Very soli friends....

Come visit me at my new home http://clemfour.wordpress.com

Click here to Read More......

Happy Mother's Day

"Berat mata memandang, berat lagi bahu memikul"

To all my sisters blogger, wishing you all Happy mother's Day especially to Sis Elviza, Sis Marina and Sis Nuraina. Cantona here I go.

Adios

Click here to Read More......

Wat say Tokoh Wartawan?

Update: Zainuddin Proposes Classification Of Web Bloggers
Class registration

Now that NUJ is strongly for the formation of All-Blogs, I wonder what will be our latest Tokoh Wartawan says on these. This is the second time Norila Mohd Daud the president of National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said about All-Blogs. First was during the world press freedom day and the latest was yesterday at the world Press Freedom Day 2007 forum as reported by the star today.

............................................
Saturday May 5, 2007
NUJ backs bloggers alliance
PETALING JAYA: The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) supports the formation of the National Alliance of Bloggers (All-Blogs), said its president Norila Mohd Daud.

She was speaking at the World Press Freedom Day 2007 forum Bloggers: New Breed of Journalists or Online Journal Keepers? at Menara Star here.

“It shows their seriousness in carrying out responsible blogging,” she said in an interview later.

The NUJ also supported All-Blogs because it cared about press freedom and issues pertinent to nation-building, she said.

A group of bloggers met last month to form All-Blogs and the drafting of its constitution would be finalised for submission to the Registrar of Societies, said its pro tem vice-president Jeff Ooi.

Forum speaker Ooi said bloggers have not elected themselves as journalists but may have broken news by accident.

He said that according to Technorati, which tracks 55 million bloggers worldwide, only a minority of bloggers addressed current issues.

The most blogged topic was food, followed by technology, politics and subsequently public relations, he said.

The progress of ICT had changed the way people got their news, no longer only from newspapers but also online, PDAs and mobile phones, said Ooi.

Another panel speaker, human rights lawyer Malik Imtiaz, said bloggers played a critical role in nation-building by providing valuable information on how things worked.

Freedom of expression, however, did not mean one could go around slandering others, Malik said.

Star Online editor Raslan Sharif said that while journalists and bloggers had a role to play in bringing up important issues that affect society, the public also needs to be more involved.
“The people need to rediscover their voice,” he said.
.......................................

Have a wonderful week end friends,
Adios

Click here to Read More......

Hibernation done...........

Finally, shar101 become a MAN not false one. Betul-betul ORI bukan cetak rompak. OBE blog is hosted at wordpress.com. So my hiatus in blogosphere is over but my brother Sheih's blog is under attack.

Welcome to the blogosphere shar101. And not forgetting happy belated birthday to sister bloger Elviza and welcome back after a short hiatus.

Bro Zorro, thanks for the emails and pictures (you almost un-mask me ha ha ha ha). Bro Mat salo, rancangan mok gi Banjar hancus Pok. Conference differ. Received last minutes notice tek. Hard luck Pok. So now beperap ngan blog lah.

To all my friends out there, thank you for droping by during my "hiatus". Very sorry for not replying to all the comments.

Adios

Click here to Read More......

Hiatus !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Will be away for a couple of days/weeks or months. Hopefully just days lah. Well if our paths ever cross we shall meet again in these blogosphere. Will be checking my email once a while when ever there is internet connection.

Adios

Click here to Read More......

Think it over...

Nowadays, everybody is busy. Although two salaries get home, but divorcies increased. These are times of finer houses, but more broken homes.Well here is a cool story I came across and it really touched me

A man came home from work late again, tired and irritated, to find his 5 year old son waiting for him at the door.

“Daddy, may I ask you a question?”

“Yeah, sure, what is it?” replied the man.

“Daddy, how much money do you make an hour?

“That’s none of your business! What makes you ask such a thing?” the man said angrily.

“I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?” pleaded the little boy.

“If you must know, I make $20.00 an hour.”

“Oh,” the little boy replied, head bowed. Looking up, he said, “Daddy, may I borrow $10.00 please?”

The father was furious.

“If the only reason you wanted to know how much money I make is just so you can borrow some to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, then you march yourself straight to your room and go to bed. Think about why you’re being so selfish. I work long, hard hours everyday and don’t have time for such childish games.”

The little boy quietly went to his room and shut the door. The man sat down and started to get even madder about the little boy’s questioning. How dare him ask such questions only to get some money.

After an hour or so, the man had calmed down, and started to think he may have been a little hard on his son. Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $10.00, and he really didn’t ask for money very often. The man went to the door of the little boy’s room and opened the door.

“Are you asleep son?” he asked.

“No daddy, I’m awake,” replied the boy.

“I’ve been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier,” said the man. “It’s been a long day and I took my aggravation out on you. Here’s that $10.00 you asked for.”

The little boy sat straight up, beaming. “Oh, thank you daddy!” he yelled. Then, reaching under his pillow, he pulled out some more crumpled up bills. The man, seeing that the boy already had money, started to get angry again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, then looked up at the man.

“Why did you want more money if you already had some?” the father grumbled.

“Because I didn’t have enough, but now I do,” the little boy replied.

“Daddy, I have $20.00 now. Can I buy an hour of your time?”

Share some time with those who need you. They need our time more then we will ever know

Click here to Read More......

Shar101........mana janji mu

Dear shar101,

Today it has been almost one week since we last met. So how are you getting on with the setting of your blog? So far the results of the scanning of the new strain virus of NAB by the 286AT machine only showed this for shar101

I understand that Mr. CGOPD and his surgeon friend had successfully done the sexual transplant for you, so that this new strain of NAB virus will be undetected by the old machine.

But wait…… you forgot that Mat Salo had help me to build a cluster machine of 286AT and the Intel Core 2. Finally I got a much better result and image.

So how brother? Don’t tell me you need two more NAB meeting to start your blog. A voice is waiting for you at SOPO Sentral of Malaysia.

Very interesting brother. Sheih going to Kelantan and Amin Iskandar is back in "bolehland". Do enjoy the farewell gathering tonight and warm regards to our friends there.

Adios.

Anon. Fm Miri

Click here to Read More......

New virus for blogsfear leader.....

Update: LAH said Penulis blog tak perlu daftar

Why are there so many fuses about bloggers in this bolehland? Is it because the elected leaders threaten them like viruses in their communication system? Or are they still searching for the anti-virus software to prevent their system from being infected. Well on the 5th of April, 2007, a new strain of virus called NAB was released for the blogsfear leaders. Since ZAM had to go to the south to search for the new scan engine, so putting myself in his shoes, I decided to use the 286AT instead of the Core 2 Duo processors machine to scan this NAB virus. I let the 286AT run the scanning while I visited my friends blog.

