Russ Beck is another aspiring blogger like myself who hopes to make an impact in the security and intelligence blogosphere. He is also a fellow undergraduate of mine at Penn State’s College of IST. Today was his official launch date, and he currently has one post. I am sure that he will soon get his blog running on a regular basis and explore some compelling topics.

For that one assignment way back in the beginning of the year about the bloggers evaluation, I posted an entry about a blog titled Cobalt Blue. I looked at the amount of posts, comments, and people on the Cobalt Blue blogroll to better understand how blogs worked. I was just checking Google Reader to sees what today’s RSS feeds brought to me, when I noticed that Cobalt Blue had recently posted a new entry on a Youtube video.

Cobalt Blue has posted about three or four posts a month since my analysis. I still have never seen more than one or two comments on each of his posts, but that doesn’t mean people don’t read his blog. Basically all of his posts are videos or audio clips. His blogroll has a couple more people than it did than last time. He also updated his profile as well. It appears that his blog has experienced a small amout of growth in fan base. His content also steadily is added as well.

William Kamkwamba has a dream: to power up his country one windmill at a time.

-Wall Street Journal

Kamkwamba is a 20 year-old resident of Malawi a relatively small country in Africa. In the past couple of years he has devised a couple of windmills that power his family’s house: three light bulbs, one radio, and one television. At first, his family thought he was crazy with his idea of using a windmill to create electricity, but after studying a windmill in a magazine, he was able to build a 39 foot windmill out of blue-gum trees and used bicycle parts. With no prior education, Kamwamba electrified literally and metaphorically his neighborhood, and now with the publicity that African bloggers have gotten it, nation. What amazes me with this story is that it was because of African bloggers that this story was pushed throw the pipeline. After this news hit the blogosphere, a group of independent investors decided to fund Kamkwamba’s education.

After doing a little bit of searching, I found IBM, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s employee blogging policy. All three of the companies had similar guidelines. Employee’s are required to identify themselves and their position in their company. They cannot break the news on any events or release confidential information about partners, suppliers, or third-party entities. IBM, Yahoo, and Microsoft require employees to respect others and most importantly speak for yourself. Yahoo and IBM enforce disclaimer rules. Employees must include a disclaimer in all of their posts stating that their individual views do not represent the companies.

Yahoo specifically has a portion in their blogging guidelines about the press and media.

Press Inquiries
1. Blog postings may generate media coverage. If a member of the media contacts you about a Yahoo!-related blog posting or requests Yahoo! information of any kind, contact PR (pr-corp@yahoo-inc.com or 415-318-4120) You should also reach out for PR for clarification on whether specific information has been publicly disclosed before you blog about it.

IBM doesn’t want their employee’s bickering with other bloggers.

Don’t pick fights. When you see misrepresentations made about IBM in the media, by analysts or by other bloggers, you may certainly use your blog — or join someone else’s — to point that out. Always do so with respect and with the facts. Also, if you speak about a competitor, you must make sure that what you say is factual and that it does not disparage the competitor. You should avoid arguments. Brawls may earn traffic, but nobody wins in the end. Don’t try to settle scores or goad competitors or others into inflammatory debates. Here and in other areas of public discussion, make sure that what you are saying is factually correct.

I found all three of these guidelines were posted on employee blogs. After digging more into the Microsoft blogging policy, I found out that for quite awhile Microsoft didn’t really have any set rules or guidelines for blogging. It wasn’t until 2005 that Microsoft created a semi-informal policy. On the blog that I found the IBM policy, some other bloggers commented and made some recommendations to make the policy better. Blogger security was one of the reoccurring issues.

One thing I might suggest improving is the emphasis on avoiding personal, especially family, details. Identity theft, phishing, stalking, pervert predators, etc. make the revelation of private data more risky than it’s portrayed here.

Posted by vasper on May 17 2005, 06:55:00 PM EDT

From what I have gathered, here is my own version of blogging policies for the corporate world.

