How to generate links: B.L. Ochman, blogger and professional complainer, hit the motherlode of incoming links by posting a rumor that one of blogging’s biggest brands, Technorati, is about to be sold. Within 72 hours, two different analyses of how the rumor has spread have been posted by the weblog Data Mining and Mark Wade.

15th century “blogging”: In England, 15th Century “Festival Books” were a precursor to today’s celebrity tabloids and magazines…and, apparently, blogging. As this article about a new online archive of festival books points out:

“Some of the texts now available online were written not by official reporters (Renaissance press officers!) but by “people who simply happened to be around and thought they’d turn an honest – or dishonest – penny by writing an account,”

The British Library has now digitized 253 of these rare Renaissance festival books and has made them available on their website.

It’s alive: Steve Baker says the BusinessWeek “dead week” during the end of of August is dying: “The shift is from weekly to daily, daily to hourly. It makes sense, and I’m not complaining. We have to do what we have to do. But it means that Dead Week, that late summer idyll, is fast becoming an anachronism.”

What Terry Heaton said: “I love living in Music City. When people outside the area ask me about living here, I tell them, ‘Imagine every church having a fantastic band.’”

(Terry’s full post explores some issues in this article about indie artists.)