Law X.0

Top 10 Blogs for Writers

The winner of Writing White Paper's third annual Top 10 Blogs for Writers contest is Copyblogger. "As the undefeated champ, this blog has held the number-one spot for three straight years! The baby of Brian Clark, this blog keeps winning because of its excellent and educational articles." [JH]

Is Your Life a Blur of Social Media and Web 2.0 Tools?

Aliza Sherman's life is. Check out her Web Worker Daily post about her daily routine. [JH]

How Much is Your Blog Worth?

This blog is worth $16,936.20 according to this calculator. [JH]

EFF Launches Coders' Rights Project

From the website: "EFF's Coders' Rights Project protects programmers and developers engaged in cutting-edge exploration of technology in our world. Security and encryption researchers help build a safer future for all of us using digital technologies, yet too many legitimate researchers face serious legal challenges that prevent or inhibit their work. These challenges come from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and state computer crime laws, among others." Special Coders' Rights projects include reverse engineering and vulnerability testing and reporting. [JH]

Free Wi-Fi Directory

The Wi-Fi-FreeSpot™ Directory is a listing of locations that offer Free Wi-Fi IN the US, Europe and other regions.  In addition to US state-by-state listings there are several helpful specialty directories:

• Companies (like Panera Bread) with multiple locations with free Wi-Fi
• Airports
• Hotel, Motel, Inn and Resort National and Regional Chains
• RV Parks and Campgrounds
• Vacation Rental Properties

Bookmark it! [JH]

Extend Firefox 3 Contest Winners Great for Online Researchers

Mozilla Labs has announced the winners of its Extend Firefox 3. The three grand prize winners in the Best New Add-On go to (1) an open source tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping called Pencil; (2) Tagmarks, a one-click bookmark tagging add-on; and (3) HandyTag which provides a complete set of most relevant keywords in the bookmark’s edition panel.

Best Updated Add-on grand prize winners are (1) Read It Later which allows you to save pages of interest to read later, thereby eliminating the cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest; (2) TagSifter for browsing your bookmarks by their tags; and (3) Bookmark Previews which adds previews to the tooltips in the bookmarks sidebar.

See the Mozilla Labs blog post for download links. [JH]

The 2008 BlogWorld & New Media Expo

The 2008 BlogWorld & New Media Expo will take place September 20-21 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Going to be there? Conference agenda and registration Information. [JH]

The Most Trusted Man in American on Blogging

Tim O'Reilly on O'Reilly Radar calls attention to blogging tips and lessons published in Michiko Kakutanti's New York Times article Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America? See also Chris Brogan's Best Advice About Blogging post. [JH]

Trendspotting: Finding Signals in the Noise

What will your life be like in 2011? Richard Laermer identifies a number of trends and reveals the most functional forecasting secrets of professional trendspotters in his book, 2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade. Purchase the book from Amazon or grab the free download after viewing Mashable's Mark Hopkins video interview with the author. [JH]

10 Tech Books Recommended by Steven Levy

Steven Levy, author of Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (2001), picks his top 10 tech books in the July issue of IEEE Spectrum. [JH]

On Getting Real

Getting Real is a book about launching web apps without all the BS that can stall them. One caveat, while providing plenty of useful tips for creating web apps you want to create, creating web apps for clients is a totally different story. If you have to answer to clients, some of the offered advice simply won't work. [JH]

Read Getting Real Online: Free | Buy PDF: $19 | Buy Paperback: $25.00

The Blog Council Releases Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit

The Blog Council has released its Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit. The Toolkit is a draft series of checklists to help companies, their employees, and their agencies learn the appropriate and transparent ways to interact with blogs, bloggers, and the people who interact with them. Topics covered include:

• disclosure of identity,
• personal/unofficial blogging and outreach,
• blogger relations, compensation and incentives,
• agency and contractor disclosure, and
• creative flexibility.

