Loose Leaf Notes

Apparently blogs now have their own version of the Academy Awards called the annual “Bloggies.” Here are a few interesting blog facts that I got from a March 15th BBC report covering that event:
* Blogs had a big year last year, with a top US dictionary naming “blog” word of 2004.
* Technorati, a blog search engine, tracks more than seven million blogs and says that more than 12,000 are added daily.
* But a recent Gallup survey revealed that only one in four Americans were either familiar or somewhat familiar with blogs.
* More than half, 56%, said they had no knowledge of them. Among internet users, only 32% said they were very or somewhat familiar with them.
After reading that, I felt smaller than a needle like in a haystack, so I checked out some of the winning blogs for inspiration and Dooce.com was my favorite. It won the best US blog, most humorous, best taglined, and best written. The author, Heather Armstrong, helped coined the term “dooce,” meaning someone who gets fired from their job because of the contents of their blog. It’s not a DC tell-all-who-you’ve-slept-with; Heather lives in Utah, was raised Morman, is married with a young child, although, her writing is edgy. A photo posted on her site yesterday, shows (her) in a black T-shirt with boldly printed white letters that read: “I’m blogging this!”