"Wonkosphere.com saves blog readers time by scanning the postings of nearly 1,200 political blogs," ASU Web Devil reports.

It's a cool site, but my favorite thing about this story is that it appears on something called the "Web Devil."

InformationWeek has more on Wonkosphere.

"Google's Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs," BBC News reports.

"The fake entries contain weblinks that lead to booby-trapped downloads that could infect a Windows PC."

Well, at least it's nice to know people sometimes click on those hyperlinks we take the time to embed in our posts...

This week's column looks at attempts by blogs to get the most out of their comments, including a new Huffington Post initiative that'll promote one commenter a month to full-fledged blogger status.

Do you read blog comments? Do you find them valuable? What do you think is the best way to maximize the value of blog comments?

Links to mentioned blogs:

Huffington Post
Publishing 2.0
Daily Kos
Huckleberries Online
The Comics Curmudgeon
New York Times Readers' Comments
Gawker
Seth's Blog
Micro Persuasion
coComment

And as always, sign up for--and comment on--the free Alternative Source podcast.

The New York Times heads to Kipling, Saskatchewan, to catch up with blogger "Kyle MacDonald, or, as he is known in these parts, the Red Paper Clip Guy" who "traded a paper clip for a house."

Turns out the house cost about $8,000. Also, it's in the middle of nowhere and the roof leaks. But MacDonald got quite an adventure, and ongoing media ride, out of the deal, too.

And there's a final twist in the tale that underscores just how much marketing drives nearly everything these days. I'll let you discover it for yourself...

Guess who comes out ahead in the battle of reporting and analysis between NYU's Jay Rosen and the prof who wrote a lame-brained attack on blogging for the L.A. Times this week that cited blogs he now admits he never even read?

It's Rosen by a knockout.

And he uses the rebuttal opportunity afforded him by the L.A. Times to present a nifty, crowdsourced list of original reporting projects conducted by bloggers.

That list should be required reading for anyone contemplating a future knee-jerk dismissal of the form.

That's the word from InformationWeek's Stephen Wellman:

"I just received an invitation to 'the industry's first BlogWorld and New Media Expo.' What's interesting is that the only people who can get in with a media pass are traditional press. Just what kind of blog and new media show is this?"

My first thought upon reading about this via Gawker today was that the event organizers wanted to close a loophole whereby their target audience would use credentials requests to attend conference sessions free of charge. They'd want to limit credentials to those few bloggers who actually cover problogging as news and would be coming to the event solely to write it up.

If Wellman had thought about it for five seconds and bothered to e-mail the conference planners, he could have gotten the scoop. But instead it fell to a conference official to set the record straight in the blog's comment section:

"I am sure you can understand and appreciate that we are a blogging and new media conference and tradeshow. One of our goals is to try and help bloggers learn how to produce better content, increase their readership and monetize their content. That means A-listers as well as B and C listers are our audience.

"Press credentials will be given on a case by case basis if we can determine the reporter or blogger is coming to cover the conference as a news item and not just trying to get in for free.

"Just as [other media conferences] don't allow every journalist into their events for free. We view our event in a similar fashion and view bloggers, vloggers and podcasters as micro publishers and broadcasters."

Makes perfect sense. But why should Wellman pursue an obvious line of questioning when it's easier to play a knee-jerk round of gotcha? It's not like he's writing for a site called InformationWeek or anything...

I checked in with talk-show host Dick Cavett about his New York Times Talk Show blog for this week's column.

Cavett was as gracious and quick and interesting as he was on his show, and it was great fun covering the conversational waterfront with him for an hour. Some highlights that didn't make it into the column...

On the dearth of great talk-show guests:

"Who would the counterparts be now for Davis and Hepburn or Welles and Brando and Hitchcock and John Huston? There are interesting personalities alive, yes, but it seems almost like a golden age or an age of giants has gone into reverse."

On his penchant for plunging into show-business situations, such as striking up a friendship with Groucho Marx at the funeral of writer George S. Kaufman:

"I never found it hard to plunge in because I was sort of driven to. I never expected to be able to stand backstage at 'My Fair Lady' in the wings, with Cathleen Nesbitt and Julie Andrews having to step around me to make their entrances, for very long. But I was there longer than I thought. It never occurred to me to go to Vassar, Smith and Wellesley along with everybody else during weekends at Yale, but to go to New York and try to get into the Jackie Gleason studio and meet Art Carney and that kind of thing. I don’t really know entirely where it all comes from.

