In many respects, it’s a labour of love driven by the fact there really wasn’t a comprehensive and high-quality place to find Canadian blogs. As a result, you had to peck and search around as opposed to having a one-stop destination that met all your needs.

The CBD was launched with about 800 blogs, and since it went live a couple of days ago, we’ve had more than 150 blogs submitted. You can submit your own blog or recommend a blog you like. Either way, it’s free.

Consider the CBD a first step in what we’re looking to do. Our goal was to plant a stake in the ground and establish a foundation upon which we could build. There are lots of things on our to-do list, including new features and a refreshed design.

We’re looking to the community to help us make the CBD better and bigger. Submit or recommend a blog, or send us some thoughts at feedback@thecanadianblogdirectory.com.

I’m not talking about the value of the site but, more important, the value of all the content you’ve diligently written for the past months or years? For many people, it’s like the MasterCard commercials: priceless.

I mean, can you put a value on the hours of work, the amazing amount of creativity and brain cycles that have been invested in pumping out blog posts? Personally, I have close to 10,000 posts from three blogs that are still active. To lose them would be devastating.

So, what’s it worth to back up all of that blog content?

VaultPress suggests that in an ideal world, it’s $15 to $40/month for a one blog. Despite the fact your blog content is invaluable, $15 to $40 seems expensive, especially that we live in a world in which paying nothing is par for the course. The question is how much would people really be willing to pay to back up their blog content. My sense is that maybe $5/month.

What’s interesting, however, is I’m starting to see more interest in blogs from clients. Many of them are looking for ways to differentiate themselves and establish a stronger online presence so the idea of having a blog resonates for many reasons. This is a contrast to just a few months ago when Twitter and Facebook were viewed as the most attractive social media options, while blogging was seen as labour-intensive.

While Twitter and Facebook are still integral parts of the corporate social media arsenal, I think blogging is starting to regain some of its cache because a well-written blog can be a valuable way for companies to tell their stories – and at a time when there’s so much digital noise, the ability to tell a good story is more important than ever.

Another reason blogs are such a key part of a corporate social media program is they can be great content engines to support a company’s overall social media efforts by generating material for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

A good blog can be also used to support marketing and sales programs by serving as a living breathing entity that reflects a company’s thoughts, strategic positioning and new developments.

Truth be told, blogs are workhorses while Twitter and Facebook are the glamour twins. But for many companies, blogs are playing an important role by acting as the key pillar for their social media efforts. This is the big reason why blogs could make a comeback as companies see their value and have more resources to support them.

For more of my thoughts on blogging, check out this video by IT World Canada in which I explain some of the keys to successfully blogging.

That said, I think there’s a place for a bigger and even better WordCamp Toronto. If you were relatively new to blogging or WordPress, yesterday offered a great opportunity to get a lot of solid knowledge and inspiration, and an opportunity share ideas. But for people experienced with WordPress and looking to do more creative, innovative or sophisticated things, it wasn’t the place to get it.

In an ideal world – and something that should be seriously explored given the size of Toronto’s tech and WordPress communities – WordCamp Toronto should be a one-day, multi-stream event that meets the needs of everyone from newbies to WordPress ninjas.

There should be a WordPress 101 stream that provides the straight goods on why to use WordPress, the different ways it can be used, and basic information about the worlds of plug-ins, themes, hosting, etc.

A second stream would be for designers and people looking for insight on how to take their blogs and Web sites to the next level, offering insight into creating new themes, and rolling out innovative features and functionality.

The third stream would be for developers with sessions on the guts of WordPress MU, the development of themes and plug-ins, hacks and security.

WordCamp Toronto would become a place for the entire WordPress community to gather to meeting new people and exchange ideas – a place where the new WordPress users could talk to experienced designers and developers to learn about how WordPress can be used, and a place where experienced WordPress users could learn from peers and gain insight into the things that users are looking to do.

Toronto’s technology community has tons of enthusiasm, energy and a hunger to learn. In the right venue, WordCamp Toronto could be a much bigger event with a larger mandate that would be a roaring success.

Having used Disqus at Twitterrati, I went looking for another comment system to see if there was another good option. After a bit of research, I came across Echo, which appeared to have many of the necessary features. I particularly liked how Echo would display tweets as well as comments – thereby providing coverage of more conversations about my blog posts.

Installing Echo was pretty straightforward, and the comments already within the blog were imported easily and quickly.

After a week or so of it, I’m not completely convinced it’s a long-term solution. The look and feel isn’t as polished as I’d like it to be, and the administrative functions need to be improved in terms of usability and intuitiveness.

Given Disqus and IntenseDebate have free versions, I’m surprised Echo costs $12/year after a 30-day trial period. Not that $12 is a lot of money but the lack of a free version is a detraction.

To be honest, I’d probably have uninstalled Echo already but there doesn’t appear to be an easy to uninstall it, which is completely strange.

Any thoughts on other blog comment systems?

In other words, Twitter is easy; blogs are difficult. Twitter is dessert; blogs are dinner. Twitter is paint-by-numbers, blogs are a canvas, some paint and an easel.

