Scott Neal, City Manager of Eden Prairie, MN (a Twin Cities suburb) now has a weblog called The Blog from City Hall. I’ve got the weblog hosted at BlogSpot for now, Blogger’s hosting service. But Blogspot doesn’t allow CGI scripts or other tools that make hosting easier, so I may end up moving the weblog, especially if other city staff and/or councilmembers want weblogs.
[April 14 update: the blog has been moved.]

In today’s CNet: The changing face of search engines

Once the primary road signs to navigating the Internet, directories have moved to the shoulder. They are being displaced by algorithmic search tools and commercial services that many people… now believe do a better job in satisfying Web surfers and advertisers. The transformation is bringing to an end an altruistic era of human editors, who once wielded significant clout in driving traffic to Web sites through recommendations made without regard for commercial considerations.

Which is why an active weblog still seems to be among the most cost-effective means for small web sites to be found via “algorithmic search tools” like Google.

Since there seems to be some momentum towards using weblogs in organizations and small businesses, I’m sending out my first weblog email digest for Wigley and Associates today.

I’ve subscribed most of my weblog clients to the digest, assuming they’ll want to know whassup with this business of mine. (Feel free to unsubscribe with one click, folks. I’ll be deeply offended but will recover eventually.)

Yesterday Doc Searls mentioned my weblog client list of businesses and organizations, including politician Ray Cox. I’m still trying to find out whether Ray is the first elected official in the country to use (not just ‘have’) a weblog.

I’ll soon have a weblog up for the City Manager of a large Twin Cities’ suburb. It may be a first.

We’ve now added RSS to this weblog. What’s RSS?

It’s a radio signal for a website, most commonly used for weblogs. More technically: “Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable “What’s New” for your site.” See Intro to RSS for more info.

The Newspaper Association of America site has an informative article titled Syndication Made Simple. “Just as free e-mail newsletters enable publishers to directly reach readers and promote online and in-paper content, RSS “pushes” headlines and succinct, one-sentence article descriptions to those who subscribe to the no-cost feeds.”

The other side of syndication is aggregation. Here’s an article from Wired News that explains why aggregators are all the rage: Aggregators Attack Info Overload.

This icon is the cue that we’re RSS capable. So train your aggregator to grab content from Wigley and Associates’ syndicated weblog.

March 12, 2003: Blogging Goes Corporate

A company’s decision whether or not to deploy Weblogs may hinge more on policy than on technical issues related to software deployment. More conservative companies may see Weblogs as too informal and too uncontrolled to justify the risk.

A client, MN Rep. Ray Cox, was featured in today’s Future Tense on Minnesota Public Radio (MPR).

The direct link (Real Audio): Why is the Weblog of Ray Cox different from the rest? Hint: He’s a politician.

As far as I know, he’s the first elected politician in the country to have a weblog.

Audioblogger is a new service that allows you to post two-minute audio entries to a Blogger weblog via a telephone. ($3/month for 12 posts.) I started using it today for my Real Joe weblog.

I’m learning to use Movable Type, a competitor to Blogger.

Northfield Citizens Online/Northfield.org, a local non-profit that I co-founded, has installed it on a server and plans to offer it to any interested area citizen. I’ve got mine up: Citizen Wig. The goal is to see what happens when a cluster of civic-oriented weblogs proliferate in a concentrated geographic area.

I’ve also been coaching some staffers at Utne on using Movable Type, primarily the publisher, Nina Utne, who’s been posting to her Code Pink weblog.

The web site and weblog for the International Association for Learning Alternatives (IALA) is now up.