Meet Tavi Gevinson; one of the most well know names in fashion right now. No, she's not an up and coming fashion designer, nor is she editor of one of the all-powerful glossy magazines. Tavi is the youngest and most influential fashion bloggers in the industry now. Her blog Style Rookie is one of the industry's hot commodities.
At 13 years of age she not only has her own unique style, she also has the power and eloquence to critique and analyse collections of fashion brands that have existed long before she has. When Tavi blogs, the likes of Prada and BCBG take notice. Check out this post where she's pictured sitting discussing fashion with John Galliano .
In the post below, Tavi talks about how she came home from school one day and found that the creative director of Prada along with Mrs. Prada had sent her a skirt from the Spring 2000 collection (when Tavi was just three!) because they noticed from her blog that she loved it so much.
At London Fashion Week Tavi's name comes up whenever I mention fashion blogging to any one. The thirteen-year-old blogger is in a group of elite fashion bloggers that can make or break a trend with one click.
Michelle Lowe-Holder has her own sustainable fashion label. She mentioned another influential fashion blogger; Susie from Style Bubble.
One good blog post from a well known fashion blogger can get you all sorts of attention. I have a website for my fashion label. When Susie from Style Bubble said she liked my label I had hundreds of people visit my site. They are very powerful and very important because now the big magazines pay attention to see what they say about a certain trend.
I also met Katie Wright who's just started fashion blogging. Her blog Style My Wardrobe covers everything from fashion weeks to celebrity trends.
Look out for Katie's video here on Blogworld where she speaks more about fashion blogging and how she reacted to the news of Alexander McQueen's death. You can also find more London Fashion week photos on Blogworld's Flicker account.
Patterico in the US has analysed yesterday's exchange between a recovering Dick Cheney and George 'Dubya' Bush . . . describing it as 'How to Talk Texan in One Easy Lesson'.
While I was in Japan I had a headache and my host family rushed me to the hospital like I was dying or something. Then they tried giving me an IV shot why? I really don't know but the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th time I went to the doctor all ended up with them giving me an IV shot... "throat hurts? PUT A SHOT IN IT! stomach aches? PUT A SHOT IN IT!"
Direct from the steaming streets of Sydney and covering the plushest suburbs to the seediest corners, Adrian Neylan's blog makes for a good read. Like all taxi drivers he seems to have the gift of the gab and like all Aussies (in my experience) he reckons Australia is the place to live (and not without good reason). Not everyone shares that view though:
Prior to driving taxis I managed a backpacker hostel in Far North Queensland . . . Each morning when checking-out guests I posed the same question to each party: 'Would you like to live in Australia?' Surprisingly, amongst thousands of guests from a wide variety of countries, two nationalities consistently rejected the idea. Guess who..?
Describing their thinking behind the campaign the press release from the ANSP says:
The creative choice was clearly to highlight the human dimension of these professions through case studies demonstrating the pride of membership. Le choix créatif est clairement de mettre en exergue la dimension humaine de ces métiers à travers des portraits démontrant la fierté d'appartenance.
And just two days ago on Le féminin l'emporte -- another big womens blog -- commenters were none too pleased with yet another new government initiative featuring a white-clad pregnant Marianne.
Solomon Sydelle.provides a peek into Nigeria. Here she talks about how religious imagery is used in everyday speech in "Naija" culture, especially when talking about ailments:
Esteghomaya is Hide and Seek in Arabic, specifically in Egyptian Arabic dialect. It's also Jimmy Halim's Blog name where he discusses everything Egyptian. In the blog post below he ponders over the recent spreading of Sufi music within upper and upper middle-class young Egyptians. He starts by saying
Listen sweetheart. I'm just into Sufi music, Sufi singing or anything that has to do with Suf. Just may be Sufi blankets. حبيب قلبي انا ماليش في الموسيقى الصوفية ، الإنشاد الصوفي و كل ما له علاقة بالصوف اللهم إلا البطاطين الصوف
Suf is wool in Arabic. With a great sense of humor Jimmy Halim attempts to analyse social and political issues in his blog. Sufism in high society is one of them.
