25 Blogs to Inspire You or Maybe Depress You

Jeff Bullas — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:01:10 +0000

The continuing development of the power blogger within different industry sectors, niches and micro niches is another demonstration of the Web’s power to continue to influence and change the “Information Age’s” landscape.

The bloggers new found ability to spread their content through social media in recent times with great effect and leverage is raising some interesting scenarios especially with Rupert Murdoch’s News about to start to charge people for news and content on his newspapers and magazines worldwide

Cnet News in a 2005 article had this to say “Will bloggers upend the mainstream media? What legal protections should bloggers have? Is there a blogger business model? While no definitive answers exist just yet, experts at Wharton advise questioners to be patient. Blogging, they note, will be around for a long time”.

A Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter puts blogging right up there with the printing press when it comes to sharing ideas and disseminating information.He said “This is not a fad, It’s the rise of amateur content, which is replacing the centralized, controlled content done by professionals.”

Another Wharton legal studies professor Kevin Werbach also says “At its most basic level, it’s a technology that is lowering the cost of publishing” and turning out to be “the next extension of the Web,” says . “Blogging is still in its early days. It’s analogous to where the Web was in 1995 and 1996. It’s not clear how it will turn out.”

What is clear is that opportunities for blogging abound.

Companies can use bloggers to put a more human face on interactions between employees and customers
Marketers can create buzz through blogs
Bloggers can act as fact checkers for the mainstream media.

There are dozens of applications for blogs, Werbach notes, and many that haven’t even been conceived yet. To be sure, the concepts behind blogging aren’t exactly new.

Some of the subscriber counts of these blogs is in the millions such as Huffington Post and TechCrunch.

This list is to challenge and inspire you as a blogger in what can be achieved and some examples of blogging best practice and success.

So here are the “Best 25 Global Blogs” as selected by Time Magazine that cover topics from politics and global affairs to shopping and sports. And, yes, a few about nothing, too.

Best 25 Global Blogs (as selected by Time Magazine)

