australianblogs.com.au is here

Welcome in Australian blogging to a very useful new site, australianblogs.com . Cloud tags, nearly 300 blogs and rising and some interesting names among 'em. It would be great to see more, especially useful if they are tagged with their capital city to boot.

SInce its opening just over two weeks ago, Jon Yau and team have put me in touch with several sites hitherto unknown...

Just for starters, there's a disability network (wow), Enableblogs:

The Enableblogs vision is to facilitate and promote conversations between people who are involved in or wish to explore disability issues.
Enableblogs is being built as a place for people to get involved in discussions around disability and related issues.

Behold, I think of it a few months ago - and it was already happening.

Margaret River blog
Gherardi Wines is a boutique winery in the famous winemaking region of Margaret River in Western Australia. The writer to the blog has twenty-nine years of viticultural experience and is consulting at Curtin Uni in their viticulture course. Pretty nice blog. Pretty darn nice.

Disambiguity is the blog of Leisa Reichelt, a digital experience architect from Sydney and a natural gathering point for those interested in Web 2.0 down under and elsewhere. A new media point of interest presented itself very early in Australianblogs.com at academic Angela Thomas' blog on English education, i-Anya.

So if you're blogging in Australia and reading this, please get over there and stick yours up with some tags.

Meanwhile, at Larvatus Prodeo,  Mark Bahnisch has flagged his burgeoning interest in the sociology of blogging and offers news on an impending piece of research on why Australians blog. As usual the comments form a rich vein of content for us Oz bloggers to mine (if you ignore the long digression on a literature competition in media res). I particularly like the comment on the number of SOHO types blogging - this is parallel to the US experience and shows Oz blogging is emerging as a social 'force'. If that's the right word...

AND finally - I don't usually blog family but I'd like to remember this! I wish I had an internal video camera (in some respects I have always had one, but the funny things are often forgotten. And there have been so many of them.)

Two youngest family members sitting in the living area over the Saturday morning papers, deconstructing the opening scenes of Citizen Kane - one has seen it at his rather good high school for history, the other is analysing it for her film class, and they both speak in their own stagey, sarcastic demotic of 'dysfunctional sibling', which they insist is A JOKE, Mum! get over it.
'So, you're saying I'm wrong? That when he closes the window, he's saying, 'Let him play in the snow?' and when she opens it, she's saying, ' Bring him inside, I want him to get warm?'
'That's right, you dick, you've got it ALL WRONG AGAIN.'

Comments

[Jon Y]

Thanks for the plug + feedback + help with the HELP pages, Gen!

Cheers
Jon

[CW]

Thanks for the info re AussieBlogs, Genevieve :) (BTW I've been a reader of your blog for some months now, I guess this is me decloaking ;) )

[genevieve]

No problem, Jon -I think the site is well worth supporting and it's something people have been wanting for a while.
CW - I read yours too! good luck with your blogging presentation!

[The Bec Half of Glamorouse]

Thanks for finding us! I must check out the australianblogs.com, maybe Kim (blog partner) listed us there.

So pleased you like the new design, a friend in America did it for us after she found the graphic and thought it looked like we wrote!

And the Citizen Kane argument? You mean that after they stop fighting about toys, food and bathroom time they move on to opposing forms of deconstruction? Crikey. I'm in for a long haul...

[genevieve]

Mmm, Bec, but they were teasing each other as well. They are old 'Good News Week', Frontline and Lano and Woodley buffs (hey, isn't everyone? Why can't Lano and Woodley get another series for Chrissakes). As the Irish might say, they give good craic. I had a very dark day t'other week, lost a key negotiation with a supervisor - came home and they were cacking themselves watching the piano episode of Black Books. It was a nice space to chill in. Eventually, being a mother does pay off! However I have been where you guys are, and it's a very long term investment :)

[leisa.reichelt]

i *love* the piano episode of Black Books. In fact, it could well be my favorite episode.

thanks for the shout out. I've been enjoying exploring your blog in the last couple of days.

I hadn't been back to australianblogs since just after it launched (when there weren't very many of us in the index). How great too see how it's grown. Many more blogs to explore.

Interesting that the biggest tags (at first scan) are Australia and Blogs/Blogging etc.

one might have thought you could do with out using those tags at a site called australianblogs...

ah, tagging...

[genevieve]

It is a very fine episode indeed. I rather like the vin du Pape as well ('Pick me! pick me! pick me!' Boys, boys, boys!')
That 'bleeding obvious' aspect of tagging is a feature of most first cataloguing attempts, believe it or not. I had to kick myself after first tagging, having realised that putting in my location might be rather neat (which is why I had to go back and do it again!). Tyranny of distance and all that. Some 'user beware' type instruction is often required even for the 'trained'user :)
But Jon has been very interested in all my carping comments about the tags, which is most kind of him.

[Mark]

Thanks heaps for putting me on to australianblogs.com. I've been lonely for other Australian blogs (which is why I enjoy yours) and been looking for something like this... I've just realised how many other Australia blogs there are!!! I like listening to Australian voices...

I've just added my blog, and had to think hard what tags to use. Thanks for the tip on tagging 'melbourne'. I hope to find more melbourne bloggers our there.

[david tiley]

Lano and Woodley have split. O NO!

They should have killed Kenny instead.

BTW - a small personal coincidence. I've stayed with the Gherardis, who are the best, best people. Some of the photos are from their deck which overlooks the vineyard on the hill. Mrs G. is Jenny, who is a film producer and an all round good person.

[genevieve]

Ahh, so the Gherardis have been taught by Australia's top blogger. No wonder it's such a well-made blog.
My daughter has organised a contingent of mourners (if that's the right word) to attend L & W's final bash. Amazing how much attention Frank is getting for his centurion costume on Thank God You're Here, though. As Beckett himself might have said, people are bloody ignorant apes.