I was a guest on last night's edition of Dave Wallace and Mike Seyfang's The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show podcast.  The show is up and available.  Go give us a listen!

We talked about blogging, networks, music, RSS, Facebook, MySpace, podcasting and all sorts of other interesting topics.

I really enjoyed it, and would welcome the opportunity to guest on more podcasts.

I enjoy memes, because they are a way to find out about others - and sometimes yourself - in an interesting way, without having to write or read a boring autobiography.  I also think answers to questions are more revealing than prose, because they elicit specific information rather than whatever the writer consciously or subconsciously wants to present.  Having now mounted my defense of memes, let's get to the business at hand.

Chip Camden tagged me in Randy Morin's bullying meme.  So here we go.

Am I a bad person, if I'm happy to know that the bully did not live a full life?

I believe people are generally good or bad based on what they do, not what they think.  Having said that, it depends on the level of bullying and what is meant by "live a full life."  There are certainly some things that a bully could do that would lead me to be happy if he shuffled off this mortal coil, but outside of murder, rape, etc., I would not wish death on someone.  I would, however, be happy to learn that karma or the law acted to cause a serious bully to have a bad job, go to jail, become homeless, etc.  I might want to forgive and forget, but I am an imperfect person and would be perfectly happy to hear of a little cosmic payback.

Were you bullied as a kid?

Not generally.  There were a few times I was treated badly by some older kids, but it was more of a stop following us around thing than a bullying thing.  My dad told me to avoid a fight when possible, but that there are times when there is no other way to resolve something.  I tell my kids, in cases of physical aggression only, to ask the person (be that a sibling or third party) to stop twice, and only if that fails to respond in kind (or "do what you gotta do").  It is a hard line to draw and to walk, but I simply do not believe anyone has to accept physical abuse without defending themselves.  Of course most of my wife's friends think I am a caveman (and not the Geico kind) in this regard.

Was bullying as rampant in your schools, as they were in mine?

Probably, although I was largely oblivious to it at the time.  If I bullied people in any way, it was by being unaware of their suffering at the hands of bullies that I may have been hanging out with.

What happened to the bullies in your school?

A couple of them are in jail, actually.  None of my close friends were bullies, so I don't know about the rest of them.

Was it just the boys, or did the girls bully too?

I don't know about at my school, but as a parent of girls, I am convinced that bullying by girls against other girls is much, much worse than between boys.  It's verbal, as opposed to physical, and much harder to detect.  If two little boys are fighting on the playground, it's obvious, and they generally forget about it by the time school's out.  If you see one little girl whisper something to another, you have no idea what she said.  And the adverse effects seem to linger longer.  I think schools need to be much more proactive where girl to girl bullying is concerned.

Were you the bully?

Not to my knowledge.  I have generally taken up for people when I feel they are being taken advantage of.  When I was younger, I was less aware of that sort of thing, but the older I get the better my bully radar seems to be.

Now to tag some bloggers.  I'm going to dive into my new reading list, along with a few long time pals.  Bob Meets World, Nick O'Neill,  D'Arcy Norman, Nancy White, Blonde 2.0, Dave Wallace, Steven Streight and Thomas Hawk (who I think got beat up unfairly in the comments to a recent Scoble post).

There's a new version of Windows Live Writer available for download.  Lots of new features.  Kevin Briody likes it.  Why in the hell does it flash every time I add a link to a post?  It's User Account Control (which I long ago disabled) all over again.

Mahalo launched today.  Steven Streight has a good write up on it, as does Mashable.  Mahalo says it's:

the world's first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven't yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.

There's a page for Scoble, one for Guy.  None for Seth.  Or me.  Seems oddly familiar....  Anyway, why does a search for wolves return NOFX (whatever that is), Kevin Costner and Instapundit as 3 of the 4 links?

Scott Karp has a good summary of the CBS/Last.fm business.  It's about the declining radio ad dollar.  One of these days someone is going to start looking for a return on all this money old media is tossing around trying to become new media.

I was a guest on Dave Wallace and Mike Seyfang's The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show podcast tonight.  It was an absolute blast!  I'll link to the episode when it's up.

Fred Wilson is fired up about HD Radio.  He applauds Sony's entry into the HD Radio market with the soon to be available XDR-S3HD (an inspired name, for sure), a $200 table top HD radio.

I love music, and I particularly love high fidelity music.  Currently, I get my car music via XM Radio, and while I am generally pleased with the selection, I find the audio quality to be a notch or two above two tin cans and a string.  Anyone who says XM is CD quality hasn't listened to many CDs.

On the other hand, there's a very good reason why XM has grown so fast and why networks are looking for creative and technological ways to keep people from skipping ads.  People simply don't like ads.  In this era when everyone is jumping on the ad revenue bandwagon, radio advertising has been on the decline.

People tolerate online ads because they are relatively easy to ignore.  Ads on the radio are impossible to ignore.

Sure, I've never heard HD radio.  And the experience might be so amazing that all those radio ads I haven't missed in the years since I've listened to one second of over the air radio will be like, well, music to my ears.  But I've had HDTV for a few years, and I can tell you this - I've never once watched the ads.  I record the show and fast forward through every ad that doesn't have cavemen.

I hope HD radio takes off, mostly because it will put competitive pressure on XM to sound better.  But a higher sound quality won't be enough to lure me back to traditional radio.

Variety is reporting that ABC is "hoping to reinvent the newsmagazine for the YouTube generation with a show produced by ABC News but based on user-generated video." 

i-Caught, a new show with a Web 2.0 worthy and grammatically challenged name, will get a six-week run on ABC starting August  6.  If it does well, it might return midseason.

It won't do well for one reason.  ABC, and the other TV networks, are superfluous to the user generated video movement.  YouTube, Google, the blogosphere and hordes of other online media hubs already constitute a distributed video on demand system that exists without the need for a traditional broadcast medium.

ABC brings nothing to the table users can't get elsewhere, whenever they want it, and generally without all the advertising.

This is an update on my swivel feeds experiment, in which I ask bloggers I read to help me rebuild my reading list.

Here are the swivel feeds recommendations so far from the first group.  Note that, when possible, I designate blogs by the name of the blogger, because I like to know who I'm talking to.

Anne Zelinka
Ballastexistenz
Bob Meets World
Bonnie Staring
Chris Brogan
David Rothman
Deborah Schultz
Engtech Lite
f8d
Heise Security
Hilary Talbot
Ian Forrester
IT|Redux
J.A. Konrath
John Tropea
Les Orchard
New Scientist
Nick O'Neill
Phydeaux3
Quasi Fictional
Reg Braithwaite
Robert Andrews
The Struggling Writer
Tresblue
Tricks of the Trade

Participants Blonde 2.0, Mike Miller, Amyloo, Assaf Arkin and Improbulus round out the first edition of my new reading list.

So far, we are off to a good start.  I have subscribed to all of the recommended blogs, and all of them are new to me.

No suggestions yet from A Consuming Experience, Amy Gahran, Amyloo, Assaf Arkin, Ben Metcalfe or Ben Werdmuller, but there's plenty of time to get them in.

Now for the next 8 bloggers (whose additions will be listed in the next update):

Bill Liversidge: Bill is a writer, like several of the swivel feeds recommendations above.  I have been reading his blog for a long time, though he does not post as much as he used to.  I hope he sees this.

Brad Kellett: One of my core blogging pals.  He's one of my mobile tech gurus, though he writes well about a lot of other topics too.

Chip Camden: Another of my core blogging buddies.  He's a software developer who, like me, blogs about all sorts of things.  One of my long-time reads.

Christopher Carfi:  Chris is an entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Cerado.  I've been reading his blog since I found out what blogs were.

Claus Valca: Another Houston blogger, who writes detailed and very informative posts about software, among other topics.

Corey Clayton: A relatively new read who I met via Twitter.  He's a tech writer and a podcaster.

Craig Newmark: The founder of Craigslist needs no introduction.  The first time he commented here, I actually called my wife from work and told her.  That's the only thing about this blog she actually thinks is cool, as opposed to, well, nerdy.  I enjoy Craig's political and social activism posts. 

Dave Rogers:  Dave is a retired navy commander from Florida, whose blog I have read for a year or two.  He writes well about all sorts of stuff.

That's the second group of bloggers I'm asking to help rebuild my reading list.  If you're willing, please give me 5 recommendations to add to the list.  Use the comments, your blog or email, whichever you prefer.

Here's some pretty amazing YouTube activism by Greg Hewlett, a blogger, Texan, amputee and, by all accounts, fine blues singer. 

Link for feeds.

Unfortunately, Greg reports that the bill amendment that would have forced insurance companies to provide better prosthetics coverage was stripped from the bill.

While unfortunately not successful in this case, this video is a great example of the sort content activism that can reach a lot of people in a short time.  I probably wouldn't have read a letter about this topic from someone I didn't know.  But I watched this video 3 times.

Good pickin', effective message.  Rock on.

We've been talking a lot about social networks lately.  I've said many times that I don't get MySpace.  A few folks have tried to explain it to me.  Nevertheless, when I look at MySpace, I still see the worst of ugly Geocities and walled-off AOL all rolled into one.  It's worse than Prodigy.  It's GEnie on crack.

It's a gallery of bad web design, user unfriendliness, intrusive advertising and dead end links.  I don't care if the whole world is there, it's ugly.  Horrible, I tell you.

And I ought to know.  I just got back from wandering around MySpace for a couple of hours.  My header hurts, my feed stinks and I most certainly don't love MySpace.

Here's how it started.

I noticed the other day that a musician buddy of mine has a MySpace page.  His looks like everyone else's, so I'm not picking on him when I use his page as an entry point to the many things I dislike about MySpace.  Go to any MySpace page and you can follow along, because they all look the same.  Bad. 

First, music starts to play automatically.  If it were a MIDI file instead of a good song (my friend is a great songwriter), I'd think I was back in the nineties.  It's the same on the MySpace pages of two other people I used to know, whose MySpace pages I found in the chaos that passes for Friends and Comments at the bottom of my buddy's page.

There are blog-like elements to a MySpace page.  Clicking on "subscribe to this blog" is not one of them, however, as that leads to yet another page stating that you have to be a "member" to do that.  Stalwart potential subscribers can click over to the "View All Blog Entries" page where there is an actual RSS link- where you get short partial feeds.  A lot of work for very little return.

Friends and Comments.  Where to start.  There are a ton of pictures at the bottom of the page.  Some of them are called Comments, but the format screams Guestbook.  Then there are the Friends, that mythical connection that is supposed to make MySpace the great community.  Leaving the cubist-like formatting aside for a moment, you can only have Friends who have MySpace accounts- a symptom of the AOL-era closed system.  And based on the lists I saw on the pages I visited, the only requirement for Friendship is fame or asking to be listed.

Jimmy Buffett has 106,637  MySpace "friends."  If that's a social network, then the phone book is a social network.

It makes Twitter seem like a family reunion. 

I also spent some time on the MySpace pages of another songwriter I know.  His page is slightly less ugly and less user friendly.

There's a pictures link.  That leads back to the main MySpace page.

There's a videos link.  That leads to an empty page.

There's another jumble of Friends and Comments.  For me to poop on.

Let's summarize the devastation.  Horrible layout. Ugly design.  Music playing automatically.  Hundreds of so-called Friends, many of them famous people who happen to have a MySpace page.  I'm not feeling the community.

Particularly when you can go to any number of blogging services, get a free blog with a template that is not migraine producing and be up and running within minutes.  No html required.  And if you want to link to famous people, you can still do it.   Here's a link to Roger McGuinn.  Here's one to Lloyd Cole.  Here's one to Steve Rubel. 

I think the social networking closed site as online Mecca story is a myth driven by people who want to keep the content producing public behind the walls so they can make money off of the content they produce.

Jay Neely follows up on our conversation about blogs and social networks and the differences between the two:

What's the difference between a social network and blogs or a blogging service? One is for your friends, the other is for your audience. The key difference is that one group already knows you (it's easy to replace "friends" with "coworkers", "family", "neighbors", etc).

As I mentioned the other day, there is logic to that distinction.  But the more I think about it, I don't believe it's as clear-cut as that.

Jay says bloggers write for their audience.  Clearly some do, like Guy Kawasaki, the folks at Mashable and other bloggers with one foot remaining in the old media pool.  But lots of other bloggers are writing not merely to have a soapbox, but for the multi-way conversations that are a central part of the blogging experience.  Robert Scoble is the best example of a popular blogger who, it seems to me, approaches blogging from this perspective.  Doc Searls is another.

There are other reasons why Jay's line of demarcation sometimes breaks down.  Take connecting with old friends, for example.  Very few, if any, of my real world friends even know what Facebook is.  None (to my knowledge) use it.  As a result, I will have a much better chance connecting with people I know by nurturing my web site and waiting for people to Google me.

