What to Send for CJA's "Best Blog"?

The Chess Journalists of America has announced their 2008 Journalism Awards which finally includes a prize for the "Best Blog" devoted to chess:

Category 13
Best Blog
Open to online chess blogs. Send URLs of three best blog entries. Blogs judged on visual appeal, content, and ability to draw constructive comments from readers.

They ask for three representative samples between June 1, 2007 and May 31, 2008, and I'm not sure which to send. Perhaps readers and club members can offer their advice? Here is a breakdown by topic -- including Opening Analysis; Reviews; Essays, Articles, and Interviews; and Annotated Games.

Which do you think the committee would find most worthy? Which did you like best?

Opening Analysis
Mammoth Traps II: Catching the Queen in the French Wing Gambit
Richard Palliser's "Fighting the Anti-Sicilians" and Guseinov's Gambit Refuted?
The Brooklyn Defense
Benjamin's Classical Hippopotamus
Benjamin's Games with the Nimzovich Defense
Sidney Bernstein Plays 1...Nc6
A Saemisch Surprise vs. the Alekhine Defense
Anti-Pierce - 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.f4 Bb4!?
Weeramantry - Bisguier, USATE 2008
Urusov Gambit - A Rare Practical Example of 8...d5 9.O-O-O Be6 10.Nxd5!?
Urusov Gambit Update
Urusov Analysis - 3...Nxe4 4.dxe5 Qh4!?
Urusov Analysis - 5.Qxd4 Qe7?!
Refuting 5...Nxe4 in the Scotch Four Knights
Sicilicide or Suicide? Treger - Charbonneau, Marshall CC Ch. 2007
The Philidor Clamp
Queen's Gambit Declined, Lasker's Defense
Traxler Counter Attack (Wilkes Barre) Webliography
The Spanish Four Knights, Part III

Reviews
Review of Joel Benjamin's "American Grandmaster"
Review of Dangerous Weapons 1.e4 e5
Richard Palliser's "Fighting the Anti-Sicilians" and Guseinov's Gambit Refuted?
1.d4 Repertoire Books
Paul Hoffman's Attack on Lies in Chess

Essays, Articles, and Interviews
Tim McGrew
Chess Amateurism
Chess Publishing, Web 2.0 Style
Magnetic Sumo Kings
Pawn Battle Rules & Strategies
USATE 2008 Preview
Chess Narratives Exercise
Google Books III
Chess Tourist Returns
Questionnaire Tag

Annotated Games
Jeff Sarwer - Josh Waitzkin, National Primary Ch. 1986
Season Ends for NJ Knockouts with Loss to NY
Knockouts Keep Playoff Hopes Alive by Drawing Kingfishers
NJ Knockouts Stop the Blitz
NJKO - Blitz Preview
NJ Outwitted by Inventors
NJ Knockouts Slay Carolina Cobras
NJ Knockouts Beat NY Knights
NJ KO'd by Queens
NJ Knockouts Draw Kingfishers
New Jersey Knockouts vs. Tennessee Tempo
New Jersey Knockouts vs. Queens Pioneers
Max Sherer at the 2007 NJ Open

Personally, I'm leaning toward Tim McGrew, Review of Joel Benjamin's "American Grandmaster", and Richard Palliser's "Fighting the Anti-Sicilians" and Guseinov's Gambit Refuted? But it is hard to choose. Perhaps instead Mammoth Traps II: Catching the Queen in the French Wing Gambit, Season Ends for NJ Knockouts with Loss to NY, USATE 2008 Preview, Review of Dangerous Weapons 1.e4 e5, or Chess Amateurism? Who knows what they will like?

Maybe I'll post something even better in the next two weeks anyway....

By the way, next week marks the third year that I will have been writing "The Kenilworthian" blog. I will try to develop a list of my best entries, as I did after "A Year of the Kenilworthian" back in May 2006.

Another good reason to slow down...

In what will likely be the most blogged about story today, The New York Times reports that "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop." Bloggers are literally dying while "toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment."

I think it's time to kick back, open up a board, set up the pieces, and play a nice long game of chess.

February BloGGGgs

Mark Weeks of About.com does his usual monthly summary of the top stories in chess blogs by focusing on the GGGg controversy at the U.S. Amateur Team East this year -- see "Elsewhere on the Web: February BloGGGgs." His conclusion: "In the future the event should be called U.S. Amateur Team East." Hat tip: Jim West on Chess.

Chess Publishing, Web 2.0 Style

I have answered a number of e-mails in the past month from people who would like "to set up a chess website" (their exact words) for their club or for themselves. At first I wrote back trying to give some traditional web publishing pointers to these folks based on my experience. In the process, I realized that doing an old fashioned HTML website like ours is a lot of work, requires more than the standard computer literacy, and can cost some money if you want to do it right. And I also realized that, really, there is just no good reason to do that sort of thing anymore in this Web 2.0 universe, where web-based, browser-access, collaborative, point-and-click publishing is so accessible, free, fast, and easy. So now I'm going to write up my new advice so that from now on I can just send them the link!

I recently made the leap into Web 2.0 software for a class I'm teaching this semester, and I am now convinced that the easy way is the better way. The only downside I see is that, basically, you are often trusting in these Web 2.0 companies both to survive and to continue hosting your stuff for free (and without frequent server downtime). But at this point, that seems like a pretty good gamble, at least for as long as your stuff is going to have any currency anyway (and then you can always hope that the Wayback Machine takes it from there).

