Blogs of executives are starting to appear and at least some of them seems to be using ghost-bloggers according to a comment by Elwyn Jenkins (aka Microdoc) to my Blogs will fade away post is of any indication.  Elwyn wrote:

"I would have to disagree that most of the writing can now go in-house for most corporations. People within corporations do not have the time to 'blog' for their company, and few feel that they can write. Already, I write three blogs for large companies and have a growing list of clientele. I will soon be putting writers on to handle the volume of writing. The task is to listen to what is going on within a company, learn the voice of a key person and blog for that person. The client ultimately publishes today's blog, but a professional writer, thinks up the ideas, and puts a spin on today's blog to match in with a series of events within the corporation."

My initial response was "Whoa!  That's cheating."  But I thought about it some more and tried to think about it from the perspective of businesses and executives.  It made sense.  While writing style matters, it is the message that matters more.  How we think and how we write also make a lot of noise that seeps into our blogs and interefere with the message we are trying to convey.

Still, I thought ghost-blogging is a topic others might want to think about.  One blogging lessons I have learned recently is that I should write, not only about what I want to write about, but also what my readers want to write about in response to my post.  Participation is a big component of blogging after all.  So tell me what you think of ghost-blogging.

If you are a forward-looking executive for a large corporation who wants to see how blogging can help you do your job better, but have either terrible writing skills or leaky-temper problems, give Elywin a call.  I have both problems, but I don't have much of an *ss to cover.  You do.

Update #1: I have created a Ghost-Blogger Directory for people to offer their services.  Until a better directory is created elsewhere, this will have to do.  Send me a note if you want to be included.

Ho ho ho.  We got a new dog.  It doesn't have a name yet, but here he is.  Oops.  I forgot to ask whether it's a he or she.  As to what, I think it is a new breed created by mixing poodle and something else to minimize hair shedding and smell.

It's not like I care whether a dog smells and sheds hair or not.  I love all animals, especially dogs.  Having him/her in the house makes me so happy that I might start barking any minute now.

Business market, particularly the small business market, is where most of the action and the money will be in the future, not personal blogs.  Benefits of blogging technologies, such as ease of update, content syndication, moblogging, audblogging, fotologging, and social networking, will allow small business owners to explode into the web like never before and propell blogging into a day-to-day necessity for survival. 

For proper perspective, think about how little hole-in-the-wall stores so common in Asia might use blogging technologies to improve their business.  Then scale it up and expand across the globe across language boundaries.

We are about to enter the marshland of copyrights, a wet land of confusion that lies between the land and the sea.  On land, things are on firm ground of fair use.  In the sea, what sinks and what doesn't is clear cut.  In the marshland, nothing is certain.

As I mentioned before, value-added blogs and feeds are coming our way.  But copyright issues could sink it before it gets here.  Last night, I asked "Dave" how he would feel if I created an RSS feed of his posts I liked.  His answer was no, and I suspect majority of bloggers will feel the same way.

Imagine a newspaper of blog posts delivered to 100 million readers three times a day.  While some might think this is impossible, I have walked though most of the serious technical and business issues and have concluded that such newspaper is not only possible, but potentially very profitable.

Biggest unknowns are the copyright issues.  It's not just the bloggers and how they feel about commercial syndication of their posts, but owners of the material bloggers frequently refer to or embed into their post either partially or as a whole.  It's a big iceberg that could turn any ship into Titanic.

Jakob Nielsen rants on PDF (thx to Dan Gillmor).  Jakob is absolutely right on this.  It is not just PDF.  Viewing PDF via Acrobat is as pleasing as watching My Dinner with Andre in slow motion.  The mystery I need to solve is how the hell Adobe manages to keep selling this monstrosity effortlessly.  They just some how popup in the Fortune 500 IT grocery list.

Another reason why I read Jakob's article with interest is that newspaper UIs have potential for having similar problems.  Orphaned location, in particular, is a serious one that is difficult to workaround.  I don't know why I am so fatally attracted to tough problems.  Must be the ego thing.