It's the same with new friends.  No one will ever accuse me of being shy, but at the same time, I'm not big on chatting online with people I don't know.  That's the reason Second Life lost its appeal to me.

On the other hand, I have made a bunch of friends via cross-blog conversations- many of them from other states, countries and continents.  Chip Camden, Earl Moore, Randy Morin, Blonde 2.0, Brad Kellett, Dave Wallace, Ethan Johnson, Frank Gruber, Hugh MacLeod, Nick Carr, Martin Gordon, Mathew Ingram, Susan Getgood, Mike Miller, Ric Hayman, Richard Querin, Rick Mahn, Seth Finkelstein, Steven Streight, TDavid, Tom Morris and Warner Crocker are just a few of the people I likely would never have become friends with if I had set up camp in Facebook.

Plus, the community that develops via cross-blogging is so much more meaningful than merely adding a few hundred "friends" to the botton of your butt ugly MySpace page.  When I visit MySpace I see very little that looks like a real community.  Mostly, I see a gallery of bad web design.

Granted, the cross-blogging community is distributed, inefficient and sometimes impolite.  But it exists, and without walls.

I think Jay is onto something, and I hope he keeps writing about it.  But at the moment, we're all standing on the tip of the iceberg.  Below the surface are a lot of other forces at work.

These lines that seem bright and pretty today may disappear completely tomorrow.

Or they may begin to look like walls.

I got a lot of great feedback on my Facebook question.

Jay Neely of the Social Strategist says I am focusing on services when I should be focusing on people.  In other words, that in the blogosphere, it's what you say that matters, whereas with Facebook and the other social networks it's who you are that matters.  That makes sense to me, though I wish the blogosphere was a little more people-centric than it is.  If you read Jay's entire post, you'll see that the gatekeeper business, the community concept and Web 2.0 applications are all driving the evolution of, and distinction between, the blogosphere and the social networking sites.  Here's my follow up question to Jay (and everyone else): to what extent, if any, do you think this evolution is really being driven by developers who want to make money off of the content created by users on the social networking sites?

Mike Miller says the social network sites are about community, and ease of use.  Community, in the sense that people want to be where their friends are.  Dave Wallace agrees that the ready-made community draws people in because of the pre-existing population and the fact that making connections is technologically and socially easier.  Dave then sums up the essence of a community beautifully, by quoting Adam Fields:

There's really only one rule for community as far as I'm concerned, and it's this - in order to call some gathering of people a "community", it is a requirement that if you're a member of the community, and one day you stop showing up, people will come looking for you to see where you went.

I built several large communities around message boards back in the nineties, and that definition is perfect.  I have said before that I thought blogs were the new message boards.  Maybe these guys are right, that the distributed nature of blogs makes it too hard.  Maybe Facebook and MySpace are really the new message boards.

Richard Querin, like me a Facebook skeptic, says that Facebook and blogging are separate animals altogether.  He sees Facebook as a way to connect with people you've lost touch with- a better version of Classmates.com (but perhaps not as good as Ethan's Google/blog post approach).  Richard says that, while blogging is a lot harder than opening a Facebook account, it also has more potential- both technologically and socially.  I suppose it depends on what you're looking for in a service, but if I ever use Facebook, it will be for the reasons Richard outlines- a way to find people I want to reconnect with and then direct them here.

Amy says we're better off pulling content from the web onto our sites via APIs and widgets than we are "cramming more stuff into somebody else's big hermetically sealed office building with windows you can't open."  She says content is flowing the wrong way.  While I have a greater appreciation for the benefits of Facebook after reading everyone's responses, I still agree with Amy.  I totally get Facebook for those who don't have blogs and/or are looking for people, be they old friends or potential new ones.  But if I am going to work my tail off to create content, I'm going to do it here and in comments to blogs I read.

Thanks to everyone for responding.  I'm still in learning mode, so if you have thoughts or other perspectives, please keep 'em coming.

Movie Recommendation: if you like scary movies, rent The Gravedancers.  Very creepy.  Netflix link.

Louis Gray on the aging of a beloved pet, and a happy update.  We lost Virgil and Beanie within a few months of each other back in 2003.  Beanie (18) was my cat before Raina and I got married.  I still miss them.

Even birds are crapping on President Bush.

Zenhabits tells us 10 benefits of getting up early, and how to do it.

I never would have guessed this.

It's no secret that I've been a little bored with some of my feeds lately.  So it's time to launch a grand experiment that will provide lots of good, new blogs to read.  I'm going to dump a lot of my feeds and ask bloggers I enjoy reading to help rebuild my reading list.

And I'm going to compile the list and share it with everyone.

When I logged on today, I had 147 feeds in my feed reader.  Some of them are news sites and blogs that I view as the functional equivalent of news sites.  They will remain in my feeds.  This group consists of Blogspotting, C|Net Alpha, C|Net News, Digital Markets, Download Squad, DPR, eHomeUpgrade, Engadget, Fark, Farmgate, Gizmodo, HD Beat, InsideMicrosoft, Lifehacker, Mashable, Obscure, Photography School, ProBlogger, PVRblog, Steve Gillmor, TechCrunch, Techdirt, Techmeme, TV Squad, Valleywag and ZDNet Blogs.

Next, there are quite a few blogs that I am going to drop, because they have fallen into near abandonment or otherwise don't interest me for one reason or another.  No need to list those.

Now for the fun part.

Then there are the rest of my feeds.  This group consists of the bloggers who interest me the most.  I have a lot of interests, so these feeds cover a lot of ground.  And I want these folks to help me reseed my reading list with blogs they like and/or think I'd like.

I'll update both the list and my feeds as we go, and when we're done, I'll post the entire list and an OPML file for anyone who wants it.

So, once or twice a week, I'll list several of these blogs, describe briefly why I enjoy them and ask each of the writers to add 5 blogs to the list.

That's about it.

So let's get started with the first 8 bloggers.

A Consuming Experience: I learned a lot of the technical stuff I do with my blog template from Improbulus.  Her blog is a living resource for blogging and technical tips and how-tos.

Amy Gahran: She was the first person who got me thinking about blogs as conversations, which became my core blogging philosophy.

Amyloo: Amy blogs on a lot of topics that interest me.  A great blend of tech, politics, music, philosophy.

Assaf Arkin:  He's one of my favorite software reads, and the Tom Clancy of the blogosphere.  Lots of hard, but understandable, tech.  Very little "me too" posts about the latest bookmarking application, etc.

Mike Miller:  Mike is one of my core blogging buddies, and someone I discuss stuff with almost every day.  He's already led me to lots of good reads and several people who'll appear in this series, but I want more.

Ben Metcalfe:  Ben is a social media commentator and developer.  Thus, I learn a lot more from him than a lot of the social media bloggers who merely regurgitate what they read on TechCrunch.

Ben Werdmuller:  I realize that Nuclear Sledgehammer is a group/company blog, and I mean no disrespect to the other writers, but Ben was the one I started reading first, so he gets the recommendation request.  Good, thoughtful writing about the blogosphere, social networking, etc.

Blonde 2.0: Ayelet came out of nowhere to quickly become one of my favorite bloggers.  If she posted a little more, she'd be in the Technorati 100 within a year (Steve Rubel once said that about me, but I didn't quite make it).

So there are the first 8 bloggers I'm asking to help rebuild my reading list.  If you're willing, please give me 5 recommendations to add to the list.  Use the comments, your blog or email, whichever you prefer.

Also, if you are a blogger I don't know about yet, feel free to tell me about your blog, and it may make the list too.  And if you're one of the rare non-blogging blog readers, please give me your list too.  I am very interested in recommendations from non-bloggers.

I am really excited about this.

I have seen a lot of concerts.  Cream is one band I've never seen live, and if they play anywhere near Texas, I'll fix that.  We saw Eric Clapton not long ago, and he was great.

Here's a link to the embedded video for feeds.

Now, if the remaining members of Led Zeppelin would tour again, I could plug the other huge whole in my concert portfolio.

On the other hand, I'm not all that stoked about this.

I have a genuine question.

What is so much better about Facebook (and MySpace and other similar platforms) than an ordinary blog on a popular platform- say WordPress?

I would love it if someone could explain this to me.

To this point, I've always felt like the blogosphere is the only social network that matters, and that Facebook, etc. are the dilutive sandboxes of the new Geocities generation.  But I am obviously missing something.  Just look at tonight's Techmeme.

I understand how it's better for the owners of Facebook, because they can sell ads and leverage off of the content and traffic created by users.

But I don't get it at all from the user's perspective.

Can somebody help me with this?

Blogtrepreneur (that's really hard to spell) has a list of 101 Essential Blogging Resources.

eMoms at Home tells work at home parents how to keep kids busy during the summer.

Ethan Johnson smartly end-runs around Classmates.com.  This is a good idea, and I may do something similar for all the other geezers from Cheraw High School, Class of 1978.  Any of my classmates who read this blog, let me know what you think.

I'm going to try some of these on Luke.  Up until now, I've been satisfied with saying "look at the giraffe" every time we see a horse.  Just kidding, eMoms.

An exclusive interview with Jackson Miller.

One of these days I'm going to start a 5 questions series where I ask regular bloggers 5 questions.  Like what's the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?  You're young and you got your health, what you want with a job?  That sort of thing.

Reason number 187 not to play golf.

Rogers Cadenhead on the RSS Advisory Board.  This is the 7th time I've linked to Rogers, not that I'm keeping score or anything.

On that note, Scoble says his link blog isn't getting enough return links.  Sometimes I think he writes stuff just to irritate me.  It's a real shame you have to be sycophantic or bombastic just to get included.  I like Randy's plan better- and it obviously worked.

TVSquad on the future of Lost.  I really liked the season finale.

Thanks to Mike, Penelope (author of the book I was discussing) and Ayelet for commenting on my recent posts.

Doc Searls likes his news the old fashioned way.  He says:

So here's a challenge to the daily papers: stop giving away the franchise. Make daily editorial available online only for subscribers. Charge for the fresh stuff, online as well as off.

In a perfect old media world, that's exactly how it would work.  But this ain't a perfect old media world, and if the papers start walling their fresh content off, a hundred online-only publications will happily take their place.  Everyone- bloggers, new media, advertisers- would benefit from the trickle down news effect, except the papers.

I haven't subscribed to a newspaper in almost 10 years.  By the time I see it in the paper, I already know it.  I don't watch the local news on TV anymore for the same reason.

We live in an accelerated world and news via old media is in slow motion.

Guy Kawasaki asked Penelope Trunk, the author of a book on career advancement, for her 9 biggest myths of the workplace.  I've spent a lot of time in the workplace, a lot of it hiring and managing people.  Here's the list, with my thoughts (and these are only my personal thoughts).

1. You'll be happier if you have a job you like.

There's logic (and condescension) to the garbage man in love story, but this is not a myth.  Being a pessimist can ruin any job, but the fact is that those who do what they do only for the paycheck are generally going to be less effective and less happy.  I'm not saying you have to love it so much, you'd do it for free.  But, within the context of a job, it really helps to like what you do.

2. Job-hopping will hurt you.

I think most folks have 2 maybe 3 hops.  After that, it becomes a red flag on a resume- as does missing years in the timeline (which often hide more jumping).  So it's a matter of degree.

3. The glass ceiling still exists.

I don't know if the glass ceiling in the traditional sense still exists or not.  But I completely agree that lots of people are stepping off the ladder and looking for life balance.  But there will always be a segment of the population who is scrambling up as fast as they can.  The important thing is to figure out where your personal sweet spot is and work towards that.  It may be to make the most money possible, or it may not.  I hope it's not.

4. Office politics is about backstabbing.

Interestingly (at least to me), I agree that this is largely a myth.  What backstabbing remains is much more subtle, but the ones who do it are generally found out and controlled.  If you have good and attentive managers, it's not much of a problem.

5. Do good work, and you'll do fine.

I agree with this, but not the toot your own horn every chance you get part.  You have to do good work, period.  Then, you have to try to get others to toot your horn for you.  If I tell you I'm good, it means nothing.  If others tell you that, it means a lot.  People don't like self promoters because people don't like to be sold.  They like to make their own decisions.

6. You need a good resume.

This is not a myth- at least as far as content goes.  Sure, blind resumes don't get you the job.  But once you've left the interview, a good resume helps you beat out the competition.  By good, I mean content.  I agree that the form and font and whatnot don't matter.  I wouldn't pay some so-called expert a quarter to write my resume.

7 People with good networks are good at networking.

I totally agree that this is a myth.  People who are sincere and likeable are the best at networking.  Because to them, it's not networking- it's living.  Nothing turns me off faster than someone who wants to get to know me mostly to leverage off that relationship for personal gain.

