Thanks to Daypop, we can keep track of what the blogsphere's saying about Stephen King.

• At his Acorn Universes, Duane Simolke compares his success as a self-published e-book writer to that of the author of Riding the Bullet and The Plant.

...Though some writers reported great success with e-book publishing, I found little reception for my e-books. In all honesty, I wouldn’t buy an electronic document either. Also in all honesty, most of the people whose books sold well in e format were already well-established authors, such as Stephen King.

• At Fenian Ramblings, Terry McMenamin concludes King's From a Buick 8 is "All Context, No Story".

...I've been a Stephen King fan for quite a while now, so I was looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, like many of his recent novels, thus far this one seems to fall somewhat short of compelling...

The problem lately is that he seems to have become caught up with the art of developing his characters, while forgetting that a good plot is essential to any story. Stringing readers along by holding an exciting plot just out of their grasp has come to be the standard in King's writing of late...

• The Bibliophile also expresses some insatisfaction with From a Buick 8, at BiblioBlog.

...while I started out really enjoying the book, by the time it ended, I felt like I still wanted something else. While that is a point in the book itself that is made, I could have just used more. It’s still a good read, but not on par with some of his other works, Bag of Bones for example.

• On his sidebar, under "Books", The Homeless Guy mentions the inspiration he found on On Writing.

This is by far the most inspirational book about the craft of writing I've ever read. Regardless of your genre you'll find Mr King to be a kindred spirit, very much in love with act of writing, and a powerful motivator. In reading this book you discover he's not quite the creepy guy you thought he was.

Deal May Freshen Up Google's Links
By David F. Gallagher
February 24, 2003

People who follow Weblogs are curious about what Google, the leading search engine, expects to gain from its recent purchase of a Blogger service.

Exactly what are Google's intentions behind its acquisition of Blogger is still up in the air, but the current speculation is that it will harness the plethora of links from weblogs to return fresher results on Web searches. I didn't really comprehend why Google would need to take Blogger under its wing to achieve that until I read the following:

Blogger's database, which holds all of the entries for the Weblogs using the service, sets it apart from more localized Weblog tools like Movable Type and Radio Userland. A Blogger user logs on to blogger.com, types an entry into a box and clicks a button. That entry is added to the Blogger database and published on the user's Weblog, whether on BlogSpot or another server...

A centralized database? I'm kinda surprised nobody has complained about privacy issues on that one. But I digress: if Google taps directly into that database of weblog posts, it will have a rich link-farm to exploit.

On a secondary note, people out in the blogsphere are attempting new names for this new hybrid. Xian came up with both "Bloggle" and "Googer". Steven Johnson came up with "Bloogle". Good ideas, guys, but they just don't roll off the tongue like the names of the original companies. Not to worry, though. I have a proposal of my own.