Lots of buzz about bloggers covering the Democratic National Convention this year. Much more potential for excitement/revolution when you’ve got bloggers participating in gatherings like the Southern Baptist Convention, events that, unlike the DNCC, are unscripted and not already covered by 5000 reporters? (Via Instapundit.)

Kate Kaye does a great job rounding up the recent blog reader survey in MediaPost.

One thing unmentioned in the article that Kate and I had talked about: the number of bloggers among blog readers. Kate said she’s sometimes suspected that blogs are read mostly by people who write blogs, so was surprised that only 21% of blog readers are also bloggers. On the other hand I was surprised that that many are bloggers themselves.

I guess 20% strikes a nice balance: guaranteeing that messages broadcast beyond the blogosphere, but also increasing the chances that blog ads can resonate within the blogosphere and pick up secondary links or discussion.

(Worth re-reading Duncan Watts on mathematics of epidemics, and the necessary balance between inside/outside, closed/open to sustain propogation.)

Online advertising guru Tom Hespos has tasted blogs and now wants a whole meal.

Doug Arellanes reports that Czech soccer commentators are… not brilliant. Some things seem to be constant across cultures.

Likewise, have you ever wondered about the fact that in every culture known to man, there’s a political left and right? Even if they aren’t called such, the two (or more) sides co-exist and thrive by deriding and scheming against each other. (Ever wonder about those those cave-drawings of donkeys and elephants?)

Is it that, as with the Y chromosome or the gene for left-handedness, we’re all born with some marker that tells us which side of the aisle or barricade to stand on? Or that we’ve all got some kind of natural born political IQ; some people are simply smarter and get “it,” the political truth, while the other dummies just see things from the wrong side?

More likely, it’s that humans are hard-wired to cluster into groups and then define our groups in opposition to other groups. The stakes are social as much as they are ideological.

Doug Arellanes reports that Czech soccer commentators are… not brilliant. Some things seem to be constant across cultures.

Likewise, have you ever wondered about the fact that in every culture known to man, there’s a political left and right? Even if they aren’t called such, the two (or more) sides co-exist and thrive by deriding and scheming against each other. (Ever wonder about those those cave-drawings of donkeys and elephants?)

Is it that, as with the Y chromosome, we’re all born with some marker that tells us which side of the aisle to sit on or which side of the barricade to stand on? Or that we’ve all got some kind of natural born political IQ; some people are simply smarter and get “it,” the political truth, while the other dummies just see things from the wrong side?

More likely, it’s that humans are hard-wired to cluster into groups and then define our groups in opposition to other groups. The stakes are social as much as they are ideological.

WSJ: “In January, Kodak forecast a 10% to 12% industrywide decline this year in unit volume of rolls and single-use cameras — essentially a single roll with a disposable case. But in 2004 through May 16, IRI charted a 16% decline compared with the same period a year earlier. And in the four weeks to that date, the drop was 19%. For both periods, the decline in overall dollars paid at retail was smaller, as pricing remained firm for single-use cameras.”

Sometimes the wheels just fall off all at once. I was short Kodak stock for a few months in 1999. Right trade, wrong millennium. General rule of thumb when investing: things usually take ten times longer than you expect. Be patient. And then be patient some more.

Just noticed Republican National Committee ads on a few blogs. Given all the ink sprayed about liberal advertising on blogs, I wonder if any journalists will notice this entrant.

My comrade-in-ink Matt is back in the mysterious East of Europe. Emmanuelle will have photos here soon I hope.

We went to see HP last night, celebrating the end of school. The Pythonesque ballooning-aunt-to-bus-ride-to-hunchback-butler-to-Weasley-warning sequence had me thinking “this could be the greatest movie of all time!” But then HP lost its manic jag and slipped back to being merely a very good movie for kids-at-heart.

Championship T-ball game at 1PM today. With Sabermetric precision, we’ve determined that 22.1% of (our) outs come from jogging to first base, so we all practiced running to first base last night.

Update: Everyone played lots of positions. Pirates were the home team and didn’t get our last at-bat when the Dodgers fell one short of matching our 15 runs.

Ads that make you think, win says a new advertising manifesto. Points 4-6 are particularly relevant to blog advertising, I think:

4. Active learning, or high involvement processing, produces enduring attitude changes.
5. However, most of us tend to process most media passively.

6. Despite appearances TV is a relatively low attention medium.

(Via Steve Hall.)

Jeff Jarvis exchanges e-mails with Jeff Sharlet, the editor of a new site called The Revealor, about the efficacy of the site’s recent advertising campaign. The low down:

The Revealer spent $7 k on advertising in the last month or so (most of our budget). We decided to divide it, roughly, between conventional online media and blog ads. Blog ads blew the conventional media out of the water.

Talking Points, Little Green Footballs, DailyKos, Matthew Yglesias, Hit & Run, Washington Monthly and Donald Sensing all generated multiple times more traffic than ‘conventional media.’

And all are for sale right here.