The DIY Network has a show called Blog Cabin where bloggers helped build a cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains. Blog Cabin is DIY Network’s newest hit series, featuring popular expert hosts who pitch in to bring the Kinzel Springs retreat to life. Watch us build the cabin one blog at a time, then enter daily for a chance to win it! From February until early April, 2007, DIY Network.com invited visitors to vote each day on 13 design areas for a future cabin to be built in the Great Smoky Mountains. Thousands decided on such areas as the floor plan, roof, countertops, even the front door. The results are here, and so are the build projects. Knoxnews.com reports that the cabin was “designed, discussed and tweaked” by bloggers. They also say the show has a big web following. What program viewers see is a structure designed, discussed and even tweaked by Internet bloggers. Thirteen parts of the building, from floor plan to front door, were voted on and blogged about on the channel’s companion Web site, www.DIYnetwork.com, from February to early April this year. The Web site’s blog cabin section has had more than 2 million page views since February. More than 2,800 blog comments were posted and 4.2 million votes cast to select the cabin features. “I was surprised by the sheer numbers, frankly,” says Freddy James, DIY vice president for programming. “It’s amazing how much having creative input in a home-building project really resonates with people.” It looks as if we are reporting this a little late because some episodes of the show have run already. The winners of the show will be announced on October 28th. You can read the Blog Cabin blog here. The show’s website is located here. There is also a time lapse video of the cabin being built here. We like the name of this show - maybe they will build another Blog Cabin in 2008. Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

How Much Are The Top Blogs Worth?
24/7 Wall St has a post (hat tip Silicon Valley Insider) asking who is going to buy the big blogs. Take Huffington. According to research firm Compete, it has an audience almost as large as the online version of the Philadelphia Inquirer. As a part of a larger newspaper organization like The New York Times (NYT) or Washington Post (WPO), that audience could probably be much bigger. NYT and WPO need a Huffington or two. Their internet revenues are under 10% of their total and not growing fast enough to keep up with falling print sales. Huffington has raised $10 million in VC money. What is it worth? $100 million. Maybe more. Worth it for The Times or The Post. With the trouble that are in, yes. The big tech blogs are even larger than Huffington. According to internet measurement service, TechCrunch has an audience about a third of CNet (CNET). And CNet is in bad shape. It’s blog business has not caught on. In early 2006, its shares were $16. Now they trade at under $8. Do they need a way to improve their reach and image with the online tech crowd? The $100 million evaluation may be steep - even fairy tale steep - but there’s no question the major media companies will start looking to acquire the big blogs. Technically, they already have started. TreeHugger, which ranks 17th on the Technorati 100, recently sold for an estimated $10 million so the higher ranked and higher trafficked Huffington Post and TechCrunch sites should be able to sell for over $10 million. Some traffic may be lost if there is no talent movement as part of the deal. If the blog’s founder(s) do not continue to blog following a sale people might lose interest in the bog. There is also the risk that a blog may not be as interesting once it is no longer independent. But popular blogs have constant traffic, large numbers of feed subscribers, tens of thousands of inbound links and large archives of content. At some point it will be easier for the big media companies to just buy the wheel rather than try to reinvent it. Posted in Blogging Industry News Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia to Launch Marthapedia
Ad Age recently reported (hat tip 5 Blogs Before Lunch) that the new social network and user-generated content website from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will be called Marthapedia. Martha Stewart, the paragon of expertise as content, is adopting the style of social media for her next website — to be called “Marthapedia.” But Ms. Stewart, who didn’t get where she is by suggesting that the hoi polloi know more than she does, made clear that Marthapedia will not be so freewheeling as, say, Wikipedia. Editors at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will check to see if the public’s ideas are better than their own, she said. The site initially will be seeded with existing content from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, such as Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook, but will open for information and suggestions from the public, Ms. Stewart told an Advertising Week audience this morning. “It will be a very interesting site,” she said. That’s a slight change from last year when the buzz was that the new Martha Stewart website was going to be