeared eight months ago while traveling from West Africa to Turkey:

"...when Nicole, 32, failed to make her usual fortnightly phone call home in April, her brother Matthew's LiveJournal posts began to strike a grave note. Frantic and thousands of miles away, Matthew Vienneau typed out a desperate plea for help from readers in the region of Syria where she was last seen.

"Eight months on, remarkably, the site's daily updates have become the command center for a global search for Nicole. Manned by hundreds of helpers, the site has bridged the online and offline worlds and has come agonizingly close to locating the missing woman, whose birthday is Thursday. Hundreds of volunteers have interviewed witnesses, checked hotel rooms, translated documents and websites from both Arabic and English, and made heartfelt pleas to the media for coverage."

As the story notes, her birthday is today, and her mother has posted an entry tonight to mark the occasion.

(Thanks to Tom Sowa at TXT for passing along the link.)

Read his blog to find out. The Chicago Tribune rounds up the favorite medical practitioner blogs of Cardiologist Westby Fisher, proprietor of the Dr. Wes blog. His picks:

Kevin, M.D.
GruntDoc
Clinical Cases and Images
Surgeonsblog
The Blog That Ate Manhattan
Dr. Deb
Movin' Meat

The last one's based in Seattle, by the way.

And the best thing about all these blogs? They don't require a copay.

Wired rehashes the whole MP3 blog phenomenon: It's file-sharing, but it's also good publicity so the music industry tends to warily support it, etc.

What was new in the article, to me anyway, was this tidbit about how Google polices its free Blogger blogs:

"Google denies responsibility for content on the AdSense network and says it acts fast when it identifies publishers who violate its terms of service. And to enforce this policy, Google reviews participating sites to weed out content that violates the AdSense terms-of-service contract.

"'In the same way we crawl websites (for our search service), we crawl publisher websites to flag information that may violate our policy,' says Google spokesman Brandon McCormick. 'Every site at some point goes through a manual review. It's something we take very seriously.'"

Can you imagine having that job? Reminds me of the kid in the Dr. Seuss book tasked with mowing the fast-growing grass...

If you know and love a blogger (you poor sap, you), check out this week's column for some holiday gift-giving tips.

Links to mentioned sites:

ThinkGeek
WalMart.com
Costco.com
MadeInWashington.com
Organize.com
SweetToothDesigns
TheWeekDaily
Stupid.com
Amazon.com
Technorati
Despair.com

And here's a gift almost anyone would love: a subscription to the free Alternative Source podcast.

"Philanthropy has been late to the game of blogging, hardly a surprise in a field that has operated on personal relationships and reputations earned over decades," the New York Times reports. "But just as charities have learned in recent years to use e-mail blasts to solicit support, their executives are getting used to a digital world in which there are fewer secrets than in the past.

"According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the number of blogs on philanthropic issues that the journal follows has soared to 160 from 100 in March. As the number of blogs has grown, so has the range of topics they cover: what began as material geared to industry insiders can be used by donors researching the performance of charities."

Says one key observer: "Information is power, and good blogs empower donors. I think good blogs scare the hell out of lousy charities, because they understand that they serve as a clearinghouse for truth and transparency."

One example: The Agitator

But is there a blog that'll tell you if the kid selling cookie dough at your door will really deliver the sweet, delectable goods?

Cutting in line! Accidentally upending a video camera! Such are the crazy antics when the arch-enemies from Engadget and Gizmodo square off, Fortune reports.

Zoinks!

"I spend about a third of my workday blogging," Dilbert guru Scott Adams admitted in the Wall Street Journal recently. "Thanks to the miracle of online advertising, that increases my income by 1%. I balance that by hoping no one asks me why I do it."

Luckily, a publisher gave Adams big bucks to turn his blog into a book.

Unluckily, "As part of the book deal, my publisher asked me to delete the parts of my blog archive that would be included in the book."

As Felix Salmon notes at Portfolio, that sparked an outcry from readers.

"So now Adams has to offset his six-figure advance against the ill-will of people who 'were personally offended that I would remove material from the Internet that had once been free.'"

Opines Salmon, "Free is only complicated if you try to mess with it and start making it expensive. ... needlessly annoying your blog's readers is extremely unlikely to be a good business decision."

Well, Adams has still got that six-figure advance to keep him warm.

By the way, the cartoonist's blog is a consistently chewy read.

But now that he has the book under his belt, he's decided to blog less.

