Volunteers from the Audience?

[ase]

I'm tutoring an acquaintance for pay and vivid reminders about my undervalued online social networking skills. The goal is to produce a blog for a web 2.0 class. Originally I was asked in for grammar check and target audience reading, but this - this is going to be interesting.

Me: You can't do Thursday? I can do Friday morning, but I'm interviewing a potential roommate that afternoon.
Tutee: Okay, Friday morning or Saturday afternoon works.
Me: I have to ask... so, how much blog experience do you have?
Tutee: Zero.
Me: *headdesk*
Tutee: What was that about a room?

Behold my anti-superpower: an unrivaled skill at finding people who are more interested in what I have to offer than vice versa. Fortunately, tutoring costs have already been discussed, and an agreement has been reached. The indefinite article and banhammer will both be on the table this Friday. (On the other matter, Tutee is under the impression the landlord requires a 1-year commitment, and no subleasing.)

Which brings me to the audience participation part of my day: previously, I listed some blogs I consider "good". Notice, again, the geek slant. Now, I don't want to put my life on display present a one-sided and idiosyncratic picture, so I have to ask: what are your favorite blogs? Why? Speak up, please: I'm going for breadth here, because I've got geeky depth covered.

Comments

[marahmarie]

I'll go first: I'm pretty much addicted to TechCrunch and Business Insider (tech and business-tech, respectively). I don't read 90% of posts on either blog anymore (but I used to read almost 100% of posts on both when they were written mostly by Arrington and Blodget, respectively), but I still tune in whenever Arrington or MG Siegler writes on TC, and since I lost my taste for Blodget's writing altogether sometime last year, I read Nicholas Carson almost exclusively now on BI. I also like Blogoscoped once in while, but other than those three blogs, I visit hundreds more mostly via Techmeme and very rarely, Digg. I have certain small, independent blogs bookmarked but they usually fail to hold my interest, so I just literally surf, bouncing from one interesting article on one website to another.

[ase]

Some recurring themes are popping up in the "favorite blogs" discussions I've been having: blogger personality and length are huge factors. Any links to those blogs you mention?

Yes, and most writers on both blogs are fond of long posts...

[marahmarie]

http://alleyinsider.com/
(redirects to Business Insider - they renamed the blog last year)
http://techcrunch.com/

I've been reading both since 2006. They are the only two blogs pretty much on the entire Internet that I keep going back to, outside of Blogoscoped (a blog that focuses only on Google):

http://blogoscoped.com/

Outside of that I like the NYT website, but not so much that I visit with any regularity, and that's about it....I just surf.