The Huffington Post – Politics and News
Lifehacker – Life skills and tips
Metafilter – Crowd sourced daily best of the Web
TreeHugger -It’s a one-stop blog for green news, solutions, and product information
PostSecret -PostSecret is one of those rare one-note blogs that actually works, mainly because the note is so beautiful and resonant. The blog is an ongoing community art project in which ordinary people mail in a personal secret written by hand on one side of a homemade postcard. The cards are then posted anonymously on the blog exactly as received, presented without comment. You can’t make this stuff up because someone else already has: one postcard depicts a man holding a baby with the scrawled secret: “I’ve ranked all of my past and present lovers. My husband comes in 4th out of 5 in both size and skill.”
Blog di Beppe Grillo – Beppe Grillo, a popular Italian comedian, actor, and political satirist, writes one of the few non-English language blogs that’s become wildly popular worldwide. That’s because Grillo speaks the international language of outrage.
Engadget – If you’re a gadget lover, you’re probably already reading Engadget — either that, or your blog-reading gadget is broken. Launched in March 2004, Engadget is a 24/7 candy store for gadget heads, displaying the latest and often strangest consumer electronics and computer equipment. Its only real rival in blogworld is Gizmodo
Freakonomics -Freakonomics, part of the New York Times’ blog network, is a notable exception; it easily stands on its own by dint of insight and wit. The writers, Stephen Dubner and economics professor Steven Levitt, penned the best-selling book Freakonomics, and keep the contrarian ball rolling in their blog. The blog truly tackles “the hidden side of everything,”
Gigazine – Gigazine previews the latest trends in cell phones, video games, junk food, fashion, toys, and consumer products from Japan and across the Pacific rim.
Ace of Spades HQ -the Ace of Spades HQ, (AoS) has been going strong since 2003, and recently recorded its 10 millionth hit. Like most political blogs, the anonymous Ace comments on the day’s political news and provides links
Radosh.net – What makes Radosh.net stand out is that the guy at the keyboard — Daniel Radosh — knows how to write. Radosh, an editor at The Week and a regular contributor to the New Yorker, can write quite comfortably about the silliest things imaginable, obsessing over the likes of Huckapoo and Lindsay Lohan
Gawker -This is the blog that turned snark into success. Gawker’s relentlessly critical, headache-inducing cynicism about, oh, practically everything, (even its employees we hear, but whatever) would seem downright mean it weren’t for its usual juicy targets: the self-important boobs that rule Manhattan media and high society. Or think they do.
The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan – Andrew Sullivan is gay, Roman Catholic, HIV-positive, anti-tax, and no scourge on recreational drug use. In short, he’s the perfect commentator in the age of the blog: impossible to categorize by the old rules. The ex-pat Brit (and former TIME blogger and contributor) confounds both the left and the right without necessarily trying to do so.
Velveteen Rabbi – This charming and thoughtful blog is the work of Rachel Barenblat, a rabbinic student who holds an MFA from Bennington and has written three chapbooks of poetry. Barenblat is a poet at heart, and her musings on religion, Judaism and faith in a technological world alone are worth the price of admission (which is free, of course, but still)
Boing Boing – Visiting Boing Boing is like stepping inside a Geek Clubhouse. No girlz allowed but cyberchicks and Goth Girls welcome. Hey, check out this crazy $15,000 handmade mechanical dragonfly! And here’s a guy in Australia who killed himself with a robot he built! And look: a rare photo of a Sri Lankan mouse deer! Boing Boing, the self-titled “Directory of Wonderful Things,” was launched back in the blogging Stone Age (May 2000). It’s quietly built itself into one of the most popular blogs in the world (#5 globally as rated by Technorati).
TechCrunch – TechCrunch is the quintessential insider blog: people read it because they believe other people read it and don’t want to be left behind. Silicon Valley lawyer and entrepreneur Michael Arrington launched TechCrunch in 2005 as a blog about dotcom start-ups, but it quickly metastasized into a powerful and influential arbiter of what’s hot and what’s not in technology investing. The site is now ranked the third-most popular blog in the world by Technorati.
Web 2.Oh…really? -This blog is a welcome counter balance to the relentless pom pom waving of folks that cheer anything called Web 2.0. Former Washington Post editor and writer Craig Stoltz trains what appears to be a permanently cocked eyebrow on the use of 2.0 tactics in mainstream Web sites and poses a heretical question: Is this stuff useful or does it exist simply to please the boss?
The Sartorialist – A blog that wears its passion on its sleeve — and on its French cuff and plunging neckline. The Sartorialist is all about fashion as seen on the on the street. It’s a daily repository of shared photos of ordinary people wearing kick-ass clothes, accompanied by sharp, sometimes stinging commentary. Subjects range from a colorfully dressed bicyclist in New Delhi to some guy wearing a cape.
Daily Kos – Everyday, Daily Kos reports “The State of The Nation,” at least that part of the nation that considers itself to be either liberal or a Democrat. Founded in 2002 by Markos Moulitsas (from whose first name lends the blog its title), Daily Kos has grown virally into the uberblog of online liberalism and get-out-the-vote activism.
The Consumerist – The Consumerist is the blog where shoppers can bite back and sometimes even leave deep teeth marks. As the editors put it: “We’re not anti-capitalist; we’re anti-stupid-capitalist.” And there’s lot of stupid capitalism on display.
Indexed – Created by writer and illustrator Jessica Hagy, this blog reduces the rich pageantry of life to small Venn Diagrams and bar graphs that graphically and (often hilariously) highlight life’s profundities and absurdities. One diagram features three circles labeled “laxatives,” “acne cream,” and “wart removal” sharing an intersection marked “no eye contact with the cashier”.
Wired’s Threat Level Blog – Wired News Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen and a small team of editors do a great job explaining privacy and security issues in the post 9/11 age at this Wired.com affiliated blog. And rest assured, Kevin Poulsen knows a thing or two about security issues. During the 1980s, Poulsen enjoyed a celebrated career as a high-flying hacker before being busted in 1991 and serving 51 months in prison on fraud charges. Who better to see privacy cracks than someone who used to exploit privacy cracks?
Regret the Error – Regret the Error is the media consumer’s revenge, a regularly updated compendium of media mistakes big and small. The big mistakes get plenty of coverage elsewhere — the plagiarized newspaper columns, the fabricated news sources, the memoirs that are — how shall we put this — totally made up. Regret the Error covers the big whoppers, but it really shines on highlighting the small stuff that the media gets wrong.
Bad Jocks – Bad Jocks, which bills itself as “Where COPS meets SportCenter” turns to the world of sports and poses a simple question: Who did something dumb today? Never mind the celebrated cases of stupid jock behavior — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and scores of major leaguers abusing steroids and then lying about it, NBA referee Tm Donaghy caught betting on games he officiated. Bad Jocks has all of the big stories but then drills deeper into even more unsettling territory: the Detroit Lions assistant coach arrested after ordering a meal at Wendy’s drive thru window naked.
The Reverse Cowgirl -Bringing up the rear, so to speak, is The Reverse Cowgirl. Writer, photographer, and artist Susannah Breslin’s blog supplies a rare commodity online: smart writing about sex and sexuality.

Two things are certain: Blogging will remain disruptive to the traditional media, and new uses will surface. “You are going to see blogging move to video and instant messaging,” says Werbach. “It’s just the beginning.”

In fact Video blogging by 2010 has become mainstream.

Have you been inspired as blogger or just plain depressed by the spread, depth, ideas and creativity on display?

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25 Blogs to Inspire You or Maybe Depress You