When the World Wide Web was first getting started, it was often trumpeted as the equivalent of having an unlimited number of radio and TV broadcast channels - everyone could be a broadcaster. Of course, it turned out that very few were very good at broadcasting, and the majority of podcasts and videos are of the "swinging a dead cat in my back yard" variety - chock-full of annoying advertising, to boot. Blogs started with the same promise - "everyone can be a publisher" - but so many of them are just chains of people commenting on each other's blogs. Even worse, they are either stuffed with advertising or are written by those who are trying to sell us something, so the writing is actually disguised advertising.
So, when I came across the blog of an 11 year old girl (Boo) whose mother has breast cancer, and who was kayaking with her father as a way to raise awareness for breast cancer, I was really touched. There is hope after all in the Web, it just takes more work to find the gems under so much manure. Even better, it turns out even some ads can be gems.
If you go to this page on Boo's blog, you can click on a link that bring up a page of ads. Just by going to that page you cause the sponsors of the ads to give money to support the Breast Cancer Site and Greater Good Network. How cool is that?
Comments