Aftonbladet discovers podcasting and quotes Adam Curry, about what's wrong with regular radio:

"99 per cent of what you hear on radio today is crap". Nuff said.

I have been interviewed in some media this year about blogging and the papers that have published interviews or linked to my blog are the following:

* Interview with TT Spektra was published during November and December in (see pdf):

Dagbladet (Sundsvall)
Hallandsposten
Hudiksvalls Tidning
Hälsinge-Kuriren
Jönköpings-Posten
Karlskoga-Kuriren
Karlskoga-Kuriren (again)
Kinda-Posten
Linköpings Tidning
Ljusdals-Posten
Mariestads-Tidningen
Nyheterna (Kalmar)
Piteå-Tidningen
Skaraborgs Läns Tidning
Skånska Dagbladet
Smålands-Tidningen
Skövde Nyheter
Tranås Tidning
TT Spektra
Vestmanlands Läns Tidning
Vetlanda-Posten
Vimmerby Tidning
Örebro Kuriren

* Internetworld published a long article about corporate blogging in December.

* Media monitoring company Observer ranked my blog the fifth most influential in Sweden. The list was published in:

Dagens Nyheter (Nov ??, not online)
Dagens Media (Nov 15) subscr. required
IDG.se (Nov 15)
Internetworld (Nov 15)
Sydsvenskan (Nov 21)
Falu-Kuriren (Nov 22)
Sundsvalls Tidning (Nov 22)

* I was interviewed for a longer article in Dagens Media along with Tove Lifvendahl of JKL and Mark Comerford of Stockholm University. Article was published in ?? (must check) and is not online.

* Sweden's first blog forum, Bloggforum 2004, was held in November and got some extra publicity when Dagens Nyheter censored a review of Bloggforum by journalist Oivvio Polite. Articles (that did not mention my blog) about the forum was published in:

Internetworld (Nov 15)
Göteborgs-Posten (Nov 17)
Smedjan (Nov 18)
Dagens Nyheter (Nov 19)
Journalisten (Nov 22)
Expressen (Nov 25)
Internetworld (Dec 10)
Helsingborgs Dagblad (Dec 13)
Norrbottens-Kuriren (Dec 14)
Piteå-Tidningen (Dec 16)
Norra Västerbotten (Dec 18)

Sofia Olsson Olsén, editor-in-chief of Swedish daily Norra Västerbotten has "done a PJ", i.e. started a blog on the paper's web pages. The blog is called Sofia OO just nu (see PJ just nu) Nice initiative, although the blog is missing just about everything that makes it a blog, like permanent links, an RSS feed and comments (well, you can comment at the bottom of the blog, but not individual posts). And she doesn't link to any other information on the web, so it sure looks more like a diary to me. Interesting to see one of the few comments, that negative comments supposedly have been removed. My advice, try make it more interactive and blog-like by adding the stuff mentioned above. Then it will be an interesting section on the paper's web page because Sofia OO writes in a very personal and candid way (example below for Swedish readers).

I övrigt fick jag samtal från en arg dansk boende i Ske-å som undrar om Norran äger aktier i Canal Digital. Vi har tydligen 100 procent av deras filmutbud i TV-bilagan, medan bara 40 procent av Viasats filmutbud. Jag får kolla det. Vi byter leverantör av bilaga vid årsskiftet, jag tar det nästa år. Särskilt om han ringer och är sur igen.

Many readers seem worried that Sofia will not have any time left for herself with the added work load of writing a diary. I sure would like to see the same concerns for PJ Anders Linder of Svenska Dagbladet...

"Läser och följer dina onsdagsrader, uppskattar din ärlighet och raka rör. Försöker även följa dagboken på nätet, i mån av tid. Men jag blir också lite orolig över dig? Hinner du med att ta hand om dig själv? Mellan möten, fotograferingar, möten igen, barnen, mail, modem (som kan driva vem som helst till vansinne!!!)"

Swedish PR agency Springtime got sued a few years ago by Spring Time Electronic Publishing for trademark infringement. Spring Time works with graphic production and publishing, while Springtime mainly works with public relations, lobbying and consulting. The district court has now decided that, although both companies are active in commercial communication and marketing, their respective businesses are quite different in terms of key competence and services. As a consequence Springtime gets to keep its name, reports Pointlex.

A new study looks at information management and meaning construction practices of online distributed classification (or free tagging) communities, like popular online services such as Furl, del.icio.us or Flickr.

"We have definitely arrived at a point in the development of human knowledge where the amount of content published online everyday far exceeds the ability of anyone to categorize and index such wealth of information. Even for a hypothetical individual or organization of great skill and capacity, the task of processing all that content would pose an almost insurmountable problem, without even considering the difficulty of developing and maintaining a taxonomy to accommodate the speed at which new knowledge is produced."