"I think it might come from something that’s a pre-memory on my part. My mother used to stand me up in a chair and I apparently would recite yards of Shakespeare, Byron and Shelley that she had taught me, and then would urge, 'Now everybody crap.' And because I had trouble with 'l' and 'r,' it always came out 'everybody crap.' That got me several more bookings in Gibbon, Nebraska. And you don’t get too many in Gibbon before you’ve saturated the market, but apparently that was part of my appeal without my knowing it. Maybe that acceptance and that applause had a big effect."

On performing magic:

"I’ve lost touch with it. But somebody started sending me a magic magazine and I’m always glad to see it. It always makes me wish I had infinite time to do nothing but this. Woody [Allen] admits to the same thing. He’ll say, 'Remember the fun when your magic catalog came from Max Holden’s great magic shop in New York and you just wore it out turning the pages and trying to decide what you could afford to buy?'

"[Steve Martin], like Woody, is very good with manipulation, the really hard stuff--shuffling two stacks of coins in one hand. We went and had breakfast once and he dazzled me with some of his sleights of hand. It has to be practiced daily. It’s like gymnastics or ballet--you can’t really go away from it and expect it to work."

On the infamous "Tonight Show" incident when Cavett was a writer and Jack Paar lost his temper after a comedian used the word "uvula" on stage:

"I never determined exactly what part of the female anatomy he thought was being slipped in on him there."

On his voice:

"Everybody does recognize my voice. It’s an amazing thing. It makes it difficult to be anonymous at times. And also I get caught. People notice it and make a point of listening to what I’m saying, in a restaurant or somewhere."

My voice isn't quite so recognizable, of course, but you can hear it by signing up for the free Alternative Source podcast...

Michael Skube wastes the time of L.A. Times readers with a reactionary anti-blog essay that's as badly written as it is researched.

First, paint blogworld with a broad brush of harsh generalizations:

"The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an unbecoming hatred of enemies real and imagined."

Next, illustrate a tenuous grip on the facts:

"And to think most bloggers are doing all this on the side. 'No man but a blockhead,' the stubbornly sensible Samuel Johnson said, 'ever wrote but for money.' Yet here are people, whole brigades of them, happy to write for free. And not just write. Many of the most active bloggers -- Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Yglesias, Joshua Micah Marshall and the contributors to the Huffington Post -- are insistent partisans in political debate."

The people he cites all make money from blogging. That's what we call in the business an embarrassing blunder.

Finally, illustrate you don't grasp the breadth and depth of blogworld:

"One gets the uneasy sense that the blogosphere is a potpourri of opinion and little more. The opinions are occasionally informed, often tiresomely cranky and never in doubt. Skepticism, restraint, a willingness to suspect judgment and to put oneself in the background -- these would not seem to be a blogger's trademarks."

It's reasonably clear Skube is talking about political blogs in his piece--an important slice of the pie, no doubt, but nowhere near the whole pie. And one of the bloggers he cites as an example--Joshua Micah Marshall--regularly breaks news. (He even broke some rather surprising news about Skube's column.)

Blogworld benefits from informed, constructive critiques.

This howler-filled crock does not fit the bill.

Irony Dept.: "...a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post material far more potentially harmful than anything found on a individual's blog," Wired reports.

This is the same Army, of course, that has started cracking down on its soldiers' blogs...

David Newland came up with a clever phrase to refer to dead blogs, and he tried to spin a full column out of it in the Winnipeg Sun. Doesn't quite work, but let's give the descriptive its due. Drumroll please for...

Dotsam and netsam

Syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman notes that, when it comes to political blogs, "The chief messengers are overwhelmingly men - white men, even angry white men.

"I began tracking the maleness of this media last spring while I was a visiting fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. An intrepid graduate student created a spreadsheet of the top 90 political blogs. A full 42 percent were edited and written by men-only, while seven percent were by women-only. Another 45 percent were edited or authored by both men and women, though the 'coed' mix was overwhelmingly male.

"Yes, this is the kettle of the MSM - mainstream media - calling the pot of the netroots male. In fairness, half of all 96 million blogs are written by women. But in the smaller political sphere, what is touted as a fresh force for change looks an awful lot like a new boy network."

What's the reason for the male cast to political blogworld? Goodman offers several potential answers, including the fact "that educated, economically comfortable men were the early adopters to the technology and took the lead" in blogging.

"Two Dutch news bloggers caught filming under women's skirts in a car park in order to warn the public of the intimate views afforded by see-through stairs must appear in court, according to their blog," Reuters reports.

It's too bad the authorities don't recognize the merits of such undoubtedly civic-minded reporting...

