Blog Clue (blogclue.com) is a cross between a wiki and a search engine. Much like the more famous examples you can use it's URL structure to point tags at. Tags (in case you have been living under a rock) are a way of marking blog posts (and other things). To qualify for the tag micro format the link URL must be the same text as the linked text from the last slash to the end. Lots of sites have suitable structures media wiki installations like the wikipedia are one such example. Blog Clue is another. The page for Thanet was, until today, lacking a reasonable write up. Even after my modest attempts I am sure there is more that can be said. Therefore I am going to make it a minor mission of mine to encourage my fellow Thanet bloggers to make the listing the best that there is. Part of that is getting your blog listed within the Thanet, Kent, Margate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate and etc. pages on blogclue.com. To do this you simply need to use relevant tags to get your posts listed. Easy when you know how. However, if you don't know how it can be a nightmare. So over the next few weeks I will be looking at the issues of tagging and getting listed in such sites. I may even throw in some hints and tips on how to get extra mileage from it all. Getting listed is not all there is to it however. It just happens to be the really really easy part. Being a wiki you, me and the guy next door can all take part in editing the pages that matter most. That is what is so special about wikis. Some people say that WIKI stands for What I Know Is. It is not actually true (wiki means quick) but it is a good way to explain the community joint effort that makes them so powerful. I just happen to think that the entries for Thanet and the surrounding issues should be extra good.

The world of the arts is something that Thanet is deeply lacking. For all the talk of "revamping" the libraries (by moving council services into them) and the black hole that is the Turner Centre we are a deeply deprived area. Were it not for a few souls working hard to bring things finer than say, a pint of cheap larger to the masses, we in Thanet would be totally bereft. One such group is the voluntary organisation known as Thanet Film Society. Thanet Film Society have since 1994 been bringing independent and foreign film to Thanet and screening them in real cinemas too (Such as The Windsor where things started). This flavour that is not the spoon fed mainstream of "blockbusters" and template driven formalised stories could as easily disappear tomorrow as stay with us forever. As they themselves say on their website the content they should tends towards "...foreign language films, independent American movies and small scale British films that would otherwise not be screened in local cinemas". Being a firmly community minded group they claim that "...at least two-thirds of the content of each season results from audience suggestions." What does this tell you? It tells me that it is possible to have variety and your opinion can and does matter. It also tells me that such efforts require our support. As blog and site owners we should be ready to help spread the word and as citizens of Thanet we can improve our poor little island by simply becoming involved with things. By getting out and enjoying things. Who says that making Thanet better has to be a struggle? Visit the Thanet Film Society Website at thanetfilm.co.uk

XML is a powerful technical specification but powerful specifications are nothing without a useful implementation. RSS and ATOM are two such examples of an implementation that is both fun and useful. However, that means nothing if you don't understand what they are for. Atom and RSS are site feed formats. A site feed is simply the raw content (headlines, story etc) of a site. While this sounds rather dull there is plenty that can be done with it. For example you can head your favorite Thanet blog on your PDA, mobile, desktop or even in some email clients (like Thunderbird). It allows headlines from lots of sources to be pulled together into a giant custom super blog of everything you are interested in or push out from your blog and into headline aggregation sites for others to discover. If you use the browser Firefox you can use a feed to have live up-to-date bookmarks of the latest items for any site that produces a feed. If you use any of the many specialist start page providers (my Yahoo, Google home page and the like) you can pull the headlines in and have them there for you to read in the morning. Many bloggers use them to keep tabs on the vast numbers of other bloggers whose blogs they watch. You do not even need to know how it works because most modern readers will do all the leg work for you. Rather than go over old ground again I will point you to some some great further reading if you happen to find this topic interesting.

