BYTE MARKS
Instapundit collects best of blogs
By Burt Lum
To blog is to create your own online Web log. A blog is usually an individual's deeply personal commentary on life. The popularity of blogging is well documented, with many articles written about such sites as blogger.com, weblogs.com and our own HawaiiStories.com.
Blog subjects run the gamut from the trivial to the profound. In either case, they represent a window into our individual and collective consciousness.
I found this to be especially true in the case of Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit.com. Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee. As such, he spends an inordinate amount of time scouring bloggerville for interesting perspectives on current events. Reynolds describes his interest as the intersection between advanced technologies and individual liberty. Obviously he is well equipped to maintain a well written blog.
But what is it that has made Instapundit so popular?According to the Blogger Ecosystem (www.myelin.co.nz/ecosystem), Instapundit ranks 12th among some 17,000 blogs scanned.
When I checked out Instapundit, I found good reason to stay engaged. One positive quality is humor. With enough poking around I was rewarded with some interesting commentary and links that made me pause to laugh.
On Jan. 12, as an example, Reynolds posted the following: "FIRST THE VLOG. Then the Plog. Now, the Clog. Where will it all end?" Then he offers examples of the Web log evolution, from video log (Vlog), to the puppet log (Plog) and finally the clog log (Clog).
On a slightly more serious note, I found a posting on Instapundit for a blog on Pakistan at zackandamber.blogspot.com.
What Reynolds does, which also contributes to Instapundit's popularity, is wade through countless other blogs and select those postings that he thinks readers will find most interesting. The first-hand account of events in Pakistan gave me some perspective on what people from outside the United States perceive us to be. We are all so busy living our lives it's refreshing, albeit concerning, to bear witness to other points of view. ;-)
Burt Lum is one click away at burt@brouhaha.net.