I revisited bro zorro’s blog and interestingly I found this comment left by bro Rocky as a reply to the comment that I made there. Here, I copy and paste (sorry bro zorro, forgot to seek permission from you). Since I’m Not So Talented Person, here is the plagiarized comment: -

The word is blogsfear, bro anon. I've been knocking myself on the head for not coining that word; it's been staring us in the face all along!

Anyway, I must put on record that Zam was, indeed, a journalist. He peaked as utusan malaysia group editor, a powerful position then rivalled only by the group editor-in-chief of the nstp group, as far as mainstream media are concerned. I was in London when zam lost this post over the bahasa malaysia issue involving dr mahathir. In London we became latte friends, especially in the spring, watching the english roses went about their daily routines. Zam wrote a book full of adulation of mahathir while he lived in this lovely exile.

He is now our latest Tokoh Wartawan, like it or not. Yes, some said it was paid for (Zam okayed a grant for RM5 million for the Msian Press Institute, the body that gives this formerly revered Eminent Journalist award; naturally, many people thought the MPI reciprocated by giving the award to Zam), but the fact remains that he is the Tokoh Wartawan.

What's disappointing is that Zam is not behaving as a Tokoh Wartawan should be. Of course, we don't expect him to be anywhere near Pak Samad, but the least he could do is to champion journalists' rights for a better freedom. Journalists here include the citizen and net journos, including bloggers who blog news and commentaries on issues and current affairs.

We have a Tokoh Wartawan who seems to be working against the interests of the profession. I think it is only right for Zam to return the award and concentrate on becoming the Information Minister or, if he's replaced by Rais Yatim, as Shar101 had speculated, on becoming a politician and parliamentarian.

If he really deserves the Tokoh Wartawan award, he will be re-awarded it in future.

Frankly, I won't bet on either happening.
April 9, 2007 10:59 AM

And here is some result of the virus scanning report for the new strain virus NAB.

...............................................................................................................................................

The antidotes for NAB Virus

Note: Click on the image below for the creator of the virus

##########################
The NAB Malware

##############################

The NAB Virus

######################################
NAB Trojan

############################

The NAB Worm

The 256AT is still in the process of scanning for Shar101, pulau duyung and many others. I believed more and more worms are being created every second. So next time I’ve to use the Core 2 Duo processors machine to scan.
Photos courtesy of Mat Salo of Borneo Blues and Jinggo of Generasi M. For more action please click here, here and here.

Adios.

Click here to Read More......

Fresh attacks on bloggers?????

This is what The Sydney Morning Herald said about Malaysian minister on bloggers......

(Pics courtersy of Mob's Crib)

Malaysian ministers in fresh attack on bloggers

April 7, 2007 - 9:20PM

Malaysian ministers have issued fresh attacks on bloggers, threatening to take away their rights and accusing them of trying to overthrow the government, according to reports.

The assaults come amidst an unprecedented defamation suit against two bloggers and outrage from rights groups after a minister during the week suggested Malaysian bloggers may be forced to identify themselves.

Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin said bloggers should not be exempt from the same controls as the mainstream media, and accused them of using lies to overthrow the government, the state Bernama news agency reported.

"This is very dangerous as they are writing and taking steps to gain power," he was quoted as saying late Friday from Singapore.


The rest of the article can be found here

Have a nice day...
Adios

Click here to Read More......

Finally The National Bloggers Alliance is here..

My flight got delayed, but at last I’m in Miri. Woooo…. The thousand miles journey is worthy man! It marked the end of my “virtual friendship status” with the key bloggers in the National Bloggers Alliance. Brother and sister bloggers, Thank you very much for the hospitality given. All of you are great leaders in this blogosphere.

Brother Sheih, sorry to make you do the multiple round in the peak hour at Jln TAR to locate and pick me up to NPC. I enjoyed having your company. Although we just met for the first time, but the feeling is as if we've known each other centuries ago. By the way, my big BOSS is ok. She anticipated the delay.

Brother Mat Salo and Zorro, you guys are great, dudes. Well, do email me the pictures and your phone contact. Forgot to ask last night ‘cos too occupied with brother BigDog, Shar101, The Malay Male, and RPK.

My two favorites sister bloggers Write Away and 3540 Jalan Sudin, although I was not able to spend much time with both of you, Sister QueenB was there to enjoy the foods and entertain us with a few songs.

Last but not least, Brother Rocky, yes it’s a pleasure to meet you too.
I'll update again tomorrow… got to hit the sack.

Adios

Click here to Read More......

KL here I come.......

Less then 12hrs I will be crossing the South China Sea. Destination NPC KL. Where the hack is it? Well it’s not really a problem because most of my virtual friends are there to show me the direction (Hope so).

Click here to Read More......

Discovered by Rocky’s Bru

Checkmate again dudes!!! After zorro, now the "One Million Hits Blogger" dropped by my cyber’s base camp. It’s an honour for me to be visited by Rocky’s Bru a.k.a. Ahirudin Attan, the pilot for my dream Soul Plane. Brother Rocky, thank you very very very much. Rain or shine, I will be with you. Malaysian Bloggers will always be united.

Adios

Click here to Read More......

Happiness is Voyage

Zorro my virtual friend send me a nice email again today. At the end of the attachment this questions were put forward. "So what have you decided? Trash this or send it?" Neither Trash nor send the attachment, I decided to post it here so that other bloggers and visitors could read it and ponder on it.

Thanks again brother.

Click here to Read More......

Today is 1st of April

This morning I received an email from zorro. Would Like to share the content of the email with Clemfour visitors here. Hope zorro wouldn't mind after I reserved this seat for him.

Click on the image below to have a look.

Beer.swf

Hosted by eSnips

Have a nice day, and will be back later.
Adios

Click here to Read More......

My friend... The World is Yours

The World is Mine

Today, upon a bus,
I saw a very beautiful woman
And wished I were as beautiful
When suddenly she rose to leave,
I saw her hobble down the aisle.
She had one leg and wore a crutch.
But as she passed, she passed a smile.
Oh, God, forgive me when I whine.
I have two legs; the world is mine.

I stopped to buy some candy.
The lad who sold it had such charm.
I talked with him, he seemed so glad.
If I were late, it'd do no harm.
And as I left, he said to me,
"I thank you, you've been so kind.
It's nice to talk with folks like you.
You see," he said, "I'm blind."
Oh, God, forgive me when I whine.
I have two eyes; the world is mine.

Later while walking down the street,
I saw a child I knew.
He stood and watched the others play,
but he did not know what to do.
I stopped a moment and then I said,
"Why don't you join them dear?"
He looked ahead without a word.
I forgot, he couldn't hear.
Oh, God, forgive me when I whine.
I have two ears; the world is mine.

