We just heard from Lawrence Lee of Zoundry that their Blog Writer app has been updated to support SSL and Blogger's AtomAPI. It's a Windows app for doing WYSIWYG blogging from the desktop.

Or at least that's what I took away from the NYT's piece on the evolving relationship between gossip blogs and gossip columnists.

Since you can't fill 40 columns with "These are different formats doing different things" why not conjure up a new v. old media smackdown! In one corner, we have octogenarian gossip Liz Smith. In the other, the Blogs That Dish.

Gone are the days when FDR used to dish dirt with Walter Winchell. Sadder still is the loss of all those fabulous hats the pro-gossips used to wear.

It's all been washed away by a tide of anti-hat, anti-old-lady bloggery. Ev - how could you be so cruel.

If recent news is any indication, this very blog my be in danger of dinosaur attack. Is there a blog you'd like to see decimated by rampaging dinosaurs, flaming meteors, flooding water, or just a good, old-fashioned slow burn? Netdisaster can help you out with that. (via Waxy)

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This guy shot a construction staple through his hand and now he's blogging about putting a second story on his house—by himself. Macabre? Perhaps. Good blogging? I think so.

He slides the chamber open and calls over the foreman to take a look. Turns out the gun's NOT jammed - it's empty. I shot myself with the last staple.

He writes about why he started the blog but hasn't gotten to the real work yet because there seem to be so many strange and funny things to share about the existing house. The x-ray makes me wonder how this whole thing will turn out but one thing's for sure: This house needs some serious help.

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Last year Jennifer Garret wrote an article called New Jocks on The Blog about sports fever and blogging. It looks like things are heating up again. The spring training announcer for the Chicago Cubs just wrote in to Blogger Buzz to let us know that he's blogging from HoHoKam Park in Arizona where the Cubs are training now. So if you're a Cubs fan, you might want to get an early start this season and check out Tim Talks.

Update: Jen Garrett wrote in to point out that she was correct last year when she wrote in her bio: "Jennifer Garrett is a writer and blogger living in Boston, and the Sox are going all the way this year, baby. All the way."

In the next few weeks, British climber Gavin Bate will be attempting a solo summit of Mount Everest, for a charity called Moving Mountains. He's blogging the adventure, and will also be phoning in reports via AudioBlogger. Here are the key dates:

• 28th March - Gavin leaves UK for Nepal
• 1st April - Trek to mountains begins
• 20th April - Island Peak climb & trek ends
• 24th April - First climb on Everest
• 24th April to 17th May - Load carrying up to South Col
• 19th May to 28th - Summit window!

Here's where you can follow along. Good luck, Gavin!

The latest issue of BlackBook is all about diaries, journals and weblogs:

"Among publishers it’s an article of faith that people no longer want to read books; they just want to write them. The old adage that everyone has a novel in them is being tested as never before, only this novel has turned out to be autobiographical. From television to the Internet, the confessional is rapidly becoming the de facto mode of expression. Everyone, it seems, wants to be heard. Responding to the spirit of the times, BlackBook invited a cross- section of the blazing talents and intellects in the culture to tear a page or two from their diaries or journals and give them to us: the result is a glimpse into the daily lives, concerns, and obsessions of some of the people who shape our world."

Featured writers:

• Salam Pax: "Dear Diary, 'resistance fighters' with Kalashnikovs and covered faces have spread out over the streets of our west Baghdad neighborhood."
• Alexandra Kerry: "Dear Diary, I’m going on Larry King tomorrow, my first press appearance since dad lost the presidential election..."
• Irvine Welsh: "Dear Diary, I’ve decided against taking part in Celebrity Big Brother—it would be crap being known as somebody who’s on the telly, rather than as somebody who’s actually done something."
• Ozzie Osbourne: "Tonight I’m heading down to Fountain Studios in London to hang out with my wife on the set of X-Factor, a new television show that she’s doing with Simon Cowell, from American Idol. I’m taking my jellybeans, and hopefully I’ll be close enough to pelt Cowell in the back of the head with some."
  