8. Work hard and good things will come.

I agree that this is a myth.  Hard work is a requirement, but there's a lot more to it.  Having said that, it's not this: "Make sure you're not the hardest worker. Take a long lunch. Get all your work done early. Grand thinking requires space, flexibility and time. So let people see you staring at the wall. They'll know you're a person with big ideas and taking time to think makes you more valuable."  Because if you do that, people won't think you're a person with big ideas, they'll think you're a slacker.  Period.

9 Create the shiny brand of you!

This sounds like a clip from some Powerpoint presentation, but I agree with this passage: "Offer your true, good-natured self to other people and you'll have a great network. Those who stand out as leaders have a notable authenticity that enables them to make genuinely meaningful connections with a wide range of people."

I think people tend to over analyze job advancement.  It's really simple.  Be smart.  Be honest.  Be kind.  Work hard.  Live good.  Manage priorities.  Find your balance.

And as Webb Wilder says, wear glasses if you need 'em.

Looks like Google is, in fact, going to buy FeedBurner.  That makes me sad.  Google is trying to corner the market on information.  Like when someone shoots the moon in Hearts, it may be too late to do anything about it when people realize it and start to care.

Now cola has gone open source.

Kodak is getting out of the "low end" digital camera business.  Hmmm.

My home state gets serious about beer.  When I lived there we were happy to get our hands on PBRs and Falstaff.  I even had a taste of moonshine a time or two.  Anyone drinking those high falutin' beers would have been beat up summarily.

The Civil War in 4 minutes.  This is a great video- watch it before they take it down. (via Kevin Briody)

Tris Hussey asked the $64,000 question, and then deleted it.  Here's a clip from my reader.

Scott Karp is a blogging buddy, but when I see both "disruptive" and "disintermediated" in the first 13 words of a post, it's time to mark it read and move on. 

My funny line of the day, from a TechCrunch story on some scheduled Second Life downtime: "Second Life entrepreneurs are particularly unhappy with the downtime, after all, if you're trying to make a living from Second Life this downtime affects the bottom line."  That's what I tell my wife when she makes me and the kids stop playing whiffle ball and come inside for dinner.  "Honey, I'm going to get rich playing whiffle ball one day...."

Blonde 2.0 on brand building via social media. 

C|Net reports that the music industry is offering "small" webcasters the option of paying "below market" royalty rates on the songs they play, keeping the required royalty rates essentially the same as they are under a 2002 law called the Small Webcaster Settlement Act.

It's not known what the cutoff for "small" would be, but the SaveNetRadio coalition argues logically that almost all webcasters should be considered small by broadcast standards.  Once they get more popular, however, they might very well grow themselves out of business under the proposed plan.

While I'd love the ability to stream some MP3's from Newsome.Org, the bigger issue is not helping bloggers put a few streaming MP3's online, it's ensuring the viability of the places most of us go to get new music- the Pandoras and Rhapsodys of the world.

 As Techdirt points out, this is likely an attempt to distract the growing number of politicians who have been looking at this very important issue.

While I'm happy to see the music industry negotiate a little, there's a lot more work to do before we're done.

Randy Morin is 100% correct.  Those on the outside looking in could easily change the game by linking to each other.  For me, it's a matter of recreating the blogosphere or leaving it altogether.  Once we get a collective voice, the blogging elite will let us in the club, and we can all blog together.  It's not about pulling the A-Listers down, it's about pulling ourselves up.  Scott Kingery agrees.

Google declares Google Office victory.  Maybe, if victory means being used by non-corporate cheapskates.  I don't know a single person who uses Google Apps in lieu of Office or Works.  Not one.

Karl Martino makes some good points about online news, and expects to be ignored.  See item 1 above.

Darren Rowse, who I consider an un-A-Lister even though he never answered my question, has a good post on growing a blog.

Random blogs I like: Ben Metcalfe, Brad Kellett, Craig Newmark, Greg Hughes, Jeremy Zawodny, Kevin Briody, Ric Hayman, Richard Querin, Steven Streight and Zoli Erdos.

Amazing rumble in the jungle between lions, crocodiles and buffalo.  (via Rob Gale)

Robert Scoble says he's in a blogging malaise.  That's sort of like those celebrities who complain about all the fans asking them for autographs and whatnot.  Robert should be thankful for his blogging fame (which he deserves and earned through hard work).  So I'm not going to shed too many tears for him.

Seth makes a good point in the comments to my unblogosphere post.

On that note, I have lately forgotten to implement my new policy, so thanks to Seth, Barbidoll31, Mike, TDavid, Richard, Louis, OmegaMom, Ethan, Susan, Holly, DeeJay and Kelly for commenting on my recent posts.  Please keep 'em coming!

Dave Winer points out that some conferences he recently attended were not unconferences.  He says "people don't seem ready yet to accept that knowledge is distributed through the room."

I agree that the structure of an unconference is a better way to learn about a lot of stuff.  But I sort of feel the way Dave felt at those conferences every time I fire up my feed reader.

If we want to promote unconferences, first we need to promote an unblogosphere.

I've noticed that some people are starting to combine partial feeds with a big ad banner at the end of each partial post in said feed.  I will unsubscribe to any feeds that do that.  Bye bye to two long time reads, Blog Herald and PC Doctor.

If this becomes the norm, it will spell the end of my blog reading.

UPDATE: Adrian (the PC Doctor) emailed me and said the banner ads at the end of every feed post was a technical glitch.  I have resubscribed.  Thanks to Adrian for emailing to clear that up.

So The Pirate Bay is going to launch a YouTube Killer.

That's sort of like a company called "Bank Robbers" launching a Bank of America Killer.  "The Pirate Bay" translated into any language means "Please Sue Me, I Dare You, You Pansy."

I mean, come on.  I think that's a hilarious name, and part of me is pulling for them just because I bet they like Monty Python too.  But there's a little more to slaying YouTube than a waiving a funny name and a middle finger at big media.

Ask Yahoo how they did slaying eBay.

The only way anyone is going to put a material dent in YouTube's stranglehold on the streaming video market is by putting up a bunch of copyrighted stuff and somehow making it stick.  Granted, The Pirate Bay (arrgg, matey) is at the front of that line, having grown out of the Swedish anti-copyright organization.

But as AllOfMP3.com found out, an offshore address is no panacea for legal troubles.

The Pirate Bay has been on the run from the get go, with allegations that U.S. political pressure forced Swedish police to raid them once already.  I certainly don't think that's the highest and best use of U.S. foreign relations, and while I've never used The Pirate Bay, I can see why people pull for them.

But popularity is one thing.  YouTube, well that's something else.

Either way, it should be fun to watch.

Arrgg!

I continue to be amazed at Google's ability to effectively play the underdog card.  Somehow Google is able to look and quack like Mr. Drysdale and yet get treated like Jed Clampett, pre shooting at some food.

I don't know if it's brilliant marketing, Microsoft hate or some combination of the two.  But it seems to be working.

Google has a market cap of $146,000,000,000.00.  That's $146 billion.  An insane figure for a company that basically has no tangible product to sell.  A company whose revenue stream is closer to media than tech.  A company whose stock price is $470 and whose trailing P/E ratio is above 40.

How does Google pull it off?

Maybe it's the collective "I can't believe this is happening to me" effect.

Google went public on August 19, 2004 at $85, via a dutch auction.  I bid 60 something dollars, fully expecting not to get any, but thinking wrongly that anything higher was too much.  Those who bought just 100 shares at $8,500 at the IPO now have stock worth $47,000.  A $25,500 investment is now worth $141,000.  If I had bid higher and gotten a few hundred shares, I probably wouldn't write anything relating to Google but thank you notes.

Somehow, Google is able to play the little 'ol me card while simultaneously nipping at the heels of the Fortune 50.  Here are the U.S. companies with a larger market cap than Google: ExxonMobil, GE, Microsoft, Citigroup, AT&T, Bank of America, P&G, Wal-Mart, Pfizer, American International Group, J&J, JP Morgan Chase, Chevron, Berkshire Hathaway, IBM, Cisco and Altria.  Pretty nice company.

Or maybe Google just knows how to throw a pep rally.

Today Donna Bogatin writes about Google's coach-like fear of the opponent.

Microsoft (DISCLAIMER: I am a Microsoft shareholder) has set its sights on Google's sacred online ad dollar, buying digital marketing (read advertising) company aQuantive, Inc for $6B.  Plus, Microsoft has lots of money and employees.  And Bill Gates.

Google says it's worried.  You can almost hear the clanging of locker room chairs as its employees gather round to listen.

"Win one for the Brin-er!"

Meanwhile, in the other locker room, Donna quotes Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's Gates Lite, talking about how Google puts its pants on one leg at a time:

I don't really know that anyone has proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value.

Maybe not, and Google has certainly had a hard time trying to capture lightning in a bottle the second time.  But Microsoft has products to sell, a ton of cash and application dominance (those who say Office is dead don't spend much time in corporate offices).

Yet it still trails Google and Yahoo in the race for online dominance.  All that cash and all that structure still hasn't created decent looking web destinations.  Give Google a computer tariff on virtually every computer sold, and I suspect Google would crush Microsoft and Yahoo.

But the online media game is an away game for Microsoft.

Part of it is that applications and media and online search are different animals.  Dominance in one does not easily translate to the others.  Part of it is scheduling.  While Google and Microsoft dilute their energy by fighting over every possible revenue steam and their bank accounts in the startup rush of '07, will opportunities arise for a dark horse?  Yahoo perhaps?

I don't know.  But I do know that playing the underdog role has served Google well.

Even when the lines say it's not the underdog.

My dislike of the once great Norton Antivirus has been well documented.  I have lately been on a quest for a simple, effective, non-intrusive antivirus program that doesn't slow my computer to a crawl or try to operate it for me.

I don't need a program to tune up my computer.  I don't need a hundred pop-up alerts every time I log on.  Unless the black plague is running rampant on my hard drive, I don't want to see anything related to my antivirus program.

When I ditched Norton, I tried the absurdly named Windows Live OneCare.  At first, I liked it, but that was the Norton effect.  After Norton, anything feels wonderful.  Over time, however, I came to realize that Windows Live OneCare was slowly taking over my computer.  Again, I don't want a frickin' computer tune up.  Not now.  Not ever.

So last night, I uninstalled Windows Live OneCare.  And resumed my search for the holy grail of antivirus programs.

Next up is Kaspersky Antivirus 6.0.  I've read good things about it.  So let's install it and see what's what.

It was easy to purchase.  Paypal payments are accepted, which is a plus for me.  The download file is around 19 megabytes.  Installation took a couple of minutes and seemed crisp and efficient.  By the time it was done, I had received an email with my license key.  Everything was activated and up and running within minutes.  So far, so good.

Time to restart my computer.

I noticed no delay in my boot up.  This is not telling, however, as FileBack PC, a great back up application, takes forever to load (note to FileBack developers- please figure out how to make the program load silently in the background, without stalling the PC).

Kaspersky ran a start up scan, which took a couple of minutes.  It was pretty unintrusive and didn't stall my PC.  A full scan took 11 hours (I have a lot of files and an external backup drive, so most stuff was scanned twice).  The application ran relatively unobtrusively in the background.  It reported and neutralized several infected emails, mostly trojans, that Windows Live OneCare did not find.  In fairness, that may be because for the past few weeks I have been waging a computer turf war with Windows Live OneCare, hammering the "x" every time it launched an assault against my computer turf.

One thing I like about Kaspersky is that when you tell it to stop, it stops.  No pop-ups or warnings.

It's too early to tell if Kaspersky is my holy grail.

So far, I'm optimistic.  Time will tell.

Dave Wallace has some good ideas for blog promotion.

Tutorial Blog has a list of free Photoshop plugins.  roScripts has some nifty Photoshop resources.

Download Squad on my blogging buddy, Guy Kawasaki's Truemors.  Guess what: "[J]ust a few hours after the site went live, it was filled with spam."  I told you so.

More Moore.  Earl's son Aaron is blogging with him.  That is very cool.  Here's Aaron's post on Unsanity's Shapeshifter: "Back in the days before I ever thought I would be using a Mac as my only computer, I did everything I could to make Windows something different."  I'm a Windows guy, but I totally get that.

Am I the only one who is overwhelmed by the number of posts at Engadget?  I can't help but think a ton of those posts get blown off or skimmed due to the huge volume.

I am depressed by the thought of Google buying Feedburner. 

Hugh MacLeod has 15 new blogcard designs available.  Hey Hugh, I'll pay you $50 out of my promotion budget for a Newsome.Org card.  It doesn't even have to be flattering.

Kevin Tofel has pictures of the Dell Tablet PC.

