I haven't found the right time yet to write about what Kevin Maney wrote a good article about in the USA Today. Blogs share a lot in common with their first-cousin pamphleteering. Over the past many centuries we've seen the advance of so many technologies making sharing information easier and cheaper. The printing press made getting a lot of copies of information out much cheaper than it had ever been before.

The argument is made that freedom of the press is only afforded to those who own one. Certainly blogging has made inroads in this area by continuing to cut the costs. The changes bear a strong resemblance to the advent of the laser printer dramatically cut the prices of sharing ideas and communicating information. Blogging makes it possible to link to other's information in ways that were previously not thought of.

Abundance

Rogers Cadenhead hits the nail on the head with his post about the doomed "nofollow" attribute. My prediction is a little different. Within about nine months Google and others will quietly determine that it has done more to hurt their databases and will quietly stop using it.

The problem is that the nofollow attribute won't stop the spam bots from polluting websites aplenty. There are plenty of ways to increase search engine placement that aren't comment spam. On the other hand nofollow will provide ways to prevent your link to a site from casting a popularity "vote" for the site but it won't stop the spam.

Nofollow was put together quickly with a few bloggers and software companies being given advanced notice but there was not a vetting that allowed developers to put their heads together and hash it out. Many people are frustrated by the process because they have to deal with attitudes that really are not helpful and their frustration is understandable but closing the process to outsiders is not the answer.

Until watching NOW tonight I thought it wasn't too bad to have a tuna sandwich five days a week for lunch. Turns out that the reason tuna is not known as a mercury laden fish has more to do with the spending of the tuna lobby than it does the mercury content of the fish. Maybe I can use the tuna cans in the pantry to make a thermometer.