Why would I consider blogs as „Weapons of Mass Destruction“? Originally, there’s simply the issue that the author of a blog may influence the life of certain people – especially those who’ve been targetted by the author. Remember the case of Citizen-Media-Ethos in which Eason Jordan was bound to a statement concerning US troops in Iraq infront of a small internal journalist group, but one has been a blogger without affiliance to the Mainstream-Media or any Multinational Corporation. This fact about the hidden and often underestimated power of blog authors made me name this blog Sichelputzer with the subtitle of „Weapons of Mass Destruction“ (seen in the layout image). But blogs as „Weapons of Mass Destruction“ are certainly effecting different topics such as:

Infected Blogs
…which unleash trojans, keyloggers or viruses by utilizing the often provided diskspace to save malicious files and prepare them for an automated download in the HTML of the weblog. Usually the infected blog is being promoted by using the most simple idea: spam mails. On the other hand one should ask why people still grant permission to auto-install software via the internet explorer or visit spam mail related websites… please, stupidity is no excuse.

Censored Blogs
…which is commonly done in China and other countries which fear the truth and non-governmental-controlled media. But even a democratic country like Spain plans to censor the internet and especially blogs. Now the idea to study in a spanish language specialization for my International Management study seems to be oblivious.

(Un)Censored Blogs
…which is explained by a recent voting poll by the US webhosting-company Hostway: 80 percent of a total of 2500 participants in this poll expressed that blog authors should not publish third-party information. Nevertheless, about 52 percent of the participants support the idea of granting private journalists (blog authors) the same rights as traditional and official journalists have – only 27% had no independent opinion on the subject.

Since the 7th of April I’ve become a part of the team for the MEX Blog, a well known and well cited blog in the germanspeaking Blogosphere. I consider myself being on a probational term while I maintain my blog and website. To aid in the process of creating a culture for the MEX Blog, I’ll surely add some of my individual culture to the group personality of MEX. So far I contributed two entries concerning the local event in Schleswig-Holstein and the recent idea of Microsoft to publish future editions of their Encarta as Wiki (or as nothing else but a „feedbackpedia“). We’ll see what comes next, and I’m eager to contribute at both sides: There and Back again – a Blogger’s Tale.

I felt like updating the RSS List which I’ve been using to manage my full Blogroll service. On top of the newly uploaded OPML file, I created more categories to sort the numerous blogs and news services. Now you all may enjoy to read what I read several times a day, stay online and be up to date! ;)

I had enough of the limitation of 65 words due to the partial syndication of my blog. The URLs to the feeds will remain the same, so please do not worry! But from now on, both the RSS and Atom feeds will contain the full and uncut content. However, certain feed aggregators might not display the content 1:1 due to plugin or layout differences.

In general, many other phone numbers will exceed 30 characters… but I noticed upon entering my telephone number in account/overview.php of the admin interface that the number cannot exceed more than 10 characters. But unfortunately my number (without spaces!) includes already 11 characters, if I add the international area code for Germany „+49“, the field needs already to have 13 characters since the first „zero“ of the national area code is erased once international callers use my number. Once I’d try to draw the value for this input field in a more readable format, it would include a minimum of 21 characters as I combine „+49 (0) xxx xx xx xxx“ for my number.