Earnest - a serious and intent mental state.
- Merriam-Webster

I've noticed a trend lately when reading my feeds.  There are so many bloggers churning out earnest posts about supposedly earnest products and events that the fun quotient in the blogosphere is really taking a hit.  My feeds look like hundreds of little sleep-inducing Wall Street Journals.

It's boring.  And ironic.  Ironic, because so many people are spending a ton of time and effort to mimic the very thing they claim to be in the process of replacing.  Infinite potential manifesting itself in the digital equivalent of the neighborhood newspapers we did as kids.

Blogging should be so much more than that.  Why should we albatross this new, improved and dynamic medium by using it in such a provincial manner?  How many "me too" posts do people really need to read about the latest Web 2.0 application?  One might be too many.  Hundreds are far too many.  It's imitation to the point of irrelevancy.

Many, if not most, bloggers have the potential to be so much more than that.  To be more interesting.  To have more fun.  But fun makes the earnest blogger uncomfortable.  This is serious stuff for him, and he believes that serious and fun just aren't compatible.  It saddens me to see all this brainpower, potential and effort directed at something so...indistinguishable.

And it doesn't work.

No moat can contain attention.  It flies across the blogosphere at the speed of broadband.  Clicking here and yon with abandon.  And abandonment- of things too common, or too uninteresting.  Or too earnest.

The toll of earnest writing is heavy.  It's hard to be serious all the time, particularly when you're not being paid a decent wage to act that way.  After a while, you just give up, the way we did with our little neighborhood newspapers.  The way so many do with their blogs.

The remedy for this is a healthy dose of fun.  And the realization that fun only has three letters.  Fortunes are made on fun every day.  In fact, when you cut through the jargon, most of the stuff bloggers are concerned with are based on fun.  No one ever confused YouTube with Masterpiece Theatre.

If you want to create a new journalism, you can't do it in the staid image of the old one.

You have to live outside the box.  Let you hair down.  Write something fun or funny.  Let it all hang out.

Otherwise, you're just another boring newspaper nobody wants to read.  Fun beats smart every time, and in every way.

John Watson has created some nice "screen time" tickets to teach kids to self-regulate their TV and computer time.  I like this idea a lot.

NicheGeek has 10 Stupid Online Ideas that Made Someone Rich.

Donna Bogatin says that Bill Gates says the Yellow Pages will be gone in 5 years.  I thought they were gone already.

Doc Searls on why he keeps blogging.  "Even if many bloggers are now entertaining hopes of Buck Two or Buck Two Thousand, blogging is still that garage band. And, at its best, it still rocks."

Amazon bought Digital Photo Review, the best digital photography review site.

In my Darren Rowse post the other day I asked what people would do if they had $1,000 to promote their blogs.  I have been thinking about budgeting a little money to promote Newsome.Org to potential new readers.

TDavid responded with a fantastic and detailed post, full of ideas for anyone looking to spend a little money for more traffic.  It is a must read for anyone trying to build a blog.  Even if you don't plan to spend money promoting your blog, it's still a must read, as he includes a number of cost-free promotion ideas.

As TDavid points out, I went on a non-scheduled, unannounced blogging hiatus for several months.  I didn't intend to.  I just got burned out and one week turned into two, etc.  I went through the same sort of thing Scoble talked about the other day.  A confluence of real world responsibilities and what often seems like a low rate of return on the hard work of blogging put me out of the blogging business for a while.  When I started back (also unplanned), I had lost some of my audience and my Technorati ranking was in free fall.

The point is that blogging is a marathon, not a sprint, for most of us.  This is particularly true when you are geographically remote and unable to plug into a local blogging culture.  Steve Gillmor, who I have met in the real world and consider a pal, tells me geography doesn't matter in the blogosphere.  I respectfully disagree.  It's not something you can't overcome, but I believe if I lived in the Bay Area, I'd become friends with a lot of the guys out there, who would in turn include me in more of their online conversations.

But, like a lot of us, I don't live out there.  So I have to find another way to promote my blog.  TDavid has some great ideas, many based on his personal history of successfully growing both a blog and other web sites.

TDavid says you need at least 75 posts a month to be in growth mode.  Historically, I would have disagreed with that, but I come from an old media perspective, having written for newspapers and trade journals for years (where a coveted monthly column became burdensome to the point of impossibility).  But having been involved in the blogosphere for a few years, I think he's probably right.  If not for the content itself, for the content and the embedded links to draw other writers to your site, and to seed the reciprocal links which are, for better or worse, one of the established measuring sticks for blog readership.

TDavid gives some stats that support his more posts the better theory.

Then he proposes an allocation of my $1,000.

He breaks it down into 4 areas: design, widgets, contests and advertising.  Go read his post for details.  Now for my thoughts about each.

Design:  I think I should spend a little money on design, and perhaps a better search approach.  I used to use an internal Perl search engine at Newsome.Org, but I switched to Google a couple of years ago.  I think the first thing I need to do is figure out how to move my content to a WordPress platform- as there are a lot of design possibilities in Wordpress that don't exist via Blogger (my site is locally hosted, but I use Blogger (via Live Writer) to publish content).  Eric Scalf kindly wrote a WordPress template of my basic design for me last year, but I didn't make the switch because of the frustrating URL problem.

If you are a new blogger, start with WordPress, because it's sometimes hard to switch once you have a large archive.

Widgets: I have experimented with a number of widgets, and have a few on the site now, including my poor excuse for a tag cloud in which "nbsp," html for a space, is the most popular "tag."  You've got to love that.  Again, I think I could solve a lot of this if I could switch to WordPress.  Some widgets have a material adverse effect on page load times, so you have to be thoughtful about which ones to add.  After ignoring it for a long time, I have become a fan of the MyBlogLog widget, and find a lot of new blogs via the people who visit Newsome.Org.  I also like the Flickr widget, but it drives very little traffic to my Flickr photos.  I'm still using the GoodBlogs widget, but it's currently under review, simply because I don't know how much inbound traffic it generates.  I use the Twitter widget mainly to encourage readers to add me to their Twitter lists.

Steven Streight has a good summary of some available Widgets.

Contests: This is one area that I've been thinking about for some time.  I will definitely have a contest or two in the near future.  It seems like a good way to reward current readers and hopefully attract some new ones.

Advertising:  I have also thought about doing some advertising.  TDavid suggests Google Adwords.  I may give it a try, but I have no idea how much bang for your buck you'd get from say, a $250 purchase.  I like his idea about doing a post on the experience to get some added value.

TDavid then provides some effective, cost-free ways to promote your blog.

I used to do trackbacks a lot more than I do now.  I need to start doing them more, because they worked.  I think commenting on other blogs is also a way to get in front of potential new readers.  TDavid has several more good ideas.

This I know: no one is going to read your blog just because you write it.  And the be a good soldier, write hard and wait to be discovered technique is too remote to be a good bet.  We all have to do something to attract readers.

What do you do to promote your blog?

I'll add links to any posts addressing this topic here, so others can read them too.

 

Mike Miller hosted a special Mother's Day edition of the Carnival of Family Life.

Here's a little link love for the other participants, and some good family reading for you.

• Csara presents The abc's of Motherhood posted at Baby Talkers.
• Karen Lynch presents Mommies, Moms, Grandmas and the Circle of Life posted at Live The Power.
• Lill Hawkins presents Mother's Day Message posted at News from Hawkhill Acres.
• Karen Weideman presents A Thrifty Mother's Day Craft posted at Thrifty Mommy.
• Charlene Polanosky presents What Are Your Mother's Day Traditions? posted at Casual Keystrokes.
• Kelly presents God Bless Imperfect Mothers posted at Pass The Torch.
• kristen presents Love Shak, Baby: Mother's Day: What NOT To Get Me posted at Love Shak, Baby.
• Summer presents Every day is Mother's Day posted at Wired For Noise.
• Summer M presents Top 5 Mother's Day Gifts for a Homeschooling Mom posted at Mom Is Teaching.
• Megan Bayliss presents Mothers Wanted posted at Child protection: serious business.
• Kerri presents Playtime with Mom for Mother's Day! posted at Play Library.
• Amanda Rose presents Mother's Day Makeover posted at Rebuild from Depression Blog.
• Garret presents Mother's Day is coming posted at Need to Get Some.
• ispf presents 5 Gifts for Mom That Won't Ever Go Out of Fashion posted at Grad Money Matters.
• Terri Mauro presents Mother's Day Musings posted at About Parenting Special Needs.
• Holly Schwendiman presents Little Things posted at Holly's Corner Blog.
• Emma Honey presents Miss M's Mother's Day posted at healthandfitnessfactorfiction.com.
• Kailani presents Mother's Day Celebrations posted at An Island Life.
• Lisa Mitchell presents Happy Mother's Day posted at Let's Talk Babies.
• Fun Playdates presents Bug Your Mom with this Fun Craft for Kids to Make posted at Fun Play Dates.
• Kevin presents Happy Mother's Day, Mom posted at More4kids Parenting.
• Leisa presents A Mothers Day Feast (for next year) posted at downwiththekids.net.
• Nina presents Ten Money Questions for Rebecca Walker posted at Queercents.
• Mama Duck presents A Mother's Day card for Grandma posted at Lil Duck Duck.
• Jordan presents Happy Mother's Day posted at MamaBlogga.
• Silicon Valley Blogger presents O, That Special Gift: How Much Do You Pay For Sentiment? posted at The Digerati Life.
• Jenny presents Mamma Mia posted at Absolutely Bananas.
• Super Saver presents Mother's Day Edition - A Tribute To Mom's Work posted at My Wealth Builder.
• JHS presents Sunday Scribblings #45: Goodbyes (Part Two) posted at Colloquium.
• Mommy the Maid presents I busted a Mother's Day Surprise posted at Ramblings from the not-so typical Stay at Home Mom.
• Madeleine Begun Kane presents Mothers Day Limerick Contest Results — And The Winners Are… posted at MAD KANE'S HUMOR BLOG.
• Kent Newsome presents Mother's Day posted at Newsome.Org.
• Jon Swift presents My Mother Is a Terrible Person posted at Jon Swift.

My mom was born in Andrews, SC in 1925.  Some of her first memories were of the depression-era rural south.  That experience had a lot to do with the way she felt about money, politics, and just about everything else.  She drilled into my head that saving money was important, that debt was bad, and that you never knew what was around the corner.  As I get older, I am constantly reminded of how much of her values I absorbed- even as I tried to ignore them.  In turn, a lot of her values are being drilled into my kids' heads.  I hope they are absorbing them- even as they seem to ignore them.

My dad died when I was 8 and my mom was 43.  My sister was in college by then, so for most of my formative years it was just me and mom.  We fought like cats and dogs at times, and we had great fun other times.  She insisted that I do my best and accepted nothing less.  It often made me mad, but it also made me who I am.

Many of my best memories of my mom involve playing cards and board games.  We played Hearts, Spades, Spite and Malice (which we called Spike Malice), Risk, Rummikub, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble.  You name it.  The family games we now sometimes have after dinner are another remnant of my mom.

She cooked the best chicken livers and made the best biscuits in the world.  She was a great tennis player.  She loved Bjorn Borg and disliked John McEnroe.  She was a huge Wake Forest fan, and we would talk on the phone after every big game.  Like the time Randolph Childress single handedly won the ACC Tournament.

But she loved her cigarettes.

Mom died of cancer 5 days before Cassidy (my oldest) was born.  I wrote a short story about it.  Part of the reason Cassidy and I are such soulmates is that she pulled me out of that darkness and healed me.

After Cassidy was born, I went back home to clean out Mom's house- the house where I grew up.  I wrote this song on her back porch after the movers left.

I don't think about mom every day anymore.  I wish I did.  But I'm thinking about her on this Mother's Day.  I wish she could know her grandkids.  I wish they could know her.

Maybe they do a little.  Because they know me.

best_mom

Here are some Star Trek inspirational posters.  Perfect for your desktop background.

Web Development has 15 cool Firefox Tricks.  Too bad playing embedded Windows Media files isn't one of them.  I use Firefox, but the WM problem is a pain in the ass.

A "body farm" has been scrapped due to buzzard concerns.  I guess a scarecrow wouldn't help.

Mashable has 10 digital Mother's Day gift ideas.

Richard Querin on photos + music.  I use Photostory all the time.  Here's a video I made of my dad's World War II scrapbook (link for feeds).

 

Some folks are revisiting the Twitter vs Blogging thing tonight.

Fred Wilson says we are in the era of conversation.  That saying blogging is journalism and Twitter is not misses the point.  He says we will get our news from blogs and Twitter in the future.  I think that's true to a point, but not for the reasons Fred talks about.

Tony Hung says that Blogging and Twitter are both journalism.  Part of this is semantics, but I don't agree.  Not unless graffiti is journalism.   

