(26 December 2005 2:00 pm)

MUMBAI: What occupied blogs in 2005? Surely not politics. In the US, it was entertainment, technology and natural disasters that took centrestage, according to marketing intelligence firm Intelliseek's BlogPulse.com.

Intelliseek CTO Sundar Kadayam says, "Blogs have emerged as a worldwide phenomenon that touches nearly every aspect of everyday life, commerce, technology, media, entertainment, politics, even the coverage of natural disasters and news events. BlogPulse.com is a search engine and analysis tool. It provides daily analysis from an index of more than 20 million blogs about top issues, personalities, blogs, blog posts, news stories and key phrases."

Michael Jackson and Britney Spears generated more celebrity buzz than other entertainers. Boing Boing and Engadget were the two most popular blogs, Sin City was the most popular movie, and bloggers referred to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia for information about "podcasting" and "Hurricane Katrina" more than any other topic or issue.

In a newsy year filled with natural disasters, the Pope's death and the war in Iraq, which news story did bloggers cite most often? That honour fell to an April essay Unitarian Jihad a call for moderation and reasonableness in politics and religion, written by Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The top 10 links to Wikipedia from blogs were podcasting, Hurricane Katrina, Ajax (a web programming script), Flying Spaghetti Monster (blogger Bobby Henderson's alternative theory to "intelligent design"), US, Wiki, Folksonomy, London subway bombings, Web 2.0, RSS, meme (shared online info/activities) and intelligent design.

The top 10 online news sources cited by blogs were Yahoo! News, BBC, New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, MSNBC, Guardian Unlimited, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today and Yahoo! Finance. Others of note were Fox News (No. 21), Canada.com (No. 32), NPR (No. 43) and The Onion (No. 70).

The top 10 movies were Sin City, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Serenity, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman Begins, Sideways, Napoleon Dynamite, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and War of the Worlds.

In 2005, the Committee to Protect Bloggers launched a campaign to free two Iranians who were imprisoned for blogging. Bloggers worldwide continue to struggle to define their roles and rights under the umbrella of freedom of speech.