When this newspaper launched its Web site in 1997, it held a seminar at an off-site location for staffers to learn about the Internet. The Sun's first Web editor asked the class to type any subject that came to mind into the "search engine."
How cool, I thought, and typed in the name of my daughter's favorite toy: the American Girl Doll.
To my horror, those words summoned a very graphic porn Web site. I did all I could to throw my body to shield the screen from the newsroom secretary sitting beside me in Internet 101.
Even a few years later, I recall an editor wondering whether the Internet would ever "amount to anything" after I'd written about some Web development.
Obviously, no one's asking that question anymore.
Still, the befuddled "American Girl Doll" phase is roughly where we are with blogs right now.
They've already been anointed the "next big thing," but no one can really explain why. There are more than 110 million of them, but an awful lot resemble the most inane bar-stool conversations put in type, and that's probably unfair to bar-stool conversation. Even folks who pay attention to news would be hard-pressed to name more than a few blogs. Some bloggers have struck it rich or become influential, but they're mostly as anonymous as, say, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were in the late 1990s developing something they called Google.
Not all bloggers, but many of them, link to and ride the backs of other people's work.
Not all bloggers, but many of them, think cursing makes them seem smarter.
So I was intrigued by the possibility of finding some answers in a new book called Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web, published by Vintage Books of Random House.
Sarah Boxer, who was the first Web critic of The New York Times during 16 years as a reporter there, edited the book, choosing selections from 27 blogs that best exemplified the craft. Boxer combed through blogs she liked, blogs those blogs linked to, nominees of various blog contests, and blogs mentioned on leading compiler sites like BoingBoing and Technorati.
Whatever else one wants to say about bloggers, they come up with arresting titles. Among those Boxer chose for the anthology: "How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons," "It's Raining Noodles," "The Rest Is Noise."
The blogs she ultimately selected, she wrote, often combined two loyalties -- two countries, two languages, two areas of interest such as war and gaming or comics and epics. In fact, that may be what blogs do best: focusing not just on niches, but the niches within niches.