That's one back-of-the-envelope calculation of Gawker Media's annual ad revenues, Wired's Epicenter blog reports. And the net take could be in the $48 million range. "Looking at it that way, [Nick] Denton’s decision not to sell this company—despite the annual rumors—makes perfect sense," writes Adario Strange.

Commenters on the blog that made the quick calculations have been pretty critical, however:

* "Unfortunately, that’s assuming every ad impression on every page is sold and that it’s sold at rate card rates. Two things that, in online publishing, never ever happen."

* "You are a complete idiot if you think that the sell-through rate on that network is higher than 10-30%. Your numbers are completely worthless. You clearly know nothing about how the online business model works in the real world."

The real question seems to be: Is Denton rich or is he filthy rich? (via Romenesko)

For this week's column, I sought comment from both Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs and the formerly anonymous blogger known as Fake Steve Jobs.

I figured I'd probably hear back only from the one who isn't busy brewing up new phones, MP3 players, computers and other gadgets he can slap that little "i" on.

Imagine my surprise, then, to receive an e-mail addressed from none other than "Steve Jobs."

It turned out the message was from the fake one, though. Journalist Daniel Lyons really likes to play his role to the hilt.

Read what Lyons had to say about being outed by the New York Times and other matters by clicking here.

Links to this week's mentioned sites:

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
Bits
The Secret Diary of Brad Stone
Anil Dash
Rupert Murdoch's Blog
Bill Gates' Blog
The Secret Diary of Bill Gates
The Secret Diary of Steve Ballmer

Clearly in blogworld, fake is the new real.

After you check out the ersatz pundits, get a dose of reality by signing up for the free Alternative Source podcast.

Michael Weiss offers a guide to naming one's blog in Slate. His main tips:

1. Irony is a cruel mistress.
2. Mind the allusions.
3. Inside jokes doom.
4. Choose antagonists wisely.
5. Beware the pun.

Read the full piece for some fun insights.

What's your favorite blog name and why? Least favorite?

And the next 45,000 bring in an additional $100 million a year, according to a new study released by ad network Chitika in association with the University of Texas.

The projections are based on some rather broad assumptions:

"Using Chitika revenue numbers from 2006 and assuming that bloggers will, on average,
diversify across 3 revenue sources, and assuming that they will typically try out other
sources that will generate similar revenue streams, it is safe to estimate that the total
estimated revenue for their blog will be at least 3 times the revenue attained through
Chitika."

That's a lot of assuming and estimating. But some expert observers say the figures are likely pretty close to the mark.

Chitika CEO Venkat Kolluri responded to critics' assertions that the data are too thin to amount to much in the comments section of TechCrunch:

"This study is our first attempt in this direction and to start off with we used data from our network and public sources like Technorati to take a first stab in estimating the dollars in the blogosphere. Our goal is to refine and continue this study on a regular basis with richer data sets and publish/share the results."

Assuming this initial effort is near the ballpark, that means the lower 45,000 of the top 50,000 blogs earn an average of just $2,222.22 a year from ad sales.

Which means that unless you're one of the 5,000 or so leading sites in blogworld, you probably won't be able to quit your day job.

On the other hand, another new study projects Internet advertising will become the largest ad segment by 2011.

So posits the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Tom Mattzie, Washington director of MoveOn.org, the 3.3 million-member online activism hub, said smaller bloggers 'are going to gain a lot more importance in the upcoming elections.'

"Here's how: A blogger writes about something going on in his community, say plans for a local development to be built on toxic ground - the kind of story many large newspapers rarely break nowadays. Residents start complaining about the issue at local meetings. Soon, the buzz generated causes the local press and perhaps other larger bloggers to pick up on the issue, and the government is forced to respond to their inquiries.

In addition, "as more newspapers cut staff and can't cover many of the stories they used to, bloggers who cover local politics have become the de facto watchdog in some communities and over some areas of government. While they see the news through a partisan political lens, their reporting has become a tip sheet for journalists at traditional outlets."

We're certainly seeing local bloggers make a political impact in North Idaho, as aided and abetted by the S-R's own Huckleberries Online...

Progressive bloggers are kicking around the idea of forming a union that might help them negotiate lower prices for health coverage, establish professional standards and more easily obtain press credentials, the AP reports:

"In a world as diverse, vocal and unwieldy as the blogosphere, there's no consensus about what type of organization is needed and who should be included. Some argue for a free-standing association for activist bloggers while others suggest a guild open to any blogger — from knitting fans to video gamers — that could be created within established labor groups. ...