With feet to take me where I'd go.
With eyes to see the sunset's glow.
With ears to hear what I'd know.
Oh, God, forgive me when I whine.
I've been blessed indeed, the world is mine.

--Grover C Gouber

Selamat menyambut Maulidur Rasul

Click here to Read More......

A long distant call from China.....

After a short online chat with sister Marina this morning (Bon voyage and safe return sis), I received a long distant call from an ambassador who’s working in Beijing, China. This is the third call I received from him this year. As a freelance who had just finished clearing all the outstanding tasks, and now back to the normal “jobless" blogger, it’s a checkmate dude! What good explanation I can come out with now for not coming to meet him there?
Maybe I should tell him I’ll be there if I could travel in the soul plane. I would love the plane like the one in my dreams.

Yeap... more or less like this.......

Here is for the pilot Sheih and Rocky's Bru

Here is the sit for Clemfour visitors

Meeting place for the "jobless" blogger

Dining place

Resting place for BigDog and Zewt

Siesta place for Zorro

The wash room

Here of course, for all my sister bloggers

THIS only one person so far qualified!!!

Would it be nice if all the "jobless" bloggers can have the experience to travel in comfort to meet friends?

Adios

Click here to Read More......

Am I ready????

Out of the blue, last Friday I received a text message from Sheih of Kickdefella’s blog. This is the opening of the sms “Sheih is searching for Al Ghazalli. His journey now taken him to ….”. So mission Al Ghazalli started and yesterday 25th march, he named the operation as Da Ghazalli Code.

In his posting he said, “In pursuit for the elusive Al Ghazalli, we will need Malaysians to volunteer to follow my Badak whenever he is in Perth. Preferably our volunteer will be Malaysians who are currently residing in Perth.

We need to know my Badak’s movement in Perth. We need to know where he sleeps and where he goes for his golf goofing sessions. If he ventures into the casino, we need to get a copy of the close circuit television recording."

Here are some pixs taken in Perth where at the time the people of south Malaysia is suffering from one of the worst flood in Malaysian history.

Brother Sheih, thank you for the poster. One of these days you will see the face and the eyes behind the cloth. Will it be like this ??????

It’s all in the eyes... innocence…never lose it!

---------++++------------

We are born with two eyes in front,

because we must not always look behind.

But see what lies ahead, beyond us.

We are born to have two ears,

one left one right so we can hear both sides.

Collect both the compliments and criticisms,

to see which are right.

We are born with a brain concealed in a skull.

Then no matter how poor we are, we are still rich.

For no one can steal what our brains contains.

Packing in more jewels and rings than you can think.

We are born with two eyes, two ears, but one mouth.

For the mouth is a sharp weapon, it can hurt, flirt, kill.

Remember to talk less, listen and see more.

We are born with only one heart, deep in our ribs.

It reminds us to appreciate

and give love from deep within.

----unknown author---

Click here to Read More......

In "bolehland" it just started ???

It seem that in "bolehland" this article will not be applicable ???
I came across an article by Jay Rosen Associate Professor, former chairman, 1999-2005.New York University, Department of Journalism. I copy and paste it for my visitor to read.

January 21, 2005

Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over

"I have been an observer and critic of the American press for 19 years. In that stretch there has never been a time so unsettled. More is up for grabs than has ever been up for grabs since I started my watch."

This is the essay I wrote for the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference Jan. 21-22 in Cambridge, MA. (Participants.)

Bloggers vs. journalists is over. I don’t think anyone will mourn its passing. There were plenty who hated the debate in the first place, and openly ridiculed its pretensions and terms. But events are what did the thing in at the end. In the final weeks of its run, we were getting bulletins from journalists like this one from John Schwartz of the New York Times, Dec. 28: “For vivid reporting from the enormous zone of tsunami disaster, it was hard to beat the blogs.”

And so we know they’re journalism— sometimes. They’re even capable, at times, and perhaps only in special circumstances, of beating Big Journalism at its own game. Schwartz said so. The tsunami story is the biggest humanitarian disaster ever in the lifetimes of most career journalists and the blogs were somehow right there with them.

The question now isn’t whether blogs can be journalism. They can be, sometimes. It isn’t whether bloggers “are” journalists. They apparently are, sometimes. We have to ask different questions now because events have moved the story forward. By “events” I mean things on the surface we can see, like the tsunami story, and things underneath that we have yet to discern.

That’s why we’re conferencing: to find the deeper pattern, of which blogging and journalism are a part. So that is what I give you: my best attempt at scratching out a pattern.

I have been an observer and critic of the American press for 19 years. In that stretch there has never been a time so unsettled. More is up for grabs than has ever been up for grabs since I started my watch. And so it is fortunate that we meet next week on blogging, journalists and the social dynamics of user trust. For this is an exciting time in journalism. Part of the reason is the extension of “the press” to the people we have traditionally called the public.

By the press I mean the public service franchise in journalism, where the writers and do-ers of it actually are. That press has shifted social location. Much of it is still based in The Media (a business) and will be for some time, but some is in nonprofits, and some of the franchise (“the press”) is now in public hands because of the Web, the weblog and other forms of citizen media. Naturally our ideas about it are going to change. The franchise is being enlarged.

It was a sign of the times for everyone watching when on January 1, Dan Gillmor, a participant in our conference, and one of the most respected technology journalists in the country, quit the San Jose Mercury News, and quit Knight-Ridder, for a grassroots journalism start-up, funded not by any media company but two entrepreneurs in the tech biz, Mitch Kapor and Pierre Omidyar.

For years, Big Journalism had been losing great people when they ran out of room for their ideas. It was believed that these losses did not threaten the enterprise. Gillmor was gone because he had reached the limits of professional press think. The journalism he was interested in developing lay outside the capacities of a traditional media company. He left for the same reason Mark Potts, co-founder of WashingtonPost.com, is starting a hyper-local news operation where the content is to be citizen-provided.

But then it’s the same reason newspaper editor John Robinson of the News & Record in Greensboro took up blogging, formed ties with the local blogging culture, and announced a shift in direction toward open-source and participatory journalism at his newspaper, which will mean gambling on a whole different kind of online operation. (See his column to readers about it.)

Not sovereign

They all sense it, what Tom Curley, the man who runs the Associated Press, called “a huge shift in the ‘balance of power’ in our world, from the content providers to the content consumers.” If there is such a shift (and Curley didn’t seem to be kidding) it means that professional journalism is no longer sovereign over territory it once easily controlled. Not sovereign doesn’t mean you go away. It means your influence isn’t singular anymore.

