I the wake of the attempted mass murder by car-bomb in London yesterday, I thought I could drop a timely reminder that one of our clients is the international security expert (and author) Juval Aviv. Juval has been writing up some of his security tips for Summer Travel.

For what it’s worth, here are my own thoughts on the attack. Bombs aimed at nightclubs aren’t about foreign policy, but about attacking our way of life and “loose Western values”. You just have to look at the comments recorded by investigators who foiled the “fertalizer bomb plot” to attack another club, “The Ministry of Sound”. One of the plotters said: “No one can even turn around and say ‘Oh they were innocent, those slags dancing around.”

Recently so called “honor killings” in this country of young women who “go the wrong way” have been linked to Islamic groups waging war on Western values.

So this is the message from the terrorists: if you go out dancing, you aren’t innocent. It doesn’t have much to do with Iraq. It has everything to do with the clash of cultures.

Last week’s Russian media seminar at the University of Birmingham raised an interesting question: Why has the Russian Government left the blogosphere (more or less) free? It’s generally agreed that Russian TV is under total control of the Government, and newspapers are almost under the thumb - but the lively Russian blogosphere continues to be a big free-for-all of free expression.

The only cloud on the horizon seems to be the acquisition last year of the Russian licence for Live Journal from 6 Apart. It was bought by a Company known as Soup (Sup-Fabrik), owned by the Oligarch Alexander Mamut, a friend of Roman Abramovich, and some say, a friend of the Kremlin. It doesn’t really matter whose friend he is. In Russia, a rich person has a lot to lose, as the Kremlin has aptly demonstrated in the past. Therefore it is wise for a rich person to take a hint from on high.

But the Kremlin so far does not seem to have put any pressure of Live Journal or its users. Ivan Zassorsky of Moscow University - who worked as PR Man for Soup at the time of the sale of Live Journal, reflected on why this might be.

“When you build a central system of command and control, you have to have a feedback system to know what is going on,” he said. So the Russian blogosphere might be how the Government keeps its feel on the pulse of opinion.

Vlad Strukov of Leeds and London Universities pointed out that the Russian internet, though lively, is far from being a mass influencer of public opinion - so perhaps the Government can afford to ignore it. 10% of Russians have internet access, where the UK hit that figure in 1998. Still, you can see five people sitting around one terminal in an internet cafe, so it’s hard to measure the full reach of the internet: besides what do people do at work all day in offices the world over? Obviously they cruise the internet and write their blogs.

Oleg Kozlovskii Co-ordinator of the Oborona Youth Movement pointed out that the authorities are not unaware of the internet. He said that before the recent demonstrations in St. Petersburg, a number of sites belonging to NGOs mysteriously went down. He’s also noticed the pro-Kremlin youth movement, Nashi flooding the Russian blogosphere with similar postings on political tops.

For now, the Russian blogosphere appears to be a slightly wild place, but one that is pretty much free from political interference. It’s somewhat elitist, belonging to those few who have access to a good internet connection, but those who are in it have upwards of 1000 “friends” or online contacts. Stories can spread. One striking example the tale of a village priest and his family, murdered in an arsen attack on his house. It wasn’t until a blogger in the next village - the wife of another priest - blogged about it, that the story got around the blogosphere via “friends” and then into the traditional media.

Maybe the Kremlin doesn’t take the networking power of blogs seriously enough. If so, it wouldn’t be the first large organisation to have made that mistake.

Doing your own web design can be very useful as a site owner because you won’t need to hire a web designer to make every little change you might need, but there are many design concepts to consider when making and editing a site, so if you don’t have time to learn web site design yourself then hiring a professional could be your best choice.

Interesting to see how Chinese bloggers are gaining power and influence. A blogger has attacked Starbucks’ presence in the Forbidden city, and now it looks like the coffee chain faces eviction from the ancient palace of the emperors. At least one American spin doctor in China is saying that Starbucks is probably one of the least tacky things about the way the authorities present their heritage.

But it’s good that the ordinary citizen bloggers are having their say, isn’t it? But perhaps not all is quite what it seems. The blogger in question is Rui Chenggang, a TV anchorman. Of course I do not know him, or his work, but I can’t help thinking that as a leading Chinese mainstream media person, he perhaps has official sanction for his view - or at least a sense of what would go down well with the official mandarins.

Perhaps the Chinese Government is using blogs to disseminate its message.

WordPress bloggers should beware of spam right now: Akismet, the integrated spam-catcher, appears to be down, or at least is showing “API Key invalid”. The spammers are running rampant. I would be very reluctant to have barriers to commenting, such as moderation or catchpas, so have just installed the very latest versions of Spam Karma 2, and Bad Behaviour. Also been thinking up a long list of dirty words to ban outright over at our kids’ site, Storynory.