As I have said before, blogs and Twitter and bathroom walls are platforms for the distribution of content.  They are not a new species of content.  The gathering and accurate reporting of news is the lynchpin of journalism, not the medium in which that news is delivered.  There are blogs and print media and maybe even bathroom walls that are journalism.  And there are ones that aren't.

So I don't think blogs and Twitter and all those butt-ugly MySpace pages are going to magically turn into a distributed, global Wikipedia maintained and fact-checked by our collective online consciousness.  The platforms don't make the content any more than the bottle makes the wine.

Rather, I think blogs and Twitter are the new water coolers.  The places around which we share all sorts of information.  News, gossip, humor, photos, videos and music.  The bloggers who are fair, accurate and accountable will get more mindshare, just like the best story tellers get more ears at the water cooler.

There will be journalism.

Over time, more and more journalists will move to a blogging platform.  The main obstacle to that migration being the difficulty in taking the subscription (as in pay to read) model along with them.  As this inevitable migration happens, people will claim that blogging is reinventing journalism.

That's not true.  It's the journalism, or more accurately the journalists, that will reinvent blogging.

And you need not have a fedora and a old school press pass to apply.

Mike Miller tagged me in the Next 5 Stumbles Meme.  The idea is to list your next 5 stumbles using StumbleUpon.

One of the biggest spankings I've received in the blogosphere was over my failure to pick StumbleUpon as a winner in Round 20 of my Web 2.0 Wars.  I'm still smarting over that one.  But I'll tell you a little secret- other than to check it out during that round, I've never used StumbleUpon.

Until now.  I installed it the day I got tagged and have been using it for the past few days.  I'm not going to say anything that might get me clobbered again in the comments.  Such as, for example, that I like it OK, but don't love it.  Or that I'll probably uninstall it in a few days.  No sir.  Not going to say anything like that.

What I'm going to do is list my 5 stumbles and then tag some people.

My Stumbles:

1. The Size of Our World.  I didn't realize that Earth was so much smaller than Jupiter and Saturn.  Some funny astronomer named a star after Beetlejuice.  If I had a star, I'd name it Patrick.  My kids would like that.  I once had a cat named Stevens.  Get it?

2. Pandora.  Man, maybe there's something to StumbleUpon after all.  I love Pandora.

3. HassleMe.  Because sometimes in life, you just need to be nagged.  I have a team of people who do that for me every day.

4. BugMeNot.  I use this application all the time to avoid having to register with those stupid registration required newspaper sites.  There's a nifty Firefox extension.

5. Nick Brandt.  Never heard of him before, but I like the photos.  A tad on the artsy side.

And now, I'll tag the following StumbleUpon fans, who defended it so well in the comments to my prior post:

Sam
Mike
Shamir

I need two more.  A quick search for the stumbleupon tag at Technorati mandates (mandates I tell ya) that I tag Gabrielle of the Tech Chick blog.

And last, but not least, Joy, of the Blog of Joy, because she likes StumbleUpon.

I just tagged 5 people, none of whom I know.  I wonder if that's cool or uncool?

Thanks to Mike for tagging me!

And thanks to Richard for commenting on my last post.

They started calling used cars pre-owned cars as a marketing ploy to make people feel better about buying a used vehicle.  I'm not sure why people needed to feel better about it, but apparently they did.

And I just know I'll feel a lot better about DRM infested songs if we start calling it Digital Consumer Enablement, or DCE.  I had to check to make sure I wasn't at The Onion, when I read this nugget:

Speaking at a panel session at the NCTA show in Las Vegas Tuesday, Zitter [HBO's Chief Technology Officer] suggested that "DCE," or Digital Consumer Enablement, would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers "to use content in ways they haven't before," such as enjoying TV shows and movies on portable video players like  iPods.

No need to worry about all the problems, technological and philosophical, that DRM causes.  Let's just give it a pretty name and everything will be all right.

As Joey deVilla points out, Mr. Burns would be proud.

I like the New Radicals' You Get What You Give, too.  But Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark may be the most solid record ever made.  There's not a song on it I would rate less than a 9.5 on a 10 scale.

On a related note, I have started looking to Wikipedia for my album links, simply because AllMusic is not link friendly.  They better change that before they become irrelevant.

I don't really care who's on the board of judges for TechCrunch 20, because I don't really care about TechCrunch 20.  It's like the WWF.  I know it's out there, I sometimes come across the participants all pumped up and beating their chests, but it just doesn't interest me.  Maybe if Wahoo McDaniel was on the board...then I might care.  Or Wonder Mike.  Or Big Bank Hank.

Frank Gruber has discovered a new poll making application.  I'm going to try it out, just because it is called Polldaddy.  I once thought about changing my name to Catdaddy.

[[[UPDATE: My beautiful poll won't display, so I deleted it.]]]

It probably won't work in feeds, so here's the link for those who want to exercise their right to voice their opinion in this very important decision.

@Jackson: Big companies seem to like the Blackberry server best for pushing email.  I have one, but I would much rather have a Treo.  Or two cans and some string.  Or a conch shell.

TDavid has a good writeup on videoblogging.  If it's harder than podcasting, then I want nooooo part of it.

I don't understand any of this, but I felt compelled to link to it.

Here are the Problogger Top 5 entries for Day 4. Let's spread a little link love around.