Orville Schell, dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s journalism school and a conference participant, told Business Week recently: “The Roman Empire that was mass media is breaking up, and we are entering an almost-feudal period where there will be many more centers of power and influence.”

When 90 percent of the op-ed style writing was done on actual op-ed pages, editorial page editors had sovereignty over that region of public dialogue. With blogging and the online space generally, that rule is gone. Opinion in reaction to the news can come from anywhere, and the bloggers are frequently better at it than the sleepy op-ed page ever was. Newspaper op-ed pages can still have influence; they can still be great. But they are not sovereign in their domain, and so their ideas, which never anticipated that, are under great pressure.

When Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and a figure in the news, wants to speak to fans, players or the community, he doesn’t do it through the reporters who cover the Mavs. He puts the word out at his weblog. For the beat writers who cover the team this is a loss; Cuban hardly deals with them anymore. Here, however, the balance of power has shifted toward a figure in the news, once known as a source. A weblog helped shift it. (Blogs of a corporate executive, and an officeholder who have done the same.)

If my terms make sense, and professional journalism has entered a period of declining sovereignty in news, politics and the provision of facts to public debate, this does not have to mean declining influence or reputation. It does not mean that prospects for the public service press are suddenly dim. It does, however, mean that the old political contract between news providers and news consumers will give way to something different, founded on what Curley correctly called a new “balance of power.”

Others have seen the change coming. In a 2003 report, New Directions for News said, “Journalism finds itself at a rare moment in history where … its hegemony as gatekeeper of the news is threatened by not just new technology and competitors but, potentially, by the audience it serves.” The professional imagination in Big Journalism wasn’t prepared for this.

• 
  Armed with easy-to-use Web publishing tools, always-on connections and increasingly powerful mobile devices, the online audience has the means to become an active participant in the creation and dissemination of news and information.

Meanwhile, the credibility of the old descriptions is falling away. People don’t buy them anymore. In 1988, 58 percent of the public agreed with the self-description of the press and saw no bias in political reporting, according to the Pew Research Center. (And that was regarded as a dangerously low figure.) By 2004, agreement on “no bias” had slipped to 38 percent. “The notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto,” wrote Howard Fineman of Newsweek, Jan. 13. “Now it’s pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things.”

Big Notion death was a theme in journalism in 2004, coming not from the margins but the middle. Geneva Overholser of the Missouri School of Journalism, former editor of the Des Moines Register, former ombudsman of the Washington Post, said it:

• 
  This was the year when it finally became unmistakably clear that objectivity has outlived its usefulness as an ethical touchstone for journalism. The way it is currently construed, “objectivity” makes the media easily manipulable by an executive branch intent on and adept at controlling the message. It produces a rigid orthodoxy, excluding voices beyond the narrowly conventional.

If objectivity, once the “ethical touchstone for journalism,” has finally collapsed, then we have conditions resembling intellectual crisis in the mainstream press. Steve Lovelady, managing editor of Campaigndesk.org, and a former editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, agreed that the press in 2004 “was hopelessly hobbled by some of its own outdated conventions and frameworks.”

When people like Fineman, Overholser and Lovelady—who are elders of the tribe, and products of its recent history—are saying about a key commandment “that’s over,” and “our belief system has collapsed,” we can assume the causes are deeper than some spectacularly blown stories or the appearance of more nimble competitors. Loss of core belief is related to loss of editorial sovereignty.

“The paper doesn’t have a voice.”

“I live in Winston-Salem,” begins a blog post from Jan 13, which I submit as material for the conference. Jon Lowder writes:

• 
  I have the Winston-Salem Journal delivered every morning. But I don’t feel like I know anyone there. The paper doesn’t have a “voice,” at least not one that I can hear. The closest thing to its voice is the editor’s column in the op-ed section.

The problems of finding a believable voice are fundamental in Big J journalism today. Jon Lowder admitted that one reason the Journal seemed so voice-less to him was the juxtaposition with the Greensboro News-Record, which had begun to reach him from the next town over through weblogs he read. (There are five and he subscribes to them all.) These he received via the wire service of the blog world, known as RSS, a truly disruptive technology for the news business. (See this.)

“I get all of the N&R blogs via RSS,” Lowder said. (It stands for real simple syndication.) “I don’t get their paper… yet. But I still feel closer to the N&R, and in a way I feel it is my hometown paper.” And this is what his post is about: not blogging, or RSS, or journalism, but a shfting sense of “hometown paper” for the user. Lowder explains how the Greensboro paper (see my reports on them here, then here and here) has infiltrated his world. “It would probably pain the editor at the Journal (I have no idea what his/her name is) to know that I feel like I’m on a first name basis with the editor of the Greensboro News & Record (Hi John!).”

That would be John Robinson. With his Editors Log he is talking to Winston Salem more often than the newspaper editor in Winston-Salem does. Lowder speaks of the News & Record coming to him, while the Journal site just sits there, static.

• 
  I hear from the N&R several times every day, all via their blogs. I hear from the Journal in the morning and that’s it… As a result I know more about Greensboro’s city council than I do about Winston-Salem’s. So for now I’d say that the N&R is my hometown paper. It’s not too late for the Journal, but they better act fast or it will be. I’d love to write the editor and share some ideas… anybody have a name for me?

Distributed journalism. Open Source journalism. Citizens media. Citizen journalism. We media. Participatory media. Participatory journalism. These are the new names for the discussion that first grew up around blogging. Steve Outing of the Poynter Institute noticed it:

• 
  The earthquake and tsunamis in South Asia and their aftermath represent a tipping point in so-called “citizen journalism.” What September 11, 2001, was to setting off the growth and enhanced reputation of blogs, the December 2004 tsunamis are to the larger notion of citizen journalism (of which blogs are a part).

The cartoon dialogue

Chris Willis, co-author of a key report, We Media, said in a recent interview with a Spanish journalist: “What is the most unsettling thing for media professionals is not change but how the change is happening and where it is coming from. Change is not coming from traditional competitors but from the audience they serve. What could be more frightening?”

And some of that fear had crept into bloggers vs. journalists, making it a cartoon dialogue. One reason I jumped at the chance to do this introductory essay is that I felt I had some hand in creating what John Palfrey of the Berkman Center called (in his letter inviting me) the “totally inadequate language that is used like a blunt instrument to describe both journalism and blogging.” (See this PressThink post, and this one.)

