Just a few days ago there was a flurry of sarcasm over the launch of DipNote, the comically named, poorly designed and dubiously intentioned new official State Department blog. It's fair to say that its arrival was met in the larger blogosphere with a resounding thud, though whether there might be anything worthwhile content-wise in its existence seems worth going back to check at least a few times.

Now there's another new government blog being launched, with, if you can believe it, an even worse name: GovGab: Your U.S. Government Blog. With the ambitious plan of one blog post a day split up between 5 contributors plus an alternate, GovGab hopes to bring you information about topics ranging from "saving money and visiting National Parks to finding out about government auctions and the latest recalls." Recent posts tell you how you can help find missing kids and what the National Recording Registry does.

Let's try to move on from the fact that one of their contributors is named Sommer, spelled the same way as my name -- trust me, it took me a while, and a confirmation email from the publisher, to believe it was true. The topics covered in GovGab aren't really so atrocious, and it's pretty adorable to see the Office of Citizen Services and Communications at the U.S. General Services Administration try to get hip to the blog scene about four years too late. Mostly, it just looks an infrequently updated site with a dull voice that might, if you're patient enough, reveal one or two interesting things you didn't know over the course of a couple months. Since we have to keep up with these kinds of things, we'll add it, tentatively, to our RSS reader. But would you?

We first heard about washingtonpost.com's intentions to launch a comprehensive directory of D.C. area blogs last January, when they gathered a bunch of invited local bloggers to come have free soft drinks and chocolate-covered strawberries so they could pick all of our brains about how best to reach us on the interwebs. Today, we received the first word that the Local Blog Directory is up and running and available to users to register.

Generally, we think a comprehensive blog directory is always a nice idea, and the interface they've come up with is relatively useful. You can browse for blogs by specific neighborhood, there's an RSS feed for the most recent posts from across the board (which does seem like it could be awfully cumbersome to subscribe to in an RSS reader -- we'd love to see feeds tailored to specific areas or topics), and there's an edited section called "What We're Reading" that points you to the most interesting posts of the day, according to Posties. One potential problem is that the general "search" functionality appears only to search the self-reported descriptions of each blog, not any of the content of the blogs themselves. Probably the most unique feature is that it allows you to search for blogs relevant to specific areas in Northern Virginia and Maryland -- since DC Blogs has long been doing an admirable job area for blogs within the city.

The intention of the new directory seems clear enough: washingtonpost.com would like to become a home base for people who are looking for local blogs or unfamiliar with what's out there, and local blogs might like to be listed in order to get traffic directed their way from the WaPo's large base of readership. If you have a local blog you'd like to add to the directory, head over here and fill out the form. And don't forget to let us know what you think of the new feature -- very few blogs have already signed up, so the content is a little sparse right now, to be sure.