Gavin's Blog

I have been thinking about how to approach adding new content to the blog – I guess I have shortlisted in my mind a number of ideas.

Firstly, digests. A weekly Economist digest, with the best of its content (in my opinion anyway), with other periodical digests such as the Atlantic or FP, or indeed FA. Daily ones would be more time consuming and perhaps less beneficial to readers. But maybe a look at some of the comment sections in some of the papers.

Secondly, a podcast. I have oft threatened to start an audioblog, back in the day before ‘podcasting’ was coined, but never bothered my ass. I was thinking of a weekly discussion, perhaps 30 minutes, on either a given topic, or a selection of topics. All I need is the equipment. I would always try and have more than just me speaking, I sound incredibly boring.

Thirdly, a weekly column. I know that sounds weird given my ability to publish anything I like at any time. But I think setting oneself a target of a 1000 word rant column, is worthwhile. I never did congratulate Red Mum on her success in getting her own column.

What I should concentrate on I don’t know.

I have a backlog of stuff the post from the last week or so, best to post it all at once I guess.

DL tries to compile a list of the top Irish blogs on the basis of inlinks via Technorati. A difficult task given Technorati’s increasing unreliability. I do note that Donncha is missing from the list, I do envy his rather stratospheric inlink status.

As Frank notes, I do remember that a few more link to me than Technorati seems to recognise, but then no one, especially not Technorati, is perfect.

As a blogger I have developed an unhealthy preoccupation with analysing readership. I don’t generally let it affect my output, but I do like looking at how people come here, where they are from, and assorted other statistical information.

One thing has stood out in recent months with regard to visitors to this blog. I am not sure if the same trend is being repeated for other blogs out there.

Since the beginning of the autumn I have noticed that a higher percentage of my readers are Irish. Based on comments alone my readership is almost exclusively Irish, but based on web stats, my Irish readership has grown – especially during office hours – from miserly low percentages like 2 or 3%, to significant portions of 20-25%. Getting later into the evening the US eastern seaboard kicks in and the huge majority of readers between about 9pm and 1am are from there.

I could put this down to a higher awareness of blogs in Ireland, or the growth in the number of Irish blogs – bloggers tend to read other people’s blogs. But I wonder is it a trend that is being seen by other Irish blogs. The visitors have certainly changed in the last 42 months.

Dan Drezner points to a recent survey by Pew on internet habits. He notes the figures for:

“the proportion of that daily population who are doing some well-known internet activities”:

Email 77%
Search engine 63%
Get news 46%
Do job-related research 29%
Use instant messaging 18%
Do online banking 18%
Take part in chat room 8%
Make a travel reservation 5%
Read blogs 3%
Participate in online auction 3%

And he rightly points out the one thing that is missing from it…take a guess what that might be. Hmm. I think he might mean looking at por… portable media players.

I came across this website ages ago, and meant to blog about it. It’s a great online resource for students are people interested in public policy lectures. Some great webcasts in there.