Minnesota Realty Blog n News

Tom Wark of FERMENTATION has announced the nominations for this year’s American Wine Blog Awards. My work here didn’t rate a nomination this year which didn’t surprise me as my output over the past year has been substandard for such accolades, to be quite honest. So I think that puts me in the position to be somewhat objective and comment on blogging awards in general and these in particular.

My main concern with the American Wine Blog Awards is not the name, although I’d prefer something more international, no it’s the voting process. If the Oscars used the same system as these awards, ‘Spider-Man 3′ or ‘Shrek the Third’ would likely win Best Picture as they were the most popular movies last year from their box office receipts. Both are well crafted films but they are not in the same league as ‘No Country for Old Men’ which finished 36th in 2007 ticket sales but took the top Oscar this year.

Why this discrepancy? Because only those in the film industry vote on the nominations and final awards.

So I propose that wine bloggers consider an association that creates an independent awards program modeled after the Motion Picture Academy Awards. As a placeholder, let’s call it the “Wine Bloggers Guild” but we’ll change the name if the discussion warrants. I’ve started a new thread over at Open Wine Consortium for wine bloggers and podcasters to discuss this idea and see if there is consensus for my proposal.

My intention is not to criticize the American Blog Awards, just create an analog to the Oscars to Tom’s People’s Choice Awards. I think there’s room for both. What do you think?

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Original post by Tim

I spent the morning upgrading the blog to the latest version of Blogger so I could take advantage of some widget functionality. The upgrade automatically reverts the site to its original “vanilla″ version, so it took a lot of time to tweak the colors, fonts and various badges and counters back into place.

I think I′ve got it squared away now, but if you see something that doesn′t look or work right, please let me know.

Also, let me know what you think of the italic blockquote style in this post. Do you prefer it, or the previous bold-type style, as in this post? Or do you not care?

Might have some substantive posts later, but this took a lot of my available time.

politics, midtopia

Original post by Sean Aqui

I’ve been catching up on my blog reading today and noticed an interesting new feature of Google Reader: friends shared items. As I read wine blogs, I “star” notable posts but always wondered what the “share” choice was for. Now I get it and am enjoying reading links shared by friends, listeners and readers.

If we’ve crossed paths via Gmail or Gtalk, it’s likely that you will see my shared links automatically appear in your Google Reader. I’ve also posted the widget to the right sidebar of the blog so you can see what I’m reading. Because I went back and shared all my previously stared items today, most of what is there now is a bit old. Going forward, you can keep up with the best posts from wine blogs in my shared feed.

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Original post by Tim

I’ve been catching up on my blog reading today and noticed an interesting new feature of Google Reader: friends shared items. As I read wine blogs, I “star” notable posts but always wondered what the “share” choice was for. Now I get it and am enjoying reading links shared by friends, listeners and readers.

If we’ve crossed paths via Gmail or Gtalk, it’s likely that you will see my shared links automatically appear in your Google Reader. I’ve also posted the widget to the right sidebar of the blog so you can see what I’m reading. Because I went back and shared all my previously stared items today, most of what is there now is a bit old. Going forward, you can keep up with the best posts from wine blogs in my shared feed.

Original post by Tim

One of my blog subscriptions is to Hugh MacLeod’s personal blog, gapingvoid. If you don’t know Hugh, he’s the guy who is behind Stormhoek’s conversational marketing success. I interviewed him and Stormhoek principal Jason Korman last year.

Yesterday Hugh posted some thoughts on his blogging (or lack, thereof) that rang true with me:

clipped from gapingvoid.com So this last week I’ve been telling people I work with, I’m changing the game plan. I’m going back to basics. From now on building “the gapingvoid brand” will become my first priority.

Like Hugh, I’ve let the various demands of commerce get in the way of my blogging and podcasting here. So it’s back to basics with daily posts and more wine reviews. My bi-weekly podcast regime is also back in action, which will be maintained from here on. It’s easy to let this blog slide as it produces next to no income but it’s what the conversation triggers that produces the reward.

Winecast is back in business full-time… thanks once again, Hugh!

Original post by Tim