أعرف أيضاً أنها ( أحدث موضة ) .. أو بتعبير مجلة حواء ( أحدث صيحة ) في عالم المثقفين و المثقفات .. و تحديداً المحاظيظ ( جمع محظوظ ) من الشرائح العُليا و الوسطى من الطبقة البرجوازية المصرية و طبعاً المطبلاتيه بتوعهم - أو بغبغاناتهم - من الشرائح الأدنى للبرجوازية و الأعلى من الطبقة المتوسطة
Darius Vassell is a football player who used to play in the English Premiership. He now plays for Turkish side Ankaragücü in the country's capital. Shortly after arriving in Turkey he started a blog and his poignant posts about getting to grips with all things Turkish have gained a cult following. Like many foreigners he has language problems but not everyone has a legion of loyal football fans to help them out though. Here Darius struggles to understand what his central heating system is telling him:
Inspired by Michelle Obama's recent appointment to head up a task force (slogan "Let's Move") to tackle America's childhood obesity problem, an anonymous blogger at Zombietime.com has analysed Mrs Obama's predecessors' pet projects and rated their relative significance and success.
Remember, from March 8th we will be airing -- in 3 different languages -- short TV and radio slots featuring some of the bloggers who appear on this site. Do get in touch if you want to participate and record a webcam piece for us.
We featured Jamshid's blog earlier on Blogworld. Here he is in Herat talking about using the web in Afghanistan and those moving pictures he took in Kabul (see the Flickr feed on the right for his picture of the shoe shine girl):
Note -- Jamshid and his fellow Dari blogger Mahdy Mehraeen in Bamyan will be featuring in an upcoming BBC documentary about the usage of the internet in Afghanistan. If you want to get your blog featured on Blogworld's TV and radio slots starting the 8th March then feel free to get in touch with us.
Paddy Donnelly is a blogger but more importantly he's an information designer. If you have a site on the web I dare you to subject it to his all-seeing eye. Here he writes for Smashing Magazine about how blogs are changing:
Paddy will be posting his thoughts here in video form very soon. Check back later.
Remember, if you've something to say and you've a blog then get in touch. From March 8th we will be airing -- in 3 different languages -- short TV and radio slots featuring some of the bloggers who appear on this site. Do get in touch if you want to participate and record a webcam piece for us.
Female Egyptian blogger Zeinobia at Egyptian Chronicles is excited by the return to Egypt of the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr Mohamed El Baradei.
Zeinobia may have to wait a while, many have commented that Mr El Baradei has a lot of work to do to build up support and in this interview posted on Egyptian Chronicles with the independent newspaper Dostor Daily, Mr El Baradei says there are other obstacles:
However, she has a few things to say about some of the media coverage:
A reminder, from March 8th we will be airing -- in 3 different languages -- short TV and radio slots featuring some of the bloggers who appear on this site. Do get in touch if you want to participate and record a webcam piece for us.
Blogging came to me as a reaction to what was going on arround me. It was involuntary. The Greek media wasn't telling people those stories, so I wanted to.
Those stories are ones of reform, they are stories of everything that needs work in Greece. This is just a snippet of a long and very interesting conversation I had with Constantinos today.
Looking at the majority of what I could read on his blog (the rest is in Greek) , it's hard to believe that Constantinos' specialty is actually architechture. He started blogging when the government was trying to pass a bill for huge concrete building blocks to be put up on the Greek coastal line. Something that, as Constantinos describes, "would have destroyed our skyline and tradition."
He then blogged to try and free a person who was jailed, without trial, for nine months during the 2008 riots. And as you can see from the post below , Constantinos looks at the economic woes of Greece and how according to him the EU is also to blame for the situation..
Chinasmack is an example of the growing trend for Chinese 'bridge blogs': sites run by people who trawl Chinese-language blogs and forums and then translate interesting posts and stories into English for a wider audience -- they even translate some of the comment sections too. It really does shine a light on a nation everyone is watching.
