Launched in February, a decent example of a blog (comments, bylined posts, XML feeds, etc.). I just don’t like the use of frames. I also don’t see permalinks.
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Link

Should be required reading for bloggers worried about losing their jobs for their online musings. Take a cue from an old axiom of journalism: when in doubt, leave it out.

CNET: FAQ: Blogging on the Job

A colleague asked me what percentage of Fortune 500 companies are blogging. Interesting, though I don’t know. (Let’s presume we’re talking about just public blogs, and real blogs, not faux blogs or intranet blogs.) I guessed somewhere in the 3-6% range currently. Unfortunately, the Fortune 500 list is now a premium feature of Fortune.com, so I’m doing a simple gut-check on what firms make the list at this point. But here’s a short list off the top of my head:

• GM
• Sun Microsystems
• Microsoft
• Google
• Yahoo!
• Boeing

That’s 1.2% right there, but I haven’t really thought too hard about it yet. Who am I missing?

UPDATE:
I’m not sure Google and Yahoo! are technically 2004 Fortune 500 (I’m working on finding a friend with a login so I can check), but if not they miss it by a hair’s breadth, given each of their $3+ billion in revenue last year.

Reader John Ridings points out that Cisco also has a blog.

Jeremy Wright adds a post on his blog of all the F500 companies he knows of with internal blogs, which is naturally a lot longer than this one of public blogs.

Steve Rubel suggests taking those and making a stock index out of them, which he bets would track better than the S&P 500.

Debbie Weil points out that HP also has several blogs.

http://devresource.hp.com/blogs/index.jsp

Mercury News reports:

In a case with implications for the
freedom to blog, a San Jose judge tentatively ruled Thursday that Apple
Computer can force three online publishers to surrender the names of
confidential sources who disclosed information about the company’s
upcoming products.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg refused to
extend to the Web sites a protection that shields journalists from
revealing the names of unidentified sources or turning over unpublished
material.

Strange, because I thought that journlaists also didn’t have those rights. Anyway, the lesson is clear: be careful what you blog.

MarketingVox points out that W Hotels is advertising on the HotelChatter blog.

MarketingVox: W Hotels Tries Blog Media Strategy

I can’t believe this is my first post about the Business Blog Awards. I could almost pretend that this post was timely, as the awards were just announced yesterday, but the pathetic truth is I just stumbled across the site for the first time now. That despite the fact that Jeremy Wright, one of the masterminds behind the site (along with Daron Barefoot, his partner in crime at Inside Blogging) emailed me about it a couple of months ago. (Awful confession: I barely ever look at the email sent to the Gmail account I set up specifically for this site.) Have I mentioned that I’m really busy with a new job?

Needless to say, I didn’t win an award.

Link

Easy come, easy go. It was just over a week ago that I noted Gawker Media had launched two new sites with exclusive ad sponsorship, including GridSkipper, a travel site sponsored by CheapTickets. Well, it turned out that the racy tone of the blog was too rich for CheapTickets’s blood and it’s withdrawn its sponsorship.

This promises to be a touchstone for all those who doubt the viability of blog advertising. I agree that it will take a while, if ever, before many advertisers feel comfortable with the unrestrained tone of blogs, but I also agree with Nick Denton, Gawker’s publisher, that it’s their loss; speaking to PR Week, he said:

"We’d rather lose the occasional advertiser than the character that
attracts the audience in the first place. If an advertiser wants a safe
environment, there are thousands of tired media outlets to choose from.

"Weblogs are supposed to be unexpected and wincingly frank.
That’s an essential part of the appeal to a generation that’s turning
away from network television and print media. We had a million visitors
to our sites on Tuesday alone."

Details on PR Week.

Microsoft’s uber blog evangelist Robert Scoble is frothing at the mouth he’s so mad about about a marketer daring to not have RSS on his site. He blogged [emphasis his] "Sorry, if you do a marketing site and you don’t have an RSS feed today you should be fired. I’ll say it again. You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed." Easy, boy. We’ll get a doctor. You’ll pull through.

Jupiter Research analyst Eric Peterson politely suggested Scoble get a grip, that RSS really isn’t for everyone. His colleague Michael Gartenberg concurs. Me too.

24roids.com

A new seminar on business blogging: "Blogging Goes Mainstream: New Media For Corporate Growth." Cost: $125.

Attendee Profile:

• Corporate Communications and Marketing
  Executives
• Product Development Executives
• Brand Managers and Directors
• Technology Executives
• Research Analysts
• Advertising and PR Professionals
• Journalists and Bloggers

Where: Microsoft Customer Briefing Center

1290 Avenue of the Americas, Between 51st and 52nd Street, 6th Floor

New York, NY

When: April 28th, 2005

4:00PM – 8:30PM

Business Development Institute: Blogging Goes Mainstream

iMedia writes:

Speakers at a recent Blog Business Summit believe blogs are replacing email as an effective two-way dialog tool.

