So you have an idea for a group blog! Good for you. Who’s going to fill its pages? Writers. It’s the writers who are going to furnish the erudition and gravitas, or humor and hipness, or sexiness, or snarkiness, or whatever magic ingredients you need. And if you’re serious and have a clear vision for your blog, you’ll choose your writers carefully. (A startup founder doesn’t want just any hack building his/her platform.)

But if you let anyone who’ll work for free fill your blog with his blather, you’re screwing yourself right off the bat. You’ll get crap writing and a crap audience and crap advertisers (if any). Eventually, your dream of creating something special will die because your blog won’t be in the least bit exceptional because your content isn’t because your writers aren’t.

Read the rest of  Give me equity or give me a break on frogblog.

But although Posterous makes it easy for you to spread your Internet finds around, this doesn’t appear to be its primary goal. I have reason to believe that the people behind the app don’t want you to use it solely as a personal “cloud,” even though that’s how I suggest it be used in my article. The fact that all the content you send to your various social sites also appears on a Posterous site tells me that Posterous wants to be a blog unto itself and a stand-alone element of your online presence. Plenty of people do use it that way.

But Posterous is rather late to the blog game and, with its limited theme options I can’t see choosing it over WordPress, or even Blogger, if you want to publish a good-looking blog with some spiffy functionality without having to code. A community of designers will undoubtedly spring up around Posterous, which will make it a more attractive option.

In the meantime, try it anyway. It’s exceptionally usable and useful, with close to zero learning curve.

Frankly, I think they’re a symptom of laziness on the part of writers and readers alike. But I do have to admit that with all the info we have to process these days, they’re sometimes better than nothing. It’s true that, as Umberto Eco (who loves lists, BTW, and is no slouch) says, they “make infinity comprehensible.” I guess people can always dig deeper into a subject if they want something they can sink their teeth into. I wonder how many do.

Anyway, you gotta do what you gotta do, and I’ve been known to write a list post or two in my day. In fact, the last two I wrote for Web Worker Daily were just that: 5 Japanese words that start with S, and 3 words uttered by Mel Gibson that start with E (and might help you get a content strategy, which you should do).

Just found out my personal blog, frogblog, is ranked 42 of all blogs in the “France” category according to invesp consulting. And I’m in some pretty good company! But you know what they say about stats.

Got my blogging pass for LeWeb ’09. I’ll be there for Web Worker Daily again this year. I discovered some exciting startups to write about there in ’08.

I have a new dog. Well, actually, he’s a “used” dog. I even wrote about one of the reasons why someone with my lifestyle should get a dog on Web Worker Daily the other day. It was published on the day I got him from the shelter! His name is Wiley. But we also call him Firefox because he looks like a fox. And, of course, we are Firefox fans.

I got an iPhone! Like Wiley, it’s used — Vincent gave me his 2G when he got a 3GS. I spent Saturday morning playing with it in bed…

I rudely interrupted their conversations by waving my badge around and asking if they had anything that might make web workers’ lives “easier or more beautiful,” specifying that I was looking for “tools, not toys.” That eliminated a lot of them…

But there were plenty whose cards, stickers and trinkets I put in my swag bag so that I could share the love over on Web Worker Daily once the party was over.

I picked up a lot more than info on hot new startups and business cards at LeWeb and, based on what I saw and heard, I want to offer a couple tips for startups attending conferences.

1. Seek out the bloggers. And not just the biggest ones, who are sometimes simply overwhelmed, surrounded by supplicants or entourages, or too busy trying to be in somebody else’s entourage, or who might have egos so large that they can’t see past them to give your demo the respect it deserves… (I call it like I see it.)

There were so many startup teams standing around shooting the breeze with each other. Fun, maybe, but not necessarily productive. You believe in what you’re doing, you’ve worked hard, you want us to talk about it, so come find us. Don’t be shy. Split up and work the room. Some bloggers might not be as willing to come looking for you as others. Keep in mind that we want things to write about, so if you see a blogger or a press badge, walk right up and ask if we’d like to hear about your thing. If we don’ think it’s right for our readers, chances are we can introduce you to someone who would be interested and give you all kinds of other info, tips, or leads. I did a lot of that.

2. Don’t underestimate the women at tech conferences. Most of them are not decorative. (Again, I call it like I see it.) When I wasn’t hunting for stories alone, I was floating around part of the time with a well-known geekette journalist who regularly writes tech-related articles for some very prestigious French publications, and part of the time with a French online marketing goddess. Both are extremely well connected, yet completely approachable. Like me, they’re delighted to listen, advise and direct you to someone whom you might want to know if they can. So if the dog-eat-dog crowd intimidates or excludes you, try the cats…