Mathemagenic

A research paper by Stephanie Nilsson - A Brief Overview of the Linguistic Attributes of the Blogosphere [via Mario, tout de go...; see also others who linked to it via Blogdex]

I only scanned it, but it looks like an interesting reading for both findings and research method.

Later: final version of this paper and other papers

Something I was supposed to post long time back: final version of my BlogTalk paper - Blogs: the stickiness factor (.pdf).

I finished it only a couple of weeks back: I was too lazy to rewrite parts of it and managed to get organised only before final-final deadline for print version. I'll be sending e-mails to the participants tonight.

There is more in the data about blogging I collected than I was able to analyse and to write about. I'll be using bits related to knowledge work in my "under construction" paper and I'll see if I come up with more ideas.

Doing that study was a great experience. It started almost accidently when I discovered a way to connect my interest in weblogs with my PhD exploration. At that moment it was a way to test some ideas I had and I didn't think that I would seriousely look at weblogs in my PhD research. Well, you never know: Life has more imagination than we carry in our dreams.

Discovering blogging - writing a weblog, reflecting on my own process, reading others' reflections, sparks of comments and discussions, studying it - all these things contributed in somehow invisible way to my thinking about knowledge workers and my PhD research. At the certain moment two themes that make me passionate collapsed in one. And I've got my PhD focus, in one day, after struggling for months.

My new PhD focus is not approved yet, but at least I know what and why I'd like to study. This may change again and I guess I have more struggling ahead, but at least now I feel very happy to see how bits of ideas are getting into coherent whole.

So, thanks for participating in that study: you did more than you may think.

Wired - Russia: Dial 'H' for Hostage [via browsing started by Waypath plug-in] - a year old article about LiveJournal as an alternative to mainstream media.

It also says about LiveJournal: "Of the site's 700,000 users, more than 6,000 are Russian." I wonder what is the real number as Blogcensus shows only 900+ Russian language blogs.