Bloggers are not journalists and nobody cares about bloggers’ writings

Frederick Giasson

I was reading a conversation on Moleskineries this morning and I came across a post, from an anonymous writer that wrote:

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1. Moleskins suck.
2. Bloggers are not journalists
3. Repeat 2. 16,789 times
4. Nobody cares what bloggers write

I feel sorry for your wasted time.

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This is a really funny post. First, I think that people don’t understand or just didn’t want to. Some seem to fear the new communication medium that are blogs. They don’t understand their implications their popularity. Blogging seem to be implemented in the news system and would probably not go. The interaction between blogs and traditional news networks had begun some years ago; the interactions became more and more important. Blogs use traditional Medias to discuss the world’s situation and traditional Medias use blogs to discuss the world’s situation. Is that bad? Certainly not. But it can be a fearful situation for someone that work in traditional Medias and that want to keep is job or that didn’t like change. Sorry to disappoint you but they are there and will not disappear tomorrow.

Personally I blog for myself otherwise I would not blog. You think that the 1.5 million of MSN space bloggers are writers? I don’t think so. They do this for them, for their friends and family. There are writers who blog; there are journalist who blog; there are CEO who blog; there are also normal person who blog. Anybody can blog, it’s the beauty of blogging; it’s probably one of the best free speech medium. Go check Iranian blogs or Iraqi blogs; you?ll understand what I say.

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The magic of blogging; the pleasure of writing – Personal communications: the underground of blogs

Frederick Giasson

Blogging bring me an unexpected thing. This is the possibility to correspond with really interesting persons. I’m not talking of meeting people on chat system or contact websites. No no no; I’m talking of the old way of correspondence, like 10 or 15 years ago when one of the only services available was emails: the reflected writing, not the writing on the fly.

What I have underestimated is that when a person blog, he’ll share is view of world; his passions; a hobby; his life, etc. If a blogger write about a specific thing, it’s because that he have joy by writing on it, otherwise he would not do it. If a person read his posts, it’s probably because he shares the same view of the world; the same passions; the same hobby or lived the same things. Otherwise, he would not read it. This specific situation is the catalyst of future conversions. They will try too deepening the subjects, off the blog, by email. Then you just enter in the underground of blogs. However, you need to take in count that this situation will only happen with the will of the read; if he initiates the conversion. If the conversation is initiated then things will emerge from them. Then new idea will be written by the bloggers for future readers, etc, etc, etc. You see the cycle? Is this not so beautiful? This is just a way to humans to search for new ideas and concepts in conversations; but in this case, with the help of a new technology.

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New version of MSN Search – Some cool innovations in the engine

Frederick Giasson


New version of MSN Search
Some cool innovations in the engine

Microsoft just released the new version of MSN search. I was using the beta version since some months. I’m really impressed by the work they done. They started from scratch and do this in 2 or 3 years (don’t remember the exact numbers). His look and options make him look like Google; but he is not. One of the main features of a search is that you have the power of how you want to perform your search. All indexed links are composed of 3 new characteristics: the update frequency, the popularity and the accuracy of the match. You have many more power on the result you’ll get. The one I particularly like is the popularity tag. The problem with Google is that most of the time you always have the same 10 or 20 first results; always on the same sites. If you want an obscure website, you need to scroll 500 pages. But with the popularity tag, you can put it at 0 and you’ll have all the obscure sites you want. This search flexibility is the real innovation for this type of search engine. It gives more power in the users’ hands. How can you change them? Click on the “search builder” then click on the “results ranking” tab and you’ll got it. There are also other cool features like the integration of Encarta entries in your search results.

A new feature that is not essential but is so cool is the RSS search feature. You can build a query like this:

http://search.msn.com/news/results.aspx?q=SEARCHTAG&;format=rss

SEARCHTAG is the search query string. Replace it by “moleskine”, put it in your RSS reader and check the result.

Finally there are many other cool things. You just have to play with it and read the help section. It’s sure that it’s not ease to change your searching habits but I just tell you to try it for some searches, and after some you?ll know if you like it or not.

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