The Blogging Journalist

Valleywag Crowns 'Media Winners And Losers' In iPhone Coverage

Valleywag has crowned the "Media winners and losers in the frenzy to report Apple, Inc.'s widely reported unveiling its iPhone at Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007.

Matt Craven Reveals Why Blog Media, Inc. Is Now Problogging, Inc

Tony Hung over at Deep Jive Interests today posted a significant interview with Matt Craven of Problogging Inc. He reveals why BlogMedia, Inc. renamed itself Problogging, Inc. He also tells why the company is getting rid of some blogs in its network.

To read this highly recommended interview, see "Is Blog Herald On The Chopping Block? Matt Craven Goes On The Record.

To The New York Times, Friendster's Abrams Is A Web Party Wallflower

Today's New York Times has a post on former Friendster CEO Jonathan Abrams and the gamble he took when he turned down Google's offer in 2003 to buy the "the social networking Web start-up" for $30 million.

The Times said, "Mr. Abrams spurned Google’s advances and charted his own course. In retrospect, he should have taken the $30 million." See Gary Rivlin's "Wallflower at The Web Party.

Technorati tags: Google, Friendster, Jonathan Abrams, New York Times, Gary Rivlin

VentureBeat Is Back

Matt Marshall, who left SiliconBeat at the San Jose Mercury News September 1, 2006 to run Venture Beat has "learned some lessons" about trying to get a start-up in motion.

"We launched early yesterday morning, but an overwhelming spike in traffic, a subsequent server crash and no fallback combined to shut down the Web site for a whole day," he said in a September 1, 2006 post. "We’ve learned some lessons."

If you are interested in what lessons were learned, see "VentureBeat is back.

I think this experience will make Marshall a compassionate blogger/ businessman, now that he's experienced an oops moment.

By the way, I like VentureBeat's feel and rhythm. It reminds me of The New York Times online.

Another Six Apart Apology and Compensation Offer

On December 23, 2005, Barak Berkowitz, Chairman and CEO Six Apart,"the providers of TypePad, Movable Type and LiveJournal," issued another apology and offered compensation for the TypePad outages that occurred the night of December 15, 2005 and lasting until about noon eastern time December 16. Apologies and compensation guidelines were also issued in a November 14, 2005 post headlined "Update on and compensation for TypePad performance." Also see this and this. In this latest apology, Bekowitz said, in part:

As some of you might know, last week on Thursday night and Friday morning TypePad suffered a severe hardware problem, causing blogs to be inaccessible for two hours and posting to be inaccessible for 16 hours. This was the longest outage in TypePad’s history, and given our performance problems in October I understand why at this point an apology might sound hollow. But the truth is, we are very sorry. The outage, of course, is inexcusable, and for us at Six Apart it was mortifying.

As someone unable to use his two TypePad blogs--I also have Movable Type blogs--from September 30, 2005 to December 22, 2005--I should be upset but I'm not. I was frustrated for a while because attempts to login led to a prompt that said I was being directed to an unsecured server. Well, who wants to go to an unsecured server, even if it's owned by Six Apart? I don't. I still can't logon from the TypePad homepage if I reach it from a search engine. I get that being redirected message.

For a while, I couldn't even retrieve my password, to make certain I was attempting to log on using the right one. TypePad tried to help but it didn't work. I kept trying and was finally able to retrieve and verify my password.

Although I said I was giving up on TypePad, I think I'll keep my TypePad Pro account until it expires next fall. By then, I expect TypePad to be so stable that we won't have to worry about troublesome outages. Is this wishful thinking?

Blog Updates

The National Political Observer and The Opinion Gazette, which I also publish, have been updated.

The Diplomatic Times Review

If you are interested in international affairs and diplomacy, please see The Diplomatic Times Review, one of my other blogs.