"[...] One approach, made possible by advances in network technologies, is to distribute the task amongst the maximum number of individuals possible. [...]
This principle of distribution is at work in socio-technical systems that allow users to collaboratively organize a shared set of resources by assigning classifiers, or tags, to each item. The practice is coming to be known as free tagging, open tagging, ethnoclassification, folksonomy, or faceted hierarchy [...] One important feature of systems such as these is that they do not impose a rigid taxonomy. Instead, they allow users to assign whatever classifiers they choose."

Some of the findings were quite interesting, for example that people used the "extended tag" as an informal way of notifiying a smaller community about certain links, like "for David" or "Did anyone attend this event?". Also, according to the study, "people seem to find more value in reviewing links than in submitting them".

The practice of distributing classification of content can be quite useful for filtering the huge amount of information on the internet. Both Flickr and del.icio.us allows you to read links with a certain tag (http://del.icio.us/tag/tsunami) and subscribe to it via RSS (http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/tsunami). I have not yet used Furl enough to be able to comment on its functionality.

In the wake of the tsunami disaster, Sweden's Ministry for Foreign Affairs are working hard to locate as many of the missing Swedes as possible. On Tuesday they sent an SMS to all Swedish mobile subscribers currently in Thailand, urging them to contact the Swedish embassy in Bangkok or to get in touch with their families back home. About 10,000 SMS's were sent. According to the Ministry's press contacts, they received more than two thousand names of people missing, many of people who are traveling on their own and aren't on the travel agencies' lists. Two individuals had collected 100 and 400 names, respectively, which they sent to the authorities.

A similar SMS was sent yesterday to Swedes currently reported to be in Sri Lanka. There are still more than 1400 Swedes missing.

Sweden's fourth largest daily, liberal Göteborgs-Posten now distributes content via RSS in five different categories:

Gothenburg: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=113
Sweden: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=102
World: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=103
Sports: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=104
Entertainment: http://www.gp.se/rss/index.jsp?d=180

Footnote: Link to my list of 172 Nordic media RSS feeds.

Sweden is one of the countries outside the region that has been most seriously affected by the tsunami tragedy. Officially there are 1400 Swedes still missing, but the numbers are insecure and potentially even bigger in reality. The Red Cross is urging everyone to help by donating money and if you have your own blog you can help by adding a banner and a link like the one below. International banners can be found here, but you may need a written permission by the Red Cross.

Brands are a vital part of culture and that is perhaps more obvious in hip hop than anywhere else. By tracking what brands are mentioned in popular hip hop and rap tunes, Agenda Inc are drawing some interesting conclusions about what brands are hot (Cadillac and Hennessy) or on their way out (Hilfiger and Courvoisier). The list can be seen as "a great barometer of consumer aspiration".

The brands that appear most frequently in the charts are fashion, cars and beverages. Cadillac tops the list of brands that have been mentioned most times in top 20 singles in the Billboard chart. Top ten are:

1 Cadillac 70 (times)
2 Hennessy 69
3 Mercedes 63
4 Rolls Royce 62
5 Gucci 49
6 Jaguar 37
7 Chevrolet 28
7 Cristal 28
9 Bentley 26
10 Maybach 25

Check out American Brandstand for the full list and a comprehensive analysis in pdf format.

Laura Ries has some great thoughts about managing "brand you" that I think are relevant to blogging, especially if you are blogging about a topic that has to do with your career. Laura writes:

"The most successful business people consider themselves a brand and market themselves according. And like product brands, it's not enough to just be well-known. You also have to stand for something in the minds of other people."

There are many examples where business people have managed their brand successfully via blogs, like Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion) = Blogs and PR and Åsk Wäppling aka Dabitch (Adland) = Advertising to name just two in my own field of interest.

If you take Laura's advice and apply them to professional blogging it might look like this:

1. Do[es] you[r] [blog] have the right brand name?
With 4-5 million blogs it is getting harder and harder to give your blog a unique brand that can also help in positioning you as a thought leader in a certain field. That is especially true if you want to host your blog at Blogspot.com where many good names are already taken. The obvious choice to name the brand after yourself is of course ok as long as you don't share names with thousands of others.
2. Narrow the focus, don't try to be great at everything.
Many bloggers are commenting on a variety of topics, and do it with style. Erik Stattin is one good local example. But for most of us, focusing means that it's easier to carve out a niche where you can be #1. When blogs become ubiquitous it will be hard for general blogs to gain readers.
3. Use PR to build your brand.
Blogging can generate publicity for yourself our your company, especially if you are good at creating original content and not just refer to existing information in media without adding your [expert] opinion.

Liberal journalists read liberal blogs. That's not the way to increase the diversity of voices, is it? Peter Wolodarski, political journalist at liberal Dagens Nyheter likes to read liberal thinkers Dick Erixon and Johan Norberg. PJ Anders Linder links to several blogs from his own blog at liberal (or "independent conservative") Svenska Dagbladet. Which ones? Dick Erixon and Johan Norberg are two examples of the 7 links. Other examples are not-so leftist National Review.

But then again, people tend to read information and sources that confirm their point of view, and shy away from conflicting opinions, so we shouldn't be surprised.

