Is Blog-revolution over?

An interesting but debatable point has been raised by John C. Dvorak. Dvorak feels that the so-called Blogging Revolution has bitten the dust and that Blogging can't become the future of journalism as predicted due to two reasons:

• Massive abandonment of blogs with the writers getting bored or too tired to cope up with regular writing


• "Big Media" co-opting the blogosphere that would undermine the potential and originality of blogging

John's observatoopns are based upon a whitepaper study by Perseus that reveals that of an estimated 4.12 million blogs, created on Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xangaan, an alarming 66% have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. The report makes a nice conclusive simile:

An iceberg is constantly dissolving into sea water, and the majority of blogs started are dissolving into static, abandoned web pages. Right now, though, this iceberg is moving so quickly into arctic waters that it is gaining mass faster than it is losing it. The key is that an iceberg is never what it appears, and so it is with today’s blogging community.

I think that the first point, while holding true, could hardly harm blogging keeping in mind that the growth rate of blogs is faster than the attrition rate. And what about the blogs that pay for the hosting, abandoning free blog-service might be easy but these are committed bloggers. The disturbing point could infact be the second one, faux blogs authored by professional writers and corporations and pretending like blog; the blogquivalent of paid editorials or advertorials. Imagine somebody deciding whether the post is as per guidelines or not before you post something on your blog, or worse still somebody telling you what to write on. But will they affect the real blogs? As long as genuine bloggers are there I think both can co-exist.

Blogs of Earth

It was a pleasant surprise to find a blog with an Indian name by a foreigner. While the author Awacante has evidently stopped blogging today on one of his other blog only he has a blog (infact a travelogue) called Namaste (Hello in Hindi). The author had visited India in 2000, perhaps as a volunteer to the Missionaries of Charity at Calcutta, and was inspired enough to chose an Indian name for his blog. In one of his posts titled the "Sikhs" he wonders why most of the Sikh names end with a "Singh" and provides an interesting pointer to various types of turbans. His blogs has interesting accounts of how he was charged 5 times more (Rs.85 for a trip between Paharganj and Cannaught place) by the auto-rickshaw guys at Delhi and how he learnt to behave like Indians and managed to pay the right fare of Rs.15. Recognizing the tea-craziness of India the author says his consumption of tea has also increased dramatically. I also came across this nice site (though I could read very little of it) on India Indojuku by a Japanese, the catch line says "Hum dharti ke niwasi aapka swagat karte hain" (we the residents of this earth welcome you). What a nice way to emphasize the feeling of universal brother hood!

Scrollbar for Lefties?

Rajesh was intrigued to find the scroll bar on the left of his screen for Google Arabic search and I agree with his observation. Now I am no UI design expert but for languages that are written from right to left is it imperative that the readers are left-handed (no pun intended) too? Also notice how the left/right arrow keys behave on the page. The reasons for the text alignment has been explained but any rationale for the scrollbars?