Included in that is the simple, tempting and ultimately useless question: are bloggers “real” journalists? To put it that way is unnecessarily antagonistic. But it’s worse than that. It’s reductive, and smart people have been calling it that for years. Scott Rosenberg, managing editor of Salon and a technology-aware writer, said it back in 2002:

• 
  Typically, the debate about blogs today is framed as a duel to the death between old and new journalism. Many bloggers see themselves as a Web-borne vanguard, striking blows for truth-telling authenticity against the media-monopoly empire. Many newsroom journalists see bloggers as wannabe amateurs badly in need of some skills and some editors.
• 
  This debate is stupidly reductive — an inevitable byproduct of (I’ll don my blogger-sympathizer hat here) the traditional media’s insistent habit of framing all change in terms of a “who wins and who loses?” calculus. The rise of blogs does not equal the death of professional journalism. The media world is not a zero-sum game. Increasingly, in fact, the Internet is turning it into a symbiotic ecosystem — in which the different parts feed off one another and the whole thing grows.

“Participatory media and journalism are different, but online they exist in a shared media space,” wrote Rebecca Blood, author of the Weblog Handbook and a careful student of the form. (“Shared media space” puts it well.) “I have no desire to conform my weblog to journalistic standards, or to remake journalism in my image. I want to find ways to leverage the strengths of both worlds to the mutual benefit of both.” I think that is the right attitude for our conference to take.

In an earlier essay, Blood showed how difficult it was to identify journalism exclusively with journalists. If we focus on practices that meet a certain standard, she said, then it is easy to tell who is who:

• 
  When a blogger writes up daily accounts of an international conference, as David Steven did at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, that is journalism. When a magazine reporter repurposes a press release without checking facts or talking to additional sources, that is not. When a blogger interviews an author about their new book, that is journalism. When an opinion columnist manipulates facts in order to create a false impression, that is not. When a blogger searches the existing record of fact and discovers that a public figure’s claim is untrue, that is journalism. When a reporter repeats a politician’s assertions without verifying whether they are true, that is not.

Instead of wrestling with blogging’s actual potential in journalism, we have tended to fight about bloggers’ credentials as journalists. This is a matter of far less importance, although I would never say “credentials don’t matter.” Even fights about credentials matter, sometimes.

But that is a poor way to go about discovering what blogging means for journalists and the future of the public service franchise. Today there is every reason in the world for journalists to finally get religion about blogging while bloggers get their thing with journalism straight.

Departure points for Friday morning (Schedule.)

I recommend the following points of departure for our discussion. There are five.

• 
  1.) Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, and blogging means practically anyone can own one. That is the Number One reason why weblogs matter. It is the broadest and deepest of all factors making this conference urgent.

With blogging, an awkward term, we designate a fairly beautiful thing: the extension to many more people of a First Amendment franchise, the right to publish your thoughts to the world.
Wherever blogging spreads the dramas of free expression follow. And this will happen in journalism. There will be struggles with freedom of speech. A blog, you see, is a little First Amendment machine. And some of the roots of blogging are in the right to speak up, the will to be heard. In some cases, heard over the din of journalism. Dave Winer, conference participant, in a 2001 essay, “The Web is a Writing Environment,” tried to get freelance interpreters interested in becoming sovereign on the Web:

• 
  What if you’re a freelancer, you sold a piece on wireless computing, and that’s it, but what are you supposed to do with the knowledge you’ve accumulated as the market you wrote about is developing? Or flipped around, what if you’re an engineer and the press is covering your category without any depth, do you just sit by and watch the opportunity dissipate? What if you’re a human resources manager in a large corporation, and want to publish a column for your constituents, but the internal development people are always too busy to work on your project?
• 
  In all these cases you can take the power into your own hands, start writing for the the Web, and see what comes back to you.

I think there’s always going to be tension between bloggers and Big Journalism. It’s in the DNA.

• 
  2.) Instead of starting with “do blogs have credibility?” or “should blogging obey journalism ethics?” we should begin in a broader territory, which is trust. Trust as it is generated in different settings, online and off, in both blogging and in journalism— or in life.

When a student leaves NYU’s graduate program and joins, say, the St. Petersburg Times as a staff writer, she benefits on her first day at work from the accumulated trust or reputation the newspaper has in its market, in the community around Tampa Bay. The circumstances in which this asset was created have long since passed from view. The trust transaction lives for new employees mostly in the form of professional standards they are to meet, which in theory maintain the brand.

This is the number one asset of the news organization: stored trust, reputational capital. Any competent journalist knows how to benefit from that: your calls get returned… like magic! But as to how that capital is created, or the transaction of trust that involves people and their connection to the news, the professional journalist is minimally involved.

We start telling students in graduate school they won’t “have” credibility unless they meet professional standards and obey the rules, but this tends to be interpreted as: “if we obey the rules of journalism, and meet the standards of our peers, then we have credibility.” And that is not true. (Your peers may have the wrong standards.) If it were true, having a wall of journalism prizes would be equivalent to having the public’s trust.

In a 2002 essay in Microcontent News, John Hiler observed: “For bloggers, it’s all about trust too: except weblogs are starting from zero, building their reputations from the ground up. Blog responsibly, and you’ll build a reputation for being a trusted news source. Don’t, and you won’t have a reputation to worry about.”

Here is one advantage bloggers have in the struggle for reputation— for the user’s trust. They are closer to the transaction where trust gets built up on the Web. There’s a big difference between tapping a built-up asset, like the St. Pete Times “brand,” and creating it from scratch. Bloggers are “building their reputations from the ground up,” as Hiler said, and to do this they have to focus on users. They have to be in dialogue. They have to point to others and say: listen to him! The connection between what they do and whether they are trusted is much alive and apparent. In journalism that connection has been harder to find lately. Journalists don’t know much about it. They do know their rules, though.

• 
  3.) Look around: blogging partakes of a resurgent spirit of amateurism now showing in many fields earlier colonized by professionals. Why would journalism be immune?

We learn about it from a fascinating new study, The Pro-Am Revolution, a 70-page paper from Demos in the UK. It barely mentions bloggers or journalism, and so it is perfect for sketching a larger pattern into which J-blogging fits.

• 
  The twentieth century was shaped by the rise of professionals in most walks of life. From education, science and medicine, to banking, business and sports, formerly amateur activities became more organised, and knowledge and procedures were codified and regulated. As professionalism grew, often with hierarchical organisations and formal systems for accrediting knowledge, so amateurs came to be seen as second-rate. Amateurism came to be to a term of derision. Professionalism was a mark of seriousness and high standards.

