Lots of blogging happening over the New Year's holiday ....

Was that really Judd Nelson blogging over at Protein Wisdom the last week of 2004?

Politics in the Zeros notes that the animals seemed to escape the Tsunami disaster and wonders if they have a special warning system.

Skippy has added a co-blogger, Cookie Jill, and she fits right in. Welocme, Cookie Jill.

Mark at Norwegianity has the top politically correct words for 2004.

Roger Ailes (no not that one) has a year in review quiz.

Tom Burka of Opinions You Should Have has a satirical 2004 wrap-up.

Where is Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul? Her last post is December 20. Jeanne, come back.

Happy New Year to all, we hope it rings in justice and peace.

For those of you spending New Year's by a computer, here's an open thread for you.

Update: Some End-of-Year lists

Media Matters: The Top Ten Most Outrageous Statements of 2004

Fafblog: Thing of the Year : the Blog

Nathan Newman spent some of his Christmas vacation in Phuket, leaving for Bangkok before the Tsunami hit. He has some pictures of Phuket.

I spent a week in Phuket here in the late 1980's. It was beautiful. The Meridian chain, which now owns the resort, reports that none of its guests were seriously injured or killed and it did not sustain any structural damage. It remains operational.

Time Magazine's Man of the Year is old news already. Out today is P.C. Magazine's People of the Year and it is a joint award to Blogger.com 's Evan Williams, Meg Hourihan, and Paul Bausch, and Ben and Mena Trott of Six Apart , (creators of Movable Type and Typepad). I got a little surprise reading the first paragraph - TalkLeft is now an "accredited member of the Fourth Estate."

Blogs—short for weblogs, or online diaries—have been around for more than a decade. But this year, the blog found a new role as an accredited member of the fourth estate. Select bloggers were allowed the same access as traditional journalists at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, among them Patrick Belton at Oxblog.com and Jeralyn Merritt at www.TalkLeft.com, powered by blog tools Blogger and Movable Type, respectively.

Also prominently featured: Technorati.

Technorati, a blog-tracking service, keeps tabs on over 3 million weblogs in what has come to be known as the blogosphere. According to Technorati, a new weblog is created every 5.8 seconds, or about 15,000 new blogs a day. There are blogs out there for everyone, and the audience is growing: A February 2004 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project says about 11 percent, or about 50 million, of Internet users are regular blog readers.

Thanks, P.C. Magazine.

AmericaBlog says Bush was wired during his last press conference--and has the link to the video so you can decide for yourselves.

Say hello to CrimProf blog by criminal law professors Jack Chin and Mark Godsey who do a remarkably good job.

Skippy is back from Belize and blogging away, celebrating his 700,000th visitor.

Beautiful Horizons, the best blog on Latin American affairs, turns two years old, Happy blogiversary!

The Drug War Rant is going on vacation and leaves a list of some of the best bloggers around on the drug war, including Libby at Last One Speaks, Loretta at the U.S. Marijuana Party and Scott at Grits for Breakfast.

Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul has a Christmas story.

Avedon Carol of Sideshow has the latest on the election returns. Was it a stolen election?

Markos of Daily Kos criticizes John Kerry and points out the opportunities in being in the minority for the next four years.

Nominations close today for the 3rd annual Koufax blogging excellence awards. If you haven't submitted the names of your favorite blogs in at least some of the 12 categories, you have till 5:00 pm today.

There is tough competition this year in the "best single issues" category with all the great blogs being nominated. It's probably too much to ask to win three years in a row, but TalkLeft would like to be nominated. So if you have a few moments, and you think we qualify, head on over and drop our name. And put a few bucks in the Wampum till for the the hard work that Dwight and Mary Beth do every year on these awards.

Here is the list of 2002 and 2003 winners.

Update: Kevin Hayden has started the Perranoski Prizes.

As the Denver Post used to proclaim on its masthead every morning, "'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado." 300 days of sunshine a year. Here are some views from my new abode, taken today --southwest and west. The larger ones give you a much better picture.

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It's time for nominations in the third annual 2004 Koufax blogging awards. Go on over and nominate your favorite blogs. TalkLeft is the proud winner of the award for "best single issues blog" in both 2002 and 2003.

I hope you will nominate us again.

Update: If you don't have your own blog yet, the Washington Post gives you some pointers.

Since the advertising has dropped on blogs following the election, I'm back to paying for all costs associated with TalkLeft myself. I don't plan on breaking for the holidays (even though I'll be completing my move into my new home, another expense.)

As regular readers and commenters know, this site takes hours of my day and evening to maintain. What began as a fanciful hobby is now a news and opinion site read daily by more than 10,000 people. Between 300 and 500 comments are left on the site daily, almost all of which I read personally. Many of you readers return several times throughout the day, evening and weekends, looking for fresh material. So far, I haven't disappointed.

Without the ad revenue, I have to ask for reader contributions. There really is no other way to keep the site going at the current level. So, if you are a frequent reader, or if you just appreciate TalkLeft and want to see it continue and thrive, please make a donation. All amounts are welcome and appreciated.

• PayPal
  

• Amazon (Anonymous)
  

Thanks, and I do send out individual thank you emails to all but anonymous donors.

Say hello to Relevanta, another blog wire to add to your daily rounds along with Memeorandum and the Daou Report.

Ad and technology expert Michael Dissan at Personal Democracy has some good ideas for Blogads and for advertisers wanting to benefit from ad placements on blogs. With the politics no longer driving the ad trade, there's plenty of room. Idea number one:

1. Branch out.

If you visited a blog in October, you couldn’t have missed TBS’s ads promoting reruns of “Sex and the City.” And rumor has it that TBS is planning another large Blogad campaign around their new reality show “Gilligan.” In addition to TBS, Blogads were also purchased by Sharp Electronics and a handful of other non-political advertisers. Blogads should proactively market themselves to online ad agencies as a way to reach influential and engaged consumers. Just don’t let the non-political advertisers buy up all the ad space!

We were pleased to see we made the article under idea number 4:

4. Label blogs based on their ideological slant and physical geographic location

Here’s how you go after incremental dollars. Help those purchasing ads on one blog know about other blogs that also match its particular ideological or geographical slant. When someone checks out, take a cue from Amazon.com’s playbook: “People who purchased ads on DailyKos also purchased ads on TalkLeft. Click here to add TalkLeft to your basket.” While local campaigns are prone to buy placements on well-known blogs, they might consider others if they can easily discern their ideological or geographical slants.

Henry and the Blogads team were the revolutionaries this year in creating a mutually beneficial relationship between the political community and activists. That same vision, with helpful ideas like these from the media and ad gurus, can apply with equal force to other industries, particularly media (television, radio, music) and publishing. How about the travel and arts industry? Banking, stock market, food industries? We'd love to host them all.

[link via Jerome at My DD.]

The word blog has officially arrived:

A four-letter term that came to symbolize the difference between old and new media during this year's presidential campaign tops U.S. dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's list of the 10 words of the year. Merriam-Webster Inc. said on Tuesday that blog, defined as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks," was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.

Blog will be a new entry in the 2005 version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. The complete list of words of the year is available here.