Check out 2007 BlogWorld speaker author and all around nice guy Professor David Perlmutter on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Show talking about his new book Blog Wars.

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The New York Times has a story today that suggests bloggers work too hard and cites two recent personal tragedies as proof of their claim.

I don’t buy it. Bloggers are no more or less obsessive as a group than any other group of individuals. What I noticed about this story is that there have been quite a few articles about blogging in the print and/or online editions of the NYT.  We have their attention.

There is of course lots of reaction in the blogosphere.  My favorite is Marc Andreessen’s post mocking the NYT’s take and predicting future headlines from the NYT. 

Reworded for brevity:

Blogging Causes Death

Future New York Times headline submissions from yours truly:

Blogging Causes Herpes

Bloggers Shorter than Normal People

Want To Contract Malaria? Try Blogging

Bloggers Have Bad Breath

Leprosy and Blogging May Be Connected

Hitler Probably Blogged

Now Bloggers Aren’t Even Wearing Pajamas

Blogging Fad Almost Over

Howard Lindzon has a good take:

Technorati Tags: New York Times,NYT,blogging,Marc Andreessen,Howard Lindzon

I read The New York Times business most days and if this is Sunday Time’s worthy, we are f@#ked. They are officially out of money or ideas. The article only proves one thing…that the New York Times has allowed itself to get caught up in the hype, not real journalism. There is no real link betweeen blogging and heart attacks. Maybe the Times just wants to get to the top of Techmeme .Interesting and sad times indeed for newspapers.

When we talked to our friends at Southwest Airlines about becoming the “Official Airline of BlogWorld & New Media Expo” we suggested we do something fun. While brainstorming we came up with the idea of a caption contest where Southwest fans could post their suggested caption for a photo of Southwest’s choosing. Then other folks could come and vote on their favorites and against the captions they didn’t like. The winner would receive free airfare from Southwest Airlines, Three nights free hotel stay from the MGM Grand and free registration to BlogWorld.

One of our challenges was putting together the contest quickly and setting up a voting system. Then it hit us, one of our exhibitors Spigit did exactly that.

We called them up and asked them if they could/ would like to do it. They said no problem and in about three days they had everything built. After clearing Southwest’s legal department the contest was announced on Oct 19th and ran until yesterday the 26th.

After 800 posts and almost 24,00 views in seven days on the contest site, and 42 comments on the Southwest blog I would say it was a pretty big hit.

The winner will be officially announced on Monday but I think if you take a look at the contest site it kind of gives it away.

Thanks to Paula, Brian and the Southwest Airlines team for just being the fun folks they are, Padmanabh and his team at Spigit for creating a great contest site on such short notice, to all the bloggers out there who helped spread the word about the contest and to everyone who voted and participated.

See you all in Vegas in a couple weeks and I hope you are all flying my favorite airline Southwest.

Blog on!
Rick Calvert
CEO & Co-founder
BlogWorld & New Media Expo

I really hate announcing this but a couple weeks ago Arianna’s people called and asked if we could reschedule her talk for the Nov 8th Keynote.  We asked them to give us a couple of days to try and rework the schedule as this would effect 3 other people (Jeremy Wright, Roger L. Simon, and Jim Lanzone) who had all made plans to participate in that panel.

After we were able to get all of her co-panelists  to agree to re-arrange their schedules and give their talk on Nov 9th, her office told us she was going to cancel her appearance completely.

I know many of you were looking forward to seeing and hearing from Arianna at the show. So was I. If you are still interested in hearing her speak, it looks like she will now be at the Media and Money conference in New York on November 7th.  Registration is $2,100.

the blogosphere’s own NZ Bear AKA Rob Neppell appeared yesterday on the New Fox Business channel and represented the blogosphere quite well. Take a look at the video clip here.

The show airs tonight. Mark needs our help to win this thing. Check out this excerpt from his Facebook dancing with the stars page:

Mark invited you to “Dancing with the Stars - Vote for Mark and Kym - Again P4 !” today, October 15 at 8:00pm.

