ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

WHICH ARE THE TOP BLOGS IN ASIA? How does one measure the success of a blog?

In China, Ya.IYee came up with a list of “Top 40 Chinese blogs” based on stats given by RSS reader Zhuaxia抓虾 (apparently most popular in mainland China right now, with around 30% or 60,000+ users).

In Malaysia (thanks, LiewCF), Gaman compiled a list of “50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia” based solely on Technorati rankings while Blog Webmaster Malaysia Alang created a list of “Strongest blogs in Malaysia” based on Page Strength, a combination of different factors, including Google PageRank, Technorati, Alexa, etc.

In the Philippines, a few dozen companies pooled resources to sponsor and to present “The 2007 Philippine Blog Awards” in 12 categories recently (end march) — based on the evaluation of 14 judges. I couldn’t help but wonder though: Who in turn has/have evaluated the competence and objectivity of these 14 judges?

Which evaluation criterion (or ranking) is most reliable (or not reliable) to you? Why or why not?

Afternote 14-04-2007: LiewCF.com, listed on Technorati’s Top 10 for Malaysia, is not among “the strongest of strongest blogs.” Somehow, Page Strength shows no result for his Alexa Rank and listing in DMOZ. Read the rest of this entry »

FIRST, Sister Judith Zoebelein, editorial director of the Vatican website, was interviewed by Robert Scoble and friends at the recent LIFT conference in Feb. They discussed the relevance and challenges of using Web technologies for a 2000-ish-year-old organization like the Catholic Church.

SECOND, the Podcast Awards for 2006 are out. Among the winners are three Catholic podcasts: Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, it’s already Feb. Still, over here, utility is much more important than “the latest and the coolest”. So, here’s a handy list of the best Web 2.0 software in 2006 from Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 blog:

• Social Network: MySpace. Runners up: Bebo, Facebook, Vox, XuQa, MyBlogLog (Me> IMHO, MySpace seems rather sleazy. Academics, students and alumni probably would do better to join FaceBook. People keen on business networking would do better to join LinkedIn.)
• Start Page: Netvibes; Runners up: Pageflakes, Windows Live, Goowy.
• Social Bookmarking: StumbleUpon. Runners up: Delicious, TrailFire, Magnolia, Listible.
• Peer Production News: Netscape. Runners up: Digg, NewsVine, Reddit.
• Social Media Sharing: YouTube. Runners up: UnCut Video, JumpCut, Google Video, Revver. (Me> What about Eyespot? Like the remix feature there.)
• Online Storage: Amazon’s S3 with JungleDisk. Runners up: OmniDrive, iBackup, AllMyData.
• Office 2.0 Suite: Zoho Office Suite. Runners Up: ThinkFree, Ajax13, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Foldera. (Me> Just give me everything on the same platform as far as possible. Right now, looks like I can find most essential services on Google. Looking forward to Zoho Notebook though.)
• Honorable Mention: BlogFilers: TechMeme, Social Music: Pandora, Professional Social Network: LinkedIn, Consumer Generated Advertising: The Chevy Apprentice campaign, Online File Conversion: Zamzar (MS Office docs, images, audio, video, etc), Web Application Stack: Ruby on Rails, Mashup Tool: DataMashups

THE FIRST annual “Open Media 100″, a list of key players (in five categories: Pioneers, Trendsetters, Practitioners, Toolsmiths and Enablers) in the online blogging and social networking field is out — thanks to AlwaysOn and Technorati (which tracks more than 11.5 million weblogs and over 1.2 billion links).

Although many of these folks may never grace the pages of the high-gloss pubs, they will most certainly be keeping an independent eye on those who do. As we’ve all witnessed, this is already happening. Both Dan Rather and CNN news chief Eason Jordon were handed their walking papers after being busted by bloggers.

(2007-03-01 note: The AlwaysOn link above is now broken. See The 2006 AO 100 instead.)