For years businesses have avoided blogs, but are now realizing they cannot afford to do so.

Dr. Bill Ives provides a a comprehensive report of business blogging and why it is essential.

It's not a secret anymore that the web has changed the news business. The BBC like all others has a number of editors who regularly blog.

To their credit, there is self-criticism and openess about reporting methods. The blog generation continues to make its mark on the worldwide media.

Based on my experience, most people who work with SEO techniques are unaware of the history of SEO.

Now, more than a decade since its conception, Market Day provides
a comprehensive overview of the SEO industry.

The acronyms commonly used for search engine optimization discussions and reports:

SEO - search engine optimization
UCD - user-centered design
SERP - search engine results page

For more see Acronyms.com.

The 30 top retail websites in the United Kingdom do not provide customers with disabilities even the most basic accessibility recommendations established 10 years ago by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3).

The study by Nomensa tested major retailers including British Airways, Apple Computer, and Amazon.co.uk. All of them failed to pass the accessibility tests.

"These research findings show that anyone with serious physical impairments, the visually impaired or even just people wearing glasses to read would encounter difficulties and in many cases would give up trying," said Simon Norris, managing director of Nomensa.

"There are over 10m disabled people in the UK and I believe that each one of those has a right to be able to buy a Christmas present online for a friend or loved one this year."

Andy Beal presents a good argument for why businesses should switch SEO providers if they are not receiving the results and attention expected after dishing out thousands and thousands of dollars.

The article provides a comprehensive checklist to help separate the good and bad SEO firms.

In a continuing effort to collect reliable resources on SEO, check out the Wikipedia entry for Wikipedia search engine optimization entry.

Surprise, surprise, more large firms in the United States are collecting and selling your personal data.

(Sometime in the future: Sir, please step forward to get your microchip planted in your arm; we want to track where you are all the time. It's for your safety.

In a New York Times article published on FreePress.net, writer David Carr examines the power of the bloggers in A Comeback Overshadowed by a Blog.

Carr puts his New Republic editors' feet to the fire over an incident in which one of their reporters anonymously posted a positive comment about the magazine's coverage on the publication's website.

The reporter, Lee Siegel was suspended and later told The Times he got carried away. Of course, the omission that the reporter of a story was so overwhelmed by the verocity of criticism that he would post a positive comment anonymously to his own blog is troubling. Where would we be without bloggers?

There are constently new choices and challenges for web professionals to consider in how best to build and maintain web pages.

While Java-based platforms have been slow to catch on (mostly because of technical issues experienced by end users), Brett McLaughlin of O'Reilly and Associates, offers a tutorial to help developers implement
JSP-driven technologies on their sites for better performance.

McLaughlin explains JSP dynamic content and supplies server-side include samples, in addition to Java related resources.

John Lender of the Baltimore Sun joins the ranks of newspaper reporters explaining how significant of an impact blogging is having on culture, politics, and darn it, free speech. Traditional media has long resisted turning over any editorial control to "people on the outside," aka bloggers.

But with the influence of blogging permeating every faucet of society over the past five years especially, newspapers cannot afford to ignore it, and must dish out some editorial control to non traditional jojurnalists, those without the necessary training, experience and education.

This of course is a hotly contested issue in the world of blogging (I hate the word blogosophere; can we vote to change it?) and media conglomerates across the U.S. and the world. It goes without saying that many trained and qualified journalists are threatened by an increasing number of bloggers who are attracting readers and building a base.


Quick Clicks
Peruse Wikipedia's How To Copy Edit page with guidelines and resources.

Today's Highlights

An article from WebProNews provides some helpfultips and resources on web styles, as well as observations about IE and CSS updates.

The Miami Herald reports that YouTube is so popular that the number of video clips being submitted is now at 60,000 a day.