And of course this happened in journalism in the 1920s through 1940s. University training, professional societies, codes of ethics emerged. This movement created my institution, the J-school, as well as the standard of neutral, nonpartisan professionalism of which Howard Fineman spoke. Demos on the shift:

• 
  But in the last two decades a new breed of amateur has emerged: the Pro-Am, amateurs who work to professional standards. These are not the gentlemanly amateurs of old – George Orwell’s blimpocracy, the men in blazers who sustained amateur cricket and athletics clubs. The Pro-Ams are knowledgeable, educated, committed and networked, by new technology. The twentieth century was shaped by large hierarchical organisations with professionals at the top. Pro-Ams are creating new, distributed organisational models that will be innovative, adaptive and low-cost.

In other words, they cannot be dismissed. “Knowledge, once held tightly in the hands of professionals and their institutions, will start to flow into networks of dedicated amateurs,” says the report. “The crude, all or nothing, categories we use to carve up society – leisure versus work, professional versus amateur – will need to be rethought.” Written about other fields, these words should be read into journalism, which is being hit hard by the Pro-Am trend.

• 
  Professionals – in science and medicine, war and politics, education and welfare – shaped the twentieth century through their knowledge, authority and institutions. They will still be vital in the twenty-first century. But the new driving force, creating new streams of knowledge, new kinds of organisations, new sources of authority, will be the Pro-Ams. (p. 67)

Bloggers vs. professional journalists is over. But there’s power in the revolution Pro-Am.

• 
  4.) If news as lecture could yield to news as conversation, as some have recommended, it might transform the credibility puzzle because it would feed good information to journalists about the trusters and what they do and do not put their trust in.

Professional journalists confronted with the confusions of the online world have consistently maintained that the “traditional” news criers will do fine on the new platform, even with more competition, because, the feeling goes, the bigger the onslaught of information online, the greater the need for some authoritative filter, like the daily newspaper.

William Safire, for example, wrote a “nah, we’ll be fine” column about it. “On national or global events,” he said, “the news consumer needs trained reporters on the scene to transmit facts and trustworthy editors to judge significance.” Indeed, everyone needs an intelligent filter to find what’s good and make sure nothing essential is missed. Journalists reckon, “that’s us.”

Sound reasoning. However it doesn’t tell you how the filter does the filtering for the filterees. I mean… “editors to judge significance” based on what? Big Journalism’s answers have been: Knowledge of professional standards in journalism. Knowledge of our community. Knowledge of the story. The knowledge that comes from experience. In other words, the filter is reliable because it is operated by a professional editor who knows what to do.

But online a filter becomes more intelligent by people interacting with it. To judge significance, it helps to be in conversation with the people you are sifting things for. One might propose: over time a blog teaches a journalist how to become an intelligent filter by forcing interaction with the Web and its users. If the traditional press expects to survive on its filtering skills, and to be authoritative, it will have to devise a way of interacting more with the filterees. Ask not how professional or experienced the filter is, but how interactive. We need filters that learn from users. Trust, I believe, will flow from that.

• 
  5.) Among bloggers there is the type “stand alone journalist,” and this is why among journalists there now stands the type: blogger.

Some journalists are identified with a brand, like MSNBC. Others, as Chris Nolan figured out, stand alone. Many of the practical problems of bloggers are the problems of standing alone. If there were solutions to those, there might be better blogging all around.

Writing about the Iraq war in his blogger’s manifesto (2002), Andrew Sullivan explains the advantages of the stand alone style in blogging:

• 
  The blog almost seemed designed for this moment. In an instant, during the crisis, the market for serious news commentary soared. But people were not just hungry for news, I realized. They were hungry for communication, for checking their gut against someone they had come to know, for emotional support and psychological bonding. In this world, the very personal nature of blogs had far more resonance than more impersonal corporate media products. Readers were more skeptical of anonymous news organizations anyway, and preferred to supplement them with individual writers they knew and liked.

It’s not all about providing good information. Responding when people are “hungry for communication” also builds trust online. In certain ways, which we have yet to learn much about, the stand alone journalist may be easier to trust than a corporate provider.

Conclusion

Because bloggers vs. journalists is over, better and better comparisons can be drawn between the two. Simon Waldman of the Guardian said that the tsunami disaster “has shown both the greatest strengths of citizens’ journalism, and its greatest weakness.”

• 
  The great strength is clearly the vividness of first person accounts. And, in this case, the sheer volume of them. Pretty much every story of everyone who experienced the tsunami is moving in someway or other - and thanks to blogs, text messages, camcorders and the overall wonderfulness of the net, there have never been so many stories recorded by so many people made so widely available to whoever who wants to find them, whenever they want to find them.

This is the revolution in supply, via self-publishing on the Web. “The great weakness, though, is the lack of shape, structure and ultimately meaning that all this amounts to. It is one thing to read hundreds of people’s stories. It is another to try and work out what the story actually is.” That won’t come from a revolution in supply because it’s about reducing information, distilling it down, as “happens in traditional media.” Waldman is clear on the advantages of professional journalism’s sense of discipline:

• 
  The disciplines of traditional media—space, deadlines, the need to have a headline and an intro and a cohesive story rather than random paragraphs, the use of layout or running order to give some sense of shape and priority to the news—aren’t just awkward restrictions. They add meaning. They help understanding. Without them, it’s much, much harder to make sense of what’s happening in the world.

Xeni Jardin, co-editor of the hugely popular BoingBoing, told John Schwartz of the New York Times that arguing about whether blogs would replace the major news media is like asking “will farmers’ markets replace restaurants?”

• 
  “One is a place for rich raw materials,” she continued. “One represents a different stage of the process.”
• 
  Blogging from the tsunami, she said, is “more raw and immediate,” but the postings still lack the level of trust that has been earned by more established media. “There is no ombudsman for the blogosphere,” she said. “One will not replace the other, but I think the two together are good for each other.” (Link.)

Amen to that. My closing thoughts are the peaceable ones of writer, blogger and Web philosopher Mitch Ratcliffe, who, like so many of us, is trying to keep track of a dizzying scene. “The point of innovation in media is to expand, not simply to displace, the voices that existed before,” he writes. Politics, by contrast, is where we replace one group of voices with another.

• 
  I’m feeling more Buddhist all the time about this whole journalism v. blogging debate. The middle way in the metalogue that is emerging—the miraculous opening up of “the media” that’s going on—is plenty wide for all sorts of writing, the objective, the disclosed and the personal.

The price of professionalizing journalism was the de-voicing of the journalist. The price for having mass media was the atomization of the audience, who in the broadcasting model were connected “up” to the center but not “across” to each other. Well, blogging is a re-voicing tool in journalism, and the Net’s strengths in horizontal communication mean that audience atomization is being overcome.

It’s an exciting time in journalism. As the great social weave from which it arises changes form, the thing itself comes up for grabs.

The rest of the article read here

Click here to Read More......

BIOS POST freezes.....