That just might be one of Melissa Plaut's claims to fame, ABC News reports:

"Out of New York City's 44,000 licensed cabdrivers, she is one of only 400 female cabbies who get behind the wheel every day. With women making up just 1 percent of the city's taxi work force, Plaut says many of her customers are surprised when they get this college-educated, native New Yorker as their driver.

"'Most passengers comment on the fact that I'm female by just telling me that I'm female.' said Plaut, who also happens to be gay and Jewish... 'It's safe to say that I'm a bit of an anomaly.'"

Plaut blogs at New York Hack.

"'When I started the blog, it was primarily just for my friends. I got a digital camera for my birthday, and I started taking pictures of what I saw on cab shifts. I started loading them online and e-mailing them to friends and putting in captions. They wrote more words. They asked for more words, and I started writing longer and longer stories after every single shift. So the blog turned into stories behind the wheel.'

"Eventually, Plaut's musings caught the attention of publishers at Random House, which landed her an offer to turn her Web site into a book, thus giving life to 'Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What to Do With My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab.'"

Someone call Danny DeVito. I smell a "Taxi" remake in here somewhere...

Environmental Graffiti recently crunched some numbers to come up with the world's top 10 environmental blogs.

Get the eco-friendly lowdown at sites such as TreeHugger, Inhabitat and EcoGeek.

Speaking of earth-friendly sites, two good friends of mine recently debuted their Green Team blog at HGTVpro.com.

Just remember to power your computer down after reading them.

Read this week's column to find out. And no, it's not Rosie O'Donnell this year. Fans of bad poetry will just have to suck it up.

Links to mentioned sites:

Mark Cuban's Blog Maverick
Donald Trump's The Trump Blog
Asia Carrera's Asia's Bulletins
Jenna Jameson's MySpace Blog
Alyssa Milano's Touch 'em All
Curt Schilling's 38 Pitches
Katie Couric's Couric & Co.
Charles Gibson's The World Newser
Brian Williams' The Daily Nightly
Pamela Anderson's Diary
Borat Sagdiyev's MySpace Blog
Borat's video blog
John Mayer's Blog
Dave Navarro's 6767
Ron Silver's Silver Bullet
Krist Novoselic's Contention & Conscious
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
The Secret Diary of Steve Ballmer

And for more snarky fun, please sign up for the free Alternative Source podcast.

This week's column offers a glimpse at a journalism project that has reporters from outlets as varied as the Seattle Times and MTV exploring how blogs can help them improve coverage of their beats.

Sounds like the so-called "war" between newspapers and the blogosphere might be drawing to a close as the forms begin to converge.

Links to mentioned sites:

Beatblogging.org
Brier Dudley's Blog
PressThink
OffTheBus.net

And if you want a good beat you can dance to, check out the funk stylings of the free Alternative Source podcast.

This week's column tells a cautionary tale of a blog-based business that almost crashed and burned for want of an archive backup.

Luckily, the story has a happy ending--and plenty of data-protection tips for other site owners.

Links to mentioned sites:

WantNot
Woulda Coulda Shoulda
Cornered Office
Work It, Mom!
BlogHer
WiredHub
GoDaddy

If you're casting about for a career change, blogs can give you a good idea of the actual day-to-day feel of a given job, this week's unbylined column reports.

Links to mentioned sites:

Vocation Vacations
How I Am Becoming an Astronaut
Elyse Sewell's Journal
Life of a Farm Blog
The Artful Writer
One Week Job

From the fine folks at Despair Inc. we have the "More people have read this shirt than your blog" T. It comes complete with a site counter stuck on 0000002...

Ye olde Blogspotter would look like this.

What would your favorite site look like?

It depicts a "Pulp Fiction"-era Samuel L. Jackson pointing a gun at the viewer and growling, "Say 'blogosphere' again."

If that tickles your fancy, check out this list of the Top 11 Geek T-Shirts...

...this week's column takes you on a musically inspired tour of noteworthy Halloween blogs.

Links to mentioned sites:

Haunted Real Estate Blog
New York's Most Horrifying Haunted Blog
Morbid Anatomy Blog
Ghost Sickness Paranormal Research Blog
Ghost Stories
Candy Yum Yum
Candy Blog
Candy Critic
Halloween for All
CostumZee
Ugly Halloween Costumes
Broomstick Chronicles
2 Witches Blog
The Witches' Voice
Sexy Witch

If you can scare up a few extra minutes, please sign up for the free Alternative Source podcast.

Although a few blog networks and market-leading sites rake in big advertising bucks, most sites end up chasing the crumbs, this week's column reports.

