Monday, November 08, 2004
Bully for Blogging
Hello good morning and welcome to Cybersurf, your weekly window where web matters. I am your Cyberhost – Steven Lang.
About four years ago, we first made mention of blogging – that strange phenomenon that sounds like some disgusting bodily function. We spoke about the blogger.com site and came up with a few suggestions on how blogs can effectively be used. It sounded a little esoteric, but I set up my own blog and used it a few times and then forgot about it.
The main use at that point was to work on a document from home – put it on a blog – and then be able to carry on using it in your office or while on a trip without having to actually carry the documents on a disc or some such device.
Since those long forgotten days – blogging has taken over the world – OK slight exageration – blogging has become a really valuable and widely accepted way of putting stuff on the Net and communicating.
In Europe and the USA the number of people who maintain multiple blogs is growing ferociously. In South Africa – the trend has not really caught on – and I don’t know why.
First of all – blogs are cheap – in fact, most of them are absolutely free – mahala. I personally use blogger.com – and it is through blogger.com that I was able to set up the Cybersurf Blog – which you can find at the following address – www.cybersurf.blogspot.com – that is the address where I normally put up the Cybersurf scripts AND where you can also add your comments. Yes, if you wish to send any comments about a particular Cybersurf program there is a link at the bottom where you can say your piece – and your piece will be visible to other people who visit the Blog.
Blogger.com is perhaps one of the biggest and best known places to blog – but there are many others as well – www.livejournal.com is another source of free blogs. In fact if you go the Cybersurf.blogspot.com I will put up some more useful links.
In the last few weeks, one particular blog has regularly made the front page of the BBC News web site. The blog called “Diary of A flight attendant” managed to get the owner – Ellen Simonetti fired from her job.
Simonetti who goes by the nome-de-blog of “Queen of Sky” – maintains a semi-fictional diary of her travels on the http://queenofsky.journalspace.com/ site. – Nothing wrong there – but when she posted a few mildly saucy photgraphs of herself on the site she was suddenly suspended by her employer – Delta Airlines. It appears that what really provoked management was the fact that she was wearing the airline uniform when the pictures were taken. There are no obvious airline insignia in sight and even the pictures are quite tame when compared to an average Paris fashion show.
When “Queen of Sky” was suspended, she immediately removed the offending pics. The removal did not impress management and she was fired.
Since then she has put the pictures back on her site, and added a few more for good measure, and now she is taking the airline to court for unfair dismissal.
So what do you make of that? Go to www.cybersurf.blogspot.com – read the script, visit the Diary of a Flight Attendant and post your comments on the blog.
And so we wrap the blog edition of cybersurf – thank-you for listening and till next week, remember to keeeeep on surfing.
More on Blogs
http://www.eatonweb.com/portal/index.shtml
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/WWW/Web_Logs/
About four years ago, we first made mention of blogging – that strange phenomenon that sounds like some disgusting bodily function. We spoke about the blogger.com site and came up with a few suggestions on how blogs can effectively be used. It sounded a little esoteric, but I set up my own blog and used it a few times and then forgot about it.
The main use at that point was to work on a document from home – put it on a blog – and then be able to carry on using it in your office or while on a trip without having to actually carry the documents on a disc or some such device.
Since those long forgotten days – blogging has taken over the world – OK slight exageration – blogging has become a really valuable and widely accepted way of putting stuff on the Net and communicating.
In Europe and the USA the number of people who maintain multiple blogs is growing ferociously. In South Africa – the trend has not really caught on – and I don’t know why.
First of all – blogs are cheap – in fact, most of them are absolutely free – mahala. I personally use blogger.com – and it is through blogger.com that I was able to set up the Cybersurf Blog – which you can find at the following address – www.cybersurf.blogspot.com – that is the address where I normally put up the Cybersurf scripts AND where you can also add your comments. Yes, if you wish to send any comments about a particular Cybersurf program there is a link at the bottom where you can say your piece – and your piece will be visible to other people who visit the Blog.
Blogger.com is perhaps one of the biggest and best known places to blog – but there are many others as well – www.livejournal.com is another source of free blogs. In fact if you go the Cybersurf.blogspot.com I will put up some more useful links.
In the last few weeks, one particular blog has regularly made the front page of the BBC News web site. The blog called “Diary of A flight attendant” managed to get the owner – Ellen Simonetti fired from her job.
Simonetti who goes by the nome-de-blog of “Queen of Sky” – maintains a semi-fictional diary of her travels on the http://queenofsky.journalspace.com/ site. – Nothing wrong there – but when she posted a few mildly saucy photgraphs of herself on the site she was suddenly suspended by her employer – Delta Airlines. It appears that what really provoked management was the fact that she was wearing the airline uniform when the pictures were taken. There are no obvious airline insignia in sight and even the pictures are quite tame when compared to an average Paris fashion show.
When “Queen of Sky” was suspended, she immediately removed the offending pics. The removal did not impress management and she was fired.
Since then she has put the pictures back on her site, and added a few more for good measure, and now she is taking the airline to court for unfair dismissal.
So what do you make of that? Go to www.cybersurf.blogspot.com – read the script, visit the Diary of a Flight Attendant and post your comments on the blog.
And so we wrap the blog edition of cybersurf – thank-you for listening and till next week, remember to keeeeep on surfing.
More on Blogs
http://www.eatonweb.com/portal/index.shtml
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/WWW/Web_Logs/
