I have used Bloglines forever to keep the “Blogroll” on the right side of ricoblog. Like, since day 1.

If you haven’t heard, Bloglines is dying. Presently on life support, they’re pulling the plug on Oct. 1.

I’m taking the opportunity to significantly prune the blogroll before I save out OPML for use elsewhere. I’m sure something at some point will end up back in the blogroll slot, but I’m unsure what and when.

If I axed your blog, and you really think it should be there, please tell me at text geek at gmail dot com, and I’ll reconsider.

I read an article on ABCNews.com this morning titled “Parenting Blogs May Be Held Liable for Product Reviews”. The article is a brief examination of “Mommy Blogs” that involve a blogger receiving free products and then blogging about personal experience with said products. For companies, the idea is that personal recommendations and word-of-mouth carries more weight with potential customers than traditional advertising.

And that’s true, word-of-mouth normally does have a better effect; and I can see that blogs can be a good method for advertising. The concern, apparently, is that folks who receive free products for review are perceived as more likely to give glowing false testimonials in the hopes of keeping the gravy train alive than they are to give incisive, critical reviews pointing out the bad things in the product. Picking up in the middle of the article:

"But the concern is about those instances when [testimonials] are delivered and it is not made obvious that it's an advertisement for a company."

Whether these revisions, should they happen, will affect particular bloggers will depend on their relationship to the company whose product they're promoting, Cleland said. If a blogger reviews items in return for payment or free products, they may be held liable because the bloggers, unbeknown to their audiences, could be seen as shills for the companies.

"It would only affect bloggers who are paid to write reviews but the sticky issue that is raised is what happens if a product is given for free," Cleland said. "That's something we're going to have to address."

The bold part is the sticky wicket. I say this as one who has received several books from different publishers (Hendrickson, Eerdmans, Oxford, Baylor and perhaps others) at no charge for the purpose of reading them and then blogging my thoughts.

I have no idea what all of this means (will they want to tax books received for review as income?) but I do see that it is time to clearly state my own policy/ideas when it comes to reviewing books on this blog. Here they are in no specific order:

• I am under no obligation to give a positive review. I’ll tell you what I think about the book, positive or negative. Indeed, I’ve done that already (I was very negative on Ehrman’s gospel of Judas book, which Oxford asked me to review). But I’m mostly positive because … well … many times I’m able to request books or at least refuse books if I’m not interested in them. For example, I don’t plan on ever reading any more of Ehrman’s popular literature because it is ill-conceived and poorly argued (though well written) drivel. I have no time for it.
• I will disclaim in each post that reviews a book if the book was provided free of charge. That way you know the situation and don’t have to wonder. There are some books that I buy personally and also review; if that’s the case I’ll let you know that too.
• If I have an review or mention of a product from Logos Bible Software, I will disclaim that I am an employee, and that any comments/opinions are my own and not that of my employer. Indeed, I already have a blanket disclaimer for the site that says as much, and that is linked to every post ever made on this blog.

I think that’s it. I don’t want a lot of rules for this sort of thing, but I do want you to know that I’ll let you know what I think about what I read, be it good or bad, whatever the source of the book.

I’d like to know what you think about this stuff. Use the comments to have a discussion, or if you’re a blogger please interact with me via your own blog, and link back here. Send me an email (text geek at gmail dot com) with your link and I’ll provide whatever links I can at the bottom of this post to keep the thread going.

If there is some sort of concise code of conduct for book reviews that we “bibliobloggers” (or “biblicabloggers”) can devise and agree to, I’m all for it. I think that will help us and also help any publishers we may individually work with so we’re all on the same page when it comes to book reviews.

Thanks!

Merry Christmas to you if you're in the US; Happy Christmas if you're in the UK.

Either way, it's Christmas time! And it is a pretty happy time here in the Brannan household. It is Ella's first Christmas, and while she doesn't quite get the whole unwrap-the-presents thing; she sure does know how to play with wrapping paper. Celebrating Christmas will never be the same.

Thanks to all who read ricoblog, whether you've just stumbled here or if you faithfully read and aggregate posts. I'm still overwhelmed when I think that y'all are out there, and flattered that you read what I write. Thank you, all.

Blessings to you and yours as we celebrate the birth of our Savior; the one who gives us hope; and the one who will return to take us home.

[NB: It's high time for a new "about ricoblog" entry. The old one will remain, but I'll now be linking to this one under my picture to the right.]

“rico” is Rick Brannan. Somehow, folks at the office started calling me “Rico”, and it stuck. So there you have it. You can check out my personal web site for more info.

I work for Logos Bible Software as an Information Architect. Yeah, we made up that title. I'm what I like to call a text geek; I write programs to munge text from one format into another or even create alternate views of data or even completely different data sets. It is a hoot; it's a job I love, and I'm very lucky to be able to do it, get paid for it, and work with the great folks at Logos Bible Software.

I'm also a bibliophile. I love books and I love to read them — particularly books that have to do with the Pastoral Epistles, Apostolic Fathers, Greek of the New Testament, Corpus Linguistics and Styleometry; as well as Syntax and Grammar of Hellenistic (Koine/NT) Greek. My academic interests lie in the realm of the intersection of time, culture and development of the church between the Pauline corpus (so, let's say between 51-64 CE/AD) and the post-apostolic literature (so, let's say 80 CE/AD). If this is your interest, or if you have references/books/articles etc. to point me toward in this area, I'd love to hear from you.

To learn more about me, you can read (or listen to!) the following:

• I was Blogger of the Month for June 2007, according to biblioblogs.com. They even interviewed me; you can read the interview if you dare.
• In August of 2007, for reasons I still have yet to fathom, Chris Brady, of perhaps the coolest-named biblioblog Targuman, did a podcast interview with me. It runs for over 30 minutes, so go ahead and give it a listen.

In addition to ricoblog, I also blog at:

• PastoralEpistles.com
• The Logos Bible Software Blog

Lastly, I have posted some papers that I've presented at various academic conferences on my personal web site.

After a few years, ricoblog's original orange scheme is tired — and besides, it clashed with my new profile pic. So I changed the color scheme to blues.

There may be the associated item here and there that still needs to have its color properties changed (see some of the titles on the sidebar ... ). Maybe someday I'll even get to 'em.