Do you take blogs seriously?

I find that blogs are much less dry then say a white paper, and I have found alot of information in them to be truthfull.
Web Casts, never bothered. White papers, put me to sleep, articles - read them all the time, Image galleries --- ewww, pretty picture.
Chuckle, sorry. But I do consider blogs a valid source of information for the simple fact that it is usualy from a personal view point for any given topic. And I am refering to technical issues only. Ie: fought this battle, these are the lessons I learned, these are the things I like and the reasons why, these are the things I dislike and the reason why, over all personall oppinion.

White papers are good also, and I read them constantly also.

dan

Blogs are a place for people to voice opinions and rant or vent.

However, depending on the author and his/her agenda a blog [b]could[/b] be a good place to find helpful hints or facts. But you really have to know who the author is and if they're reliable or not.

Blogs rate highly to me. A lot of what I read are based off the content from another blog or article however.

So, in that respect, blogs and articles have equal weight since they are most often nowadays feed each other.

White papes are drab. Can't read 'em. Webcasts are not specific enough. Image galleries can be helpful for gear heads to see what folks are doing with their equipment. Forums are good for discussion. I find forums interesting because they take on a life of their own and to some extent are self moderated by the community with an official mod to lay down the law when rules are broken.

white papers and webcasts. I only read white papers when I can't get the information from some other source, and webcasts take too long to get to the point.

I like blogs for the personal view it gives to information. I also appreciate the commentary on life in general that a lot of them provide. The key has been finding authors with a writing style I like. (props to the Trivia Geek, I love his blog!)

My first criteria is content type. If it is not text (podcast, webcast, etc.) is is 100% ignored, regardless of all else. Period. The fact of the matter is, not only are those content types a pain in the butt to consume, but they waste my time (I read faster than anyone on the planet can talk), and I cannot consume them at work. Even a Flash piece with moving text gets ignored, I need to be able to read text while waiting for progress meters (compile, SQL queries, Excel macros, etc.) to advance, that is when I get a chance to read. Even when I get down to the text, PDF will be ignored much more often than HTML. I despise PDF as a format, it makes my life miserable. As soon as I see Acrobat start to load, chances are, I close it before it even opens the document. so keep everything in HTML.

That being said, who the author is plays a large role in my decision to read something. Some authors (no names) are top-of-the-line and seeing their name (preferably a picture, too, to assist me in associating content with the author, that's a note for the folks doing the newsletters too!) almost guarantees that I will read the item, regardless of the content or subject. Some authors are that good, that they always add value to my life, and give me a fair exchange for my time. Other authors, I refuse to read for the opposite reason; as far as I am concerned, they are time theives, for wasting my time with trifling things. If I am not familiar with the author, I do not take it into account.

The subject is the final item in the decision. The vast majority of the technical content on TechRepublic (I would say 98% - 99% of it), even the TPG stuff, is of no value to me, because I already know it or I am 100% unaffected by it. That is not a subjective statement, just an objective one. A lot of the content here is great stuff for a beginner or someone with some experience but treading new waters, but for me it just is not useful in the slightest.

That is why I generally stick to reading the blogs and discussions. Even for them, I have to be very careful to not waste my time. Anything that is unrelated to IT ("my co-worker's personal habits annoy me") is not helpful to me. Even in the tech related stuff, anything that is trolling ("[name of product] stinks!") or otherwise unimportant gets ignored. I know, I have been guilty of the same thing on occassion... What I need to read, and choose to read, are quality, well written, reasoned analysis. I find it interesting. Even when it does not directly affect me or my job, like a discussion of the technical merits or drawbacks of an obscure programming language, it is useful and interesting to me.

J.Ja

...But my own eyes. I've been witness to too many things in "traditional" media that were later reported completely wrong. My general perception is that most bloggers are wannabee journalists, pseudo-intellectuals, or conspiracy theorists. Its nearly impossible to sort the crap from the truth without seeing it for yourself. I have a friend with a conspiracy theory blog who is a master at the English language... if I didn't know him personally his stuff would seem pretty believable. This is in general though...

When it comes to purely tech blogs I tend to take them with a grain of salt. I do like to read guys who post things like "hey this is what the whitepaper said, I did it this way, and this happened, be aware..." That kind of thing. Direct experiences can be useful provided they aren't overly opinionated.

I've also read articles on Cnet or whatever other tech site that were just not consistant with my personal experiences.

My preference for the most part is whitepaper. Its cut and dry without any attempts at humor (usually), opinions, and hopefully no inaccurate information.

I watch webcasts when I'm ordered to by my boss, otherwise I find them completely boring.

We listen to some podcasts (like twit) in the office but I chalk them up as digital audio blogs.