Mark says, “Thanks again to all that voted for us ! Its time to rally the troops again. anything you can do, call 1800 VOTE 411, go to abc.com text, get your friends, school and coworkers.

We need every vote we can get !

You can visit his facebook site here.

related. Check out Tyler Bleszinki’s post at Ahteletics Nation. Tyler thinks Mark buying the Cubs would be good for baseball.

Last night, my partner Dave was talking with Mark Cuban on Facebook, and Dave gave Mark kudos on his dancing. As many of you may know, Mark’s competing on the “Dances with the Stars” TV show. Dave says he only watches because his wife and kids do, but I have a sneaking suspicion Dave wants to get out there and cut a rug!

Check out Mark’s post about why he’s doing this. 

We like Mark, enjoy his blog, and he’s asked for our help, so we’re getting the word out to all of our blogger friends.

Watch the show TONIGHT, 8pm on ABC, and call in votes to support a fellow blogger!

The call-in and text-in votes play an equal role in the outcome of the competition (evenly weighted with judges’ scoring), so if Mark gets good scores from the judges and lots of blogger votes, he might be a contender for a win….so here’s the number to call (or text):

800-86834-11
800-VOTE4-11

Text (for AT&T customers only)
3411

If you need any details about how the voting works, we found this info page.

Update: Mark just shot Dave a note this morning: “tell your friends to vote as many times as they can, text is unlimited, but you have to be ATT…calls are limited to 6, email to 11, but you can have as many email addresses as you want!…thx so much”

Thats right the 2007 Weblog Awards will be presented this November 8th during the opening night party at BlogWorld & New Media Expo. The opening night party begins at 7 pm at The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

There will be the biggest blogger party and celebration of the industry you have ever seen. Lots of great food and drink and a few other surprises. All of your favorite bloggers will be there so be sure to join us. register now.

Nominations begin October 1st. Visit the official 2007 Weblog Awards site to nominate and vote for your favorite blogs.

If you plan to attend the Blog World & New Media Expo, are you planning to live blog your experience?  I ask this because I learned something new in the convention and trade show business today.  While discussing a completely non-related convention with its planners and directors, I was trying to find out if I could live blog the event for a client.  “You want to do what?”, was the response as I made my way through the maze of red tape before I was finally told I would probably not be able to cover the event in this way.  It seems that they consider live blogging or posting the experience live through a blog, “siutcasing.” 

Suitcasing refers to businesses or sales people working the show floor selling their services or products without actually purchasing a show booth.  I tried to explain that I wasn’t there as a sales person or there to sell anything on behalf of my client, I was there to report on my client’s blog the experience of attending the show and who was there, what was the buzz, and what were the hot presentations and what was the breaking industry news.  I was a citizen journalist.  Somehow I don’t think they understood the idea behind a blog, or what posting was or how that played into their “No Suitcasing” policy.  I think it is safe to say that the Blog World & New Media Expo welcomes as many bloggers as possible to create a buzz about the show experience.  If you intend to live blog the event let us know and we can do a page of all of those that are posting their experience.  I would love to hear about those that will be podcasting from the show, livecasting the event and reporting on their experience!  I’ll let you know how it turns out with the other conference and whether I actually have to gain press credentials.  Bloggers get no respect!

Today we will be airing our radio show live at Blog Talk Radio and we will be discussing the upcoming Blog World & New Media Expo with Larry Genkin of Blogger & Podcaster Magazine, a sponsor of the expo, and one of the exhibitors of the show. 

We will be doing more interviews as we get the people lined up for the show.  Future interviewees include people like The CEO of Blog Talk Radio, Alan Levy, a speaker and friend appearing at the show and author of Blog Wild! A Guide For Small Business Blogging, Andy Wibbels.  We plan to have other guests on that will be presenting at the show, sponsoring or as exhibitors. These are sneak previews of what is in store for everyone as we near the vent.  Make sure you get registered to meet these people at the show!