Excuse my absence yesterday. I was under the weather with some sort of pollen-related cold. But now I’m feeling better, and I want to talk about the notion of bias in the blogosphere. I read an interesting post by Matt Coddington, a fellow South Carolinian, over on his Net Business Blog talking about how subjectivity and bias are (or should be) natural aspects of the blogging medium. And I tend to agree. But if blogs are biased, can they be a form of journalism, too?

As long as there have been newspapers, there have been writers using the medium as their platform to advance personal agendas. One of the first concepts I learned when I took an Intro to Journalism class in college was “agenda setting,” the theory that popular media can influence the masses by what stories they cover and how much coverage they give them. So, even if the writers try to be as objective as possible in their stories, their editors’ bias shows in the length and placement of their stories. Subjectivity is part of being human, and I think traditional media does itself a disservice by trying to hide it.

There have been those throughout the history of journalism who have embraced their subjectivity: satirists, political cartoonists, columnists, and now bloggers. And that is the beauty of blogging. Not that bloggers are subjective — everyone is subjective — but that they embrace their bias to provide their readers with content no one else can give them. Through the filter of the blogger’s bias, readers get a wholly unique perspective on words that would otherwise just lay on the page. Instead of “just the facts,” bloggers make the news more accessible by giving a face and a personality to what they report.

But do they get the facts right? Skewing the facts to suit your agenda can be a dangerous thing (Iraq war, anyone), but that’s why, if it’s important to you, you should get more than one opinion about a story. And goodness knows there are enough bloggers out there happy to oblige. On this recent fracas between Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team, I must have read at least 15 stories from all sorts of points of view before I formed my opinion.

In this growing world of subjective media, the onus is on the reader to sort it all out. And, while some folks don’t like to do their due diligence on any one story (the big reason why traditional media isn’t going anywhere, by the way), I’m of the opinion that the more points of view I read, the easier it is to make up my mind.

So, are bloggers biased? Sure. Is that wrong? I don’t think so.

Last Friday night, Jimmy Kimmel guest hosted Larry King Live, and the topic was “Paparazzi: Do They Go Too Far?” Near the end of the show, they brought on Emily Gould, an editor for the celebrity gossip blog Gawker. Apparently, Gawker — which I’ve never read — has a feature called the Gawker Stalker Map which uses the Google Maps API to show locations in Manhattan where Gawker readers have reported celebrity sightings. Kimmel, having been the subject of a Gawker sighting, lets Gould have it pretty hard, noting the potential ramifications of real-time celebrity tracking: “that way when Gwyneth Paltrow comes out of the movies, there would be at least a dozen psychopaths waiting for her.”

Now, celebrities and paparazzi have gone around and around in the debate about right to privacy for public figures, and I’m not going to get into that here. What I thought was very interesting was a line Gould came back with that redefines the rules of the game a bit:

“Honestly, I think that there’s a shifting definition of what is public and what is private space for everyone not just celebrities. The Internet, blogs, MySpace, no one has the reasonable expectation of being able to walk around the street and not being noticed by someone.” - Emily Gould

And I think she’s right to say the definition of privacy is changing for folks on the Web. But there is still — and probably always will be — a distinction between two types of public/private interactions. It’s the Cult of Personality vs. the Cult of Information.

Celebrities like Paltrow or Tom Cruise, etc. have chosen a public life in the cult of personality. People want to be them and to be close to them. While folks on the Web who participate in social networking sites are participating in the cult of information. People want to know about them and about what they have to say. It’s really hard to be popular on the Web if you don’t have something interesting to say (porn stars excepted). A majority of the time, users on the Web just want information about other people. Paparazzi and the abusers of the cult of personality want the people themselves.

Typically, surfing MySpace, looking at stranger’s profiles is no different than peeking out your front curtains, trying to figure out what your neighbor’s building in his garage. In the cult of information, once you figure out what it is, you’ve gotten all you need from that person. In the cult of personality, someone would probably steal it.

That’s the fundamental difference between these types of interactions, and I think Gould misses the boat by not making this distinction. Granted, she had Jimmy Kimmel ramming his foot down her throat at the time, but I think she does Web 2.0-style social interactions a disservice by lumping them in with traditional invasions of privacy.

And please don’t think that I’m saying all peepers in the Web 2.0 style are above-board (ask Kathy Sierra). The world is a big place, and there are just as many bad people as there are good. I’m just pointing out a flaw in Gould’s statement.

CNN transcript of the show in question.