Going forward from the recent Blog Business Summit in Seattle, two powerful messages have been reverberating through the marketing world:

1. Blog feeds are rapidly replacing email as a form of proactive marketing communications
2. Marketers wishing to post their own blogs should not approach the form as another one-way communications medium, but should plan for their blogs to offer two-way dialog.

Yawn. I’m so tired of this idea that blogs and/or RSS are ever going to replace email (as I’ve said before). Why do journalists always think that a new medium means the death of an old one? Radio is still doing very well, thank you, despite TV having come along some 60 years ago now. Blogs are good. Email is also good. Spam is bad, but spam is not the end of email. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. As for RSS, I still don’t use it. Still haven’t found a platform I really like. And besides, I get too much email already and don’t feel like I have to stay up to the minute on every blog in the world… But maybe that’s just me.

iMedia Connection: Bye Bye Email?

There was a day when I had to talk AdTech into a panel on blogs (November 2003). For their next show in San Francisco, April 25-28, I’m interested to see they have three sessions on blogs and kindred topics: "The New Personal Web," "Feeding the Beast: RSS, Data Feeds, PodCasts and More," and "Micropersuasion and Blogvertising."  Most amusing, Steve Rubel, an AdTech panelist and would-be contributor to this site, managed to get his session named after his blog!

Sounds a bit silly, but an email services firm called WhatCounts has launched a new blog system, dubiously named BlogUnit, complete with proprietary hardware. MarketingVox reports "Called the BlogUnit, the rack-mountable server includes security,
monitoring, integration and collaboration features. WhatCounts claims
the unit can be up and running within 15 minutes, allowing business
bloggers to publish, measure, manage versions and syndicate content
feeds."

Ironically, I don’t even see the press release about this new product or any relevant product information on WhatCounts’s site, much less a blog…

For once I agree with Jason Calacanis.

Jason Calacanis: Why Bloglines sold: It’s not a business

Bob Parsons, CEO of bargain domain registrar GoDaddy, has been blogging for a few months. In this post, he tells his company’s side of the story for why the NFL and Fox chickened out at the last minute from airing the second of its racy ads during the Super Bowl.

To support its Super Bowl ad about someone finding a french fry that looks like Abraham Lincoln, McDonald’s has launched this fake blog. Yawn. Steve Rubel and Kevin Duggan among other bloggers are not lovin’ it.

McDonald’s Fake Lincoln Fry Blog

So, Ask Jeeves just launched a blog. About time, considering the very identity of the company is the pesonification of personally answered questions online.

Link

You’ve probably already read this by new (I’m several days late in getting around to this post; I’ve been insanely busy at work of late), but Gawker Media just launched two new blogs: Lifehacker, a software blog with Sony as the exclusive launch sponsor, and Gridskipper, a travel blog with CheapTickets as exclusive launch sponsor. More details on publisher Nick Denton’s site.

According to the press release:

Mokena, IL Penn Media announced today that it will publish fifty of its flagship owned and operated e-zines as Blogs, positioning them as one of the largest publishers of consumer trade blogs. It has contracted with Pheedo, Inc. to guide them through the evolution and provide RSS and Weblog advertising services.

Yet another great object lesson in the dangers of business blog, or "When Bloggers Attack." John Battelle tells the story of a blogger at Google writing some things he shouldn’t have (like how drunk his sales collegues got at a sales conference, various business secrets, etc.) and then editing the posts on the advice of management, but not before they were achived forever on Yahoo, which Battelle helpfully points out. Best part: one of the offending posts was deliciously titled " first day on the job, first post on the blog." A more recent post entitled "end of an exciting day" writes:

i suppose the biggest lesson was how fast information travels nowadays. …

the
second lesson was that in today’s blogosphere, speculation runs
rampant. i suppose i should’ve anticipated this one as well, but i
hadn’t learned the previous lesson yet, so i didn’t really think too
many people other than my friends would be reading this thing. oops!

D’oh!

UPDATE:

Not suprisingly, this blogger is no longer employed by Google.

John Battelle: Googler Blogs, Then UnBlogs

Earthlink has recently launched the Protection Blog to help customers battle spam, spyware, viruses and other dangers of online life. It’s a great example of using a blog for customer service on a particular theme (mission statement post) of interest to your customers that isn’t simply talking about how great your product is.

Earthlink’s Protection Blog