The Blog Herald is pleased to introduce another new member of the team: Andy Merrett. We met Andy through the Blue Fish Network, which J. Angelo has been part of since last year.

Andy has been blogging for nearly 3 years and started blogging professionally full-time in July of 2006. He writes for several of Shiny Media‘s blogs, including Tech Digest and HDTVUK, as well as his own blogs. Andy also runs the Blue Fish Network group of independent web sites. His main areas of interest and expertise are technology, Internet trends, music, relationships, and blogging, particularly with a UK focus. Before becoming a full-time blogger, he had a number of IT jobs in both the charity and commercial sector. read more

In our cavalcade of bloggers we’re introducing this week, I am thrilled to introduce a blogger who is possibly the nicest and classiest blogger I have ever met. But in addition to her popular “successful” blog, this blogger brings credentials! She has worked over 20 years in print, software, and online publishing. Furthermore, as VP and Publisher for an American textbook company, she developed products and strategic plans with publishers in Europe, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. This “successful” blogger blogs about communicatoins, writing, and what makes your blog “successful”. Of course, I am referring to the one and only, Liz Strauss from Successful-blog.com!

Liz will be joining the rest of our blogger family as another weekly columnist, and kicks her run with us on a topic that most bloggers know about — transparency and authenticity.

Welcome aboard Liz. The Blog Herald is lucky to have you! :)

Authenticity. Transparency.

Authenticity and transparency are the reason I love blogging. They are what connected me. They make me strong, brave, and vulnerable. They are the power of the truth. Nothing can undercut, overwrite, argue down what I say, if I write in my own authentic, transparent voice from the truth I know. I am safe and I am able to add something valuable. read more

The Blog Herald is proud to announce that that Micah Sparacio will be joining its stable of regular bloggers. Micah is a philosophy teacher (and student) at Temple University, currently working on his dissertation in philosophy of mind, currently entitled “Making up the Mind: Understanding the realization relation between mind and matter”, and will bring an academic focus to the Blog Herald.

read more

Co-authored by Abe Witonsky

Students in higher education come to college to learn, but there are many things competing for their attention, besides what goes on in the classroom. The competition includes the Internet, social networking, email, online chatting, etc. As our students’ world changes, so too must the methods by which we teach and engage our students. In this article, we propose one way that teaching can be significantly enhanced by the integration of blogging. Our plans are to implement this proposal in the coming semester and to report back on its success or lack thereof. read more

We’ve just finished installing Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro which allows automatic translation of all pages in the blog to 8 other languages — German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. It uses either Google & Babelfish translation engines. read more

I am very proud to announce that Scott Karp, a blogger better known for his work over at Publishing2.com has joined the Blog Herald as a weekly columnist. I have been a tremendous fan of his work at Publishing2.com for quite some time. Scott never fails to bring crisp thoughts and sharp writing to his own brand of particularly insightful thoughts and commentary on media and digital technology. read more

Google was way ahead of MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook in disrupting the content business — Google acquired Blogger in early 2003 to accelerate the rise of “user-generated content,” otherwise known as people publishing content online with free, easy publishing software (as with “blog,” I use that phrase as an unfortunate consequence of wide adoption). But how would this explosion of online content benefit Google? Why own the platform? The answer arrived soon after with the launch of AdSense, which provided this legion of new publishers a way to monetize their content, thereby embedding Google in the exploding economics of online content. read more

Google, known for keeping projects in beta longer than most parents keep kids in diapers, has released their new version of Blogger (aka Blog*Spot) to the internet world.
read more

Today, Derek van Vliet joins the Blog Herald as one of its new weekly columnists. Derek is an Ontario native who has been programming for most of his life. In the last year he has been active in social news, and in particular, social bookmarking. Derek will be sharing his thoughts in this new and topical area of social media.

But Derek’s more than just an ordinary fan of social bookmarking.

read more