And the founder of at least one blog advertising network says there aren't enough ad dollars coming in to support the content explosion.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle this morning takes more of a glass half-full approach to the topic in a story headlined, "Yes, some blogs are profitable - very profitable." It includes quotes from Gawker's Nick Denton (who didn't return my request for comment) and Federated Media's John Battelle (whose assistant said he was too busy to address reporters' questions last week).

Anyhoo, Denton supports the thesis of my column with this line:

"'A few self-sustaining blog media businesses do seem to have emerged,' said Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, the parent of gossip site Gawker.com. 'But they're still minuscule by the standards of traditional media. And none have weathered a downturn. So it would be unwise to sound too triumphant.'"

And then there's this:

"'As traditional media continue to contract, this stuff is going to expand,' said Steve King, senior fellow with the Society for New Communications Research, a Palo Alto think tank. 'The business models have caught up and you're starting to see little blog publishing companies that frankly are becoming not so little.' ...

"The blogging industry is coming to resemble the magazine world, with multiple sites for every taste in politics, entertainment, business, technology and any other imaginable field.

"'The ones that have become very strong small businesses have a niche market that's big enough to attract advertisers,' King said. 'In most categories, a few blogs tend to dominate.'"

Again, certainly some winners, and then others left chasing the ad-dollar crumbs (which can be fairly substantial in their own right).

Links to mentioned sites:

BlogAds
PaidContent
DailyKos
PerezHilton
Weblogs Inc.
Mediabistro
Gawker
NickDenton.org
Huffington Post
Freakonomics
YouTube
MySpace

When you get finished surfing that collection, please sign up for the free Alternative Source podcast.

"We all carry a secret that would break your heart if you just knew what it was. And if we could remember that there might be more understanding and peace in the world."
--PostSecret founder Frank Warren in an interview pegged to the release of his fourth blog book, "A Lifetime of Secrets"

That's the pitch from Advertising Age columnist Simon Dumenco:

"Dumenco contends that knowledge of the hippest, hottest blogs can increase hook-up opportunities and boost sexual attractiveness," CanWest News Service reports.

"He maintains some people are using niche blogs such as Gawker.com and Defamer.com to gain pop cultural insights that make them more socially desirable and ultimately more likely to get lucky.

"'It's like how people used to offer or borrow cigarettes, when people smoked more it breaks the ice, gives you a conversational in,' Dumenco said in an interview."

Warning: This is less likely to work if you keep talking about your own blog.

The New York Times peeks in on I Saw Your Nanny, "a 15-month-old New Yorkcentric Web log that has recorded hundreds of anonymous posts, or 'sightings.'"

When people see someone they assume is a nanny having an unpleasant interaction with a kid, they can submit an account to the site.

"Posts describe restless children strapped into strollers while caretakers chat idly on the phone, or nannies feeding children junk food, and some posts are simply bizarre. One claimed that a nanny at the Billy Johnson Playground, near the Central Park Zoo, had tossed a screaming child’s live goldfish, encased in a water-filled plastic bag, into a garbage can.

"Since its launch in August 2006, ISawYourNanny has had 1.7 million hits, according to the blog’s counter. While the blog is national in scope, New York is the top state contributor, and most of its postings come from New York City, primarily Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn."

It sounds like an icky concept, even though the anonymous proprietor's reason for launching it is somewhat understandable:

"ISawYourNanny was founded by a 37-year-old woman from Greenwich, Conn., who had worked as a nanny for more than a decade. The impetus for the blog, she said, was a conversation with a child she had once cared for; the child told her that her new nanny, whom the woman had helped select, was 'one way in front of you and different when she’s around us.'

"'To me, that was a warning,' said the woman..."

But there are problems with the site, which one critic compares to East German Stasi informants:

"The blog does not confirm posts — anyone can post an item, and anyone can read it — and Jane Doe rarely removes them, a policy that can lead to errors and unwarranted invasions of privacy.

"Further, in the opinion of legal experts, the blog dwells in a potentially libelous area."

Other than that, it's peachy.

Maybe so, the National Journal suggests:

"Blog endorsements matter because politically engaged 'influentials' who shape opinions in their local communities read blogs. They also matter because leading bloggers, unlike editorial boards, are known entities. A presidential endorsement from Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos could change the dynamics of the Democratic race -- which is no doubt a factor in Moulitsas' decision to stay neutral thus far this year -- and state-based bloggers have even greater potential to swing electoral votes one way or the other."

That's a pretty strong claim. I doubt Kos is an endorsement kingmaker in the presidential election compared to, say, the New York Times.

In the sense that political blogs can drive donations and conversations, though, the best ones clearly are influential.