Writing for the Web

Canadian Blog Wars

The dispute mentioned in the post below is now nearing its third week. It's been really infuriating to listen to the recycled sludge that management has offered, especially on radio.

The blogs reporting the lockout are now drawing interest from media elsewhere, including the Guardian. From that story you can follow links to most of the relevant sites.

CBC Unplugged and Studio Zero

We have had a bad time here in Canada lately: the management of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation locked out most of its workers and then had the chutzpah to call it a "labour disruption." What management has put on the air has vindicated Dilbert in every particular.

Now the locked-out workers are reacting with a very new-media approach: CBC Unplugged and Studio Zero.

After you've read about it on The Tyee, click through to CBC Unplugged, sign up, and watch the revolution unfold.

The New Ernie Pyles

The Washington Post has a good article on military bloggers. This is a genre I haven't paid enough attention to, but I'll try to correct that lapse as quickly as possible.

Imagine the impact that blogs would have had if soldiers in the trenches of World War I had been able to write for the world to see what it was like at The Somme...complete with photos emailed from cell phones.

The Greatest Living Briton

Most of us use the Web without even knowing who made it possible. Those who write for the Web, however, should know all they can about its creator, Tim Berners-Lee. And the Guardian Unlimited has just provided us with a profile of "the greatest living Briton". Very much worth reading!

Iraq Hack: A Reporter's Blog

Tom Popyk is a freelance Canadian reporter who's been stationed in Baghdad for many months, covering the war for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He writes good strong journalism, and I'm delighted to find he's also writing Iraq Hack: A Reporter's Blog.

I like not just the content but the design of his site: well-organized, easy to navigate, plenty of white space to break up the text into manageable chunks.

Guy Sites and Chick Sites

What a shock! According to a recent report a website's appearance matters. Sites designed by men tend to appeal to men; women like sites designed by women. Anyone who's surfed men's blogs and women's blogs could have come to the same conclusion.

Attain my advanced age, however, and you find that what appeals is not the macho colours or the femmy fonts, but the human being of whatever sex who's trying to communicate with you.

Berners-Lee on the Read/Write Web

BBC News Online has a transcript of a TV interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the read/write web. He makes some sensible and insightful comments, but has to spend a lot of time fending off guilt-trip questions from the interviewer about some of the awful things people do on the Web.

Another Tyee Article

Yesterday The Tyee published my article Avian Flu Bloggers Getting Alarmed. The piece may help to explain why I haven't posted much here or in Writing Fiction. Flu blogging is something like a role-playing game based on a planetary disaster, and apart from learning about avian flu I've also learned a lot about how online writing can create a worldwide community of interest.

Technorati: a New Blog Every Second

Technorati has published its latest periodic report on the State of the Blogosphere, August 2005, Part 1: Blog Growth. About one new blog is created every second, with about half of them soon going into limbo—defined as no new post in three months.