Subjects range from celebrity indiscretions to the privileged lives of China's study abroad students to harrowing photos from China's history. Here, a poster on a forum (tianya.cn), writes about the Chinese characters for "woman" and is complaining about what they perceive as the sexist nature of some of them:
These 16 characters, contain a certain derogatory meaning, which make children during the course of their studies, and normal people during the process of writing and reading, perceive these 16 characters to have fundamental connections to the female gender; unknowingly lowering their opinions of women.
Incidentally, if you read the full post linked above you will also learn that the Chinese equivalent of "needle in a haystack" is "millet in the sea". Don't forget, starting on March 8th we will be airing -- in 3 different languages -- short TV and radio slots featuring some of the bloggers who appear on this site. Do get in touch if you want to participate and record a webcam piece for us.
Filipino Philippino blogger Marocharim has an eye on the country's upcoming presidential elections in May. Here he's posted a snap of an ad for Felix "Peck" Cantal, a businessman who heads one of the green parties and who has an interesting campaign slogan . . . would that work where you are?
Remember, starting on March 8th we will be airing -- in 3 different languages -- short TV and radio slots featuring some of the bloggers who appear on this site. Do get in touch if you want to participate and record a webcam piece for us.
I'll be the first to admit this is a dry topic and I couldn't think of a snappy headline . . . but the arrival of this plane has sparked some debate.
A couple of weeks ago the Russian air force unveiled its first ever stealth fighter. Retired US fighter pilot Bill Paisley assesses just what it can do from a pilot's view and suggests it's a case of looks good but lets wait and see while a commenter at Bill's site suggests competition from Russia is good news for US jobs:
Is this wishful thinking? The US like many other countries around the world is curtailing spending on traditional 'big' hardware projects like the F 22 Raptor. Tax Blogger Linda Beale isn't convinced though:
Staying in Saudi Arabia, Michael Bou-Nacklie is a photojournalist from Switzerland who has lived in the Kingdom for over five years. As well as some beautiful shots his blog is a great insight into living in Saudi society from the point of view of a westerner.
Michael is leaving the country soon so I've asked him to record his thoughts on five years of photoblogging KSA for a Blogworld webcam. Check back here soon.
Ahmed Al-Omran's blog Saudi Jeans is the place to go for insights into what's happening inside the Kingdom. He's especially good on culture. Anyone who has been to the Middle East can't help but marvel at the vast array of headresses -- or Ghotras -- worn by the men there. If you had to don one would you know what to do? If you don't know your eagle from your cobra from your Bint al-Bakkar then Ahmed explains all.
Russia celebrates the 65th anniversary of the end of the second World War on May 9th. However, the Moscow Advertising Committee's decision to mark the event with billboards featuring Josef Stalin has caused considerable rancour.
Russian journalist Grigory Revzin, speaking in a video message on snob.ru, is not happy. He has harsh words for Russia's older generation who may be sympathetic to Stalin's rule:
Точно так же, как господина Долгих лично оскорбляет шашлычная «Антисоветская», меня лично оскорбляет портрет Сталина, вывешенный по его инициативе, и иск будет лично к нему. Ведь мы знаем, что это его инициатива. У всех есть родственники, которые пострадали от репрессий.
Stalin's position in Russian history is not a new debate. This news article from 2009 describes how the authorities in the city of Voronezh ordered the Communist KPRF party to remove 10 of the pictured signs. The writing on poster reads: "130 Years since Stalin's birthday 1870 -- 2000. Victory will be ours"
You probably wouldn't go to a Noo Yawk literary agent for sensitivity training . . . Janet Reid's Query Shark blog is compulsive reading as she picks apart prospective writers' pitches. If you're one of those people who feel everybody has a novel inside them then it's essential reading. Conversely, if you feel everybody has a novel inside them and that it should stay there . . . then read on too.
Many of you may know Scott Adams as the author of the popular Dilbert cartoons. He also has an interesting blog with, as you might expect, very dry humour. Here he ruminates on something that may well have crossed your mind in these times of ecomomic hardship . . . why do we love gold?
Welsh Blogger Suw Charman-Anderson is on a mission to get the world to remember Ada Lovelace. Ada is credited as being one of the world's first programmers and anyone who studied IT in the eighties may well have coded in the language that today bears her name.
