Writing for the Web

Becoming a Book Blog

After weeks of work, the third edition of Writing for the Web is nearly completed. It's a far more extensive revision than I'd expected, but I'm pretty happy with the result. Not only is much of the print content changed, expanded, and updated, but the book will contain a CD with scores of links—a kind of electronic index, with added links on relevant topics.

In addition, this site will become a kind of book blog, providing still more updates and links. So if you find something in the book that you don't understand or like, you can fire off an email or a comment, and I'll try to explain myself.

Most textbooks now include websites created by the publisher to supply extra materials. Those sites, however, tend to be permanent and unchanging. As the blog for Writing for the Web 3.0, this site will change almost daily.

Websites that changed the world

The Guardian Unlimited has celebrated the 15th anniversary of the World Wide Web with an article that also lists 15 Websites that changed the world.

You'll probably disagree with many of the sites on the list, but the Web has indeed changed the world.

From Web 1.0 to Web 3.0?

Via the International Herald Tribune, a long and interesting article about where Sir Tim Berners-Lee wants the Web to go: A 'more revolutionary' Web. Excerpt:

Just when the ideas behind "Web 2.0" are starting to enter into the mainstream, the mass of brains behind the World Wide Web is introducing pieces of what may end up being called Web 3.0.

"Twenty years from now, we'll look back and say this was the embryonic period," said Tim Berners-Lee, 50, who established the programming language of the Web in 1989 with colleagues at CERN, the European science institute.

Very much worth reading.

Blogging a Nameless War

The Tyee has published my article Blogging a Nameless War, about the Lebanese and Israeli online response to the war in Lebanon.

Are citizen-journalists just amateurs?

Nicholas Lemann, in the current New Yorker, takes issue with many bloggers' conviction that they are doing the job the mainstream media are too complacent or arrogant to do. It's an entertaining piece, and in the online version you can of course visit the sites he mentions...and see what some blogger-journalists think of the article.