Jeremy Zawodny's blog

Are Weblogs Microcontent?

Jon Udell says:

The Google toolbar is an example of a microcontent client. So is Huevos. So, arguably, are the speakable Web services I wrote about in this month's O'Reilly Network column.

So what about weblogs? Granted, I write some long entries now and then, but most of the time they're short. Are they microcontent? Or maybe minicontent?

I would have never really thought about this, but I saw the "Microcontent" headline and figured Jon had written something about how weblogs are type of microcontent. When I read what he wrote, I was a little surprised and disappointed. I thought I knew what he was going to say.

That made me wonder if it makes sense to talk about weblogs as microcontent, minicontent, or something else entirely? They're certainly not the traditional model of "Gee, maybe I should write a web page about foo." I don't think about writing a web page when I blog. But I also don't apply the same thinking and editing that I do when sending e-mail, even though e-mail and weblog entries are both conversational and often the same size. I also don't think about weblog entries the same way that I think about writing magazine articles. There's usually a lot less structure to weblog entries--because they're short, single topic items.

Is anyone blogging OracleWorld?

I haven't seen any yet, but there are too many blogs keep track of. I toyed with the idea of going to OracleWorld, but... well, no.

Google is self-aware

Look carefully at the picture to the right. Click to get a larger version. I search Google for jeremy to check that I'm still in the number one slot (as noted earlier). I am. And how does Google summarize my blog?

Jeremy Zawodny's blog. ... Ah, what a difference a few weeks make. I'm once again at the top of the list if you search google for "jeremy". ...

How terribly amusing. Perhaps Google ranks you higher if you talk about it. :-)

I can't help but to think that there's an engineer at Google who reads by blog and decided to have some fun with me. That's the sort of thing I'd do if I worked there.