but i was distressed to discover

that the original intent

of the expression ‘web logging’

(to log your websurfing

with public annotations)

has gone entirely by the boards

Jorn, by the way, was the first person I saw using the term ‘weblog’.

Webnote Happy’s a bookmark manager that lets you store the URL, title, and a description for a web page. You can also hit a hotkey (Cmd-Shift-D) to create an entry for the frontmost window/tab in Safari. It’s aware of Net News Wire, so you can set it as the ‘weblog editor’ and bookmark items in the feeds you’re reading.

You can incrementally search the contents of the title and description fields, which enables you to do a sort of ‘tagging’ of entries.

I like being able to stash away links without pumping the data up to my weblog or del.icio.us stream. So it complements, rather than competes with Buzz’s Cocoalicious.

Webnote Happy’s a Core Data application, so it stores the link database as XML in ~/Library/Application Support/WebnoteHappy/WebnoteHappy.webnotes. The enterprising scripter should have no trouble grabbing that file, and using it to generate Atom entries, or cUrl commands.

• No ‘about’ page.

  My about is more of a colophon, and that hasn’t been updated since last century.

  I should do something about that, neh?

• No author photo.

  Here I am in Maui last year. I’ve gotten new glasses since then.

  I should get a head shot done.

• Mixing topics.

  Feh, I’m interested in more than Web Development.

  But I don’t want to run a separate book/media blog. Come for the XML, stay for the fanboy. At least I put the natter on Live Journal.

• No list of popular posts. I guess I should put that together from the logs.

• It’s free (but you can pay for more features.)
• It provides Atom and RSS feeds.
• It’s geared for use by groups of friends.
• You can post private entries.
• There’s a great Mac client for posting and managing entries.
• It consumes RSS/Atom, so you can use it as an aggregator.

LJ suffers from the assumption that it’s a wasteland of angsty kids. Feh, I use it to keep in touch with a far-flung group of friends who don’t want a “blog,” per se. And it’s impressive software: millions of users, thousands of queries.

The one thing I don’t like about LJ is the template system. It’s something only a Perl programmer would love.

Update: Dori says: we thought about including it, and I realized that every time I’ve seen LJ included in a similar piece, the LJ’ers screamed “WE’RE NOT BLOGGERS!” Consequently, we agreed to skip LJ in this one.

danah boyd’s written on the LJ/Blog culture gap.

Laurel’s another of the first cadre of Webloggers from back in 1998. Her current web project’s TV Picks, where she points you at what’s worth your TV time, which grew out of her love for the series Homicide. She’s been at it long enough to have a following, and the networks now send her review copies of shows.

So Laurel and Kevin, I wish you many happy returns on the day!

Effective immediately, this Weblog is under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

Anita’s been active in weblogs and online-journals since the beginning, and she’s a keystone of the Seattle weblog community. I met her through Science Fiction fandom and Potlatch.

Please keep Anita and Jack in your thoughts.

Suck.com’s style: new content daily, the writers’ snark, and their simple (for pre-CSS) design influenced plenty of Webloggers.

My favorite piece remains the piss-take on Silicon Valley Techno-Libertarians.