Probably the biggest stumbling block on my path to losing weight has been a lack of motivation. I love food, and I’ve always felt that life is for living and doing what you love. Well, turns out that can be an excuse to engage in destructive behavior, such as over eating. Anyway, a couple of things finally motivated me to make some real changes in my life, and once I decided to change, I sought out some help to keep me going and hold me accountable.

My motivation for losing weight is two-fold. First, I just turned 30. Now, I’m not saying I’m having a mid-life crisis or anything, but let’s just say I’m starting to feel Father Time nipping at my heels a bit. Second, in the process of moving into our new house last December, I hurt my lower back pretty badly lifting boxes. I spent a couple of excruciating nights during which the 15-foot walk to the bathroom brought me to tears from the pain. Laying in bed in constant pain, I promised myself that when my back healed and I was mobile enough to start working out, I would once and for all get myself in shape. It took almost a month before I felt strong enough to start, but I did start. And I plan to finish.

So, I had my motivation in place. But I’d been motivated before. When I was 25, I dropped about 20 pounds and actually had myself in pretty good shape. I marked my progress on the wall calendar in my living room, and seeing how much work I’d done really kept me going. Problem was, when I turned the page of the calendar to the next month, all of a sudden, I hadn’t done anything. The calendar was blank, and it was literally like a switch flipped off. I stopped working out. To avoid that happening again, I needed to be held accountable by a system that wouldn’t let me just turn the page.

And that’s when I started One Thing New. Even though it took me a couple of weeks to get to my first Lose Weight with Web 2.0 post, I had planned from the beginning that I would write about that. My thinking was if I publish my intentions to lose weight, then I’m accountable to my readers. And if I framed it as a project (testing out and comparing two Web 2.0 weight loss sights), then I would have a tangible goal to shoot for. Pretty smart, huh?

As I wrote in yesterday’s post, Gimme20 became my favorite of the two Web apps I reviewed. Tracking my workout — I mentioned using a calendar the last time I tried losing weight — and seeing my progress grow over time is incredibly inspirational. You want to keep it growing. Well, you can’t turn the page on Gimme20’s tracking page, and I think that’s important. And it’s not only the fact that I can see my stats growing; it’s also the fact that everyone can see them, too. If I put my goals out there, I’m held accountable by the people who read about them. It’s very motivating.

I can say that I wouldn’t have gotten as far a long as I have without the help of the Web 2.0 technology I’ve used. My age and my injury motivated me. And the potential audience and viewers of my blog and my Gimme20 page have helped me stick to my plan. I’ll continue to track my progress on Gimme20, and I’ll probably post periodic updates here. But I think I’ve gotten over the hump. My commitment to change is finally real, and I plan to see it through — with your help.

Oh yeah, since I started my program on Feb 28th, I’ve lost 12 pounds. Not bad for a month’s work, eh?

As my faithful readers know, about a month ago I did a preliminary review of two health and fitness Web sites that offered some innovative apps for keeping track of your weight loss progress. The two sites are Traineo and Gimme20, and I used both of them to help me get started on a program to lose weight. This is part one of a two-part follow up to my initial story. Tonight’s post will focus on the Web sites, and tomorrow I’ll write more about my personal experience. On to the results!

When I started out, my intention was to use Traineo to track my diet and my weight and Gimme20 to track my workout. I set up my accounts and got started.

INTERFACE
Traineo’s interface is very well done. They incorporate AJAX elements seamlessly into their pages. I never got the feeling that I was lost, and all of the interactivity enhanced the site rather than getting in the way. The graphics are typical Web 2.0 (shiny reflections and big, bold fonts). Overall, Traineo hits it out of the park with their user interface.

Gimme20 has a more traditional interface without as much AJAX slickness. They still have the look of Web 2.0, though, with their vibrant colors and big fonts. And their “Build a Workout” feature benefits from the AJAX treatment.

My one complaint about Gimme20 is that I had a hard time finding my personalized homepage where I could update my progress. On Traineo, once you sign in, there’s a big, green button on traineo.com that takes you to your personal page. On Gimme20, you either have to scroll down, click a link to your personal page, and click the “My Fitness” tab or click on a small text link in the upper right-hand corner (”My Workouts”).

First of all, My Fitness and My Workouts take you to the same page: they should be named the same thing. Second, the default tab for your personal page on Gimme20 is “profile” where you see information about yourself like homepage and blog posts you’ve written. The default tab should be the fitness tab so it’s easier to update your progress.

