30) The Informed Reader
As mainstream media organizations continue to close their foreign bureaus out of cost-saving desperation, the less expensive version — “the universal news blog” — has become a staple property on nearly all sites (nytimes.com, msnbc.com, cnn.com, newyorker.com, etc.). Though the foreign news consumer might be tricked into believing these will reveal new forms of universal reporting, it actually means that none of these sites stick out above the rest — except for the Wall Street Journal’s The Informed Reader, which somehow kept my attention that year by finding the right balance within gathering hyperlinks and providing context. (See additionally: Good Magazine.)

29) Songs About Buildings and Food
Imagine whether your favorite college prof got hooked on meth and The Hills — and you were more concerned that the latter was killing him. That’s that blog. (See additionally: Advanced Theory Blog and The Medium.)

28) Paleo-Future
If the dictum “the future is now” has any veracity, thereupon what do we do with the past? that blog chronicles how past generations envisioned what the future would look like. With an archive that goes back to the 1880s, Paleo-Future is an fundamental compendium of a new historical category: nostalgic futurism. (See plus: Subtopia.)

27) TV In Japan
If ever there were a genre in need of aggregation, Japanese TV would be it. that site (from my friend Gavin Purcell, whose day job is running Attack of the Show on G4) is religious in its pursuit to bring you the best moments of televised weirdness from the Land of the Rising Sun. (See plus: Neojaponisme and Ping Mag.)

26) BookForum
For those of us who have given up on the once-spectacular and oft-praised Arts & Letters Daily, the transformation of Book Forum to an aggregation blog has been nothing less than a savior. (See plus: ArtsJournal.)

25) Rock Band Logos
Design criticism applied to rock band logos? Yes, please. (See additionally: Book Covers and Core 77.)

24) WTF CNN?
FTW! (See additionally: Best of CNN.)

23) Metafilter Popular Favorites
Every year I sneak a reference to Metafilter onto that list. And every year a Metafilter post ridicules its inclusion — can’t wait to see that year’s! My longstanding love-hate relationship with Metafilter (check the archives) tilted back toward the negative that year, which is why the Popular Favorites feature was nearly a panacea for my frustration. More big sites are adding that “favoriting” feature (BoingBoing, Gothamist, etc.), which I initially appraised as a cheap way of avoiding depth, but now find the only way I can continue reading some sites. (See plus: Ask.Metafilter.)

22) Drawn.ca
Drawn bills itself at “collaborative weblog for illustrators, artists, cartoonists, and anyone who likes to draw,” but it acts more like a comprehensive guide to visual culture. (See plus: Design Observer.)

21) FourFour
The overabundant jungle of pop culture blogging leaves little room for new voices to emerge. One can read only so many snarky reviews of every episode of every reality tv show on every network every night (I know!). As an antidote to Perez Hilton’s pretty hate machine, FourFour’s Rich Juzwiak (whose day job is blogging for VH1) has carved out something rare in the pop landscape by balancing critical insight with a celebration for the lovable. And what does FourFour love? For starters: Tyra, America’s Next Top Model, Beyonce, Tyra, Project Runway, and… Tyra. (See plus: Golden Fiddle and Best Week Ever.)

20) Reverse Cowgirl
Her: “Why don’t more sex bloggers produce your list?” Me: “Cuz they all talk about the same thing.” Her: “Yes, but in many different ways.” It’s true, sex bloggers don’t usually end up on that list, but Susannah Breslin’s blog was one of the few sites in the genre to stay in the “to read” pile all year towering.

19) Kanye West: Blog
Too much was made again that year about famous public getting blogs. Do you really want more insight into these people’s opinions? Of course not — you want to know their passions, their desires, their interest in dropping $7K on a bottle of cognac. Kanye’s blog is more like a scrapbook of his id: some urls (hey look, the new Lupe Fiasco vid), some photos (hey look, a Delorean), but surprisingly little ego.

18) Passive Aggressive Notes
Take the Found magazine genre and thin-slice it to only include the notes you left for your college roommate. (See additionally: Best of Craigslist and Overheard in The Office.)

17) Strange Maps
Does saying “it was a big year for maps!” sound retarded? Well, it was. (See plus: Great Map.)

16) Pussy Ranch
Several years ago I included Diablo on a “hot new blog!” list. Now she’s super famous, and I’m still making that silly list.

15) Serious Eats
Food blogging has always been a blind spot for me, but Serious Eats was the first site to find the right mix of editorial voice and community interaction.

14) Shorpy
The photoblog genre is easy to miss, but that blog puts itself in a curatorial role by collecting photos up to 100 years old. (See additionally: The Triumph of Bullshit.)

13) La Blogotheque: Take Away Shows
Drag a band out into the street, shoot video of them playing, upload it to the Net… and magic. whether you’re looking for a place to start, I propose The Cold War Kids, but there are 70+ more. (See plus: RCRD LBL.)

12) Jakob and Julia
Jakulia was the worst best (and the best worst) thing of 2007. Don’t know it? Just thank your lucky stars

11) The Daily Swarm
Looking for an alternative to Pitchfork? Who isn’t! But Daily Swarm isn’t precisely that — it’s a music news source that somehow seems to break news before anyone else. And it’s not “press release” news that Pitchfork delivers, nor the salacious celeb news of TMZ, nor even the industry banter of Idolator; rather, The Daily Swarm’s beat is a rare kind of — dare I say — investigative work that no one else is doing. (See additionally: Stereogum and Culture Bully.)

