Looking for a blog in a haystack

BusinessWeek
July 25, p.38

Time is rife for blog search engine. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN may soon plunge into blog search. A protype Yahoo blog search page was briefly spotted before the company pulled it back.

Most of blog search engines today are slow. Bloggers, who count on Technorati, Feedster and Blogdigger to track down who's writing about them and their blogs, are pressing for faster search. Blending blog into web is challenging since it requires adding time into traditional search, which is based on page ranking.

'The challenge is to marry this orderly web with the blogosphere's never-ending flood of perishable posts. Searching the blogs for key words shouldn't be so hard. The challenge, though, is figuring out which posts should rank atop the results. Should it simply be the most recent? Or from a popular blogger? Or perhaps a blogger already bookmarked by the user, or even by those on the user's buddy list?"

"Search engines may initially wall off blogs from the rest of the web. But the more ambitious goal is to provide readers- and advisers-with just the right blend. This work will push the search wizards to spin their most dazzling algorithms yet. But those who pull it off stand to become powerhouses in the blog world, dispenser of everyday's buzz"

Let them Eat cake-and blog about it

France's passion for web logs is beginning to alter the political and business climate
BusinessWeek, July 11, 2005, P. 48

4.9% of French population have their own blogs, the highest in Europe.

"France has a long tradition of public protest, from the 1789 revolution to the carricades of 1968 to the frequent strikes that snarl public services:'French people love to tell everyone exactly what's on their minds'"

Ublog.com, a french blog host was aquired by Six Apart. THe biggest promoter of French blogging is Skyrock, a radio station that launched a free blog-hosting service since 2002.

"...blogging clearly played a role in France's May 29 vote against the European Constitution. An anti-constitution site run by Marseille schoolteacher Etienne Chouard drew 700,000-plus hits. "During this campaign there was a loss of credibility in the traditional media, and more and more people turned toward alternative sources," says Nicolas Vanbremeersch, who runs a blog featuring commentary on both sides of the issue.Corporate France is also giving blogging a whirl. "

"One of the country's best-known blogs is that of Michel-Edouard Leclerc, the head of E. Leclerc, a leading French retailer. Recent postings range from a lampoon of the government's anti-inflation policies to an emotional response to the release of a French journalist from captivity in Iraq. Leclerc, who started the blog early this year as an extension of a personal diary he has kept for 30 years, has this advice for other CEOs: "Don't be afraid of it. It's a way to concentrate your thoughts, test your ideas, accept criticism."