I guess that’s a fairly minor quibble, but I think it’s significant.

CONTENT
Traineo’s approach is a survey of fitness, meaning they offer a little bit of everything fitness-related. They don’t dig deep in any one area like Gimme20 does with exercise. In fact, this is Traineo’s biggest failing. Tracking your workout consists of choosing from a preset list of activities, noting how long you engaged in that activity, and selecting from four levels of difficulty. Not a very scientific approach, and as far as I can tell, you can’t customize any of it.

Tracking your diet consists of rating your diet from “poor” to “great” and entering your total daily calories. The calorie bit is helpful, but I could have benefited a great deal from some sort of calorie counting app that would let me enter what I’ve eaten and calculate the calories for me. As it stands, Traineo offers a link to the USDA nutrient database, which is cumbersome and has a useless search function. They could do much better themselves.

One thing that Traineo gets right is their offering original articles in the “Library” section. They have some really good articles about exercise, eating right, and what appears to be a dead link for articles about motivation (not very motivating if it doesn’t work!). Gimme20 could really benefit from a similar feature. Adding opinions from “experts” would give their site some extra gravitas.

Both Traineo and Gimme20 have large communities of users, but I didn’t really have the time to actively engage in either one. Gimme20 seems to have more features built in to their community, but that’s just my observation in a quick look around.

Gimme20 lacks the diversity of Traineo, but what it lacks in diversity, it makes up for in targeted content. Specifically, Gimme20 focuses almost exclusively on the exercise aspect of losing weight. And they do it very well. Users can add exercises to a list from which they or other users can create custom workouts. These workouts can be tracked pretty much however you want: reps, durations, weight, etc. Users can either create their own workouts or subscribe to pre-fab workouts created by other users. It’s an innovative way to approach working out.

Overall, I liked Gimme20’s content better. I think it’s more important to do one thing really well than to do a lot of things halfway, and Gimme20’s workout content is vastly superior to anything on Traineo. If Gimme20 added a similar interface for user-created diets and nutrition, they could very well corner the Web market on fitness.

Over the course of the last month, I spent far more time on Gimme20 than I did on Traineo. In the end, I pretty much just used Traineo for its weight tracker, which I liked better than Gimme20’s because it calculates total weight lost instead of weight lost since last weigh in. Neither site is perfect, but I think Gimme20, with it’s depth of content, is a lot closer than Traineo, which is really just a pretty face without much substance.

Check back tomorrow to see how I did with my fitness program, including how much weight I lost.

Man, I love the Web. Just when I think it can’t get any better, there’s always another idea that blows me away. Over the weekend (when I should have been learning Ruby!), I discovered tumblelogs, and I’m thinking they might be the Next Big Thing.

Basically, a tumblelog is a mini blog focusing on short form, mixed-media posts that share the thoughts, experiences, and discoveries of their authors without much commentary to go along. Folks share photos, video clips, quotations, and whatever snippets strike their fancy throughout the day in their raw forms. It’s blogging at its most basic, and it is riveting.

While there are stand-alone tumblelog platforms, the best and easiest place to get started is tumblr.com. From sign up to published, tumblr was the quickest Web publishing app I’ve ever used.

Their posting interface lets you post photos, links, quotes, videos, or regular blog-type posts. They even have a feature that lets you post photos directly from your cell phone. And of course, just like a blog, tumblr provides RSS syndication for your tumblelog. You can even import other RSS feeds. All of these features are easy to activate with just a few clicks.

While there only a few stock templates to choose from at this point, the look of your tumblelog is fully customizable if you know some basic HTML and CSS. Tumblr is still pretty new, and I’m sure they’ll be adding more features and templates as time goes on.

My favorite feature of the tumblr interface is the “Share on Tumblr” button that you can save in your bookmarks folder. When you come across a Web site or a photo or a video that you want to post to your tumblelog, just click the “Share on Tumblr” link, and it launches a mini-posting window. You can even highlight a chunk of text on a Web page, click Share on Tumblr, and the hightlighted text will be automatically imported to your posting window. Tumblr makes posting incredibly easy and intuitive.

After the huge growth of twitter during the SxSW festival, there are a lot of people who think the next wave of social networking will focus on these micro-blogging platforms. I messed around with twitter, but it didn’t stick. Tumblelogs, however, have captured my imagination. Let me know if you feel the same.

Eventually, I’ll have a supplemental tumbleblog for One Thing New, but for now check out my sports-themed tumblelog, TumbleBum.