• Wikipedia: Web Feeds
• Sixapart: About Feeds
• WhatIsRss.com

The ecology of Thanet blogs is dominated by a few big players. These are blogs that rank highly in the search engines for searches on "Thanet" and "Blog" but also occur regularly within the wider blogging community. For the Thanet blog scene these can perhaps be considered "The A-List" I think. This is a topic I hope to return to many times as growth and an influx of blogging talent hits Thanet... or at leasts shows up and says "hi" from time to time. 1. Big News Margate - authored by Tony Flag this is probably the leading Thanet commentary blog at present. Over the years it has carved a considerable reputation in the Thanet blog scene. Tony is possibly the most vocally political of the Thanet Bloggers but has gotten so far by not being boring nor feeling the need to be exclusive to the topic. As you can Guess there is some Margate bias and focus in the blog beyond the topic of Thanet in general. 2. the Isle of Thanet Gazunder - hot on the heals of Big New Margate (BNM) comes the Gazunder. More satire than outright comment the true identity of the blogger is a secret. The Gazunder dominates the Thanet blog scene with a good sense of British humour. 3. Thanet Blog List - while not the heaviest hitter of the pack TBL is a vital resource for any blogger wanting to break into the Thanet blogging scene. A link there as part of a launch plan can have a considerable impact on the blogs initial traction. However a listing there when the blog is effectively empty can be a wasted opportunity. 4. Michael's Bookshop - while it is not a blog in the most strict definition of the word this is a site that logs a great deal of (often political) activity from within Thanet. It is written by Micheal the owner of the shop in question and often has the content of letters written and replies to said letters. It is not very easy to navigate and lacks much of the charm of a modern blog design but the content is strong stuff and for this reason often the source of reference for other sources. 5. Turneround Margate - lacking the fame of other more widely socialised Thanet blogs this is still never-the-less a highly rated blog. The focus is on Thanet Regeneration. Thanet regeneration is a huge niche topic touched on by Big News and many other blogs. It is part of they key to the future of Thanet. Without some form of regeneration Thanet is doomed, quite simply. 6. Eastcliff Matters - lacking the traction of some of the other bloggers this blog is still a constant figure within the blogging scene of Thanet if only because it is the blog of the only known political blogger that is also a member of the council. Councillor David Green is a Labour member for Eastcliff (which explains the blog title). 7. Thanet Life - our final entry for the first draft of the Thanet A-List. Thanet Life has a quite following but still pulls sufficient traction to pass muster to make the list. It has archives going back to 2003 and all this time later it is still going. This is quite a healthy sign all things considered. This round up of the brightest and biggest of Thanet blogging was compiled according to the highly accurate scientific method of digging up "the blogs that stuck in my mind the most" from the times I have looked at Thanet blogs. Which I have done on and off for a while now. The ability of the blogs to get noticed was, therefore, the biggest factor along with search engine placement.

Introduction by a Thanet business blogger My Name is Matt and I am a small business owner from Thanet. I have been blogging for a long time but have done little to address the unique needs and issues of doing business in an economically deprived district. In this blog I will be focusing on successful blogging in Thanet. The possible meanings or marks of success are as many and varied as the people you might ask. For this reason I will define success as having a large readership or an active community as the base line of success for a blog. Success in business is clearer: creating and sustaining viable economic activity - something not so easy to do within Thanet. The Thanet blogging and website landscape is filled with as many derelict and white elephant sites as the district itself. My aim is to focus on the issues that lead to blog abandonment. Specifically I am to address the issues of making money from blogging (something that I do and enjoy doing). The wikipidea says of Thanet that it is "...a local government district of Kent, England which was formed under the Local Government Act 1972, and came into being on 1 April 1974. It occupies the area known as the Isle of Thanet and is governed by Thanet District Council. The main towns in the district are Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs." The same wikipidea article also makes the following claims about the status of our tiny isle. From experience I can tell you that much of this is true. Given these facts how we can prosper is going to be a prime question for this blog.

• Life expectancy is increasing but on average is less than for England
• People on means-tested benefits: 21,400
• Children in low-income households: 6,800
• Teenage pregnancies are high compared to the England average
• Violent crime is more frequent in Thanet than in England
• Estimated smoking rates are high as are death rates from smoking
• Early deaths from cancer are higher than the England average
• Healthy eating, physical activity, and adult obesity are similar to the national average
• Binge drinking is below the national average
• Higher than average number of people admitted to hospital for alcohol-specific conditions
• Higher than average rate of diabetes
• Higher than average rate of mental health problems

We businessman that choose to stay and fight the desire to run from here screaming must work hard to prosper for and with Thanet. As a people group we Thanetarians are mentally, emotionally and spiritually poor suffering from the effects of countless poor or wrong choices and a now ingrained attitude within our "leaders". The demographic (audience range) or our isle is a large part single and young mothers, the depressed, the unemployed and the technologically illiterate. Unemployment and technological illiteracy is not the fault of the person but a problem for us all. I will be addressing ways we can help Thanet overcome this barrier and what we as business people could and should be doing to improve the economic future of Thanet not in big ways but in many little and over looked ways. I will also be asking hard questions. Finally as a service to my fellow Thanet bloggers I will be addressing general issues of blogging. This will include technical and practical things we as bloggers can do to make it easier for those in Thanet (with Internet access) to engage with us. I will also address issues of earning from your blog and the moral and ethical questions that you will encounter. I hope in all this to use local and specific examples rather than the usual blogging rote of "world famous" and thus irrelevant and unknown topic specific bloggers. Not that there is anything wrong with topic specific blogging but everything that is good in Thanet must be encouraged to the very limit of possibility if we are to foster growth. As such I will be maintaining special pages of topical links but more on that when the time comes.

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mmm, Thanet ale

The Thanet Blog List has just been updated. Looks terrific.http://www.justgiving.com/jerem