Death of the boring blog post Not Really!

This article is a response to Smashing magazine's: Death of the boring blog post article

The article says ( what everyone realizes anyway) that most of today’s blog  are boring as they all look the same and have mostly the same layout comprising mostly of text and some images thrown in.
 What it suggests is that bloggers implement a system where the design centers around the content and they give up the use of a standard template for every blog post ,.This is very much like a magazine , where each and every page is carefully designed with perfect images and an appealing but not-always-standard layout, creating a sort of a ‘blogazine’.

Well , it’s a really nice effort to usher in a new way of looking at blogs but signaling it as the death of the classic blog post maybe going a bit too far.

Here are some reasons why :

Blogging has grown exponentially in the past few years and a blog has become almost a standard feature on most sites which provide new information on a constant basis (This is being superseded by Twitter but that too is merely a means of providing links to proper blog articles!) . However, the majority of blog writers are still individuals who seek to share information on the internet via their blogs. For most of these bloggers, their blog is not exactly a ‘weblog’ but actually a website for themselves. This is because setting up a blog and putting out your content on the web is much easier than setting up a site. Setting up a  (simple)blog is a rather easy  process  requiring little or no knowledge of web technologies compared to the effort one would have to take to setup their own site from scratch. This ease of usage has enabled hordes of people to share information quickly and permanently on the internet. This precisely is the reason most blogs look alike; they weren’t made by designers in the first place but just someone who wanted to get his information out there and did it with minimal effort.
The process of design suggested by the article is not exactly what a web design rookie might be able to execute.

The argument of the article may be more applicable on corporate or professional blogs(which aren’t the majority of course) which employ a professional web designer. In this  respect , it would truly be remarkable if more blogs put this concept to use to design more elegant blogs which look attractive.

Well so what I am really saying is that boring blogs are here to stay!

Licensing Your Blog

When you write on your blog whether you are just expressing your views or giving useful information to people, you are participating in a creative act and creating something unique.And as such would like to let people know what they can do with your content and how you would like it to be used.Hence comes the need to apply a license to your blog which states explicitly what rights you grant to another person regarding the usage of your blog content.

With regard to licenses, there are basically three approaches
1.CopyRight 2.CopyLeft 3.CopyME


1.Copyright:Yeah ,who hasn't heard of this .Basically says that whats mine is mine and you're not even allowed to come close to it, except if you pay me of course.To implement this method of copyright , all you gotta do is put a footer or label saying that stupid line-'All Rights Reserved'. Not a very effective method of copyright and downright so for the internet. It just doesnt work here coz people are gonna copy text from your blog, link to it , discuss it and comment upon it while you keep saying that they gotta ask you first.

2.Copyleft:This word is just a parody of copyright but represents the class of licenses that allow you to use content but in a restricted and pre-decided manner.This is the type of license that is most commonly used on the internet.If you wanna use this method of licensing for your blog, then check out the following licenses.
CreativeCommons:This is a set of licenses which basically allow people to use your content as long they attribute it to you.It is a nothing but a form of lesser form of copyright and is accused of being more in favour of the content developers.The above link will take you to the creative commons license generator page and after a few questions will give you a badge you can put up on your blog.
GNU FreeDocumentationLicense:(GFDL):This is basically a license giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license.Many people do not like the fact that derivative works also have to have the same license but I think this is fair coz if i gave it to you free , then why shouldn't you give away it for free.The above link is to a footer which you can put up on your blog .Alternative you can just put up the image.
However,this may not apply if someone has taken your content and made something much better out of it.Hence, we have what are called strong and weak copyleft licenses.
FreeBSD License: Similar to the GFDL except that it doesnt require derivative works to bear the same license and giving people greater freedom to use your work.

3.CopyMe:This is a new concept which says that copyright is totally flawed and should be abolished.One implementation of this method of licensing is Kopimi.
Kopimi:When you use this license, you're not just allowing people to copy your work but requesting them to do as much as they like in any manner whatsoever.This means no attributions, no restrictions,no legal bullshit.Take it and do what you want with it.You can apply this license by putting up the Kopimi logo's in your blog.


Comment:Here's a list of published by GNU of all the licenses for documnetation that are available