Doctor Recommended

ProBlogs.org -- Your Mother Warned You About Us

Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York - Richard III

Several weeks ago, after writing a rebuttal to a blog antagonist at The Register, I shot an email off to Dr. Jenkins over at Microdoc, asking if he would like to participate in a collaborative blog. The primary purpose of which, is somewhat broad:

- educate others as to how anyone can blog (as seen in this fine post)
- explain why individuals such as Mr. Orlowski are flat out wrong
- demonstrate as to how blogs are the closest to the ideal of what the Internet was meant to be: personal empowerment, low-barriers to entry, etc.
- and much much more (for only $599.99/month)

He accepted the proposition, as did several others (see below). To that end, I whipped up a declaration, a schematic (which most should be familiar with already), a manifesto as to the current conditions of this New World Order (Second Superpower):

A spectre is haunting the Fourth Estate -- the spectre of blogginism. All the powers of the old Establishment have entered into a holy alliance to exercise this spectre: O’Reilly and Orlowski, Rosen and Hatch, Toolan and Iranian police-spies.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as blogginistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of blogginism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:

I. Blogginism is already acknowledged by all Establishment powers to be itself a power.

II. It is high time that Bloggers should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of blogginism with a manifesto of the party itself.

To this end, Bloggers of various nationalities have assembled in Cyberspace and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

Well, I’m not so sure about the Flemish part, I mean, do they even exist?

Anyways, that is my hastily adlibbed Makeshift Manifesto of Doom™ (Dr. Jenkins has a great one, I’ll link to it when it’s finalized).

Currently the team is comprised of seasoned bloggers (though, I am by far the weakest link in terms of longevity):

- Dr. Elwyn Jenkins, who among other things has put together a great service called Blogging Headline News, which is a compilation of thousands of blog posts updated throughout the day
- Michael Fagan, creator of the Fagan Finder (a handy search utility) and soon-to-be college superstar
- Richard Giles, an all-around web geek, currently works for Sun in the land down under (is moving and about to become a dad)
- Stephen Dulaney, in addition to having attended A&M at one point, this Jack-of-all-Trades is a developer of SocialDynamX (software that enhances Radio Userland)
- Roland Piquepaille, currently a computer consultant for Savoir-Faire & Cie however, he also has a great deal of experience with super-computing projects -- a hot topic in the blogosphere
- Tim Swanson, he fulfills the equal opportunity quota for this organization and enjoys writing about himself in third person immensely

Note: We each plan on updating ProBlogs.org periodically throughout the week; the site layout and design is not complete.

So If you know of someone (Waltz partner, Carpool associate, Pool Man, etc.) that you would like to start blogging, be sure to send them our way -- we do pro bono work, for a price.

Posted by Tim at July 2, 2003 08:37 PM | TrackBack