I wonder when (because it will happen) blogging becomes so widespread, abused by corporations and covered in the media that it stops being connected to guerilla reporting geek elitism and becomes, dare I say it, mainstream. It happened to that great "All Your Bases Are Belong To Us" thing, it could happen to blogging... Another poignant example of this sort of thing happening was Google's brilliant "you want Gmail? you want Gmail? Hmmmm?" tactic - wasn't your Gmail account that much more satisfying to use before they started inviting every tom, dick and harry@gmail.com? I'm way off course, of course, but I feel that blogging (and Gmail) is just everywhere at the moment. Basically we have newscasters, bloggers covering news, newscasters covering blogs covering news and blogs covering newscasters covering blogs covering news. This infernal loop actually goes on for a while but I'll spare you for now. Cue long debates about "accountability" and blogs are all over the place from the NY Times to The Harlington Poodle Shelter Gazette. Ironically, that 60 Minutes thing basically started the debate about whether or not blogs are to be considered reliable news sources. I wish the press would stop generalising because many of us bloggers have absolutely nothing important to say but for now forget the government conspiracies, dirty journalists and hidden agendas: Paris Hilton's Sidekick has been hacked! (Link seems down/slow, bummer!) Oh, and by the way, free Gmail account for anyone that wants one (while stocks last).