1. Identity your name and your position in the company.
2. Pay dues to discloser agreements.
3. Protect the interests of your suppliers, customers, partners and most importantly employer.
4. Don’t put any personal information on blogs.
5. Use company disclaimers to avoid misrepresentation and PR issues.
6. Don’t allow blogging to interfere with commitments at work.

The type of information presented by Pallimed is knowledge that would be beneficial to surgeons written by surgeons who know their profession. There are discussions about different techniques, medicines available, treatments available and general surgical procedures focused on cancer. The terminology used by the surgeons is in a professional tone intended for fellow professionals to understand. There is no personal information included, however the tone is the writing is casual, as if to suggest nothing is out of the day-to-day routine for the author. The style of the blog is professional, but easy to comprehend and informational. The tags that are included link to similar articles within the website itself that deal with with similar topics.

The cosmetic surgery blog on Blogspot.com is written by a cosmetic surgeon, but is not a professional blog. It is more of a commentary type blog that focuses on plastic surgery. There are many links included to in depth articles written by authors (not plastic surgeons), and usually after each link listed, Dr. Sali comments on the subject. Popular topics for discussion are pop culture figures, well-known people and celebrities. The tone is very casual, but an attempt is made to make it seem as credible as possible. The implication suggests that the readers can read about topics within the field of cosmetic surgery written by a credible professional within the field.

The intended audiences of the blogs vary, Pallimed is written for professionals and Cosmetic Surgery (blog) is written for the average person. Pallimed’s language is rich in medical terms and Dr. Sali’s is rich in celebrity gossip and descriptions. The intentions of their blogs vary greatly as do their professions.

For the blogging evaluation, I went to Vox. After doing some random tag searching, I came across Colbalt_Blue’s Blog. The author of the blog is James Naismith. Other than his name, general location, and interests, James does not list any personal information. I found this information on his About Me page:

Currently living in SF. He likes it quite a bit, he enjoys the sense of anonomimity, the feeling of being an outsider yet, an insider at the same time. Sometimes though, he wishes he could leave almost all of it behind in a cloud of dust trailing behind the beat to shit jeep painted powder blue. From there he would travel most of the country, but never forgetting his true love - the american west. All the way from the Rocky Mountains and back to the Nevada Desert. He would take pictures. Lots.On black and white film. He would count miles on backroads by how many beers could be consumed between point A. and point B.Occasionally stopping along the way to blast a wild hog or two with an antiquated bolt action rifle that has the bluing rubbed off in all the appropriate places. He would visit the smallest towns, the ones that don’t even have schools and count dogs as members of the population as posted on the highway sign. He’d listen to people talk, and follow them about on their daily lives, have potluck dinner with near strangers at the trailer outside of town surrounded with early november snow. Laughter and cheap whiskey would run quite freely. He’d get to know the cowboy in west Texas, the one that kicked out his headlights in a drunken fight with his girlfriend and drove home by flashlight. The young waitress at the Waffle House in Amarillo. The anarchist who travels through the west coast by train hopping. All the while photographing it. Perhaps he’d learn something important about life that way. He would stop and camp in the evenings watching the trillions of stars make their way across the sky. Of course he would eventually tire of this life that had little structure and move back to SF. Downtown this time, and hopefully in an apartment that has a good view of the bay and chinatown. A suitable 2 bedroom of course, with plenty of room for darkroom and enlarger. In the late evenings he would sit in the big leather chair that his grandfather witnessed the Kennedy assasination in, which faced the bay window that overlooked the bay and chinatown and spent hours staring into the fog. Just staring.

James’s posts range from small one-liners to analysis of News videos that he embeds from Youtube. He posts pictures from places that he has been to. One of the more interesting black and white photos was from a protest that took place in San Fransisco just as war in Iraq broke out in 2003. He caught this image of two gangster looking guys that seemed indifferent to the protest that was going on around them. James was arrested shortly after by the police.

Jame’s uses his blog to post images, videos, and comments about his life. He tags all of his entries and archives all of his posts that range back to 2006. He has posted more than 300 times. His interests include skiing, film production, photography, fine art, cooking, hiking, hunting, etc. James has posted everyday for the past year.