[JH]

Corporate Blogs, PR Rubbish or Provider of Insider Info

Check out what Mashable's Don Reisinger has to say. [JH]

Technorati Solicits Survey Participants for Its 2008 State of the Blogosphere Study

From the announcement:

Bloggers,

Technorati has been tracking the Blogosphere for the past several years through our State of the Blogosphere study. This year we have decided to expand our study beyond the sheer size and characteristics of the blogosphere in order to hear more from you, the bloggers. How, when and why are you blogging? Is this a side business, full time job or something you do for fun? Our goal is to analyze the growth of the field as well as understand the people who make the space tick. Help us and join the study of the ongoing global conversation!

Click here to take the survey! http://v2.decipherinc.com/survey/mmc/mmc08001

We hope you will find this survey enjoyable. It should take just 15-20 minutes of your time, and your responses are entirely confidential. Be sure to check back on Technorati in late September for a summary of the results.

Thank you,
The Technorati Team

Open Web Foundation Launched

Six Apart’s David Recordon announced the creation of the Open Web Foundation at the OSCON Open Source Convention. The Open Web Foundation is a meta-standards organization dedicated to smoothing the way for large businesses to embrace open web standards like OAuth, OpenID, etc. Following the open source model similar to the Apache Software Foundation, the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification. View Recordan's OSCON presentation.

Should we care about open web standards like OpenID and OAuth? Yes, according to Mashable's Rob Diana:

OpenID and OAuth are needed for a better user experience. OpenID solves the problem of having far too many usernames and passwords to remember. OAuth solves the problem of how to share information between sites without giving your password from one site to another. Together the technologies may make things simpler for the user. Thankfully, users do not need to do anything to take advantage of these technologies. The one thing users can do is email the support team of each of your favorite sites and make sure they support OpenID and OAuth.

See also Mashable's Poll: How Often Do You Use OpenID to Login? [JH]

[JH]

To Do List for Bloggers

Here's a checklist of 101 activities bloggers can do to keep themselves busy when writer's block strikes. [JH]

Voting Underway for Computer Weekly's IT Blog Awards

Cast your vote for the best IT blogs in the UK for Computer Weekly's 2008 blog awards contest. Blog categories are listed below. Voting will run until July 31st. The winners will be announced in August. [JH]

• CIO / IT director blogs
• Company blogs
• IT law and governance
• IT lifestyle
• IT project management
• IT security
• Programming and technical
• Public sector IT
• Web 2.0 and business
• Wireless and mobile

Free Webinar Today: Getting the Most Out of Social Media Using ShareThis Plug-In

Tuesday, June 10th at 1 pm Pacific
Space limited; reserve your spot by emailing webinar AT sixapart.com

From the announcement: Join us for an informative session about current trends in sharing your blog content around the web.  With so many choices out there, we'll discuss how bloggers can extend their reach quickly and effectively.  TypePad's Andy Wibbels and guests from ShareThis will host this informative talk about on how to get the most out of social media using the ShareThis plug-in.

Selection Bias in Web Surveys and the Use of Propensity Scores

The most obvious potential drawback of web surveys is that they may not be representative of the population of interest because the sub-population with access to Internet is quite specific. In Selection Bias in Web Surveys and the Use of Propensity Scores (SSRN) (RAND Working Paper No. WR-279) the authors investigate propensity scores as a method for dealing with selection bias in web surveys.

Findings. The propensity adjustment works well for many but not all variables investigated. For example, they find that correcting on the basis of socio-economic status by using education level and personal income is not enough to get a representative estimate of stock ownership. This casts some doubt on the common procedure to use a few basic variables to blindly correct for selectivity in convenience samples drawn over the Internet. Alternatives include providing non-Internet users with access to the Web or conducting web surveys in the context of mixed mode surveys.

See also: Are 'Webographic' or Attitudinal Questions Useful for Adjusting Estimates from Web Surveys Using Propensity Scoring?  (SSRN)(RAND Working Paper Series No. WR-506). [JH]

Save the Date for Free May 21 Blogging Webinar

"The Power of Blogging" is a free webinar on May 21st at 1 pm EDT by TypePad and Bella Web Design for businesses that want to learn how blogging can set one's company apart by generating leads and communicating with present and future clients. The webinar hosts will be Desiree Scales, CEO of Bella Web Design, and Andy Wibbels, TypePad team member and author of the book Blogwild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging. Register here. [JH]