[via HardGuy]

OurMedia.org, a joint effort by Marc Canter, J.D. Lasica, Drupal/Bryght and the Internet Archive, just launched. From the FAQ:

"The idea is pretty simple: People who create video, music, photos, audio clips and other personal media can store their stuff for free on Ourmedia's servers forever, as long as they're willing to share their works with a global audience."

"Ourmedia's goal is to expose, advance and preserve digital creativity at the grassroots level. The site serves as a central gathering spot where professionals and amateurs come together to share works, offer tips and tutorials, and interact in a combination community space and virtual library that will preserve these works for future generations. We want to enable people anywhere in the world to tap into this rich repository of media and create image albums, movie and music jukeboxes and more."

Looks like Lions Gate Films set up Blogger blogs for a few of their upcoming movies. So far David Duchovny and Rob Zombie are blogging, and a few other DirectorBlogs are coming soon. Neat!

Wendy Cheng aka the award winning blogger XiaXue (Are you worshipping the ground she walks on?) scored an endorsement deal from a t-shirt company called LocalBrand because of her blog.

SINGAPORE BLOGGER SCORES A HIT
This Singaporean was signed on in December by a local T-shirt brand, aptly named LocalBrand, to endorse its products.

This could make the 20-year-old freelance writer the first blogger to receive a commercial endorsement deal, which has been the domain of celebrities.

Here is XiaXue's post about becoming a blogging ambassador.

If you're into newsreaders, be sure to subscribe to the Blogger Status feed — it's the quickest way to stay on top of the massages Blogger's been having lately.

Here's the URL: http://status.blogger.com/atom.xml

It just occured to me that there are Blogger t-shirts available at the Google Store. They're both comfy and we designed one to look like an old gym shirt. I love the descriptions:

Blogger T: "Sure, there are plenty of T-shirts out there. But this one is brown..."

Blogger Ringnecked T: "What better to express yourself than this handsome retro gym style T-shirt?"

They're both about $11 but you should be warned: If you get the lighter one, you may have flashbacks from fifth grade gym class. Like the time I climbed all the way up the rope and froze. I should blog about that.

Gosh, it must be Code Week or something at Google. My and Steve's project launched Monday on the Google Blog:

"We just pushed an updated version of Blogger's Atom API live, and wanted to post about it here to spread the word... In addition, we've re-launched the Blogger Developers Network (feed), as well as the moderated, companion BloggerDev discussion list."

Then today, DiBona's project launched:

"We're very happy to be launching code.google.com today. To begin, we're releasing some developer-oriented libraries and tools... We're also featuring links to all current Google APIs. Come check them out and if you'd like more information, please join our group, subscribe to our feeds, or if you're shy, email us directly. And happy coding!"

I just recieved an email from a Blogger user named Wayne asking if we were going to address some of the slowness issues with Blogger. We do still update Blogger Status (although there was a recent glitch with it). Performance is a huge priority for us and we're adding a bunch of new machines right now to speed things up. New machines are not an issue because here at Google we can add them quite smoothly as needed. The real issue is power—actual electricity, if you can believe it. So now we're adding more power in addition to more machines.

We use Blogger for this blog and many of the people on our team use Blogger for their own, personal blogs. We don't have a super-special employee server that gives us preference over anyone else so we are just as frustrated with slowness and performance problems. That being said, we are just as eager as you to make this fix so things will be fast again. For more specifics, again, please check out the status blog.

Eric and Steve posted a Blogger API update over at the Google blog yesterday. There will be more about that sort of stuff at The Blogger Developers Network so feel free to check it out from time to time if that happens to be your cup o' tea.

Thanks to everyone who came by our party last night in Austin. There were all sorts of folks showing up and it was great meeting many of you. In fact, I'm pretty sure there were a lot more people this year than there were last year. Maybe it has something to do with the state of the blogosphere in general. Who knows. It was fun. We gave out Blogger hats—and a good thing too because I recently got a haircut that is hurting America. (Photos: Club De Ville Sign, Blogger Sign, Duncan the dog, and the peerless Tony Pierce.)

If you're in the Austin area, you might like to know we're throwing a party. Food and drinks are on us—just leave me some hummus. I do so like the hummus. It was fun last year so we're doing it again same place, same time:

Club De Ville
900 Red River Street
Austin, TX
Monday, March 14th
6:30pm-8:30pm

I know there are lots of parties and things to do, but stop by. We'll give you some party favors, feed you, chat you up, and all the rest of it.