P.S. Instead of reinstalling Akismet, I’ve added this plugin within a plugin to Spam Karma 2. SK2 checks comments against Akismet’s blacklist of bad commenters, giving you the best of these two plugins.

Problogging.com has sold the Blog Herald to an undisclosed buyer. I used to read it every day when it was edited and partly written by its founder, Duncan Riley, but then it had a really strong voice. It was first with the blog news, and full of rather crude opinions, and I couldn’t help reading it. Under new ownership, it just seemed to lose its personality. I just don’t think that blogs sell well. But despite that, it still claims 20,000 unique visitors a day, and a million unique pageviews a month.

Interesting things have been happening over on the blog I help write for a Seattle startup, Exbiblio. The management have announced a sudden cutback of the staff. I’ve been writing up both sides of the story.

I’m not sure that the Exbiblio blog has always been everything it promised - but this is the real stuff, I believe. It is a genuine experiment in openness when you are writing about cutbacks as they happen.

We are still not quite sure if our Alternative Energy Blog is worth the effort, but we seem to have launched just as the phrase is leaping out from every news stand, with the Washington Post and The Economist both leading with the topic. I’ve no doubt that this is a really booming area.

I’m finding the subject interesting - and learning loads as I go along. It feels good to be writing about a topical news subject, with a mass of material. I don’t have to hunt for stories. But the economics of a blog are a bit airy-fairy. If it does well in Google, it could become a valuable property that somebody might want to buy - but that is going to take a while. In the meantime, it’s hard to earn enough ad revenues to pay somebody else to write it. You need to get several thousand visitors a day to make anything like real money. Still, with clicks at about 20 cents + a pop in alternative energy, it’s easier than some subjects to make some pennies. If it does well, there may be some value in credibility. We’ll see. For the minute, it’s a bit of a whim.

We don’t normally write about “hot babes” here - not my turn of phrase - but this is the most unusual suggestion I’ve ever heard for the art of Link Baiting (gettng other people to link to your blog). It comes from John Chow, and I’m sure he’s getting lots of links and diggs just for writing this up. I’m not sure these days how legit link baiting is. A good blog should network with others per se - but this is an interesting approach.

The Trade Show Photo Trick

I meet many fellow webmasters during my party at the Consumer Electronics Show. During the party, I get a few hot babes to take pictures with the other webmasters. They love this because it’s the few occasions when they can get a picture taken with a real girl. The picture gets posted at The TechZone’s photo gallery. An email is fired off to the webmasters, and they’re instantly linking it on their sites to show all their readers what a stud they are.

Unfortunately, I’ve never had the opportunity to try that one out, so I don’t have a pic to go with this post.

Shel on the FIR Podcast notes how the new venture that he and others are involved in (Crayon) has had a warm reception from the blogosphere, including “competitors”. This is one of the rather nice things about social media. We all recognise that we have a common interest in each others’ success - (though we can’t help crowing when the big boys f-up). The more that businesses experience the benefits of transparent and frank conversations with their employees, business partners, and customers, the more likely they are to understand and want blogs, podcasts, etc in general.

It’s also a tribute to the way Shel and Neville have built up a network of online contacts who feel well disposed to them. This store of goodwill is invaluable. Blogging is such a great networking tool. I do believe that a podcast is, if anything, even more powerful than a blog, because people really feel that they know you when they hear your voice regularly. Of course a blog is a great companion to a podcast.

P.S. Matthew and I see ourselves as a nascent media company that does consultancy to fund ourselves in the meantime. Recently we were told on good authority that we have the UK’s second most listened to indie podcast (storynory). I have no means of confirming that 2nd biggest claim, but it’s nice that we are thereabouts. More humbly, if anyone, including Crayon, would like some top audio production skills, including mixing and editing packages and documentaries, not to mention working with actors (both of which most podcasters are not too comfortable with), then we are at your service.

Edelman has been smart and admitted that it’s paying for two more Wal-Mart Propaganda blogs.

Here at Exbiblio I read a motto on one engineer’s wall, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off”. This is so true of transparent blogging.

Well done Edelman for facing up to this particular writing on the wall. That’s knocked a few years off your sentence in the Bloggers’ Re-education Camp.

Edelman has broken its deafening silence on the Wal-Mart fiasco. Their top blogger, the much estimed Steve Rubel, says he had nothing to to with it. His boss, Richard Edelman, has finally apologised, which is the right thing to do, but would have been done much better by doing it much sooner.

He graciously says Edelman takes 100% responsibility - i.e. let nobody blame the client (which is the first rule of PR).

Some interesting comments on Neville Hobson’s postabout the whole affair.