"While bloggers work to organize their own labor movement, their growing numbers are already being courted by some unions.

"'Bloggers are on our radar screen right now for approaching and recruiting into the union,' said Gerry Colby, president of the National Writers Union, a local of the United Auto Workers. 'We're trying to develop strategies to reach bloggers and encourage them to join.'"

There's been a lot of fun poked at the concept of bloggers unionizing and some of those who advocate it seem to have oddball ideas about what the move could achieve.

But organizations such as the Authors Guild do provide members access to discount health and dental insurance, and the NWU has used its muscle effectively on behalf of freelance writers, so organizing bloggers is not a crazy notion. It might work out better in the long run if they simply join up with an established effort such as NWU, however.

Or so claims the Wall Street Journal:

"The growth of blogging is responsible for many marital flare-ups. James Griffioen and his wife, Sara Woodward, decided to start a blog together after they had their first child. They were inspired by other couples who were blogging about their newborns.

"They agreed to give each other veto power over posts, which he exercised when she wanted to shout out into the blogosphere about his failure to do the dishes. 'That's a real sensitive issue,' says Mr. Griffioen, 30, who cares for the couple's 2-year-old daughter at their home in Detroit. Readers of the site would have blown it out of proportion, he says: 'They're going to turn it into this whole thing of how I don't keep up my end of the relationship.' ...

"For Derek Powazek, 34, there are limits to what he'll share with his wife, Heather. The San Francisco couple has separate blogs; his focuses on digital media, hers on photography. Mr. Powazek says he sometimes sees her quoting his best jokes on her blog, and he tells her not to steal his material (she credits him after the fact). As for sharing one blog, the idea 'never came up,' he says. 'It would be like saying, "Let's share our underwear."'"

Do separate blogs--and underwear--promote marital fidelity?

They're LOLcats--as in "laugh out loud" pictures of kitties with funny, thought-bubbly captions--and they're threatening to take over the Web, as this week's column reports.

Links to mentioned sites:

I Can Has Cheezburger
Lolcats
lolcatr.com
MacroCats
LiveJournal Cat Macros community
MyPetCaptions
LolCat Buildr
LOLPresidents.com

After you've had your fill of funny furballs, please sign up for the free Alternative Source podcast.

The crackerjack investigators at the New York Times yesterday revealed the author behind the Fake Steve Jobs blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, that has become a favorite among techies (including a certain Apple Inc. honcho) in recent months:

"...Fake Steve has evaded the best efforts of Silicon Valley’s gossips to discover his real identity.

"Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine who lives near Boston, has been quietly enjoying the attention.

"'I’m stunned that it’s taken this long,' said Mr. Lyons, 46, when a reporter interrupted his vacation in Maine on Sunday to ask him about Fake Steve. 'I have not been that good at keeping it a secret. I’ve been sort of waiting for this call for months.'

"Mr. Lyons writes and edits technology articles for Forbes and is the author of two works of fiction, most recently a 1998 novel, 'Dog Days.' In October, Da Capo Press will publish his satirical novel written in the voice of the Fake Steve character, 'Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody.' ...

"The book, in part, led to Mr. Lyons’s unmasking. Last year, his agent showed the manuscript to several book publishers and told them the anonymous author was a published novelist and writer for a major business magazine. The New York Times found Mr. Lyons by looking for writers who fit those two criteria, and then by comparing the writing of 'Fake Steve' to a blog Mr. Lyons writes in his own name, called Floating Point."

In response to the article, Lyons wrote yesterday on the Jobs blog:

"What's next for FSJ? Well, I'm taking a few days off to sit in a lake and do some yoga and meditation and non-thinking. Then I'm coming back next week, badder than ever, with a new sponsor -- my homeboys at Forbes.com. Turns out they've been reading FSJ and liking it too. Who knew?"

Forbes.com delivers its take here, plus a video of Fake Steve.

But what of Fake Steve Ballmer, who writes this morning, "I promise they will NEVER find me!"

The Yearly Kos convention put on by the progressive Daily Kos blog has drawn seven of the eight Democratic presidential candidates to speak to the assembled activists in Chicago.

Here's the AP's take:

"Plunging headlong into the Internet era, all seven candidates fought for the support of the powerful and polarizing liberal blogosphere by promising universal health care, aggressive government spending and dramatic change from the Bush era.

"[John] Edwards received the loudest applause when he suggested his rivals were tinkering around the edges — 'I just heard some discussion about negotiation, compromise' — rather than overhauling government. He said the nation needs 'big change, not small change.'"