There has been an interesting development in the Apple vs. Bloggers situation. There's more about it here: Apple Can Demand Names of Bloggers, Judge Says.

Judge James P. Kleinberg of the Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose, Calif., said in a 13-page ruling that Apple's interest in protecting its trade secrets outweighed the public's right to information about Apple and the right of bloggers to disseminate that.

"The Photobloggies is an annual award ceremony celebrating photoblogging around the world. Through the Photobloggies, you can find some of the best photoblog sites on the internet, chosen by photobloggers and photoblog readers. Organized by Brandon Stone, Jake Dobkin, and Rannie Turingan, it includes awards based on geographic region, photoblog subject matter, and "best of" categories."

Rannie wrote to remind us that nominations for your favorite photoblogs are still open until Wed, Mar 16 at Midnight. I don't know if that is enough time to try your hand at creating a Hello/Blogger powered photoblog, but consider it a personal dare from your pal Jason.

Three of this blog's contributors will be speaking at SxSW Interactive this weekend and next week in Austin, Texas. Jason Goldman is on a panel called Blogging Showdown, danah boyd will be talking about How to Leverage Decentralized Social Networks, and Chris Wetherell will be starring in The Flash vs. HTML Game Show—sure to be an instant hit. Be sure to check those out if you're headed to the geek portion of SXSW this year. More about SXSWi:

The SXSW INTERACTIVE FESTIVAL brings together uber-geeks and digital innovators from around the world for four days of keynote speeches, Trade Show, panels, parties and assorted evening fun. Now in its twelfth year, this is the event where the web's most creative minds share their ideas about how interactive technology will shape our future. The 12th annual SXSW Interactive Festival will take place March 11 - 15, 2005.

Before our big May 2004 redesign the team blog was smack dab on the Blogger front page (old school Blogger). When we gave Blogger its new look, the team blog became part of the dashboard—this is a great place to reach our users because you have to be signed in to read it.

The thing is, we felt a little funny going on and on in there with all sorts of infotainment from the blogosphere. I don't know about you but to me, the dashboard feels a little like my personal space. Anywhoo, we decided to launch Blogger Buzz so the Blogger team has an easy way of telling you about stuff that connects to Blogger, blogging, blogs, and bloggers. So that's what this is.

Let's call it Celebrity Bloggers in The New York Times Thursday and leave it at that. There's another article in today's Arts section about Rosie O'Donnel's blog: Need Some New Luster? Try Rosie O'Donnell's Method: Create It by the Blogful.

"One of them finally said that I should start a blog," Ms. O'Donnell said in a telephone interview from her home in upstate New York. "I have had offers to do books, but what I do is too rough and raw for them. They always want it to be more linear than I think. This way I can just put it out there."

"The unedited rantings of a fat 42 year old menopausal ex-talk show host" can be read at formerlyRosie.

There's a nice article in the New York Times Arts section today called A Computer Is Also a Screen, Wil Wheaton Discovers about Wil, his blog, and his various other endeavors.

Thus was born wilwheaton.net, a site that celebrates his current roles: husband, stepfather to two boys, member of a comedy troupe, technophile, writer and, yes, honest, still an actor.

On the Web log, or blog, he chronicles his daily life, his small victories, his disappointments, his liberal views on politics and the health of his pets. He has also written a memoir, 'Just a Geek' (O'Reilly Media, 2004), based in part on those writings."

Wil wrote the forward to my book, Who Let the Blogs Out? and he also gave me a quote that I used at the beginning of chapter three:

Without my blog, I'd be just another forgotten former child actor, dug up every decade or so on a "Where are they now?" program. I'd be frustrated and broke. However, by writing in my blog, I found passion for storytelling, and maybe even a second career. I'm happy and able to support my family doing something that I love. —Wil Wheaton

Thanks Wil, and looking forward to watching you tonight on CSI.

Tim Bray has written an excellent post about blogging and work.

Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.
2. You have to get noticed to get hired.
3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”
4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.
5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
6. Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
8. If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.
9. If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.
10. It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

Note number 7, "Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people." Yes! More on that here: How to Network with Blogger.