more of a social network. Bloggers tossed around name ideas like MarthaSpace and MyMartha. Marthapedia already has plenty of competition from crafts blogs and websites geared towards crafters but there’s likely room for expert and user-generated content organized and overseen by Martha Stewart’s staff. Martha Stewart does have her own crafts line and she is known for her creative ideas. Martha Stewart’s web products have always had more of a guru attidute than a web community so it will be interesting to see whether wikis are a good thing for the craft, fashion, recipe and weddings giant. It will also be interesting to see if they ever try anything new like targeting the growing technology modding trend you see on sites like Makezine.com — it seems like they are missing one of the biggest do-it-yourself trends. Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Some Restaurants Embrace Bloggers While Others Fear the Snark
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article last week about food bloggers and social sites like Yelp.com where people can post reviews of restaurants and local business. The WSJ said some restaurants were feeding bloggers for free. Some restaurant owners also took matters into their own hands and simply wrote positive reviews of their own restaurants under fake names. As online food sites become increasingly influential in the restaurant business, chefs and owners are plying bloggers with free meals to get good write-ups. Some are also posting favorable reviews about themselves on popular Web sites or becoming Internet scribes. Among those using the tactics are some of the biggest names in the business. Terrance Brennan, co-owner and chef of New York’s Artisanal Bistro and Picholine, hosted a cheese class for bloggers last year, waiving the usual $75-a-person fee. Bill Telepan, chef and co-owner of Telepan in New York, donated a $200, four-course meal to one influential blogger’s online contest. And in Washington, the Park Hyatt’s Blue Duck Tavern says it invited a customer back for a free Father’s Day meal after she posted a negative comment on the Washington Post’s Web site. (In a follow-up post, the diner wrote, “We will definitely return to Blue Duck Tavern,” not mentioning that she had been invited free.) Chefs at some restaurants are finding it beneficial to have bloggers give feedback on dishes. Chefs say there’s another upside to getting chummy with bloggers: advice on improving the food. In San Francisco, Chef Robbie Lewis of Bacar restaurant says he considers Ms. Gagliardi, of Tablehopper, “a friend” at this point. After hosting her at a “friends and family dinner” — a meal to try out new dishes on close associates about a month after starting as the executive chef at the restaurant — Mr. Lewis took her advice. He changed the way he plated a roasted baby leek dish, so it was easier for diners to get a taste of poached egg and sauce with each bite. “I can’t get feedback from other critics before publication,” says Mr. Lewis. Ms. Gagliardi didn’t write a subsequent review, but frequently mentions events at Bacar on her site. It’s relatively easy for restaurants to ingratiate themselves to key food bloggers. Publicists across the industry say they now include bloggers and food Web site forum hosts on their media lists, and regularly invite them to opening parties, free meals and other events. What helps some restaurants may be too much for smaller establishments and cafes to handle. Screenwerk blogs that a cafe in Oakland, California called Rooz Cafe does not appreciate “Yelpers” - reviewers from the Yelp.com website and has posted a sign that says “No Yelpers.” What I was told, in a nutshell, is that the caf? staff has encountered a stream of would-be critics “with attitude,” predisposed to take issue with or be critical of the business. Whether or not this is a correct perception, there are many more outlets (Yelp being only one) for customers and consumers to voice opinions about businesses on the Internet. And there’s little most of these businesses can do about it, for better or for worse. The staff said to me rhetorically, “If you’ve got a problem with something, you should tell us first rather than going online and posting.” They also expressed the view that amateur reviewers, in this case from Yelp, were not making distinctions between local coffee houses and large corporate outlets like Starbucks. They were, the cafe staff argued, being “snarky” for entertainment reasons or to impress the Yelp community but not being respectful or mindful of the potential impact their reviews might have on a small businesses. The reviews for Rooz can be found here and they seem to only be increasing thanks to the “No Yelpers” sign. There’s even a couple Soup Nazi references in there. The cafe actually has four out of five stars after 226 reviews. That’s pretty good but it’s those isolated snarky ones Rooz doesn’t like. Posted in Food Blogs Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Jewelry Store
jewelry Store Customer Review: On the brink… The second release from the capitol years is truely a mini-masterpiece. Lead singer, Shai Halperin writes like a folk singer, but the capitol years are all about the rock. This album channels the Beatles, Guided By Voices and the Velvet Underground. Moe Tucker and Paul […]

