Amy Blogs!

I've been trying to get my wife Amy to see the fun in blogging for a while now. Write what you're passionate about. Connect with others.

It wasn't resonating ....until now.

Amy has taken up the big challenge of running the Marine Corp Marathon. She has been sending out weekly updates to all her friends and family and her training. All of which have been written really well. I suggested she start a weblog. And she did.

So far she has 3 entries (number 1 is still my favorite). I'm still trying to get her to use a blog roll. There are tons of other running blogs out there I discovered via Google -- okay I'm passionate about blogs, and Amy is passionate about running. She doesn't get that part yet --- her audience is really just friends and family.

She is already up to 8 miles!

If you hold any value in the freedom of speach, read this.

Amazon Blogs... err... Plogs

If there hasn't been proof enough that blogging is mainstream, Amazon is toying the concept in a new content layout called Plogs. Right now I only see this as a new way of ordering content, but the potential is there, especially in the area of collaborative filtering across outside blogs and in the use of RSS. Rafat Ali says:

what I would like is that if Amazon can spider services like Technorati to see other references (from other blogs/media sources) to a new book released, and present that ecosystem as part of the "plog" recommendation...
As such, the blog meme is powerful than you think..the chunk-sized bites are about to take over the world...sorta.
I can see implications of this integrated into its A9 search engine

Stowe Boyd adds:

I can't tweak very much, can't change look/feel, move things around -- just toggling on and off the monetary value of purchases made -- and I can't actually add any content. Wouldn't it be sensible to have my own reviews, etc.?

Is this only a mechanism to push information to me? Even so I like the format. But there is no RSS feed, so I guess you have to actually go and read the damn thing.

And the whole social angle -- seeing updates to your buddies' wishlists, for example -- isn't integrated at all.

It will be interesting to see how Plogs affects sales. Unless they leverage some of the ideas from above, I don't see them helping.

Looks like Plogs is only in beta, so some might not be able to see it in action.