We're Going On A Blog Hunt - Part Six

The following concludes my exploration of the 25 best blogs, as named by Time Magazine. Since we’re getting down to the blogs that caught my attention the least (with one notable exception), I’m only going to have a quick look at them and rely mainly on the Time commentary.

TechCrunch is dedicated to profile new Internet technologies and companies. If you want to learn about 8hands, Fandango, Jookster, and sodahead, this is the place.

In contrast, Web 2.0h really? proclaims itself to be ‘a skeptic’s guide to emerging web technologies’. One of the (reportedly) most popular posts on this blog argued that newspaper bylines should be done away with, in line with New Media thinking. I like the idea, although I can’t say I notice the bylines anyway.

Wired’s Threat Level deals with privacy and security issues. According to Time, the Senior Editor was a hacker in the 1980s that spent 51 months in jail for fraud charges. On Threat Level, he uncovered 744 registered sex offenders with MySpace accounts, leading to one arrest. Click on The Ridiculous to find out about the producer who got busted for selling adult content to adults, and the Egyptian government’s plans to obtain royalties for replicas of the pyramids.

It’s a pity I’ve run out of steam by this stage, because The Daily Dish looks like it could be a good find. Time reckon that the author has the rare quality of admitting his mistakes, for example, his support of the Iraq war (take note, Hillary!) And supposedly he supported Bush in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. I’ll come back when I have a bit more time on my hands, say, when I’m at work or something.

And finally, there’s Freakonomics, the blog version of possibly the greatest non-fiction book in human history. For anyone who is unfamiliar with Freakonomics, it aims to uncover the hidden side of everything through innovative use of statistical techniques. It’s fair to say that I’ve basically been ripping it off for the past eighteen months. But this little exercise has confirmed for me that Freakonomics has what I think are all the best qualities in a blog. It has a small number of contributors that between them contribute a few quality posts a day. It has a clear theme and vision of what it wants to do, without becoming a one-trick pony. It treats all subjects as worthy of notice, as long as they are of interest and are likely to provoke discussion. And despite the big names that write for it, it is not a victim to the cult of celebrity.

That’s just like this blog, right? Wait, don’t answer that…