Duct Tape Marketing Channels:
Recently John Jantsch has partnered with many new authors to create a bunch of new channels for various related marketing ideas such as branding, pr, and innovation.

I think it is rather hard to satisfy the egos of a bunch of marketers & reward them well enough to keep them on. MarketingVox (formerly known as Marketing Wonk) is a good example of a similar type of project. It was exceptionally strong about a year and a half ago but seems to have slipped a bit as many of the channel managers have left.

Best of luck with the new project John, It's gonna be a ton of hard work to keep it going.

Speaking of Blog Networks:
John's network is a targeted quality one, but when everyone and their dog starts to make generic blog networks will they add anything useful to the web, or just try to gain a market position from which they can exploit profits by cluttering the web with noise?

The new Mortgage Refinancing Blog makes the Weblog Empire suspect from the word go.

Why as a Concept Blog Ethics = Garbage:
Not too long ago Darren Rowse mentioned what a horrible human being I was for mentioning a blog spam script. Yet when you look at some of the example blogs in his blog network you find zero original content.

Here is a good example blog from an ethical pro blogger: http://www.breakingnewsblog.com/depression/
Try to find something useful, original, professional, or compelling on THAT.

Cashing In:
Is a cross linked off topic network only abusing its power to manipulate search results if they are not wrapping the network in AdSense?

Should every socially connected person run a poker, casino, pharmacy, or credit blog? Or a network of them?

Recently Andy Baio noticed another powerful site hosting off topic high margin content.

It looks as though Google has already banned Syndic8. The comments are looking like they might be somewhat interesting.

Why did Adobe Buy MacroMedia?
all the reasons. no spin.

Algorithms & Patents & Spam, oh My:
Yahoo!'s Concept Network & SuperUnits

Is NickW for Blog Spam?
certainly not, when its done sloppily to one of his blogs ;)

The Wrong Tail:
people are starting to use The Long Tail without purpose. better get that book printed quick.

Yahoo! Buys TeRespondo.com:
a good post from Nacho.

New Blog:
O'Reilly Radar

New Browser:
Opera 8 Launched

Media Futures:
Media Futures, Part 1/5: AUTOMATA

Internet Advertising:
A decade in Online Advertising (PDF) - report by DoubleClick, who may get bought out soon. found on Lee's blog

Wanna Park?
viral marketing at its best: I Park Like an Idiot

hehehe. Jeff Alderson with another equalizer program. Blogging Equalizer is software used for posting links to a blog to get pages on other site indexed.

The software spiders a domain you enter and then spams a blog post on one of your fake blogs to have Yahoo! quickly index all the pages on that site.

I started another blog a few days ago and subscribed to the feed via My Yahoo!, and quickly indexed it. Sure this loophole will be closed somewhat soon by Yahoo! though as marketers create products like this to exploit it.

From his sales copy

And, you should keep in mind, if you're doing the "Blog and Ping" technique manually or paying someone else thousands of dollars to do it for you, then it might take you months, or even years, to make back your investment in time and money...

As far as I can tell there is no reason or value add in buying the software.

• Most blog software programs can be configured to ping automatically. I believe WordPress already is.

• You can set up a blog free at numerous places.
• You can subscribe to the feed quickly via My Yahoo! (which this software requires you to do anyway).
• Xenu link slueth (and some other programs) can create site maps free.

Jeff Alderson, where is the value add in your blog spam software? Surely the legit blog spam software annoys people and builds link popularity, but I can't see this software doing much to save most people time.

So a new Pope was elected. I do not follow religion much, but I do offer legitimate charities my ebook free.

A friend of mine does a good amount of link building and runs a few topical blogs.

One of his recent blogs was featured in AOL, BBC, Yahoo!, CNN, MSNBC, Salon, Guardian Unlimited, etc etc etc

He created a blog about the Pope, which was a unique idea when he did it. Many people could do well to write about their interests even if they do not have a business model in mind. Odds are if you enjoy the topic it will show in your writing and it will not seem like work.

Not every site has to make money. Some provide valuable services or build social currency. From that sometimes you can make profits in other ways, or maybe only profit from a spiritual front.

Pope Benedict XVI was just elected, and no doubt if Andy keeps enjoying and working as hard as he has been he will continue to have a voice in that space.