Beckham heads to N.Y.C. to debut her posh new fashion collection. Plus: Owen in Paris, Brad & Angelina and more

Greg Gutfeld at Fox News Bashes Blogs
Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be blogging infrequently but that shouldn’t mean blogging is dead. Greg Gutfeld at Fox News thinks it does. He also jabs unfairly at senior blogs. But other than realizing how much it sounds like Olbermann, it dawned on me that when the elderly, squirrels and crazed dictators start blogging, then blogging is dead. Crazed dictators is not good but seniors? They have every right to blog and probably have far more interesting stories to tell than many of the 20-something bloggers. Greg Gutfield continues his anti-blog rant by explaining how blogs suck. The worst five words you can hear at a party are “have you read my blog?” Blogs used be called diaries and they were covered with rainbow stickers and glitter. But now everyone calls them blogs and they suck. I call it the Sylvia Plath Syndrome: The idea that every nuance of your life should fascinate everyone else. At least Plath had the decency to provide a killer ending. Some think that if you don’t blog, you don’t have a life. But it’s the opposite. You should be happy that you don’t write for dopes who live in a disjointed bubble of weirdness where their own real world cowardice is masked by online bravery. Greg ends his rant by saying it would be more honest to go outside and beat someone up for real than to beat them up online. Does that mean Greg is about to go outside and beat up some seniors? We suspect Greg Gutfeld’s probably kidding about some of this but he’s going in the Blog Pessimism file anyway. Note to Greg: Ahmadinejad’s blog isn’t new – it has been around for about a year and a half. Posted in Blog Pessimism Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

What Jess & John Still Share
The exes still have one thing in common – their L.A. trainer! Plus: Nicole Richie, Britney Spears and more

Spice Girls: Then and Now
They’ve reunited after 11 years! See how Posh and the gang have changed

What’s Going to Happen in 2008?
2008 is going to be a year of political intrigue, depressing economic news, annoying web filters, weird weather, crappy television, newfangled gadgets and green hybrid vehicles. That’s the short of it and some of it is bound to be true. But no one really knows what 2008 is going to be like yet so here’s a closer look at some key issues. Australia gets a big giant filter for 2008. Duncan Riley has more on the Great Firewall of Australia here. Let’s hope filters do not become a global trend for 2008. Quality over frequency? Gawker CEO Nick Denton thinks having fewer posts with lots of pageviews is the way to go in ‘08. That could result in posts that are either very informative or very sensational or both. Robert Scoble frowns on the practice and reminds us of the popularity of his Kindle asshat post. On a positive note maybe Gawker bloggers will try to link out to other blogs more in order to get more links and traffic to their posts. Speaking of the Kindle. Some folks like that for a hot gadget in 2008. The Kindle does have some hidden easter eggs that may help it win kudos from gadget bloggers. Some more obvious forecasts are that the 3G iPhone and Google’s Android platform will be popular this year. Another hot 2008 gadget may be the Chumby. Some gadget forecasts can be found here, here, here, here, here and here. The RIAA apparently thinks in 2008 you shouldn’t be copying your music from one device to another. Some suggest that in 2008 the mainstream music industry will end. Note: It isn’t going to end but the big music labels will continue to struggle with CD sales in 2008. U.S. President: It is an easy prediction to say that U.S. politics will be a hot topic in the blogosphere this year. The polls are all over the place. The BBC calls it the “nobody knows” election. Part of the reason for the uncertainty is the lack of an incumbent. Vice President Dick Cheney could have run but he has never polled well and has health issues. The Democrats appear to be better off than the Republicans at this point. The Democrats have raised far more money and they have been polling better but the elections are still a long way away. Grist is only 98% sure we will actually get a new president in 2008. The BBC has an article about some new technologies that could be making the news in 2008 including IPTV and Wimax. They also mention there will be more of the “web to go” with technology like Google Gears. Predictions posts on Google Operation System and Google Blogoscoped also mention Google Gears. 2008 may not be an exciting tech year. There could be much iterbore says Damien Mulley: “2008 is going to be the most boring year in tech ever. Everything is about iteration. Yawn yawn yawn.” Damien could be wrong and he knows it. The subject of his post is “Complelety Wrong Predictions for 2008.” Writers Strike: We certainly hope that WGA writers is ancient history by the end of 2008 but it looks like lots of reality tv shows is a given for at least the first few months of 2008. The number of scripted shows remaining is quickly shrinking. The striking writers have won the battle for public opinion but the AMPTP is still holding out on cutting a deal. It has been depressing to watch but there have been a couple postive signs. The fact that some of the networks are already losing ad revenues is a sign the networks may need to return to the bargaining table. The Worldwide Pants side deal was also a positive sign. Despite these positives some analysts are saying the strike could last until the SAG’s deal with the AMPTP expires in June. NewTeeVee has some thoughts on the strike from insiders here. Ongoing updates on the strike can be found here and here. At least the strike brought us the Writer Boi video. Online Video: That there will be continued growth in online video was a sure thing even without a writer’s strike. That there is a battle over it between the writers and the giant media companies is a good example of just how important web video is. There will be serious growth in online video in 2008. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb sums it up this way: “Online video will become so ubiquitous, including live and mobile, that everyone will wonder how the internet existed without it. It won’t feel like a big deal, though.” NewTeeVee has some short video interviews about what will happen in the online video world this year. Marketing Shift thinks 2008 will be a big year for Joost. Paris Lemon expects Flickr to launch a video service this year. Download Squad offers five video predictions including one that Seesmic will die. Mike Elgan is forecasting a 2008 Beijing Olympic Disaster. B.L. Ocham predicts that social networks will turn to subscriptions starting with small fees. “The fees will be small, but they will replace conventional advertising as a revenue model.” Rev2.org kills off some 2007 buzzwords including AJAX, The Long Tail and Folksonomy. Economy: A lot of how 2008 goes depends on what the economy does. There are some indications that the economy in 2008 might be unfun and possibly even scary. See here, here, here and here. Some of these stories contain the dreaded stagflation word. If these dour economic forecasts pan out than we could lose some of our social media friends in 2008. At a minimum there are likely to be many more Web 2.0 shutterings in 2008 than we saw in 2007. Blogs: AdesBlog.com is predicting a slow down in blogs about blogging and blogs about making money online. DailyBlogTips sees some consolidation in the blogging industry in 2008 but expects “2008 will be another big year for blogging and new media in general.” Rex Dixon predicts there will be less blogs. Facebook Fatigue: Facebook ended 2007 by finally allowing users to turn off the invasive Facebook ad beacon. John Batelle doesn’t think 2008 will be kind to Facebook. Business Week is also forecasting Facebook fatigue. WebMetricsGuru predicts the continued growth of content aggregators. The more content there is the more we need tools we need to filter it so that we do not become overwhelmed. Green: There is no reason why green won’t get even hotter in 2008. Especially if tech companies can come up with green ideas that also save you money. GreenTech Pastures has some green predictions for the new year. Digital Urban predicts the launch of Google’s own Virtual World system. IP Democracy has a useful table that provides summaries of sixteen prediction articles. The Crunchies has a “Most Likely to Succeed” category. Companies listed include Kayak, Mint, Slide, Wordpress and Zivity. Robin Good has a two part predictions post that covers a number of subjects. His predictions include an increase in live-blogging and online collaboration tools. He also predicts that some small publishers will move away from Google AdSense. Twitter. Twitter is the still the leading microblogging service even though Google now owns Jaiku. One of the trends that emerged in 2007 with microblogging was a drop in blog posts. On this blog there were less posts in 2007 than in 2006. It’s easier sometimes to do “hey look at this” type entries on Twitter than to write up an entire blog entry. Some bloggers are predicting Twitter will be acquired in 2008. It will be interesting to see what happens. A good question is When will any of these microblogging services ever let you host your microblog account on your own domain? Maybe that will happen in 2008. Celebrities: Unfortunately, you should expect more celebrities to find themselves in the gossip blogs in 2008 for not wearing underwear or for getting a DUI. There are some forecasting celebrity turnarounds for a couple of 2007’s troubled female stars. One blogger predicts a big turnaround for Britney Spears. Defamer has excerpted some celebrity predictions from this ET Online article. If these predictions are accurate then it looks good for Lindsay Lohan from July onward. Epicurious says farmers will become the new celebrity chefs. Can’t really see a Top Farmer show but the networks may try anything if the writer’s strike continues much longer. Celebrities will also jump to online video even more in 2008. Trendwatching has a prediction post that includes some acronyms and phrases you may not have heard of like premiumization, nethoods, MIY and crowd mining. Start using some of these terms early in 2008 and you might be able to fool people into thinking you know a lot more than you actually do. Still need more predictions? Try a search on Google News or Technorati for predictions and you will find many. There’s a few hundred 2008 prediction videos on YouTube as well. Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