• Top 5 Ways To Plan an Easy Move by Single Ma
• Top 5 Italian Words You Really Don't Want to Mispronounce by Sognatrice
• Top 5 technology websites by Jaganath S R
• Top 5 Things To Do Online Before Your Trip by Maria Paz Luque
• Top 5 Reasons Bill Gates Can't Get No Respect by Great White Snark
• My top 5 single sentence movie reviews by blaiq
• Top 5 Ways Humanity Will Use Blogging to Evolve Our Species by Jesse S. Somer
• Top 5 Birthday Cards Design from Pigeon Card by Pigeon Card
• Top 5 livros essenciais by Ibrahim Cesar
• 5 Lessons Learned From Pitching VCs by Benjamin Yoskovitz
• Top 5 Things To Do in Istanbul by Mert Erkal
• Top Five Uses For Magnetic Bracelets by Forest Mitchell
• My Top 5 Most Important Comics by Lew Newmark
• Songs That Make Me Insanely Happy - The Top 5 by Jester
• My Top 5 Wordpress Plugin Ideas by Tech Lemming
• O Top 5 dos… Top 5! by Rafa
• Top 5 Hollywood actors of the last 30 years by Biby Cletus
• Avoiding the Chemical Sandwich of Doom…Plus 4 More Tips from The Practical Archivist by Sally Jacobs
• The 5 things that Helped me Finish the Ironman by Triathlete Dad
• 5 Benefits Podcasting has helped my business by The Freq
• Turn Your Meager Blog Income into a Million Dollars by Chris B.
• Top 5 Blogs by Musicians by Emma
• 5 reasons why Hollywood should spend less money on their movies by Patrick Rijnders
• Top Five Acne Treatments by Maggie and Will
• 5 Easy Daily Habits To Put Your Weight Loss On Autopilot by Time To Get Fit
• Top 5 Most Wanted Answer in Physics by LaymanSc
• Alguns títulos longos by Alexandre
• Top 5 Ways To Get Your Baby To Fall Asleep by Moxie (of Ask Moxie)
• How I look at life now that I am half a century old by Christina Kong
• 5 Sympathies For The Devil by msierra
• 5 Great Sites for Landscaping How To Videos by Paul Sayer
• Five things to remember when you adopt an older child. by Joanne
• The Top 5 List of Top 5 Lists on Blogging by Cristian
• Men’s Deodorant is Better Than Women's … Top Five by Toonses
• Top 5 Ways that Real Estate Can Help You Become a Millionaire by Saving for Wealth
• Top 5 Ways To Always Have a Job by Justin Driscoll
• Top 5 Ways to Find What Makes You Happy by Shannon Turlington
• Five things that I love about camping by Steve
• Five (Free!) resources for the burgeoning art student by Max Lawson
• Five Ways to Make Money Scrapbooking by Todd
• Top Five Little Known Wordpress Plugins by Pallab De
• Top 5 Reasons to Participate in Probloggers Group Writing Projects by Lynn Terry
• 5 Reasons Why Stand-Up Comics Make Better Copywriters by Roberta Rosenberg
• Top 5 Reasons Why I Started a Personal Finance Blog by Dy Phan
• Five Steps to Start Working From Home by Char Polanosky
• Top 5 Reasons I Should Be Have My "Grown Up" Card Revoked For Being a Moron by zoot
• Top Five Values that You Can Learn from Wine Corks by Buda Baby
• Top 5 Reasons You Should Be Grilling by Grill Maestro
• FIVE EASY WAYS TO SPICE UP YOUR HOME DÉCOR WITH FABRIC…GET TO A FABRIC STORE NOW! by J&O Fabrics
• Top 5 Latest New Jersey Controversies by Deb/Jersey Girl
• Top 5 Video Games that should be turned into movies by betshopboy
• Top 5 Reasons You Should Stop Calling Yourself a Writer, Right Now by Jeff
• The Top 5 Things That Will Check Your Pre-Wedding Bliss by Never teh Bride
• 5 truly talented artists you've never heard of. by Conscious
• Top 5 places to eat gluten free by Lucy
• Top 5 US President Bankruptcies by Ian
• Do It All and Still Stay Sane by Kathryn Lang
• Top Five Reasons I Look Great on a Gluten Free Diet by Natalie
• Five strangely named websites that made it big by Dhruv Kumar
• Save money on the Top 5 Most expensive things in your life by Marshall Middle
• Top 5 Super Foods by Melanie Thomassian
• Top 5 Reasons to get outta bed in the morning. by rel
• Top Five Ways to Turbo Boost you Mac for Free by Kenny Roberts
• Top 5 Reasons To Start A Business by Jason Drohn
• Five essential skills for blogging success by Shonnie Lavender
• Five Killer Apps That Keep Me Using Kubuntu by Chris Rohde
• Top 5 Reasons Why Wives Love Radio Control Airplanes by The Hobby Guy
• Top 5 Signs You've Graduated to the Copywriting Big Leagues by Dina Giolitto
• Five People for Your Success by Milo
• Top 5 reasons getting a fire-fighter by Wolfgang Maslo
• Top Five Bible Verses On Money And Stewardship by Savvy Steward
• Top 5 reasons you should not listen to finance professionals by Nordicmoney
• Top 5 Internet Marketing Mistakes by The Internet Marketing Monitor
• Top 5 Free Ways to Promote Your Writing Business by Yvonne Russell
• top 5 things my pantry needs to have by Loretta
• CelebrityCatch & 5 Hottest Celebrities by Cindy
• Top 5 Worst Jobs I Have Ever Had by Angela
• Big Fat Deal's Top 5 Size-Positive Songs for Girls Who Rock Their Curves by Weetabix
• TOP 5 - People I respect in this World by Philip Yong
• The Top 5 Google Tools I Use Every Day by Hugh Hollowell
• Top 5 Reasons to Visit and Subscribe to ecocheap by Char
• Top 5 reasons why it's bad to be a good listener by Jude
• Five Things Pediatricians Do That Drive Me Crazy by Terri Mauro
• The Top 5 FREE Software Programs Every Writer Should Have by Rob in Denver
• 5 top reasons to market your business on the Internet by Andrew Timberlake
• Top 5 worst things about blogosphere by Pavel
• Want To Make Real Change? Stop Making These 5 Mistakes by Melissa LaRose
• Top 5 Things to Do With an Idea by Andrew G.R.
• Top 5 Reasons Writers Should Procrastinate by Alicia Sparks
• Top 5 Reasons You Should NOT Make Money Online by Ryan Ambrose
• A world fit to be conquered: Five steps to total real estate listing dominance by Greg Swann
• Top 5 Money Making blogs I Envy by Ramanujam
• Top 5 Favorite Disc Golf Courses by Jeff Sill
• Top 5 Things That Hurt Your Online Advertising by Chris Cagle
• The Top 5 Websites that are Changing Aging by Eric Schubert
• Why build a boat… blog? by Bruce C. Dillahunty
• Top Five Misconceptions of Puerto Rico by BW
• Cman's Top 5 Tips for Building a Profitable Blog by Johnathan Long
• The secret is out! The top five things guys really want by Bruce Mulkey
• Top 5 Newsletter Design Tips by Martin Reed
• Top Five Methods to Check How Physically Fit You Are. by Harikrishnan
• Top 5 Tips for the Potential Pushy Parent by John Parsons
• Top 5 things I look for in a blog by Bengt Wendel
• Photoshop Lightroom: Top 5 Features & Tips by Ryan R Dlugosz
• My Top 5 Favorite Flowers by Lynda Walldez
• Top 5 Herbs in my Herb Garden by James
• Top 5 Tools to Build an Online Community by Joseph
• Top 5 tips for getting backlinks to your websites by vijay
• Top 5 Tips For Better Photographs by Joe Szymanski
• Green Ignorance: Top 5 Mistakes I've Made While Trying to Be Earth Friendly by Billy Shih
• Moving online journalism to Linux: Top 5 programs by Megan Taylor
• The top 5 lessons I learned at Kindermusik by Alli Crumley
• Top 5 Drunk Celebrities Caught on Video by Chris
• WiFi in the Wild! by Valerie
• 5 Incredible Things You Can Do After Divorce by Helene Taylor
• Top five reasons why ‘Ignorance is bliss' by Amit Sethi
• Camels, donkeys, and sheiks oh my! by Lady Macleod
• 5 reasons to use Ubuntu and not Windows by Tim Fuchs
• My five favorite 100-calorie meals by Sarah Lewis
• Top 5 Muscle Cars Of All Times by Quais Waseeq
• Top 5 Autopilot Moneymakers for Your Website or Blog by Toivo Lainevool
• Top 5 browsing tips for safe online life. by Ramanathan
• Five Inspirational Quotes For Conversational Blogging by Dawud Miracle
• Top 5 Author Blogs by Todd
• Top 5 steps for bloggers to get written about in newspapers and magazines by hobbit hob
• Top 5 Timesaving Google Shortcuts and Search Operators by Marc and Angel
• Top 5 Greatest Collaborative Renderings Of A Fictional Male Character In Movies or TV by Todd Howard
• Mamas! Read your blogs! by Shawn
• Five Favorite Comic Strip Characters by Neal
• My Phabulous Philly top 5 by Stargazer
• Top 5 property investing tips by Rod Thomas
• Top 5 Fantasy Baseball Minor League Prospects by Knox
• The Ultimate Top 5 Reasons to Teach English Overseas in Korea! by Gdog
• Top 5 of our favorite "Top 5" Memes by Elastic Waist
• What is the Point of Your PowerPoint? (1 of 3) by Alan Bradford
• The Top Five Ways Nakedpastor Stays Naked by nakedpastor
• The most ridiculous items on eBay that I must have by shawna
• Top 5 Recent Movies that Have Influenced Me Spiritually… by Carlton Matthews
• Those Lazy Days Of Summer - Got A Pet? - Keep It Safe by Ruth Bird
• Top 5 Skincare Tips by Rhonda
• Top 5 ways to entertain yourself when you are bored [at work] by elysa
• Top Five Challenges Newbies Face Online by Gaya
• Top 5 Linux distributions by Linux Operating System
• Stránky o regresní terapii (top) by Martin
• 5 tipov ako zarábať na blogu by Jaro
• The Top 5 Films You Never Thought Someone Would Produce (But Thank God They Did) by Vishal K Bharadwaj
• The Five Best Brain Teasers of All Time by Dr. Kaplan
• The Top 5 Reasons Chocolate Lovers Love San Diego by Carole Lane
• Top 5 Forms Of Website and Blog Monetization for 2008 by Adnan
• Top 5 Ways to Get (and Stay) Fit!! by Adrienne Saia
• Top 5 Reasons Why I Love Being Plus Size by Sassy Sarah
• My top five Chattanooga choices for Mother's Day lunch by Alicia Crumley
• 5 Reasons Dogs Can Be Annoying (And Why We Love Them Anyway) by Rhona Sutter
• (Re)Fill Your iPod: Top 5 Ways To Find New Music by Neal
• Giant Jenga Game Saves the World, One Page at a Time. Wait. What? by Riley LaShea
• Mortgage 101: Top Five Signs of Predatory Lending by elle mackenna
• Top 5 Ways To Break Out Of A Boring Life by Ray Dotson
• The Easiest Meditations by Nneka
• 5 Ways Criminal Thinking Can Make You Happier by Maile
• A top (4+1) ways to face rejection by RJ Light
• Congestion Pricing–5 Pros, 5 Cons by Claire Deveron
• StumbleUpon Quintuplet From The King Of Blogging Gobshites by Andy Beard
• 5 Things Moms Do RIGHT by Jordan (MamaBlogga)
• More Money: 5 Ways to Earn Extra Cash in Your Spare Time by J.D. Roth
• 5 things you should know before dating a journalist by Tom Chambers
• High Fives and Other Small Moves with Big Impact by Andrew Barbaccia
• "When It's Time to STOP Writing" by Kristin Gorski
• Top 5: Razones por las que quiero ganar este concurso by El Bloggero
• 5 Low-Cost High-Impact Relatively Immediate Search Marketing Tactics by Sasha
• Top 5 Reasons to Marry a Geek by Eric Giguere
• Top 5 Reasons PHP Developers Love Rails by Patrick Reagan
• Five essential tools make blogging fun and easy by Brad Grier
• Top 5 Filipino Bloggers by Jaypee Habaradas
• Separated at Birth: Top 5 Song Mashups by Megan Gilbert
• 5 Reasons why luxury pashmina is the Ultimate fibre by Sylvia Ellis
• 5 motivos para fazer um top 5 em 5 minutos by Daniel Rodrigues "Cobalto"
• Your Small Business is Worth More than a Free Email Address by Joe Rawlinson
• Top Five Reasons To Work At Home by Laura Spencer
• TOP 5 somethingVERTISING ads by Michal Pastier
• Top Five Ways to Promote Your Artwork by Laurie Harshbarger
• Top Five Celebrity Faux Paus by Denise Grier
• Orgy Invitation: Top 5 Ways to Get One! by aag
• Riding the Waves of Change aka Hints on how to deal with change by Adrienne
• The Top 5 Emotional Intelligence FAQs by Galba Bright
• The 411: The top 5 kids crafts websites by Alicia Crumley
• Top 5 tricks for taking professional looking photos with your digital camera by Samir Bharadwaj
• Top 5 Kuwait T-Shirts That Should Be In My Closet by Kuwait-Style.com
• 5 Tops Ways to Use a VA by Kathie Thomas
• The Top 5 (of 12) Steps to Market by Patrick Nolan
• The Top 5 Supporting Characters on NBC's "The Office" by Myles
• Top 5 Applications Every Gamer Should Have by Mike Raffensperger
• The Rule of the FIVE by Austin Realtor's Wife
• Top 5 Pagan References On Screen by Johanne Drever
• Top 5 Productivity Enhancing Ideas For Busy People by Chris Pangburn
• The Top 5 Things You Can Do For Your Kids…EVER by Aaron Emerson
• The top 5 things about Glasgow that make me want to kill myself by Jon Kane
• Top 5 Reasons to Save Your Grandmother's DNA by Blaine Bettinger
• Five TV Shows on the Bubble That Should Be Saved by Jason - The TVaholic
• Top 5 Reasons to Close a Trade by Babak
• Top 5 Ways to Increase Your Revenues while Decreasing Your Effort by Jim
• Five Podcast Categories by dpeach
• Time Is Money: My TOP 5 Time-Saving Pro Blogging Tips by Easton Ellsworth
• Its Time For Another Round of ‘Things that Have Come Out of My Mouth Today by Erika
• Top 5 ferramentas Linux para Desenvolvedores by Rafael Schouery
• Top 5 Action Steps to Build an Online Business by Derrick Markotter
• My Favorite Standby Knitting Projects by Tricia
• Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Rock Climbing Skills by Ryan Bombard
• Top 5 Things I've Discovered My Mom Lied About by Brian Metzger
• The Top 5 Mistakes English Speakers Make When Speaking Spanish by David Grove
• Fantastic Five: 5 Freeware Apps You Don't Know About by Tyler Cipriani
• Five Ways to Improve Your Photography by Mike Rothermel
• Top 5 Ways to Get a Good Photo by Joodie
• Nancy Drew, 5 Reasons Your Mom, Sister, Wife, and Daughter Want to be Her by Heidi Fournier
• 5 Future Events That Will Rock by Ian Byrd
• Top 5 (+20) Ideas to Break Your Duck by Prince John
• Top 5 Ways to Avoid E.Coli in the Workplace by Joe Raasch
• Top 5 navegadores web by Matheus Smythe Svolenski
• The Top Five Things You Can Learn from Rosie O'Donnell by Winnie McCarthy
• Top 5 Self-Help Myths by Peter Haslam
• Top 5 Intimidating Male American Gladiators by Dan Engler
• Top 5 Ways the Internet Can Save You Money by junger
• Five Hotels in Buenos Aires I wish I could afford to stay in… by Alan Patrick
• Five Under-Emphasized PowerPoint Best Practices by Jim MacLennan
• 5 Song Titles by 5 Singers That Tell A Story by GoingLikeSixty
• Top 5 Indicators of Sustainable Coffee by Bird Barista
• Mensagem do Dia Das Mães - Top 5 habilidades desses seres maravilhosos by Alex Alvarez
• As Cinco Melhores Coisas Para Fazer na Cama by Dnara
• Top 5 TiVo Hacks (for non-hackers) by Dave Zatz
• Top 5 - Erros que se Cometem Com o Primeiro Blog by Nospheratt
• Top 5 Reasons Why Building is Better than Buying by MillionDollarJourney.com
• Top 5 Desserts on TriniGourmet.com by Sarina Nicole
• Top 5 Emerging Blogs by Dre
• Top 5 ways I've made money as an indie artist by Des
• 10 Embarrasing Things I Spend Money On by gregg o'connell
• Top 5 Board Games I Grew Up Playing by Tahir Fayyaz
• Top 5 Slept-On Grunge Classics by Martin Skivington
• Five Easy Ways to Grow Your StumbleUpon Network by Maki
• Top Five Things You Probably Don't Know About Alberto Gonzales by Josh Nelson
• 5 Reasons You Should Learn A Craft by Donna
• Pastel de Vento TOP 5 (movie soundtracks) - As trilhas sonoras favoritas do Pastel de Vento by Fritador de Pastel
• Top 5 Reasons Everyone Should Own a Home Business by Danielle Chonody
• Top 5 Things I Should Have Told You, But Didn't. by Hopkinscutie
• The Top 5 Reasons Darren Rowse is a Marketing Genius by Kent Newsome
• Top 5 American Idol Parodies by Thomas McMahon
• Why Life = Paradox: Top Five by Lauren Oujiri
• You're Fired! - 5 Reasons Blogging Leads to the Unemployment Line by engtech
• Top 5 reasons more black bloggers are needed by Glen L Johnson
• Top 5 Ways to Spark Your Creativity by CJ
• Thank You, George Bernard by Mandy Muse
• 5 Fashion trends we hope we never see again by Cecil E. Rudd
• 5 Ways how I personalized my Internet by Stijn Vogels
• Top 5 Young Entrepreneur Projects by Dennis
• Top 5 Gluten Free Foods To Make Your Mouth Water by Karen
• Top 5 Defining Songs by Madame Pocklock
• Top 5 Things to Consider When Thinking About Starting a Business by Amanda G
• 5 Things I'd Do With An Endless Supply of $ by One Frugal Girl
• Juggling Frogs: I'll show you mine if you show me yours… by Juggling Frogs
• Top 5 Things to Avoid Saying to a Lady by Joel Corriveau
• Top 5 kitchen tools that bring me joy by wingerz
• Top 5 Strategies to Google Adwords Glory by Benjamin
• Top 5 memorable moments from the U.S. naturalization process by Jim Gibbon
• Photo Kayaker Top 5 Tips for Shooting Paddlers by Marek Uliasz
• Top 5 Web Addictions That Keep Me From Productivity by Laura Law
• Top 5 Ways to Discern Between Humans and Zombies by Andy Fry
• Five Forgotten Forms of Forestalling Filling Out Probloggers "Favorite Five" Post by Matthew Anderson
• Top 5 Real Reasons Venezuela Kicked Out the IMF by Joey
• Top 5 Reasons Cyclists Shave Their Legs by UltraRob
• Five things I wish someone had told me by phoenix
• 5 Simple Deer Repellent Tips by Repellent Review
• Mission Imblogable: 5 tips for parents of young bloggers by Chris Wondra
• Five easy pieces of white by Kim B.
• Top 5 Rules For Making Your Blog A Success by Gleb
• Top 5 Ways To Use Your Senses To Achieve Your Fitness Goals by Fitness Mantra
• Top 5 Tips For Handling Collection Agencies by Kimberly Fry
• Top 5 Easiest Ways to Solve Almost Any Problem by Batronyx a.k.a. "Barry"
• Top five thoughts I have in my head right now… by Remi
• Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Become a Co-op Blogger by Will Chen
• 5 Steps to Getting the Man of Your Dreams by Terry Ng
• 5 Things I Learned Between Naps by Susan
• Top 5 Mistakes Made By Real Estate Investors During the Housing Bubble by Joshua Dorkin
• 5 Things You Can Learn About Marketing From Pro Wrestling by Paul Nilsen
• Top 5 destinations for upcoming music artists to promote their music by Ashish Sinha
• Square Root of 25 Reasons to ‘Start my own blog' by Tyson
• Top 5 Natural Health Essentials for A Happy, Healthy Dog by Renée
• The Top 5 Best Ways To Advertise Your Blog If You've Only Got $10 by Cory O’Brien
• Top 5: Moving Beyond The Wrong Relationship by Meg
• The Great .com Scavenger Hunt - Part 1 by Robert Tatum
• Top 5 Reasons Your Girlfriend Shouldn’t Act Like Your Mom by Brandon Allen
• Five Great Adventures by Tina
• The Top 5 Steps to Job & Joy by Joerg Weisner
• Blogging is Quintessential! by Evelyn
• Top Five Ways To Make Money Online by Jaya Lakshmi
• 5 häufigsten fehler in der hundeerziehung by Manfred Huszar
• Top Five Things a Credit Card Must Offer by Jaya

Sometimes the best stuff you learn in school isn't math or science. Try Bugmenot if you need a password to view the story.