I linked to Evelyn Rodriguez' blog in my recent post about PubSub. Apparently Rodriguez was unfortunate to be hit by the tidal wave when she was in a boat outside Phi Phi Island, but apart from hurting her leg she luckily survived. And she uses her blog to tell that she's alright.

Ordinary people are creating their own media and document the tragic incidents in southern Asia, sometimes better than what traditional media accomplish. Some are uploading photos to for example Flickr and you can surf Flickr for photos by searching for tags like "tsunami" or "earthquake".

More photos here and more links here. But don't forget to contribute to the thousands in need.

I revealed on Dec 22 that PubSub potentially had made some changes in their LinkRanks application that had a serious negative effect on many sites' ranking. My blog dropped 32,544 spots in one day, down from 7,495. Well, I didn't get any answer directly from PubSub, but their CEO made a comment in Trevor Cook's follow up post.

Hey Guys,
The reason for the sudden shift is that we increased the granularity of how we measure linkranks. Specifically, we added individual blogs from the various hosting services for the first time (e.g. livejournal.com/johndoe) - that has suddenly shifted everyone's ranking. Bob Wyman, our CTO, dropped 30,000 places (much to his chagrin). Check out his blog for more details - http://bobwyman.pubsub.com

Cheers,
Salim Ismail, CEO

PubSub's CTO Bob Wyman also posted a comment on his own blog.

The effect of this improvement in the granularity of the LinkRank calculation will take about 10 days to be fully felt. We need to wait for the impact of old links to fade out of the system and for the impact of more recent links to dominate. Once this settles out, it will be fascinating to try to figure out why some sites went up in LinkRank and others went down. In any case, we'll have more accurate and thus more useful numbers to work with in the future.

Please keep sending suggestions on how to improve LinkRanks -- and please forgive what will be inevitable "turmoil" in the numbers as we continue to increase the accuracy and granularity of reporting in the future.

So it seems that the new ranking is more accurate than the previous one, but taken into consideration the drastic changes in rankings, the application maybe was launched too soon. On Nov 18 Ismail said in a press release that "We now feel the system is ready for use by consumers and professionals across the country, and the world". But as a professional you would want the data from PubSub to be reliable and if changes are made you would expect some kind of information. That information should be clearly visible on the web site, not only on a blog that most people are not aware of. PubSub have yet not published any information on their site about the changes to LinkRanks.

The end of 2004 also means the end for two Swedish magazines. TTG have decided to stop publishing Bazaar, a magazine for interior design and ICA Förlaget, now known as Forma Publishing Group, will not continue to publish the marketing magazine Sälj & Marknadsföring. Both titles will be dropped due to insufficient ad sales.

Something seems to have changed with PubSub's LinkRanks the last 24 hours. My ranking has dropped considerably, and so have several other blogs that yesterday were in the top 10,000, while many others have seen no change at all. I know that the rankings can change substantially overnight, but this seems to be more than a coincidence. For example:

* Adland 36,290 (-35,103)
* CorporateBloggingBlog 42,407 (-22,787)
* Crossroads Dispatches 36,938 (-32,603)
* Earnie the Attorney 37,366 (-33,985)
* Kunal.org 36,553 (-34,735)
* Media Culpa 40,039 (-32,544)
* Micro Persuasion 35,795 (-35,558)
* Mymarkup.net 38,346 (-34,058)
* NevOn 36,733 (-34,674)

Could it be that PubSub are adjusting their system in a way that affects some blogs a lot, while others are not affected at all? Steve, it's your client. Am I too suspicious or has something changed?

What tv viewers really really want to see. TiVo Top 25 for the last week (ending 19/12/04). Top ten looks like this:

1. Desperate Housewives
2. The Apprentice
3. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
4. Lost
5. ER
6. The West Wing
7. CSI: Miami
8. Survivor: Vanuatu, Islands of Fire
9. Joey
10. CSI: NY

Desperate Housewives will debute on Swedish channel Kanal 5 this spring. Via Lost Remote.

Swedish e-mail list Virus Bulletin (Svenska Viruslistan) has started a blog about stuff related to internet security, reports IDG. It is being run by security expert Per Hellqvist from Symantec, but he points out that it is a personal blog and not an official corporate blog.

Neville Hobson has found an interesting report from Nielsen Norman Group about how to design a website in order to serve journalists best. Executive summary here.

One journalist described what he'd do when he could not find a press contact, or any of the facts he needed for his story:

"Better not to write it than to get it wrong. I might avoid the subject altogether."

The top-five reasons journalists gave for visiting a company's website:

* Find a PR contact (name and telephone number)
* Check basic facts about the company (spelling of an executive's name, his/her age, headquarters location, etc.)
* Discover the company's own spin on events
* Check financial information
* Download images to use as illustrations in stories

I shouldn't be telling you this, because it'll make it more difficult for me to get tickets next time they're in town, but Doves are on a mini tour to create some buzz around their third album "Some Cities", due in February. The Guardian has reviewed the band's performance on Wednesday at Hammersmith Palais in London. Watch out for this must-have album and a possible European tour.