Waterpik Performance Five Mode Hand Held Showerhead VARIATION
Waterpik Performance Five Mode Hand Held Showerhead –VARIATION Customer Review: Love it This is a great item. I purchased one for each of the bathrooms in my condo and I love them. The installation is a breeze, took all of 5 minutes. Plus the directions give you the option to take out the “low-flow” […]

Google Launches AdSense Video Units
The New York Times reports on Google’s clever plans to turn its very popular YouTube video sharing service into a video syndication service. The Internet search giant is expected to introduce a service on Tuesday to allow Web sites in its ad network to embed relevant videos from some YouTube content creators. A Web site or blog specializing in hiking, for instance, might choose to embed hiking videos from YouTube. The service, which represents the first major combination of a Google product with YouTube, will give video creators wide distribution beyond YouTube via Google’s network, known as AdSense. Since the videos will be surrounded by ads, the service is another way for Google to cash in on the huge number of video clips stored on YouTube. Several other networks distribute videos and ads on the Web, but none reach as many Web sites as AdSense. Google said it would share revenue from the ads with the creators of the videos and with the Web sites that embed them, though it declined to specify what percentage of the revenue will be kept by each party. If the television networks aren’t going to turn website into syndication channels Google will it seems. For now these are generally just very short video clips but in the future full television shows could be syndicated in a similar manner. Google has an introductory post about the new video units here. There is also a faq. The faq says the ads in the video units will be both pay-per-click and CPM based. It says reporting will be different for these ads than other AdSense ads. Website owners can select video content by selecting specific categories or by choosing a specific provider. This will be a big deal for video publishers. Google says AdSense publishers can select specific providers so video publishers will be trying to get AdSense users to syndicate their videos. NewTeeVee has a short list of who some of the early video content providers are. Read/WriteWeb says Google is expected to expand the number of video providers — currently only a few YouTube user channels are being syndicated. Ads have been run along side a very select few user channels on the YouTube site for a handful of months but these reports indicate that the program will be made much wider and be taken off of the site all around the web. Here is an explanatory video from Google about their video units. Posted in Videos Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

It’s Good to Be a Bundled Feed
Google has a post explaining the addition of subscriber numbers to its Google Reader service. There’s been a lot of discussion this weekend about the subscriber counts that have recently appeared in Reader’s search results. Leaderboards have been drawn up, numbers are being compared and in some cases there’s confusion as to how these numbers compare with other subscriber metrics. Additionally, we’ve made changes (some as recently as today) as to how counts are being calculated. This is probably going to be pretty boring unless you’re a feed publisher, but we thought it would be best to explain things a bit. Here are the various numbers you may come across, and what they all mean: Google subscriber counts: These numbers include subscribers across all Google services, including Reader, iGoogle, and Orkut. You can see them in Reader’s feed search results (pictured below) and the Google Webmaster Tools. Additionally, our crawler reports them to the publisher each time we fetch the feed. Reader’s feed search was recently showing stale and incomplete data, but as of today (October 15) the numbers should be the same everywhere. Mashable notes that feeds that have been included in one of the feed bundles on Google Reader tend to have the highest subscriber figures. That’s probably true with any news reader that offers bundles. People are more likely to add one of the bundles which auto-subscribes them to all the feeds in the bundle. However, these readers won’t necessarily become regular readers of all the feeds contained in the bundle - they may never even read a single one of the feeds. Still it would sure be nice to have your feed offered in one of the bundles. Mashable says the best way for that to happen is “by striking a deal with the feedreader company or being friends with the owner.” Some of the same feeds have been bundled on Google Reader for quite a while. It would be nice if Google Reader and some of the other feed bundlers would mix it up a little bit and give other feeds a chance to be King for a while. Posted in RSS Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 2:47 am and is filed under Celebrity Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.