THE TECHWEB SPIN: The Best Technology Blogs

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September 28, 2004 (11:33 AM EDT)

THE TECHWEB SPIN: The Best Technology Blogs

By Mitch Wagner ,

First, the disclaimers:
Disclaimer #1: The headline of this article is a lie. This article will not tell you the best technology weblogs.
Weblogs are in such profusion that it would be impossible for one person to do a survey, unless that person drank massive amounts of coffee and devoted many months to the project, full-time.
I am not that person. I am tossing this column off in 20 minutes after having four—or was it six?--beers.
My expertise comes from years of reading blogs, and writing my own. What I'm talking about here are the blogs I visit several times a week to keep up with industry news. So, the real headline of this article should be: "Hey, Mitch, What Links Do You Have In Your 'Best Technology Blogs' Folder," but that's not very catchy, is it.
Disclaimer #2: The selection of blogs in this article is highly skewed toward my personal and professional interests. There are many fine blogs out there about software development, but that's not an area I'm now tracking very closely, so I haven't included any such blogs in this list. I am very interested in security (I'm editor of Security Pipeline); cyber-rights; and technology, culture, and politics.
Disclaimer #3: Not all these blogs are all about technology all the time. Some of them are only about technology some of the time. Blogs tend to be about whatever the author or authors are interested in, both personally and professionally.
Disclaimer #4: Many of these blogs are part of an Internet culture where foul language, gutter humor, and alternative sexuality are routine. Bloggers use strong language like "swell" and "so's your old man," and sometimes even worse. They'll occasionally link to a porn site if they think the site is goofy or weird in a noteworthy way. So if you like your entertainment G-rated, be warned.
Disclaimer #5: Do not taunt happy fun ball.
Enough disclaimers. On with the list:
Freedom to Tinker. This blog focuses on DRM, copyright, and related issues. Freedom to Tinker has recently written about software bots being used to play online poker, and how gambling sites are making attempts to thwart the bots, which may be an impossible task. He proposes a plan for filtering out porn on the Internet in a way that "even a strict libertarian might be able to love."
Joho the Blog. The author, Dave Weinberger, covers digital rights management (DRM), copyright, cyber-rights, and blogging. Weinberger has an air of cheerful cynicism that might well overlay a core of gloomy pessimism. He writes about being asked to speak at a meeting of the World Economy Forum, and says the pro-DRM representatives of the entertainment industry there were universally friendly, smart, passionate, committed--and completely clueless about the Internet, what their own customers want, and their own business interests. The entertainment industry actually believes (Weinberger writes) that DRM is something that their customers want. "They own congress. . . . So they are going to kill the Internet and they don't even know it. . . . Sure, there will be sophisticated hacks and analog holes and guys in back alleys with soldering irons who'll remove the hardware restrictions so your kid can include a snippet of a movie in her social studies paper. But that's exactly what losing looks like."
Groklaw.net. If you're following the SCO lawsuits against open-source companies, then you need to read Groklaw.net. The site and its founder, Pamela Jones, are enthusiastic and unabashed supporters of the open-source community and blood enemies of SCO. They follow open-source legal issues in obsessive detail. Partisan? You bet! But I'd often rather read news from a passionate partisan than from some dry, objective text; the passionate partisan has more pepper and can be balanced by reading passionate partisans with other perspectives.
The Gadgeteer. I hesitated before including this site on the list, because it's really more of a small online magazine than a blog. But the difference between blogs and online magazines isn't a chasm. It's a continuum. Webzines are starting to look more like blogs these days. Blogs, meanwhile, are getting bigger, more complex, and professional.
The Gadgeteer writes reviews of mobile technology and, well, gadgets. It's the place I go when I'm thinking of buying a new PalmPilot, and I consulted it thoroughly when I recently decided to buy an MP3 player. The Gadgeteer's review of the iPod is typical of what makes the site first-rate; it's a thorough write-up, using easy-to-understand language. I especially like The Gadgeteer's use of photos--close-ups of the front of the iPod, the famous thumbwheel, the display, even the box and the wires and connectors that come with the unit. A professional magazine art director might well run screaming from these austere, utilitarian pix, but they're just the kind of thing I want to see as a shopper. They're the next best thing to going to the store and handling the device yourself.
The Spam Weblog. Most of the common wisdom about spam is crap. The Spam Weblog looks at spam news with a smart, jaded eye. I love them even if they did make fun of Security Pipeline, the site I edit.
Blogcount.com. I just discovered this blog about 15 minutes ago, doing research for this article, and added it to my list immediately. Blogcount tracks statistics about the "blogosphere," including how many blogs there are in the world, what the demographics of bloggers are, where they live, and what platforms they use.
Blogcount says his gut feeling is that there are about 10 million weblogs in the world and 110 million people read weblogs. But it's really hard to be sure, because many blogs are hidden, either intentionally, by accident, or because the blogger just doesn't care how many people read what he writes.
Boing Boing. This is one of blogging's Old Faithful--been around forever--co-authored by four hip cats with brains the sizes of planets. Boing Boing covers technology issues such as DRM, cyber-rights, user-interface design, personal technology product design, Tiki furniture, science fiction, mid-20th Century pop culture, and sex. Recent entries include "SPIT: New Internet acronym!" about Spam over Internet Telephony; a link to an MP3 of a voicemail message left by an extremely angry Brit with excellent command of profanity; a note that the sims in the game Sims 2 can play Sims1, and an accusation that the new Star Wars bonus DVD intentionally includes a trojan that cripples firmware for users who try to play the DVD in modified XBoxes.
Other excellent blogs:

Crypto-Gram, for a smart, common-sense view of security news.

Declan McCullagh's Politech for news and insight on politics and technology.

The J-Walk Blog, which is mostly just breezy humor and links to weird web sites. But J-Walk has the occasional tidbit on tech subjects, such as the rumored Google browser, and tips for using the Firefox browser

Kuro5hin describes itself as "Technology and culture, from the trenches." Beyond that, Kuro5hin is hard to describe, just follow the link and see for yourself.

Scobleizer, by Microsoft employee Robert Scoble, who is the new face of corporate marketing. Is he a Microsoft evangelist? You bet. Does he sugar-coat? Nope. For example, he declines to evangelize Longhorn: "The thing is that I don't have any credibility left when it comes to Longhorn. Over the last 18 months I got out there and lead lots of Longhorn cheers. And now there's a changing of direction." Nothing enhances a marketer's credibility like the willingness to occasionally slag himself, or praise a competitors' product over his own company's.

Slashdot. You already know about Slashdot. 'Nuff said.

And, finally, the Unblog, by my colleague Barb Darrow. I don't know Barb all that well, but I like her a lot. We IM regularly, phone occasionally, and we even actually met face-to-face twice in the last 15 years. She's everything a journalist should be: skeptical, unintimidated, irreverent, a hell of a storyteller in print and even better in person. She knew the luminaries of this industry--people now regularly on the cover of BusinessWeek--before they were big, back when nobody would return their phone calls, and she has the scandalous anecdotes to show for it. You only get a glimpse of all that on her blog, but that's still good stuff.
Mitch Wagner is the editor of Security Pipeline.
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