Kids still get it.  They always have.

(via Obscure)

I need to do a Top 5 post so I can get a little link love, and maybe some cash, from Darren Rowse over at Problogger, which for some reason I always read as prob logger.  What better list than the five biggest reasons Darren is the blogosphere's marketing genius.

So here they are, Letterman style:

5) He founded an emerging church, according to Wikipedia.  I don't really know what an emerging church is, but it sounds brainy and sorta cool.  As long as he doesn't start writing science fiction novels and hanging out with Tom Cruise.

4) He also founded a blog network.  I'm not really sure what a blog network is either, but I've never belonged to one, so they must have taste and standards.

3) He might be making $1.2M a year from blogging.  That is a pro blogger, by golly.  And even if he doesn't, he makes at least $120,000.  That's $108,000 more than Jeff Jarvis (according to the post linked above).  I'm not sure why I find this so funny, but I do.

2) He is the father of multi-level linking via his crafty Group Writing Projects.  He has a lot of juice in the blogosphere, so people crave links from him.  He gives out 2 links each to project participants and gets a zillion links in return, thereby multiplying his juice.  Someone could write a dissertation on the brilliance of this.  And the thing is- it's a win-win deal.  Anyone can participate.  It's sort of like the un-blogosphere.

1) I just spent over an hour writing this post, just for a couple of links and a 1 in a zillion chance to win a grand.

While I am poking a little good-natured fun here, let me say for the record that I have been a reader of Problogger for a long time, and Darren strikes me as a good guy.

And a marketing genius.

Bonus question for Darren and everyone else:  If you were a struggling blogger and you had $1,000 to use to increase traffic to your blog, how would you spend it?  Even if I don't win the contest, I am thinking about budgeting some money to market Newsome.Org.  I'm not going to buy books, or tapes or go to some seminar.  But other than that, anything legal and moral is fair game.

Empathetic - showing empathy or ready comprehension of others' states.
- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

I've been thinking some about perspective as it relates to blogging and the blogosphere, in the wake of my Guy Kawasaki post and the resulting discussion in the comments.

One of the things that sometimes discourages me about the blogosphere is the way bloggers talk at, and not to, each other.  It sometimes seems like a room full of people talking to themselves in louder and louder voices.  Once in a while a few of them randomly happen to be talking about the same thing and what appears to be a conversation transpires.  Before long, however, the wave of faux conversation recedes back into the ocean of intrapersonal communication.

It's an inefficient process, at best.  Driven, at least in part, by the egocentric perspective of thousands of generally remote and often anonymous bloggers.  In this case, when I say egocentric I am using the "viewed or perceived from one's own mind as a center" definition, and not necessarily the "caring only about oneself" definition.

Upon reflection, I have been as guilty of this as (almost) anyone.  I blog because I like to write, and because I want to participate in conversations about topics that interest me.  It's easy to assume that others share - or should share- my purposes.  When I try unsuccessfully to engage others in conversation, it's easy to assume that my failure results from their unfairness, or the fact that I am on the outside of the mythical gate.  To get too caught up in that is to undertake the fool's errand of trying to change those you don't know, you can't reach, and who don't want to be changed.  And who as Hugh MacLeod points out in a comment here, may not need to change.

This epiphany occurred to me as I drove under a bridge on the way home from work the other day and saw a lone man on the bridge holding up a one-word sign that said "Impeach."  In wondering what he really hoped to achieve by standing out there with that sign, I began to wonder what I hoped to achieve by holding up a post that says "Talk to Me" while the Scobles, Rubels, Wilsons, etc. hurry by on their way home.

Later that same day, I saw a post by Om Malik about some items he hoped to buy at some point.  I started thinking about Om.  Not in an egocentric "I wish he linked here more" way, but just about him as a person.  I thought about how many of his posts I have read and enjoyed over the years.  I thought about the fact that blogging is his job, and about how stressful jobs can be.  I thought about the fact that I have never once clicked on an online ad on any blog.  Then I bought him a CD at Amazon and had it shipped it to him semi-anonymously.  Just because I felt the need to show my appreciation.  Just because it felt right and good.

It felt even better when I saw that it brightened his day.  Whatever Om got out of it, I promise you I got more.

Today, I saw this post by Ayelet over at Blonde 2.0.  She talks about the borders between our personal and private lives, and the beauty of presenting ourselves to the world- as we are, without the need to treat our online presence as some sort of living billboard.  In other words, to be people.  And to treat each other as people.  Not avatars, and not as some dehumanized screen name.  I like everything she said in that post, but this passage really summed it up for me:

[D]on't be afraid to show the world who you are. Not just the you during office hours, but the whole you. If a company doesn't want to hire you based on that, you're probably better off without them.

Amen.

My favorite blogs are the ones who show the entire person.  Blogs like Rob Barron's, that have made me cry at times and smile at other times.  Like OmegaMom's, which makes me wish that her daughter and Delaney could be friends.  Like John Watson, who finds philosophy in conversations with his kids.  Lynnster, whose musical education closely mirrors mine.  The list goes on and on- and it will.

People from my work life have discovered my blog.  I knew it would happen when I started doing it.  It's always a little scary to put yourself out there.  But as Ayelet says, we are who we are, and there is freedom and efficiency in just letting down your guard and trusting yourself.  Who we really are is the best resume of all.  Other than a few well-meaning jokes about my little online journal, I have never once had a negative reaction to my blog.  And I have had more than a few people tell me that it makes them more comfortable to see who I am away from work.

We can't change the blogosphere, and we can't make others embrace our blogging philosophy.  What we can do is try to see things from other points of view.

That's what I'm going to do.

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article about names and Google ranking- the importance of being findable via a Google search.  Among other things, the article reminds us that Google is not just about web search.  While I haven't really thought about it like this before, Google is a multi-purpose tool for me.

It is my spell-checker.  I search for the word, and it either confirms I'm correct or asks me if I meant [correct spelling].

It is my direction finder.  I type in the address and it gives me a map, and a link to Google Maps, for a bigger map and directions.

It is my lyrics finder for the lead ins I sometimes use for my blog posts.

It is my dictionary, leading me to the Free Dictionary.

Sometimes, it's my people finder.

But it's not as good at finding people as it is other information.  I search for my old buddy Carter Via, and I get to places named Carter via all sorts of routes.  I look for my cousin and get zip.  A search for my old friend Kevin Morris leads nowhere, unless I add our hometown.  Then it returns my failed friend fishing experiment (which was a rousing success compared to my failed Flickr experiment).  It all comes down to how well your name Googles, as the WSJ puts it.  And to Google well, you need an effective platform, which as Scot Karp points out, is not always easy to come by:

The problem for most people is that they don't have a platform for influencing their identity in Google or other search engines. Anyone can start a blog, sure, but that may not help if your name is John Smith, or even a less common name if you don't get any inbound links.

Most bloggers Google well, since they generally have a significant online presence.  Earl Moore is number 2, behind a baseball player nicknamed Big Ebbie.  Mathew Ingram is number 1 for both the way he spells it and the way he doesn't.  Mike Miller is number 13, behind another hoops player and a couple of clowns.  Tom Morris is number 2, behind an institute for human values.

Ken Yarmosh offers a roadmap for putting your name on the Google map.   

My name Googles pretty well.  I'm number 1 for both Kent Newsome and Newsome.  My work bio is number 2 for Kent Newsome.  The benefits of a long online presence and a somewhat uncommon name.  My two oldest kids are number 1.  Raina is number 4.  Some odd blog post that seems to mention her is number 1.  Luke is too young and has too common a name to make the boxscore. Yet.     

I certainly wouldn't change my name to Google better, like someone mentioned in the WSJ article, but I do see the benefit of Googling well.

How well does your name Google?

Steve Rubel, whose opinion I respect, says he believes 3D virtual worlds are going to become a place where people will increasingly spend time and conduct business online.

Spend time, probably.  Conduct business?  Depends on what you mean by business.

If by business he means sell virtual land and houses, OK.  If he means maybe sell some real-world books and records, OK.  If he means PR business, which I suspect he does, maybe.  In a let's build a cool structure, put our flashy logo on it and hire an intern to chat up the people and animals that fly over sort of way.

But if he means business as in the kind of big corporate business run by that gigantic percentage of the population who have never heard of Second Life and/or think it's some online video game (which largely it is, all the square peg stuffing notwithstanding), he's smoking crack.

Steve says Nasdaq should start an exchange in Second Life.  It seems they might actually be interested in doing that.  What's next, NYSE in World of Warcraft?  AMEX in Sims Online?  CME in Webkinz World?

I'm trying to imagine how it would go if I called up one of my clients and told him/her that we should start doing business in Second Life.

[Ripple effect as we fade to a dream sequence, which begins with Kent dialing a phone number from his chaotic office.  Several people stand by nervously, with reams of paper in their hands.]

Kent: Hey Bob, how ya' doing?
Client: Fine, how 'bout you?  Are we ready to close the acquisition of that office building portfolio?
Kent: Just about, that's why I'm calling.  I think we should call the seller's representatives and see if they want to have the closing in Second Life.
Client: What?
Kent: You know, that virtual world that was on the cover of Business Week a few months ago.  We could all create some avatars.  I think I'll use a zebra head.  Then we could meet over at this castle I built and shake virtual hands.  Then maybe we could take a spin on my dance pads.  I found this great 80's station that streams to my parcel.
Client: What in the world are you talking about?
Kent: It's the new thing.  All of the A-List bloggers are talking about it.
Client: What's a blogger?
Kent: It doesn't matter.  Look, just get on the internet.  It's that little blue "e" at the bottom of your computer screen.  Click over to Second Life and register.  I have to wait until I get home to do it, because our corporate firewall blocks Second Life.  They don't realize it's a business tool.
Client: Stop messing around.  Do we have wiring instructions from the seller?
Kent: No, I told them we'd pay with Linden Dollars.
Client: Have you been drinking? C'mon, man, we've got a big deal to close.
Kent: Look, I'm just trying to drag you into the 21st century.  Remember when you said email was too hard?  Now you can send emails even when your secretary is at lunch.  Second Life is the same way...only you have to ignore all those XXX rated stores on every corner.  Just pretend you're in Houston and walk right past 'em.
Client:  Look, I need you to stop goofing around and get my deal closed.
Kent: Did I mention that you can fly in Second Life?
Client: [click]
Kent: Bob...hello...Bob...are you there?

Somehow, I don't see it happening.  Sure, 3D worlds tap into the human need to fantasize and socialize.  A need that likely arises due to the real world stresses of real world jobs.  Jobs that, for most of us, are about as far away from Second Life as possible.

Look at all these rumors
Surrounding me every day
I iust need some time
Some time to get away from
From all these rumors
I can't take it no more
- Timex Social Club

TechCrunch has a screenshot and some information about my blogging buddy Guy Kawasaki's pending Web 2.0 entry- Truemors, which is apparently a rumor reporting bulletin board with Twitter and Digg-like capabilities.

Where to start....

First of all, I suspect they are going to have an epic spam problem.  Sure, they can approve entries, but I bet that's not their plan.  It would be a ton of work and would delay publication of what they probably hope will be time sensitive scoops.  There will be the traditional spammers, and the disruptors who just want to post absurd things and make trouble.

I also wonder how many people are going to happily populate Guy's site with juicy content they could post on their own blogs, web sites, etc.

Finally, I wonder how many people are going to choose to get their gossip news at Truemors, as opposed to other news and quasi-news sites?

The screen shot shows rumors about Phil Mickelson switching golf instructors, Paris Hilton whining about jail, Scarlett Johansson visiting Austin and the Spurs winning a basketball game.  Not exactly edge of your seat stuff.

Based on the screen shot, it looks to me like a Digg clone more than anything else.

