I was very impressed to read WordPress’s accessibility out of the box. There are a few issues to iron out before AAA is reached but that’s pretty good going I think you’ll agree! So if you are looking for a blogging engine or a simple CMS go for WordPress.

No this isn’t in reference to my recent lack of posts for which I can only apologise - most of my spare time (of which there isn’t enough of) is spent with my 12 week old son. A pretty good excuse I think you’ll agree so don’t be too hard on me.

An article in Wired says Blogs are so 2004 says blogs are overcome with a “tsunami of paid bilge” so “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.”

Hmm a little overreaction methinks. The Internet as a whole is full of paid and unpaid bilge so maybe that should be shut down?

Really it’s all a case of quality control which is also going to be the case of the other technologies mentioned in the article such as Twitter.

How do I find blogs? Well it isn’t a conscious decision on my part; I simply find them on my travels around the web. If I happen to surf onto a post of interest I will look at other posts in the blog and if they’re really lucky and I like what I see I’ll subscribe to the RSS feed. I’m the quality control and my quality control is tight - I subscribe to about 50 feeds in total which I don’t consider a lot as I’m a pretty heavy Internet user. This list is constantly reviewed if I don’t like the way a blog is going I hit the delete button - not really that difficult. Recommendations I like too as that web is a rather large place.

It’s just the age old web spam issue which the search engines are constantly fighting anyway - blog or webpages alike it makes no difference.

Well he isn’t actually but it’s a similar sort of headline that was taken seriously and reported by CNN. It would seem a blog reported Mr Jobs (High godness of Apple) had a heart attack and CNN broadcast this causing a drop in Apple’s share price.

A little bit irresponsible of CNN not to get this confirmed after all don’t believe everything you read online. It would also seem there are investigations to see if this story was published with the intention of pushing down the share price.

Well I’m fresh back from Jamaica (well actually not very fresh at all with the jet lag) which will explain the lack of blog posts for the last couple of weeks. My wife encouraged me to avoid the Internet like the plague while I was away which I thought was very unlikely but the £5 for 30 minutes charge at the hotel managed to dissuade me!

I spent the time relaxing, drinking and reading while I was there soaking up the Caribbean sunshine. One book I was lent by Digikev is Blog Schmog by Bly - a good read and although Bob Bly is by no means popular within the blogging community he speaks a lot of sense with regard to blogs and business. I find myself on a very similar wavelength to him however I do still feel evangelists do have their place in technology otherwise some applications would just never get off the ground (future post to follow).

Anyway I digress. The one main observation I made on holiday was the use of social networking by fellow holidayers (vacationers to our American cousins). I believe this is one area that social networking really has a very high penetration - everyone I met (and I mean everyone) had been on the Internet to research holiday locations and accommodation in particular trip adviser and holidays uncovered came up again and again.

We’re not just talking dipping a toe in the water here either, some have obviously spent a lot of time doing this and it’s amazing the type of information they brought with them from their online travels that really impressed me. For example we were recommended taxi drivers by name and telephone number, told which staff members provided the best service (and were most entertaining) and given insights into where to go to on the island; all originally were suggested by the online community. Every time spot on and really contributed to an excellent holiday by all accounts - Terrance the taxi driver certainly does know all the best jerk centres! Obviously a certain amount of this information is passed around when you talk to people on holiday anyway however coming away prepared means there are so many more heads available.

The thing I found really interesting here was that there seems to be a really small but incredibly popular niche for social networking for holiday research. A great number of the people I talked to did not know what social networking was and didn’t seem to be involved with it in anyway apart from the holiday review and forum websites that kept coming up time and time again.

Thinking about it’s obvious why this is: people spend a few weeks a year and proportionately a large amount of money on their holidaying. Therefore people are bound to spend a large amount of time researching the subject - time that they wouldn’t necessarily reserve for other subjects.

Also having a good holiday is so important to people that having a great or bad holiday will invoke an emotional response. This means they are also more likely to post about it when they get back also.

Both these factors makes social networking boom for travel information even if the activity by users is sporadic.

I do feel perhaps there is a gap here however, these sites are generally review sites in nature but I really think there is a niche here for a specific Facebook style holiday friends/reviews type site. I’ve not got the time myself to take the plunge but if anyone has give me a shout and I’ll pass on my ideas!