Still feeling disappointed, so I decided to take on some challenge today. Yesterday I collected my AcerPower SD from the repair shop. The technician told me it’s beyond repair. Well, they charged me RM30 for the inspection and cleaning up the spider webs.

It all started with the power failure. When the power was back and when I was trying to start up the PC, bios post freezes.

BIOS ROM checksum error
Keyboard error or no keyboard present

Detecting floppy drive A media…

And it will hang there forever.

So I had to go to back to basics in computer hardware. Luckily my faithful old 286AT had some notes about how to become a hacker and bring my machine back to live. I know mostly people are confused about the word “hacker” and “crackers”. The basic difference is hackers build things and crackers break them. Unfortunately, many writers and journalists have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers endlessly.

So I dismantled all the components and start to put it back together one by one. When I tried to start it up, the screen still showed the same error message. So, leaving me with no option to flush the BIOS. I started with the easy part of fixing first that is, by removing the battery and also changing the jumper. Both didn’t work.

I downloaded the utility to update the bios supplied by the manufacturer, unfortunately it doesn’t work with my machine. I was a bit lucky today because I found a freeware utility to flush and update the bios. With a bit of tweaking, I managed to make the program run. It was a success. The computer is running and I’m happy and the kids are happy too. Less fighting for the computer now.


What had happened to our leaders nowadays ?????

"Don't listen to the stories in the internet, they are all myths," That’s what Najib said in Pekan about internet rumour regarding the rift between him and Abdullah. Read what 3540 Jalan Sudin got to say.

Last night In Tv3 the battle between Lim Keng Yaik and M. Kayveas.

From the Star: Just answer allegations, Pak Lah tells Johari

Most of all I still like TDM on corruption and other issues.

“I didn’t know he was corrupt” - that was former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s response when asked as to why he appointed Zulkipli Mat Noor as the Anti-Corruption Agency chief in 2001.

“They never told me that he was corrupt,” he said.
Mahathir said from the reports given to him, he was under the impression that Zulkipli was clean and the right person to helm the agency.
Malaysiakini.com headlines “

Here is the URL http://www.malaysiakini.tv/mkini/?vid=68 video clip from Malaysiakini.tv

Zealously Errant Rodent Oligarchy (ZERO)

Only deception since W's Presidential inception.
Fake WMD's and other sleaze.

Medicare lapse, coming collapse?
Integrity in short supply, makes one cry!
Corruption eruption!
Exploding debt, financial threat!
Angry unemployed, slowly destroyed!
No child left behind, W says, 'Ebrythang iz phine.'
Declining schools, because of these fools!

---- by Mark H. Wilson. ilovepoetry.com----

Click here to Read More......

Always to be happy

Thank God it’s Friday….. This morning I bumped into a friend of mine who used to be a reporter and journalist with Bernama, and is currently an educationalist with one of the International University. I was asking him whether he has read the article by Rehman and wanted to know his opinion about it. He told me that the article is a lousy spin from a Not So Talented Person. Well since my blog sisters Marina Mahatir, Noraina Samad, Elviza and many more Malaysian bloggers in the blogosphere had given their piece of mind. All I can say is Rehman, be a true Malaysian and go with the progress of the modern technology.

The things I’ve planned for the weekend are all ruined. My significant other is not around. She flew to KL just now for the education fair. Well, duty calls so I must be happy always. I found something at poofcat.com and would like to share it with Clemfour readers and friends. You may have seen these before, but a reminder is always good now and then. No harm in that.

RULES FOR BEING HAPPY

No one can go back and make a brand new start. Anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. God didn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain, but He did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears, and light for the day.

Disappointments are like road bumps, they slow you down a bit but you enjoy the smooth road afterwards. Don't stay on the bumps too long. Move on! When you feel down because you didn't get what you want, just sit tight and be happy, because GOD is thinking something better to give you.

When something happens to you, good or bad, consider what it means. There's a purpose to life's events, to teach you how to laugh more or not to cry too hard. You can't make someone you love, all you can do is be someone who can be loved, and the rest is up to the person to realize your worth.

The measure of love is when you love without measure. In life there are very rare chances that you'll meet the person you love and loves you in return. So once you have it don't ever let go, the chance might never come your way again.

Its better to lose your pride to the one you love, than to lose the one you love because of pride. We spend too much time looking for the right person to love or finding fault with those we already love, when instead we should be perfecting the love we give.

When you truly care for someone, you don't look for faults, you don't look for answers, and you don't look for mistakes. Instead, you fight the mistakes, you accept the faults and you overlook the excuses. Never abandon an old friend. You will never find one who can take his place. Friendship is like wine; it gets better as it grows older.

Remember the five simple rules to being happy:

Free your heart of hatred.

Free your mind from worries.

Live simply.

Give more.

Expect less.

Click here to Read More......

Online friends

Dearest friend,




What a great day…… Finally manage to change from a 2 column to 3 column template. What a relief.. So just a minor touch left. Luckily it is a school break so have more time with the PC.

Guess what happened this afternoon. It was an honour for me to be online with sister MarinaM of RantingsbyMM. Even though I had not meet her in the real world, but she really light up my day.

Again as I was going thru the other old 286AT machine (Yes Zewt, I've 2 units running) I got this from a friend...I got this minutes before I log off from that computer. It hit a nerve then and when I read my friends email...it triggered the tears.

Online friends are people we may never meet....
We see pictures, we see cams...It isn't the same....
We grow close...We care and love one another....
One day we may not hear from one another....
Our hearts will break...
All we see is a name on messenger
but the person we don't see anymore.....
We pray....."Please come back"....
All I ask is you remember me in the good times we had.....
Keep me close to your heart....

Friends forever...

Pass this on to all your friends....

If I get comment on this entry....

I know you care .

Click here to Read More......

Congratulation LAH ;-)

PUTRAJAYA, March 12 (Bernama) -- Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Monday became the first recipient of the Napoleon Hill Foundation Global Leadership Award in recognition of his outstanding global leadership .

The president of the foundation, James Oleson conferred the award, a medal, to Abdullah at the Napoleon Hill International Convention 2007 at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre, here.

Foundation chairman Dr Charles Johnson said the award was to recognise outstanding global leadership and Abdullah had shown his dedication to the country's development.

"The prime minister has shown dedicated service for Malaysia's socio-economic development," said Dr Johnson in a message was read by Oleson.

Abdullah said he was overwhelmed and accepted the award humbly.

"Do I deserve this," he asked in his acceptance speech and the floor responded with "Of course".

The prime minister said he would not be what he was today without the support of Malaysians who were willing to work with him and not for him.

Napoleon Hill foundation is a non-profit educational institution based in the United States and dedicated to promote Napoleon's philosophy of making the world a better place to live in.