10) A Brief Message
Brevity seemed to only increase its role as the ruling doctrine that year (see: Snack Culture), and the designers hopped on board with their micro-manifestos on that site. (See additionally: Very Short List.)

9) The “Blog of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks
You’ve seen them — too many times to count. And whether you had taken pictures of every unnecessary instance of quotation marks, you “probably” would have made that list too. (See additionally: Apostrophe Abuse.)

emo+beer = busted career
When Earl Boykins mixed the infographic with a passion for Brooklyn indie music, he ended up with several pieces in the New York Times that could have passed for art installations. (See plus: Infosthetics.)

7) Frolix-8: Philip K. Dick
What we once called “the news” is increasingly becoming different filters for perceiving reality. whether you think about it, watching the news is just putting on someone else’s reality goggles. Philip K. Dick would probably agree, and so that amazing site gives you today’s headlines matched up next to which PKD novel the story corresponds with. whether it seems that science fiction gets less fantastical every year, soon after that is the site for you. (See additionally: Cyber Punk Review.)

6) Snowclones
A snowclone — says Wikipedia, cuz it outta know — is “a type of formula-based cliche that uses an old idiom in a new context.” The best example is the rampant usage of “X is the new Y.” But there are so many others, such as “Don’t hate me considering I’m X,” “In X, no one can take in you Y,” “No rest for the X,” “To X or not to X,” “Xgate,” “Xcore,” “Got X?” — and many more. The site is so diligent in its pursuit of the cliche and the trite that you might fall stricken with a loss of words, gasping “This is not your daddy’s snowclone.” (See additionally: Language Hat and Away With Words.)

5) Jezebel
Gawker Media’s modus operandi is to enter a substance category (gadgets, politics, sports, music, etc.) by summarizing that industry with decent volume (in both senses of the word) to basically become the fundamental trade mag in that sector. that is why Jezebel represents the biggest coup in the empire’s history. Rather than beguile its way into the women’s magazine industry, Jezebel burst onto the scene in May by defining itself in oppositional terms. It isn’t so much a thing as it is not those things. To be clear: it is not the celeb porn that Conde Nast and Hearst have been splooging on you from newsstands for decades. Whereas the average Idolator post would fit in just fine in Blender or Pitchfork, Jezebel was an entire take-down of Glamour, Cosmo, and the rest of the airbrushed crew. that is the holy grail of publishing: to find a voice that is completely different while still appealing to a broad category. Nicely played, Mr. Denton. (Note: By the numbers, Jezebel probably doesn’t qualify in the “overlooked” character of that list. But with as many dudes like me reading that “women’s fashion” site every day…) (See additionally: Spout.)

4) Smashing Telly
Smashing Telly is the antidote to all those skull-numbing viral video aggregators. Instead of gathering 30-second clips of dogs on skateboards, the site meticulously curates long-form clips that will produce you wishing to extend your office hours. It’s where I found the Mailer/McLuhan interview, Manufacturing Consent, a random Clockword Orange documentary, and countless other things. (See additionally: First Showing and vidoes.antville.org.)

3) Vulture
New York Magazine is a perplexing contradiction. It is probably the best magazine on the newsstand right now (Wired is the only competition), but it additionally has an editorial voice that is occasionally annoying in its sense of privilege and entitlement. On its worst days, I shout that attitude “Aggressively SoHo” — as in, it surpassed believing that NYC is the center of the world by declaring the epicenter somewhere south of 14th St. and north of Chambers St. When my bestest friend Melissa (disclaimer!) said she was co-launching that blog (she has since moved onto Rolling Stone), I was worried that that voice would ring through on its cultural coverage. But the opposite has happened — Vulture has kept the best parts of New York Mag (the nuance, the design, the clever), while leaving the Aggressive SoHo Tude at the door. (See additionally: Wired’s Blogs.)

2) Ill Doctrine
When Ze Frank sadly abided by his promise to shut down his much-celebrated but under-watched show in March (after precisely one year), the World Wide Web was left to gasp for different video programming. Jay Smooth’s Ill Doctrine has been the only video blog to emerge with a distinct voice, a mature vision, and brilliant programming that mixes essay, criticism, and attitude. Check it: Chocolate Radiohead and Amy Winehouse and the Ethics of Clowning People. (See plus: Epic-Fu and Rod 2.0.)

1) Twitter and Tumblr
“Blog” has always been an elastic term, just barely surviving the stress of containing everything from Hot Chicks With Douchebags to DailyKos to your mom’s Vox explanation. But that year the seams of the term finally burst, and out spilled some sort new words, tweets and tumbls, and these two new forms of quasi-blogging that are more personal, more instant, and of course more annoying than anything online communication has rustled up so far. Twitter and Tumblr are the Rubik’s Cube and the Tetris of the blogging world — simple concepts that are immensely more complex and compelling than they logically should be. I’ve explained Twitter to a hundred society in a hundred different ways, each day not quite capturing why it’s different, why it matters. “You just have to play it to understand,” I eventually say, choosing the only verb that approaches the nuanced complexity. And yet, there’s another very simple way to say it: Twitter and Tumblr made blogging fun again that year.