h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I started a blog ( http://woodpigeon01.wordpress.com ) in 2006 and I have been updating it regularly ever since. It's a very eclectic blog, covering science issues, local issues, Irish stuff and occasional bits of humour found on the Intertubes. It also has a good few photos and videos from my travels. I had been journaling in H2G2 for years, but I found the inability to post photos and videos to my journal was a big limitation. From there it kind of grew.

The blogs I follow are equally varied. There are a few H2G2 friends, a few science and humanist blogs like Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy and Friendly Atheist, humour blogs like XKCD and other various people whose writings I stumbled upon over time.

I'm not sure what makes a good blog. Part of the attraction is a good writing ability: the ability to convey passion and bring a subject to life. Brevity is good. Long, arduous posts tend to be difficult to follow over time.

I would be skeptical about the blogosphere replacing traditional media entirely. It's a complement to it, certainly, but I'm not sure if it is totally out of the "fad" stage yet. Only a tiny proportion of people on this planet are really into blogging, despite what many people might think. Traditional media needs to change, certainly, but it's not solely because of blogging. If I want news, I will still go to the BBC or RTE or any one of the online newspaper sites. I don't see that changing.

I still use my h2g2 journal, maybe a bit less frequently than I used to, but it's good to drop a note there every so often to let my friends on h2g2 know what I'm up to.

I keep up with my favourite blogs using free readers such as Bloglines and Google Reader. My blog is linked to my Facebook account also, so that any entries I write in my blog end up being sent to Facebook too. Wordpress has a nice Tag Surfer feature that allows me to look at blogs that I am interested in, so I can find more bloggers that interest me. It also has a stats feature that gives me an understanding of the number of people arriving at my site and what they are looking for.

RSS is hugely important and I'm wondering why h2g2 has not embraced it as much as it could have. Every single conversation and guide entry in hootoo should be linked to an RSS feed. It would really help to open up the site much more.

Whoops! Sorry for the title : it should have read "Blogging and h2g2"..

"Every single conversation and guide entry in hootoo should be linked to an RSS feed."

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TRiG.

Ah. Now that is interesting.