Britney’s On-Set Visit to Mom
Spears smiles and waves for the cameras after handing her mother a reportedly upsetting letter. Plus: Paris Hilton, Katie Holmes and more

Alan Colmes Launches LiberalLand Blog
According to entries on The Huffington Post, Inside Cable News and TV Newser Fox News anchor Alan Colmes has a “secret blog” called Liberal Land. Alan now links to the blog from his website so it really isn’t much of a secret anymore. The blog is located at www.liberalland.com and liberalland.blogspot.com. Colmes has been posting to the blog since November. Alan Colmes is the liberal host on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes show. On the blog he has been discussing political issues like Bush’s dissaproval ratings, Halliburton and Dick Cheney. Many of the recent posts are about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The vast majority of the posts are political in nature but Alan Colmes has also blogged about some non-political subject matter including Paris Hilton and the Dramatic Prarie Dog. Colmes’ blog is not affiliated with the Fox News channel. Posted in New Blogs Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

Page Six Blog Debuts
The New York Post extended its popular gossip news brand “Page Six” onto the web earlier this month with a new blog at PageSix.com. The site features a frequently updated blog, photos, videos and as the Daily Intelligencer notes Gawker-like stalker maps. “Page Six” has made a new move in its aggressive push to take over the world and make it canoodley. They’ve launched the new version of PageSix.com! The site is slick, a little bit more glamorous, and a lot more bloggy. They’ve got feeds from other gossip sites, a running blog (which, so far, seems to have mostly party pictures and items from the print version of the column), and even Gawker Stalker Maps. The blog is run by a team of six bloggers known as the Sixers. The blog has been popular already – it already has nearly 1,000 inbound links according to Technorati. The new PageSix.com site is seperate from the other New York Post content. The regular Page Six column by Richard Johnson continues on the New York Post. Posted in Gossip Blogs Permalink | Recent Headlines | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 7:07 pm 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.