Click back here later for a video message from Suw.
Over in Azerbaijan, Arzu Geybullayeva laments what rapid economic growth is doing to the skyline of the capital Baku.
Thanks to the BBC's Darius Bazargan for getting us in touch with Afghan blogger Jamshid Sultanzada. I've just recorded a webcam chat with Jamshid and he'll be appearing on this site in video format soon (if you have a webcam/microphone and something to say then do get in touch). Meanwhile check out his English-language photo blog at www.js.af. Here's a very poignant pic he took of a shoe-shine girl doing her homework in Kabul. Click back here tomorrow to hear the story behind the pic.
Alfredo in Manila points us to Marketman's take on the cuisine of those islands. Tasty-looking candied lemon is today's topic.
Greece's economic crisis is occupying Constantinos who writes on a site called ΠΟΛΙΤΗΣ (CITIZEN). He's not happy with the European response to Greece's problems:
SushiSule on the Youth Reporter site poses the question all Germans ask themselves around this time of year: What is Carnival? (German text). Stranded in Poland this week while the rest of Germany celebrates she says:
You've got to ask yourself this question in Łódź. In Germany you've got colourful floats, events every weekend, gardens, carnival music and a whole load of costumes being worn . . here though . . a big NOTHING
As someone who lived through a great many Duesseldorf carnivals I must say I always felt it was a little overplanned. A colleague -- also non-German -- used to call it "pretend fun". Maybe you have to be German to really enjoy Karneval?
As mentioned in our welcome post we'll be putting interesting speakers you recommend to us on air during the week beginning 8th March. The English language BBC World, BBC Persian and BBC Arabic are on board too.
Yesterday we did a mock run through in the BBC Arabic offices in central London. I cannot stress just how complicated making a tri-lingual 3 minute TV slot is. Here's a couple of stills showing how it will look.
Incidentally, check back here Thursday Friday for a video welcome from the man driving the Superpower project Steve Titherington.
Chinese film director Hu Ge has posted a satirical film about the life as an internet user in China. It's cleverly done as a spoof wildlife documentary in which internet users are animals in captivity with keepers.
If you don't speak Chinese you can still get a lot from this film by following the action however, Robert Woo at Global Voices has a partial transcript and translation here.
Meanhwile in Egypt Sandmonkey has an update on the Muslim activists who travelled to Nag Hamady to console the Christian victims of the massacre there on the Coptic New Year 6th January. The activists were prevented by the authorities from meeting the victims' families.
Welcome to Blogworld. As part of the BBC's Superpower season we'll be highlighting bloggers and blogs around the world. We'll be posting here regularly with interviews, quotes, video, audio and links to some of the most interesting topics occupying the blogosphere.
We are actively trying to contact bloggers too. Those we get hold of will hopefully also appear in a series of five short television episodes airing daily on BBC World TV and BBC World Service Radio from the 8th March. And it won't just be English sites -- we'll be drawing on the BBC's extensive language services to bring you the best of the non-English Blogosphere such as Chinese, Farsi and Arabic.
We won't restrict ourselves to the mundane either; we all know blogs can be controversial, funny and incisive. There's only one criteria: you've got to have something to say. If you'd like to contact us or let us know about a great blog then you can get us on Twitter @BBC_Blogworld, email us on super.power@bbc.co.uk or simply leave a comment below.
Update Weds 17th.. Thanks for all the suggestions so far but don't just send us top-level URLs. We know there are good sites out there. We want to know what's under the surface. Links to posts containing the actual content are what we're after.
Update Thurs 18th. Lovely to hear what interests you and we're certainly learning lots about some unusual things but please, if you are overtly selling products we're not interested.
Welcome to Blogworld -- highlighting the best international blogs in multiple languages for a special BBC season about the power of the internet -- bbc.com/superpower. We'll be updating the Blogworld blog regularly with our finds and your recommendations. So if there's a blog you'd like to share please let us know. Drop us an email on super.power@bbc.co.uk, comment or tweet us @bbc_blogworld.
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| 14:29 UK time, Friday, 26 February 2010
