At least that is what this graph shows.

We’ve spent the morning playing with the UI of the logo contest. Cleaned up the navigation a little and added a logo with most comments page and recent comments page. We’ve seen a couple of instances in which a logo has gotten a comment and then the designer has created a new version building on the feedback — maybe the new pages will accelerate discussion and collaboration. (My wife agrees with Jeff Jarvis, BTW.)

Tessa Wegert spots a key trend that I’ve been jawing about at conferences… DIY advertising, which is quietly transforming advertising. Wegert focuses on the word of mouth angle, but her point also applies to advertising purchase and distribution models. Just as blogging upends publishing, tools like Google Adwords, Blogads and Adbrite make it simple for advertisers to place their own ads. We’re doing to the ad industry what Dell did to computer sales and distribution.

As Wegert says, all is not lost for media buyers. But the game is changing:

In many ways, online media has become a self-service communications channel. Advertisers, even those with little online experience, are discovering what consumers have known for years: at its core, the Internet is a medium “for the people.” It doesn’t necessitate assistance from the pros. One can develop ad creative using a home software program, launch a site using inexpensive Web design and hosting tools, and promote one’s initiative with blogs, discussion boards, and good old word of mouth — all without traditional advertising agencies, media brokers, or placements experts.

Where does that leave media buyers, whose livelihoods depend on the demand for ad placement expertise? There’s no denying the need for evolution. Today’s buyers and planners must prove their worth by showing versatility and demonstrating expertise in new formats to makes themselves indispensable. Though it’s certainly possible to work without media buyers, they possess a knowledge of the Internet space and its users that professional and amateur advertisers alike would be remiss not to exploit. Having access to DIY online advertising is one thing. Making it work is quite another.

A bunch of bloggers have written asking about coordinating the donation of ads for Katrina relief. While an individual blogger can always give an ad with his/her own “offer code,” some bloggers are trying to coordinate a larger effort. For example, last night the liberal blogger network donated a bunch of ad space for money that will go to the Red Cross, thanks to the efforts of Kari Chisholm and Chris Bowers.

Update: John Hawkins Right Wing News spearheaded conservative blogad sellers in donating an ad to MercyCorp.

Amid lots of other juggling, I’m working on similar stuff with other networks. Some folks have mooted the idea of having a friendly competition to make things happen.

And NZ Bear has a round up of blogger charity efforts.

Update As of 6.22PM Thursday, the Liberal network’s ads have raised $58,920.80.

As I’ve noted on the logo submission page, we’re now publishing new submissions live, as well as any previous ones the creators would like to get feedback on. We’ve had some tremendous submissions and, in the interest of experimentation and social brainstorming, would like to see what happens if/when the public and other creators can look over each other’s shoulders. You can see the latest submissions here. To date, we’ve gotten 145 submissions, 26 of which are now public.

Jonathan Glater wrote a great obituary yesterday for Coudert Brothers, one of the law industry’s most brilliant and swashbuckling firms. Its an amazing sstory of how a brilliant bunch of people, peddling exactly what their competitors peddle, manage to make 1/10th the money. The moral of the story — brilliant people and ideas are important ingredients in success but not sufficient. “We were really great pioneers, and really not good settlers,” said one partner.

Eery words from a radio show in September, 2002:

Do you expect this kind of hurricane’this kind of flooding’will hit New Orleans in our lifetime?

“Well I would say the probability is yes,” says Suyahada. “In terms of past experience, we’ve had three storms that were near misses’that could have done at least something close to this.”

Basically, the part of New Orleans that most Americans’most people around the world’think is New Orleans, would disappear.

UPDATE: Please note that this contest is over and we have selected a winning logo as of Fall 2005. You can see it on the top of this page and any other page on Blogads.com.

Yesterday on the phone Doc Searls expostulated, unsolicited, that the current Blogads logo is “butt ugly.” He’s not the first to complain.

The logo was actually a mistake. Three and a half years ago, unhappy with the creepy corporate logos a professional designer kept proposing, I scribbled in my notebook an inkling of what our logo might look like. As a placeholder, we scanned that scrawny image and stuck it on our prototypes… where it has lived ever since.

In the spring, I asked some blogger friends about inviting the blogosphere to help create a new logo. I fantasized about a piece of graffiti or something hand-drawn — some graphic incarnation of blogging’s hand-crafted joy and social richness. But their feedback was mostly negative. Blogging friends in the ad industry said “do an RFP, hire a pro, draft a creative brief, hammer out a brand identity… do it right!” Demotivated by that feedback and with lots of other projects bubbling, we put the idea on the backburner.

Well, with the third anniversary of Blogads’ first sale looming and a new programmer on staff but not yet locked in the madhouse of Blogads 3.0 coding, we’ve decided to FINALLY adopt a new logo. Please help us do better. Here’s the link to more information and the logo submission form.

NYTimes:

Gossip has long been dismissed by researchers as little more than background noise, blather with no useful function. But some investigators now say that gossip should be central to any study of group interaction.

People find it irresistible for good reason: Gossip not only helps clarify and enforce the rules that keep people working well together, studies suggest, but it circulates crucial information about the behavior of others that cannot be published in an office manual. As often as it sullies reputations, psychologists say, gossip offers a foothold for newcomers in a group and a safety net for group members who feel in danger of falling out. …

Long-term studies of Pacific Islanders, American middle-school children and residents of rural Newfoundland and Mexico, among others, have confirmed that the content and frequency of gossip are universal: people devote anywhere from a fifth to two-thirds or more of their daily conversation to gossip, and men appear to be just as eager for the skinny as women.

Sneaking, lying and cheating among friends or acquaintances make for the most savory material, of course, and most people pass on their best nuggets to at least two other people, surveys find.

This grapevine branches out through almost every social group and it functions, in part, to keep people from straying too far outside the group’s rules, written and unwritten, social scientists find.

We went to the dog beach just south of Kure, NC Saturday and Taco slowly got interested in bouncing around the in the waves. We found lots of shells and saw two rays in the water. In the twilight before driving home, we walked out on the Kure pier and saw two pelicans.

Thursday we went to see the Durham Bulls. Down by 2 with one out in the ninth they came back to win by a run.

We spent yesterday painting the dining room. White!

Last weekend, we did some of the Looking Glass Rock hike, saw the Pisgah Fish Hatchery then waited for an hour for the thunder to pass and put us on Sliding Rock. The water at the bottom was shockingly cold and current-ripped and one kid had trouble keeping his head above water. They’ve added life-guards since I was last there 30 years ago.