Digital media maven Jason Calacanis today pronounces L.A.-based Metro Blogging, founded by Sean Bonner and Jason DeFillippo of Blogging.la, "the largest local blog network in the world." They added Tokyo, Houston and Toronto yesterday for a total of 16 locales, including Orange County last week.

Also in the blog world: Online Journalism Review columnist Mark Glaser checks in on the war against comment spam. The thoughts of the legendary Dave Winer caught my eye:

More recently, the godfather of blogging Dave Winer, former CEO of UserLand, told me that comments are not an intrinsic part of a Weblog and have basically failed after a brief honeymoon period in the early history of blogs. "I think a blog is a publication, and publications have proven that letters to the editor are useful," Winer said. "But blogs with comments are not letters to the editor. Letters to the editor are edited, they're selected, and that selection process is a very important aspect of it."

Instead, Winer thinks commenters should simply run their own blog if they want to comment.

I'm still pondering whether to restore comments (suggestions are welcome by email) and waiting for Movable Type to work out the bugs in its newest software release.