Its interesting to note that it has almost been a year of blogging, and that my blog has gone through some changes over the last year. It started out as my personal arena to just rant about everything and nothing -- as the subtitle of my blog indicates "the ramblings of jarle dahl bergersen".

Later it would turn into a "Flash blog" because of my interest in Flash. after all I was working in one of Norway's leading flash design/development companies and at the same time one of the editors of Flashmagazine.

The Flash section really came to life in march/april last year, as I was traveling to the FlashForward conference in San Francisco, and it was my pictures from the conference that gathered the first "Flash readers" to my blog. Now, almost a year later, people are still coming to my site for Flash information - a lot of people are looking at - and responding to - articles I have posted about Flash news and resources. Its nice to see that what I have been doing has been of use to others.

But it couldn't last.
First of all, for most of the year I have not been working actively with Flash, the aftermath of the .com fiasco took out the company I was working in, and I had to go out and find other work. So, on the computer side of work - I have been working a lot more with PHP and database related work, and not so much with Flash, it has led me to resign from Flashmagazine, and tone down the time I use to keep updated on what is going on. Don't get me wrong, I still feel like a part of the Flash community, but more and more I feel like as if I am standing on the outside looking in.

So....
I guess this is the time when I have to say that if you are coming to my weblog to find Flash news, then you would probably spend your time better looking at other blogs. I will probably not abandon Flash development or the "Flash blogs" and Flash community, but I would be very surprised if I am the one that can give you the fresh news from the Flash world.

My blog will probably move more over to commentary of various tech news, and anything else that I care about, you are free to keep coming back to see what is on my mind, or to stop visiting my PERSONAL blog. (Yes, corporate bloggers nagging about personal blogs being off-topic does get to me).

Some Macromedian bloggers has raised the issue of "Flash blogs" spamming with political content.

JD started it (as far as I can tell) with his post about "Spamming aggregators". To you John, I'd like to say: Sorry if you don't like what I am saying, but from that to accusing me (and others) of spamming aggregators. Come on!

First of all, remember that the Flash blogs are personal blogs from people investing their time and money into keeping the community informed on what is going on -- they are not paid to blog, as you are.

Second, if you check out my blog, you will notice that postings are posted to various categories, and if you look at the RDF feed you will notice that the category is listed as "subject" in the XML feed - so its fully up to aggregators if they want to use that feed, AND filter so they only include the Flash content.

Now, David Humphreys and his Flog has deliberately chosen to not filter the content from the "Flash blog", because as he says

"I learned that flog also allowed me access to a community. It's impossible to read the blogs without getting a sense of who the bloggers are -- and I think that's a good thing. I don't mind reading -- or skimming -- the off-topic rants and raves because that gives me more insight as to who's out there. We are a community. As we have people who will delight and inform, we also have people who enrage and challenge and go off-topic. Sometimes, they are even the same person. It all has value."

And I have to agree with him, its worth it to skim through the off-topic postings, at least if you look at the Flash blogs as more than just cheap information channels.

Other weblog postings about the "Spamming aggregators"

Burch Blog: Technology Blogs get Political
Eat Orange : Blog Spam
Eat Orange : Politics and Technology Butt Heads
Daniel Dura : Do Politics and Blogging Mix?
Hollowcube : my thoughts on political blogging

There is also a discussion going on after JD's initial post