Blog Monitored

I can’t remember my original reason for doing so, but I took “thejrelease” and performed a google search. Sure enough, the link came up. So I tried another, this time using “thejentertainment.” Then something happened. Another link came up.

Curiously I had been brought to an archive for a place called “All Consuming.” Even more noteworthy was that it specifically pinned one posting which had a picture of a book, its title, and what appeared to be an excerpt from a post on my blog. This would have been a benefit had my blog actually been only about that book, however it was merely about entertaining DVDs books, etc that I found a little interest in.

Not only that, but I came to find out there was a page referring other examples associated with my blog. (you can view it here, but the site will change after 30 days so it may not work after a while…including the next two titles) They referred to Homer, the Reluctant Soul: The Halo Tours and Essential Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man Volume 1 TPB.


I then wanted to know who the heck they were and found this, “All Consuming is a website that watches weblogs for books that they're talking about, and displays the most popular ones on an hourly basis. You can also use this site to add a list of books to your own weblog.”

Naturally my next thought was, how the heck or who made a program to find this stuff…that’s when I saw this: “This is a weblog detail page. It has information gleaned from Alexa.com, Google.com, and Amazon.com. Combining all of this information together, I can display a screenshot of the weblog, related sites according to Google, and products that have appeared on this website in the past.”

So I decided to check out Alexa.com since I knew where Google and Amazon would take me. At Alexa I applied searches to my web pages…this time I pulled up another result from using “thejrelease.”

Here under October 6, 2004 was copied an article that I posted, containing excerpts of an article I copied and referenced. This “Pubsub” then took me to Democracies Online Newswire, and then here http://dowire.org/. Where I learned “DoWire is your primary source for what's important and happening with the convergence of democracy and the Internet around the world. DoWire is a free, low volume, moderated e-mail announcement list. Launched in January 1998, DoWire connects over 2750 experts, practitioners, journalists, and citizens across 80 countries. If you are interested in democracy online - including politics online, new media, e-governance, e-government, online advocacy and activism, citizen e-participation and related topics, then join us. Each week, well known e-democracy expert and speaker Steven Clift forwards, with occasional analysis, no more than seven carefully selected messages. Posts include news, article, and report web links, event and conference announcements, calls for papers, and often uncover important "primary source" online resources, projects, and initiatives of significance.”

I also checked out Steven Clift who is “an online strategist and public speaker focused on the use of the Internet in democracy, governance, and community. For the last decade he has worked to fundamentally improve democracy and citizen participation through the use of the Internet. He seeks to change the world one e-mail at a time.... Read my biography below for the full version.”

So. With that in mind, keep your heads up…I think the news is cool that my blog has been used…it just feels weird without being notified. Granted, I use news clips and site the source via hyperlink or actual referencing…it just is different.