Nevertheless, millions of blogs continue to be created every day because they’re a low-barrier platform for anyone to ruminate, pontificate, speculate, opine and babble about anything and everything. Unlike Twitter, there are no arbitrary restrictions on the length of a post. You can go long, you can go short (a la master blogger Seth Godin), you can post a photograph, or comment on someone else’s blog post.

As Peter Kim outlined in a recent blog post, there are plenty of reasons why blogs appear to be losing their mojo. But I believe Kim’s thesis ignores some basic truths – the blogosphere continues to expand, and blogging continues to be the social platform to demonstrate insight, and the ability to create a community around it.

This is the reason that I encourage most of my clients to seriously consider writing a blog to show customers and potential customers who they are and what they think. To me, blogs are the perfect business card, white paper and marketing brochure in one tidy package. It also helps that Google loves blogs so blogs are a great SEO tool.

Sure, blogs aren’t easy because you’ve got to work them on a regular basis. (Note: “work them” means staying committed, which could mean one post/week or several posts/week). But in the long run, the rewards from blogging outweigh anything you’ll get from Twitter.

For more counter-thoughts on Kim’s blog thesis, check out the Future Buzz. As well, the chart below that shows how WordPress.com and Blogger.com have grown over the past year (27.7% and 28.2% growth respectively in unique U.S. visitors).

It got me thinking that while technically launching a new blog can be done in minutes using WordPress.com or Blogger.com, it’s difficult to start a blog that will attract an audience beyond family and friends. A big part of the problem is there are so many blogs out there so it’s difficult to attract an audience given the competition and noise.

To attract attention, a new blog needs a twist, an angle or something different to stand out from the crowd. A good example is Stuff White People Like, which was definitely different and irreverent. WWPL was also lucky because it caught lightning in a bottle because it got noticed and went viral.

But for the vast majority of new blogs, that doesn’t happen. They are started with a lot of enthusiasm and energy before the novelty quickly wears off. This explains why only 6% of the 133 million blogs tracked by Technorati in its 2008 State of Blogosphere had been updated in the past 120 days.

So the question is whether it’s even worth bothering with a new blog if your chances of people reading it are slim and nil. The answer is “absolutely”. If you want to blog to build your brand, express an opinion, satisfy the urge to write or keep a personal journal online.

There are lots of good reasons to start blogging that have nothing to do with attracting traffic or making money. And if, in the process, you hit the jackpot and do gets of lots of visitors, that’s just a cherry on the sundae.

More: A good read on where blogging is going is Om Malik’s “The Evolution of Blogging”.

Many of us who have embraced Twitter have discovered that we spend less time on Google Reader, et al because the people we follow on Twitter are providing enough interesting links to a variety of content, including blogs.

On TechCrunchIT, Steve Gillmor argues “RSS doesn’t cut it anymore” and that “RSS is a shell of its former self, casually subsumed as the transport for 140+ content into the social stream”.

For people who spend a lot of time online, RSS has lost some of its appeal for the following reasons:

1. This demographic consumes a lot of information so the prospect of combing through an ever-growing number of blogs within an increasingly-neglected RSS reader can be daunting.

2. Since these people are so time-strapped, they are constantly looking for ways to prioritize/filter the blogs they do read. This explains why Twitter has emerged as a consumption tool because it, in theory, you only see the links provided by people you trust (aka follow)

Of course, it is important to recognize that people such as Steve Gillmor (and myself, for that matter) aren’t representative of the online community. We – and most Twitter users – consume a lot of information, and looking for new, cool tools to consume it. We’re also fickle, gravitating to new, shiny tools before abandoning them when they move into the mainstream.

While Gillmor’s thesis probably rings true with the digerati, it is premature to blow off RSS as a dead or dying concept. In many ways, RSS is evolving to serve the needs of people better. Waterloo, Ont.-based PostRank is an example of a company putting a new twist on RSS with a service to filter and prioritize the most interesting blogs.

Links: Some more thoughts on how we’re consuming content comes from WebWorkerDaily’s Eric Berlin.

Technorati Tags: blogs, RSS

It would be a standalone tool that bloggers could configure to use with Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, et al. It would feature access to related services such as search, image search, blog search, Picasa and Google Docs.

If Microsoft can offer Live Writer, you figure some brainiac within the GooglePlex could create a different/better mouse trap?

Technorati Tags: blogs, google

I’m personally not in the market for a new laptop but if a computer maker was looking to seize a market niche, it would be interesting to see someone create a BlogBook – a notebook designed and aimed at bloggers.

It would come with Firefox pre-installed with some cool plugins (e.g. Zemanta), a blog publishing tool (Microsoft Live Writer), a user-friendly photo-editing tool, a publishing tool such as Digsby, perhaps a FTP client, and a 30-day free account for Boingo.

The BlogBook would be the perfect computing companion for people who wants a lightweight, powerful machine to blog/do social media on the go.

So, what do you think? Would there be enough of a market to make a BlogBook viable?

Update: Walter Mossberg has a story on how the NetBook is coming into its own. Maybe some smart NetBook maker will let people order customized versions to meet their needs be it blogging, Web surfing, e-mail, photography, travel. David Zatz has jumped on the NetBook bandwagon by buying a My Wind that will serve two purposes: a mobile blogging platform and portable video player.

Technorati Tags: blogs