Blogging - weblogs

Whole Earth, Winter, 2000 by Mark Frauenfelder

WEBLOGS SITES AND SOURCES

A large number of weblogs focus on Web design issues, since many bloggers are designers. Here are a few of the best:

Uselt.com (www.useit.com) by Jakob Nielsen, formerly Sun Microsystem's Web usability guru and now a user interface consultant, is a fast-loading text-only site with daily items about the wisdom of simplicity in design.

Xblog (www.xplane.com/xblog/) is a daily list of links to graphics and design articles.

Kottke.org is the "Home of Fine Hypertext Products," maintained by Web Designer Jason Kottke. You're just as likely to find a hysterically right-on timeline of the evolution of portals as you are instructions on how to opt out of DoubleClick's tracking cookies.

Other blogs cover razor-thin niches:

The US President Biography Project (biography.editthispage.com/) links to articles on the Web about what else?--US Presidents.

Mozillazine (www.mozillazine.org) covers the latest news about Netscape's open source browser project.

Scripting News (www.news.userland.com/) is Dave Winer's blog about programming-related news articles that appear in online tech publications. He also hosts a site called weblogs.com, full of tools and tips for bloggers. Over 300 people have registered their weblogs on his site.

Larkfarm (www.larkfarm.com) is maintained by an old-time zine publisher and reviewer who hasn't been able to resist the enticement of weblogs. Mike Gunderloy, who published the incredible Factsheet Five (sort of like a blog for self-published magazines) in the 1980s, now reviews other weblogs, in addition to finding and commenting on the sites he comes across.

Blog Portal (www.eatonweb.com/portal/) attempts to list and categorize hundreds of blogs out there. The publisher, Brigitte Eaton, says that the number of new blogs popping up every day has made it difficult to maintain the portal.