Dr Hill is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the century and his works have inspired millions worldwide to achieve greater success for themselves.

Abdullah said he was confident Malaysians would work with him to achieve what was best for themselves and for their country.

"Occasionally it may seem that we are not making much headway. Sometimes there will be setbacks.

"Transforming a nation and its people is never easy. It takes passion and perseverance. I know that my fellow citizens share this passion and perseverance with me," he said.

Abdullah said the government's policies of integration and inclusion would remain fundamental to their political and social strategies.

"Shared prosperity and equitable development in a competitive environment will also remain the bedrock of our economic policies," he said when touching on the country's multi-racial social contract.

He said there was no doubt that the government must improve their policies and prevent excesses in their implementation.

"Ultimately, it is our spirit, our faith and our values that will determine whether Malaysia and Malaysians can rank among the best in the world.

"I have every confidence that we have what it takes. But we must work hard, very, very hard, as Napoleon Hill would no doubt counsel us. In this, we will have our faiths and our values to guide us," he said.

Abdullah also touched on the country's National Mission, human capital development, public delivery system and Islam Hadhari.
-- BERNAMA

Click here to Read More......

Women tap the power of the blog

While surfing the net, found this article about women and blogging. So I copy-patse it here. To all out there, never under estimate the power of women in blogging.

(Pixs: courtesy of Sheih from Kickdefella)

**********************************************************

Women tap the power of the blog
Site's a key connection
By Maura Welch, Globe Correspondent July 17, 2006

Beth Kanter connects with people from Cambodia to Silicon Valley. Tish Grier debates with media luminaries from her artist's garret in Chicopee. Lisa Williams runs a town forum for Watertown. Millie Garfield, at 80 years young, expresses her wisdom and humor to a growing audience. And it all happens on their blogs.

Women are a blogging powerhouse. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 68 percent of men are Internet users, compared with 66 percent of women, but since women make up more of the population, the total number of women online is now slightly larger than the number of men.

A survey by Perseus, a marketing research services company, indicates that 56 percent of all blogs are created by women and that women abandon fewer blogs than men do.

But a fraction of the so-called ``A-list" blogs are authored by women. This inequity is not lost on San Francisco Bay area entrepreneurs and writers Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort, and Jory Des Jardins, the trio that started BlogHer.org, a sort of yellow pages for women bloggers. BlogHer's mission is to create opportunities for women bloggers so they can pursue exposure, education, community, and economic empowerment.

In other words, BlogHer links women to other women and women to the world.
On word of mouth alone they have registered more than 2,500 women bloggers. In addition to this directory, volunteer and paid BlogHer editors write a guide for women bloggers, linking and contributing to discussions on a range of topics that BlogHer women start on their individual blogs. But the most unusual benefit of BlogHer may be the least wired part of it.

The second annual BlogHer conference, with corporate sponsors like General Motors and Johnson & Johnson, will be held July 28-29 in San Jose, Calif. Attendance is expected to double from last year's session, which was supported by Yahoo and Google and attracted more than 300 women from around the country. Last year's theme was ``Where are the women bloggers?" The theme for BlogHer '06 is ``How is your blog changing your world?"

Indications are that it's changing it plenty for some women. Boston-based BlogHer member Lisa Williams, who attended BlogHer '05, is the founder of H2OTown.info, a community news blog for Watertown.

``What struck me was how different the hallway noise was compared to other professional conferences I've attended," she said. ``The hallways echoed with warm and excited `Ooohs' as women met the women whose blogs they had been reading."

Said Grier: ``Face-to-face is very important. Meeting another person makes what's on the blog real. At BlogHer I met people I've never known, but who really knew me because they had been reading my blog."

In May, BlogHer launched an ad network for its membership to channel economic benefits back to the women who blog. The trick, BlogHer founder Des Jardins said, is to ``help bridge the gap and yet still maintain the sanctity of their blogs." As a result, the ad network is totally voluntary. But the economic benefit to women bloggers is not just in the few dollars they may earn in ad revenue; it's in the human connections they make through their blogs. Increasingly, the conversations begun on blogs are spawning opportunities. Some women have quit their day jobs to blog full time.

A year ago, Grier started blogging two blogs full time: her personal blog called ``Love and Hopes and Sex and Dreams," and ``The Constant Observer," her blog about citizen media. She also frequently attends conferences like the one at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, where she met Francois Gossieaux, the president of Corante, a respected blog on science, business, and technology. It turned out that she had been reading Grier's blogs.

``He asked if there was anything he could do for me and I said, `Yeah! You can give me a job.' "

And he did. Grier now writes and edits the Media Hub for Corante, a job that, unbeknownst to her, she'd been interviewing for by writing her blogs.

Williams, a mother of two and a former analyst for Yankee Group, said she has gotten several consulting jobs via her work on H2OTown, her blog about Watertown, as well as through her personal blog, ``Learning the Lessons of Nixon."

``Some people ask me, `Aren't you worried you won't get hired because of what's on your blog?' " On the contrary, she said, ``I get hired because of my blog. It's my way to idiot-proof my life. If you don't like my blog, don't hire me!"

When asked how blogging has changed her life, Kanter, a consultant to nonprofits and the mother of two adopted children, laughed and said, ``I don't get the laundry done, and I'm late to school pick up."

She stressed that ``blogging is not a get-rich-quick medium." Rather, it's an investment. ``I've met a whole lot of people -- made great connections -- that have led to work."

Through her blog, she's been asked to lead training sessions and secured a grant for the Sharing Foundation, an organization that helps children in Cambodia, of which she is a board member.

But blogging develops skills and opens opportunities that go beyond getting individual contracts or projects. Williams said she always thought that when her kids were older, she'd go back to work.

``But now I think I'll never work for anyone again." she said. ``Blogging has made me an entrepreneur. It's taught me entrepreneurial skills, how to make connections, how to tolerate uncertainty. It's empowering. Everyone should do it."

Blogs have helped women to find their voices. Some of them find their voice 15 minutes at a time, which is why Lisa Williams said it's a perfect medium for multitasking parents. Many women talk about how they see their lives as markedly different pre- and post-blog. The biggest benefits -- relationships, community -- can't be quantified.

Eighty-year-old Garfield, one of the Internet's oldest bloggers, according to the Ageless Project, a site dedicated to proving the point that people of all ages are on the Web, sums it up:

``On my blog, people listen to me and they really get to know me."

She observed that in regular conversation, someone else is always trying to talk.

``But on my blog I can finish my thought. And I've discovered I have a sense of humor."

© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

*******************************************************
The link for the above article can be found by clicking your mouse HERE
Happy reading.

Click here to Read More......