Despite our strenuous and quite self-important insistence that this site is “more than just a blog,” not to mention our pretentious use of the “Royal We” (Pluralis Majestatis) in posts clearly authored by only one person, DAILY HEIGHTS is humbled, and honored, to be among the 4,516 entries in nyc bloggers, a project to bring together New York City’s blogs, organized geographically.
According to mike, liz, and matt, “The idea is simple: A map of the city that shows where the bloggers are, organized by subway stop. Find out who’s blogging in your neighborhood!”
We checked out this site two months ago, and it looked pretty much abandoned – tons of dead links, and so on. Now, the site looks revitalized, and they are actively seeking volunteers for this not-for-profit project:
1. Volunteers to go through our backlog of blog requests.
2. Programmers who know ASP, VBScript and MS Access to help create the password backend.
3. Designer to update the map.
4. Reviewers.
5. Anyone who can help them figure out how to receive RSS feeds.
6. Someone to help them find a new host.
Mike is actually a friend of ours–he’s the third from the left in the wedding picture at the top of my blog–and I think he is serious about getting help. The project turns out to be extremely time-consuming a way that I don’t think they originally anticipated.
The main problem is that without RSS, it’s too unwieldy for browsing, or determining what’s going on now “live” in my neighborhood. I just clicked on a random blog in Grand Army Plaza, and it’s dead–hasn’t been updated for more than 2 years! If they can figure out a way to incorporate RSS and do a “what’s new” feed for each subway stop…
They were actually looking at all the submitted blogs before manually (I think) adding them to the list, so it’s possible that many of the dead blogs are still in existence, just at other locations. I know I’m still on there under my old F stop in Carroll Gardens, but there’s also the changed URL issue. Originally, the idea was just to index blogs in a geographical way and let people check out the blogs of people who live near them, not provide a “what’s new” service. The RSS idea is really cool, but I wonder how hard it would be to set up given that various different systems people use.
The project is very alive though, and the backlog is being rapidly processed. As I write this, the backlog now consists of merely 313 applications, with the oldest now from late November. Earlier in the week there were probably over 1,500 on the backlog; and for technical reasons, as the backlog decreases the approvals are actually more rapid. (The database that needs to reload with every iteration is progressively smaller.) So far today over 100 blogs have been approved.
Yes, there is a problem with blog abandonment. but there are ways around it I’m sure.
RSS is in the works — first step was to get through the “backblog” (thanks Frank!), next we’ll make it so people can update their URL or meatspace location. We had original plans to do syndication, and had some elaborate “scraping” programs we tested, but RSS is pretty standard now across most blogging platforms. Not sure what we’ll do about deadblogs, but once we get pings we can order sites by what’s been updated most recently, which should help at least.
Welcome to the map! And hi Emily!
When I first found NYC Bloggers it did seem dead – like it hadn’t been updated in over a year. But recently it seems to have come alive again my blogs are there – under F Train, Seventh Avenue. I only sent them my info in early February, maybe. Interested to hear what’s going on there.
Alos, great to see how Daily Heights is growing and growing.
It’s nice to get some info on what’s happened with the NYC Bloggers site — I moved over a year ago and have twice submitted a change-of-location form, but they still have me at my old subway stop.
Hi Mike! See you on the Q…
I know I am dating myself right now but can someone tell me what a blog is. How is it different from a website.
Thanks 🙂