I just spent several hours working (free) for a friend, tearing through and reviewing several dozen blogs he thought were pretty good. (That's George Reeves, at right.)

This helped me a great deal. I learned a lot about what I like to see in a blog, and what I don't like to see.

Let's start with what I like to see:

• Good thoughtful writing.
• Unpredictability.
• The feeling that there's a person there.
• Availability of comments.
• An RSS feed that at least tells me what I need to know about an item before it's truncated because they're looking for ad revenue.
• Some reporting that involves more than a hotlink would be nice.

This is part of what's wrong with corporate blogging. Whether it's an executive blog, a publisher blog, or a product blog, it's just too predictable. The writing is often so strait-jacketed (in order to make it replicable and corporate-approved) that the life is knocked out of it.

Blogging is a very human activity. So is reading blogs. Given that general topics such as "politics" or "technology" are going to result in a lot of coverage of the same things, it helps if the writer has a unique take. There better be someone home. Talking points, whether corporate or political, are a waste of my time.

Which leads me to what I don't want to see in blogs:

• Few updates. Show up or just send me an e-mail.
• Distance. I want to see you in what you're writing about. I generally don't care about your cat. Friday cat blogging is a joke, and always was a joke. The joke being I need to get something on the blog but it's Friday and I don't feel like working. (Ha-ha-ha.)
• Feeds truncated to the point where I don't know what the item is about. If you're that desperate for revenue, put ads in your RSS. Or make brands your keywords.
• Inverse pyramids. If I'd a wanted mucilage, I'd a ordered mucilage.
• Predictability. Let me know you're having fun, because otherwise I'm not.

Oh, and in covering blogs? Don't ignore off-topic posts. Sometimes they're the best you're going to see, even from a good writer.

One final thought. I think this is a pretty good blog. We've got comments, we post regularly, we cover a lot of ground, and I don't always quote conventional wisdom as though Moses (or even Moore) brought it down from a mountain on a stone (or silicon) tablet (or wafer).

What's on your list? Either one.