I just noticed that Messagefire lets me “refer a friend.” So go sign up for Messagefire and use DMBDDTS in the “coupon” field — you’ll get a free month and I’ll get a free month. See previous entry for why this is Good.

Slurppppppp 🙂 … F R E E ink for your printer!… Get the Credit You Deserve… Las Vegas Vacation Blowout!… Smokers and Tobacco Users: Get Great Rates on Term… Better than Search Engines Placement… Someone wants to Meet YOU!… Open Your Very Own Dollar Store Now!… Great Deals! eBay – Find what you want… Police Auction Ends In 30 Minutes…

These are the first 10 spams (of 128) I didn’t have to download and delete this morning, thanks to the Messagefire service I signed up for via a Blogad last week. I’ll be visiting Pressflex newspaper clients in France next week and, for the first time in what seems like decades, won’t spend 92% of every session online deleting spam from my webmail account. More time to eat steak pommes frites, drink coffee and muse.

How many remember that six months ago an editor at the NYTimes tried to convince blogger/columnist Mickey Kaus to write an article trashing “blogger triumphalism.” (I blogged Kaus saying this at the Yale blogger conference in November.)

So it is a not-so-poignant irony that today bloggers get some of the credit for bringing down NYTimes editor Howell Raines.

Of course, I could quote bleachers full of bloggers congratulating themselves for toppling the giant, but that wouldn’t be quite fair or objective… even for a blog. So instead, I’ll quote one of Raines’ print brethren, and let him pronounce an eulogy for the way news used to be manufactured.

“In the end, it was the new world of Web sites, blogs, online editions and e-mails ‘ not Raines ‘ that set the pace of his exit,” says the LATimes’ Tim Rutten.

Rutten’s commentary can really be read as an obituary for traditional media. “The new media’s vast echo chamber already has demonstrated something that cannot be ignored: Questions about the Times’ revival now will be posed and answered at speeds and in ways that defy the sober standards of conventional crisis management.”

Leak fed leak, e-mail chased e-mail, with bloggers posting it all. “And so it went, with each day’s instantly available disclosures triggering a fresh round of real-time commentaries, which in turn nudged those in possession of additional embarrassing information into virtually instantaneous rounds of fresh revelation. It was death by a thousand comments…”

How long before Raines gets a blog?

Here’s an interesting map of blogdom politics. (Via Jeff Jarvis.) We really need three or four dimensions to capture all the different axis of opinion, but this is a good start for now. And it is just a start.

Mark my words: blogs are going to drive the next presidential election. Bloggers will publish leaks the traditional news (or even Matt Drudge) won’t touch and will be knawing on particular factoids or angles long before and after traditional press. Smart insiders will secretly read, publish and/or stoke blogs. The press will quote blog pundits. Bush may mutter the b word. Blog readers, themselves articulate early adopters who are influential in their own communities, will be influenced by the blogs they read. Traffic will double (again!) for Instapundit, Talking Points Memo,Atrios, Andrew Sullivan, Daily Kos, Jane Galt, Matt Welch…

And mark these words too: mapping blog networks will transform marketing. Most people look to their peers for guidance before making most decisions. Blogging creates new peer groups, empowers or revives old ones. Blogs and their entwined links tendrils let marketers map peer groups. A new science of opinion is itching to be born. The coming election will make this explicit.

Wake up guys.

Moxie had an interesting Blogads moment. She had the first documented dream about a Blogad, actually.

If you look at the bottom of the front page, you’ll get the inkling of our newest feature. A buggy inkling. Our goal is to let advertisers learn from each other. After all, how many blogadvertisers compete with each other. We’ve got a world to conquer, a pie to grow, a Sequouia to sprout… better to do it by learning from each other and letting the folks that don’t Blogadvertise suffer the consequences. If you have any suggestions, hit the comments or drop me a private line.

Just got had this ICQ exchange with Csaba, a colleague currently on a train east of Budapest:

Csab (2:42 PM) : hi henry
henry (2:42 PM) : howdie Csaba!
Csab (2:42 PM) : just logged in very quickly to notify you, that first page (top 3) is done.
henry (2:43 PM) : wonderful.
Csab (2:43 PM) : just programmed it during my trip to home (Edeleny)
henry (2:43 PM) : cool.
Csab (2:43 PM) : needs a little more testing but seems good so far.
henry (2:44 PM) : fun feature. do you want me to test, or wait til tomorrow?
Csab (2:44 PM) : i need to hook the refresh of ad data to somewhere but other than that it’s done.
Csab (2:44 PM) : haven’t uploaded yet. still on the train.
henry (2:45 PM) : wow. extra cool. so this is via your cell phone?
Csab (2:45 PM) : (mobile office, gprs, laptop etc… having fun)
Csab (2:45 PM) : yupp
Csab (2:45 PM) : pretty impressive, huh?
Csab (2:45 PM) : 😉
henry (2:45 PM) : yes. i’m going to blog it.
Csab (2:46 PM) : cool. i’ll be part of history then… 😉
henry (2:46 PM) : and you can read about it tomorrow, hearing the echo of your own shout.
Csab (2:47 PM) : great!
Csab (2:47 PM) : well, i need to log off now, because destination comes…
henry (2:47 PM) : Say hi to the conductor for me.
Csab (2:48 PM) : 🙂 i will.

I should note that my colleagues in Budapest have far better gadgets than I do. Csaba has his wafer thin notebook. Tamas has been going wild making GPRS maps of his jogging routes. He made me walk around the block with him in Vienna just to map our neighborhood. But, ICQ by mobile phone is the weirdest/unwiredest thing I’ve seen this week. By the way, here’s a picture of Edeleny.

Saw a Blogad for MessageFire on Blogshares this morning and thought I’d try the $5 trial. So far, I’m shocked & amazed & tickled to watch MessageFire’s filters keep the crud out of my inbox. Yippeee.

“The internet stops nothing short of threatening the very existence of trades [magazines], in its timeliness making obsolete much of the editorial of traditional weeklies and monthlies. Many advertisers have already pulled out of their trade publications, and they will be followed by many more. Far fewer will ever return. Ad pages for b2b publications fell 30 percent from 2000 to 2002, according to the Business Information Network. In comparison, consumer magazine pages were down 21 percent over the same period, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. So far this year, consumer magazines are up 3 percent in pages, while trade titles are down another 5 percent.” (Media Life.)