Get Back

This is not a post about my trip back to Scarborough from New York. The title refers to a blogging feature that's now also available through Blogger: Trackback. The term Blogger uses for the ability to automatically track links to a particular page on your blog from other blogs is backlinks.

Apparently another article about blogging has featured in the mainstream press in Malta. That article is not available online (yet) so in terms of the way we do things nowadays the whole approach of mainstream media to the web in Malta remains quite retarded and very underdeveloped. And if the mainstream content creators are still lagging behind, you can imagine where most of the rest of the population stands. Pink Floyd's Hey You is such an appropriate soundtrack for all that. Have you listened to the lyrics on that song lately?

Meanwhile, we, the lone rangers of the Maltese blogosphere, remain ahead of the curve, so to speak. Yet the actual curve is so ahead of all this that some of us are still trying to catch up with it. The backlinks feature is just one manifestation of this situation.

Those among us Maltese bloggers who use typepad or some other sophisticated system to managing the contents of their blog have had ways to track back links to their blog posts for quite some time. I haven't really seen it work properly, but judging from the fun I've had messing with Feedburner and Technocrati recently I have a feeling that I'll enjoy playing with backlinks too.

If your blog runs on Blogger and you're using (or planning to use) backlinks let me know what you think of the service. I'm sure Pierre and Robert will want it on their blogs too very soon.