A decade of Scripting News

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 17:34:23 GMT

On this day, ten years ago, a weblog named Scripting News appeared for the first time at this address.

Today, it is the longest continuing running weblog on the Internet.

This site played a big role in several important trends.

1. It helped bootstrap the blogging world. Many of the earliest weblogs were patterened after this site. The software that was used to build many of those blogs came from Scripting News.

2. It was the focal point for the communities that created RSS and podcasting.

3. Many of the political and social innovations that sprang from the blogging world got their start in the Scripting News community.

Earlier today SN more or less reflected what the site looked like on its first day, 4/1/97. It was an approximation -- in some cases the sites it linked to are gone, but archives were available at archive.org. In those places I've linked to the archive.org versions. In other cases there was no backup at archive.org -- those links are broken. But there is a lot of interesting non-broken stuff hanging off this page. If you're interested in the roots of blogging, you'll find a lot of treasure here. It may be worth an hour or more exploration on a Sunday afternoon.

I've archived the 1997 version of the home page.

Here's the downloadable archive of the first decade of Scripting News, in HTML. And for outliner fans, in OPML.

To the women of blogging

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 17:39:57 GMT

I have many friends in the blogosphere, and many of them checked in today, in a way that matters most to me, by holding hands in cyberspace.

A very special greeting came from Betsy Devine, who linked to a timely but forgotten piece I wrote in 2003, which I would like to dedicate to the women of the blogosphere who, at times, find the environment so challenging. In standing up for men in this space, sometimes it may seem that I don't appreciate the risks that women take. Let me make amends for that.

http://essaysfromexodus.scripting.com/stories/storyReader$2111

Be who you are, nothing more and nothing less, and know that's where beauty comes from.