Simon Willison’s Weblog

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Friday, 28th February 2003

Blogging and journalism

I’ve been pretty much ignoring the whole “Blogging vs Journalism” thing but recently I’ve begun to understand what the big fuss is about. One of the most popular arguments put forth by journalists concerned by competition from blogs is that the information contained therein isn’t as reliable thanks to a lack of an editor to check facts. Rubbish. I can’t remember the last time I read a technology article in the main stream press about something I have more than a passing interest in that didn’t have at least a few errors. Some of the blogs I read on the other hand are written by subject matter experts—these people are not being paid to knock out 750 vaguely relevant words on a breaking story, they are voluntarily providing their insights because they are heavily involved with the topic at hand.

[... 308 words]

Problems in Nirvana

Simon Phipp is Chief Technology Evangelist at Sun, and recently participated as a speaker on the “.NET Nirvana” Geek Cruise. His blog entries covering the event make interesting reading. To cut a long story short, after a couple of presentations on Java web services and open source coftware the Microsoft contingent at the event requested that he be barred from attending an evening Q & A. Simon makes the following observation:

[... 228 words]

2003 » February

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