The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg is blogging from the convention this weekend:

"I admit that I was expecting this crowd to look weirder. Not hippie weirder, though I did expect a bit of that, but nerdy weirder. So I was surprised at how extraordinarily normal everyone looked. The left, if I may use that radioactive word, sure has changed since 'my day,' i.e., the nineteen-sixties and early seventies."

You can find links to more coverage here.

"I've always been miserable at maintaining diaries and calendars, despite my annual New Years' resolution. Each year, I swear it will be the year I succeed at recording my activities and feelings," writes Caroline Hirt in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

"In a blog, there is instant gratification that comes from a searchable, chronologically correct and archived life with links to photographs.

"Maybe if I created a blog personality, I'd have to post daily.

"No one's hit counter moves when there are only shards of a story."

Or she could set it to "private" and swap her "shelves full of uncompleted thoughts bound in gorgeous, leather-bound journals" for an electronic version...

Here's the persuasive analysis from bloggers David Eaves and Taylor Owen on TheStar.com:

"Blogging is not a substitute for journalism. If anything, this past decade shows that blogging and journalism are symbiotic – to the benefit of everyone.

"To its many ardent advocates, blogging is displacing traditional journalism. But journalism – unlike blogging – is a practice with a particular set of norms and structures that guide the creation of content. Blogging, despite its unique properties (virtually anyone can reach a potentially enormous audience at little cost), has few, if any norms.

"Consider another, more established medium. Books enable various practices, such as fiction, poetry, science and sometimes journalism, to be disseminated. Do books pose a threat to journalism? Of course not. They do the opposite. Journalistic books, like blogs, increase interest in the subjects they tackle and so promote further media consumption. ...

"Ultimately blogs, like books, don't replace journalism; they simply provide another medium for its dissemination and consumption."

What do you think? Is blogging just another delivery method for reporting?

Kate Coe delivers what might be the definitive profile of Wit of the Staircase blogger Theresa Duncan, who committed suicide last month.

As Coe writes in L.A. Weekly:

"I knew her, and I knew that much of what she wrote about her world was an elaborate tale, taken as fact by the uninitiated. ...

"But her image as a player in Hollywood, albeit one with powerful enemies, was at odds with the facts. Perhaps she got tired of patching the little fissures that threatened to destroy her carefully constructed fantasy. Maybe that is why, at 40, she decided not to go on. ...

"Many read Duncan’s words online, and most thought she was glamorous, brilliant, brave, bold, erudite. She was all those things — but those attributes didn’t win in the end."

It's a fascinating piece about a compelling subject. We all should be so lucky to have someone take such care in writing our post-mortem portraits.

Meanwhile, in the L.A. Times, Swati Pandey explores themes similar to those I touched on in this week's column on Duncan:

"...I'm missing something, and like so many other readers, I feel as if an old friend has suddenly gone.

"Why should I? I never spoke to her, never saw her at the gallery openings or lectures she sometimes publicized, never met her strolling the streets of Venice, where she recently lived. I never left a comment on her blog, though I read it each day for nearly two years...

"...like the best bloggers, she created an illusion of intimacy with her readers. ...

"That imagined intimacy was so thorough that, even after her suicide, I stubbornly stuck to the belief that she wasn't a stranger to me, that I deserved some inkling of her plans, or even a blogged suicide note."

Connecticut's Stamford Advocate explores an issue that crops up from time to time on the S-R's own Huckleberries Online: Should local politicians use their real names when posting?

Some choice comments from the story:

"I've counseled those thinking of participating in local blogs that they should do so under their own names or at least (use) a consistent handle... There's a level of harshness when you're hiding behind anonymity." (A campaign manager)

"A lot of them won't because they want input on there but don't want to get attacked for the input" (A local pol who uses her own name on blogs, but notes that others don't)

"Rather than jumping in as an elected official, I might just throw out a comment. But if I say 'this is Mike Lawlor' it can be a little pretentious. 'Ooh. This is Mike Lawlor!'" (A state legislator who defends his anonymous blog posting)

"I don't think a public official loses his right to be a citizen. Most blogs, the vast majority of comments are anonymous. Would it be helpful if people always put their own name? Yeah. But sometimes - let's say you're the mayor and you want to participate in a conversation or get a feel (for an issue). You might not want to say you're the mayor because people might give you a different response. You might not be able to freely engage in conversation." (Another local pol defending anonymous comments)

"If you're a politician, you should use your name when you're talking about your job." (A political science professor taking a stand against anonymous politician posts)

So, what do you think? Should elected officials post anonymous comments on blogs that discuss issues they deal with in their jobs?