So the best way, IMHO, for anyone who wants to get started with online chess publishing can be stated in a single sentence: set up a blog at Blogger or WordPress (or use those programs to publish to your own host); use Chesspublisher or Game Replayer to create java applets of your games; use ChessUp, Chess Diagram Generator, or Steve Eddins's ChessImager to create diagrams; and use YouTube to host your videos (until Chess Videos starts taking uploads). That would not be hard, could reach a wide audience, and would not require even a fraction of the work that I put into the KCC site.

Besides those sites just mentioned, there are also a number of cool Web 2.0 applications coming out every day with potential uses for chesspublishing, especially from Google and Zoho. I think I'll bet on Google to have the greater longevity -- though no one would be surprised to see Microsoft buy up Zoho and make it even more competitive.

To get started trying out Google's new collaborative Web 2.0 tools, all you have to do (if you haven't done so already) is set up a Google account. Here are three programs they offer that I really like using:

• Google Docs
  I am a big fan of this web-based equivalent of MS Word, and I recommend you watch the excellent video "Google Docs in Plain English" at YouTube for an overview. This would be a useful application for anyone collaborating on a web or paper publication with a number of writers.
• Google Page Creator
  Create a home page and additional pages, then go back and link them all together for easy navigation. Even if a blog covers your publishing needs well enough, this online webpage builder can also serve as a good place to post files online for reference by your blog (if you are not satisfied with the way Blogger handles this).
• Picasa (requires free download)
  This is Google's slimmed down version of Photoshop, which is best for photo editing and has a great red-eye tool. It also allows you to post images to the "Picasaweb," but I noticed that Jim West tried this and then switched back to Blogger's method instead due to loading delays.
  

Zoho has a number of offerings that are pretty much equivalent to Google's, but they also have rather unique ones as well, including:

• Zoho Viewer
  Looking for an easy place to post and share documents, files, or pictures? Try Zoho Viewer, as explained in this video.
• Zoho Wiki
  Tired of the Wikipedia pinheads denying the existence of the Knights Errant? Create your own wiki and forget about them. Ideal for maintaining lists (such as of club members). If you want to maintain a collaborative list of links on the web, then del.icio.us might work better.

Of course, all of this assumes you know how to generate and edit PGN files (see 1, 2, 3, 4 for explanation) using Fritz, Shredder, Rybka, Chess Assistant Lite, Arena, SCID, Chesspad, Chess Cat, or a true Web 2.0 PGN generator like PGN Web Editor by Lapides Software (anyone know of other online utilities like this one?) You might also like to have ChessBase Light 2007, but it has limitations for creating PGN files (be sure to see ChessBase Downloads for tutorials). Posting games for display on the web should always begin with well-edited PGN files.

I generally still do things the old fashioned way, so I'm not sure my blog offers the best examples of how to be a true Web 2.0 chess publisher. But here are some good model Web 2.0 sites that I've seen:

• Jim West on Chess
  Uses Blogger, ChessPublisher, ChessUp, and Google
• Steve Learns Chess
  Uses Wordpress, ChessPublisher, and ChessImager.
• Streatham & Blixton CC
  Blogger and ChessPublisher.
  

I welcome others to share their sites and tell us the Web 2.0 tools they are using.

Chess Blog Profiles

Goran Urosevic of the excellent Chessdom blog and website has published the profiles of ten chess bloggers, including myself. It makes for interesting reading -- especially for anyone interested in chess blogging as an example of the whole Web 2.0 movement.

2007 Chess Blog Awards

Obviously unaffected by the writer's strike, About.com's Mark Weeks announced his first annual "Chess Blog Awards" on January 13. For over a year, Mark has been posting an excellent column titled "Elsewhere on the Web," where he has taken note of the more interesting chess blog posts of the past month. Apparently he has been logging every interesting post and has put together a list of the top dozen high scorers (see above). Though I didn't win the "Oscar" (which went to Temposchlucker), I was pleased to note that my blog ranked rather well, and in very good company!

My wife disagrees...

60%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Find a Sonography school near you

"The Center Square" Returns

No, not Paul Lynde--but Glen Hart, whose chess blog "The Center Square" at the Kenilworth Chess Club website had one post in July 2006 before Glen suddenly became an itinerant engineer, working on a number of projects in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Palo Alto that kept him away from New Jersey for an entire year. Now he's back, and back to blogging too (though we had to do some re-engineering to get him up and running again). His first post is about chess in LA, though he claims he was too busy at work to play much out there.... Welcome back, Glen!

Blogshares Chess

Check it out, since it is not likely to last beyond this weekend: The Kenilworthian is ranked #6 among chess blogs at Blogshares: The Fantasy Blog Stock Market. Of course, just as with the regular stock market, these rankings have little connection to real value. Quite a few prominent chess blogs (including The New York Times's Gambit blog) don't even get listed, and the rankings have no relation to the number of visitors each receives (otherwise The Daily Dirt could knock everyone else off the list). But it's nice to see that people are reading, referencing, and linking to my blog sufficiently to gain some standing in my "industry."

Chess for Blood Blog Retires

It's a sad day for the chess blogosphere as one of the most popular chess blogs (and a personal favorite), Chess for Blood by Patrick Bollig, is now officially "Closed." For any who have not read this blog closely, I recommend its Sitemap, which lists the best articles since January 2006 when it all began. My favorite posts have been on opening analysis (especially the Chigorin-Stonewall, Qd6 Scandinavian, and Anti-Opening Openings), chess videos (his first is still my favorite), and using free chess software (including to compile a free database). But I have enjoyed them all for their consistent style and tone, which always projected a manly attitude toward the game with an emphasis on attack. Blue Devil called it the chess equivalent of SpikeTV, which I find especially apt. Its forays into amateur chess video making alone will leave a lasting mark. And one of his better games was recently featured in Jack Peter's excellent LA Times chess column.

Best wishes to Patrick in all he does.