We have to wait for the public launch to see what Truemors is made of.  But based on what little I know right now, I'd have to say the early line is leaning towards a yawner.

Hey Guy, my private beta invite must have gotten lost in the mail.  Want to hook me up?

Thanks to Earl for linking to my last post.

Everyone is talking about crime
Tell me who are the criminals
I said everybody's talking about crime, crime
Tell me who, who are the criminals
- Peter Tosh

I can't believe what I just read in a Forbes article about DRM.

Here is a quote from the article explaining why other members of the record label cartel are unlikely to follow EMI and Apple's lead and start selling music online that is not infested with DRM:

Other online music retailers say they're worried that following Apple's lead will confuse customers who may already be baffled by a crazy quilt of restrictions that envelop the industry.

Isn't that sort of like saying that poor people would be confused by having money?  Or at least like saying renters would be confused by ownership.

Anyone who's lettered enough to make it through the registration process at some online music store will be able to distinguish between "restricted" and "unrestricted" and "$.99" and "$1.29."  And even if some people automatically click on the cheaper DRM-infested option- so what?  People buy crappy stuff all the time because it's cheaper.  The confusion argument is a canard.  As Forbes points out, rocket science is less confusing than the myriad of subscription plans these online stores offer.

Meanwhile, executives of other cartel members said at some OPEC, I mean record industry, event that getting rid of DRM is not a priority for them.

Really?  I'm shocked.

There's no confusion there, only greed and shortsightedness.  It's about trying like mad to protect a monopoly built on a dying business model.  It's about the nominal cost of manufacturing a CD and the not so nominal cost the cartel charges to the buyer and the artist for doing so.  And it's about how little respect the music industry has for its customers.  "We don't want the whole world to be a college dorm."  Are you kidding me?

It's not about whether it's good for the cartel.  It's about what customers are entitled to and what they are disciplined enough to demand.  And sometimes, as Larry Borsato points out, what they are promised.

If you use Firefox and Twitter, you will like Twitbin.

This is the application I've been looking for to make Twitter use more integrated with my browser.

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Here are 12 U.S. laws every blogger should know.

I think those Geico cavemen commercials are hilarious.  This one is my favorite.  When I heard they were making a sitcom with them, I was excited.  Until now.  Why in the world would they not use the same actors!?

Adam Messinger has a great post on web design and the lack thereof on the new ABCNews.com page.

Gotham Gal has a good review of Wesabe, a personal finance and financial goal tracking application.  I have played around with Wesabe a little bit, and I have to say that it is a very well designed application.  It has a social networking feature that is actually designed to be useful.  In sum, I am pretty impressed with what I've seen so far.

I have used and referred to Techmeme as the New York Times of the blogosphere since the day I discovered it.  It is one of my first stops when I go to the net for my news.

But Tom Morris has a good point.  Techmeme has evolved from the New York Times of the blogosphere to the Wall Street Journal of the blogosphere.  I don't read the Wall Street Journal for one simple reason.  It bores me to tears.  In fact, I think the Wall Street Journal is a lot like the opera.  Many people who go there are more interested in what it says about them than what it does for them.  Like neckties and polo shirts.

Tom thinks, and I agree, that layering a media slant (which in the online world is fancy jargon for "come click on my ads") on top of the larger business focus makes it even less techy and more something else.  Something less interesting.  Some square thing trying to get stuffed into a round hole.  Stuffed by those who try in the name of a potential dollar to turn a content platform into a product.

Maybe that's the root of the issue.

Maybe the Techmeme algorithm has deduced that all of this Web 2.0 stuff is really just the media business in some new form.  If you have no product to sell, what are you?  If your primary or only revenue source is the sale of ads, what are you?  You're not science.  You're not a seller of goods.  You're media.  You're the new TV.  A million pages of user generated content broadcasting your AdSense banner over the new air.

Science, as Tom points out, is the glorious process that leads to the stuff people push on and onto Techmeme.  But it's a process that's an extra step away from the illusion of money.  The process gets ignored in favor of the product and the frenzy to monetize it.

Monetize it largely by getting us to click on ads next to the content we have created on the platforms developed by some scientist who doesn't know Mike Arrington from Mike Brady.  Again, it all looks and acts like media.

Sure, there is science on the internet and in the blogosphere.  But it's not driving the Techmeme train anymore.  If it ever did.

I still enjoy Techmeme, and I continue to believe it is one of the most brilliant creations of the Web 2.0 era, largely because of its efficiency and simplicity.  But I do wish it was more about tech and less about how to make money off of that tech.  The same tech that Web 2.0 generally mandates be given away for free.

But that's just not the way it is.  Not on Techmeme, not in the blogosphere and, sadly, not in life.

Thanks to Ric, Blonde 2.0 and Earl for commenting on my last post.

You've got a way to keep me on your side
You give me cause for love that I can't hide
For you I know I'd even try to turn the tide
Because you're mine, I walk the line
-Johnny Cash

Blonde 2.0 has a great summary and discussion of the Digg censorship business.

The challenge for any web community is to give the users who create the content a sense of ownership and investment in the community, without getting sued or letting your community descend into chaos.  Users who populate a community acquire a sense of ownership.  A sense that grows stronger over time.  This is a good thing, as it creates loyalty and nurtures organic growth.  Once a community grows to a certain point, however, a couple of things happen.  One, you start making a little money.

Two, you have to walk a fine line between being too restrictive and too permissive.  A lot of users want a no-rules policy.  A lot of users will leave if chaos and conflict are completely unconstrained.  It's a fine line, and you simply cannot make everybody happy.  You have to figure out what the largest percentage of your audience wants and then try to maintain it without being autocratic.

On ACCBoards.Com and the other web communities I developed, our mission statement from the first day has been to create a "family friendly" environment.  We did this because we knew that the majority of our target user base would be more comfortable in that environment.  It was about growth more than morals.  Over time, the moderators' standard became "if a young person shouldn't read it, you can't write it."  We made some people mad.  We made more people happy.  It's math.

Sports, like technology, is a passionate topic for many.  To address this, we make a distinction between the message and the way the message is delivered.  I have been consistent that almost any opinion is OK as long as it is delivered and defended properly.  No personal attacks, and no extreme language (although we have filters to take care of most of that).  It can be hard to police that standard, because there is a significant sub-group of users who interpret a contrary opinion as an act of aggression.  They cannot separate the message from the writer, and all hell breaks loose.  I almost always side with the contrarian in those cases, and tell the others to stop attacking the opinion and refute the opinion.  I believe that someone who attacks someone for their opinion generally does so because they are psychologically bound to their position and, when they lack the ability to logically refute a contrary opinion, they have a psychological panic attack.  But that's a topic for another day.

The point is that community leaders have to walk the line, so users feel like peers, not subjects.  I think we've done a pretty good job at ACCBoards.Com, as evidenced by the fact that a newish moderator tried to kick me off the site I created the other day, because he didn't like something I said.  I honored the community by telling him that I'd stop posting for a while, as opposed to reminding him of the history of the site.  The rest of the community largely took my side in the argument.  Self-policing resolved the issue, which is what you want to happen.

Then there's the intellectual property problem.  I get emails every couple of weeks complaining that some photo is being used without permission, that someone is stealing bandwidth by linking to images or that someone is being mean (those who haven't talked to a lawyer) or committing libel (those who have).  I generally try to mediate the problem, and most times people are cooperative.  What I try hard not to do is go on the boards and start issuing mandates.  I learned a long time ago that when I do that, I soon have a mutiny on my hands.  Kevin Rose learned that this week.

But (and this is important), if I felt I had to choose between taking something down without discussion or betting the company on a case I might lose (either by losing or by cost attrition), I'd do it.  In a second.  A Digg with no encryption key posted is better than Digg out of business.  An hysterical group of users is never going to conclude that- the combination of anonymity and human nature won't allow it.  It's up to the community leaders (read owners) to make that hard decision. 

For these reasons, I don't think people should be so hard on Kevin and the other Digg folks.  Granted, they would likely do things differently if they could start over.  But getting demand letters from big operations with a pile of lawyers behind them is no one's definition of a good time.  When you're walking that line, sometimes you wander on one side and sometimes the other.  A nasty letter can blow you off course.  Users have to understand that.

I agree that there's a lesson to be learned here.  Hopefully, it will be a lesson for owners and users alike.

Thanks to Guy and Jim for commenting on my last post, and to TDavid for linking to it (and getting my back).

There's comin' down the street
They're comin' right down the middle
Look how they keep the beat
Why they're as blue as the ocean
How the sun shines down
How their feet hardly touch the ground
Jolly [Bloggers] On Parade
-Randy Newman

Guy Kawasaki gives a video interview I saw over at Jeremiah Owyang's blog.  I had read about this interview, but wasn't that interested in watching it.  As I have said before, I'd rather interact with other lesser beings than to play the jester in the court of the geek kings, and all that.  But a couple of the quotes from Jeremiah's post that showed up in my reader got my attention.  Particularly this one:

His goal is to be ranked in Technorati as the top 10, he's 14 pegs away. Guy says he doesn't read any other blogs other than his, well he only has about 40 feeds that he reads.

Being largely a math sort of guy, that tells me that Guy wants others to read his blog, but he isn't interested in reading anyone else's blog.  That's just the sort of thing I like to point out and poke fun at, so I watched the video.

Yes, Guy comes off as a little self-centered (more on that below).  But he also makes some good points along the way.  Best of all, he bashed the (other) A-Listers around pretty good.  He says he wants to be the non-asshole A-Lister.  Great sound bite, but the proof is in the pudding.  Read on.

First, he says that blogs that are journals are boring.  He's wrong about that.  Blogs written by bad writers are boring, whether they're journals or not.  A good writer can make a journal a hundred times more interesting than yet another nerd writing a me too post about the latest web 2.0 application.

Guy admits he had an "enormous advantage" when he started blogging.  No kidding. I pointed that out after he'd been doing it for a month and a half.  But that's not the advantage he talks about.  Apparently Guy spammed thousands of people whose email addresses he had collected over the years to announce his blog.  Can you imagine the nine kinds of hell some unknown blogger would suffer if he or she did that?  Guy was a known and respected person in the tech industry, so he can probably get away with it.  Advantage on top of advantage.  It irritates me that that I had neither advantage when I started blogging (and thus continue to push the boulder up blogger's hill), but that's largely jealousy talking.  I can't blame the guy for using his advantages.  At least he's honest about it.

He is also honest enough to admit that he does care about blog rankings and links.  That's a breath of fresh air after A-Lister after A-Lister keeps telling the rest of us not to worry about gatekeeping and links and whatnot.  I know Guy will see this post, since he checks his Technorati page "about 50 times a day."  Will he respond?  Probably not, though he has commented here before.  But that was before he was a made blogger. 

Guy then takes the opportunity to smack around the (other) A-Listers who "have this attitude they they are intellectually superior" and who act like it is "an honor to get an email from them."  He says that maybe the A in A-Lister stands for asshole.  That's funny.  And it's also easy to say after all those (other) A-Listers embraced him and made him their equal (or superior).

Interestingly, he says (and this is a Technorati top 25'er talking) that there is no economic payback to blogging.  If a top 25 blogger says this, what does that tell us about blogging as a way to make money?  It tells me that I and others are correct when we say that blogging is not a revenue source in and of itself- it's merely a more efficient way to distribute information about your true revenue source.  Lots of people caught up in the blogging euphoria don't get this.

He was asked about links (you know, those things that got him in the Technorati top 25).  He says he won't trade links with people, which begs the question of giving legitimate links back to others, the way they were previously given to you.  He says if you blogroll someone, you have some moral obligation to ensure that the blog is worthy.  I say maybe, but, again, we're not giving away MBE's here.  Just a link.  I also wonder how Guy felt about links the day he started blogging.  It's easy not to crave what you have in abundance.

And then they got to the part I was waiting for.  The bit about reading other blogs.  Guy says he doesn't read any blogs.  Literally.  He says he has some feeds for publications like Science Daily.  No mention of Newsome.Org (that's the feed URL right there Guy, just to make it easy for you). 

Of course he has an alert to notify him every time someone writes about him (as do I and most other bloggers, I'm sure).  He has a "virtual assistant"  (whatever that is) who will sometimes thank those who write about him.  Apparently, he doesn't realize how much all of this sounds like the A-Listers he slammed earlier in the interview.

So I was right.  He wants us to read him, yet he doesn't read any of us.  He says he has kids and likes hockey and just doesn't have the time.  Hey Guy, some of us have kids, like sports, coach sports, write blogs and have full time non-tech related jobs.  Yet we manage to get through our feeds every few days.  I'm not buying the don't have time thing.  Don't want to is more like it.

Even though a lot of the interview sounds like narcissism run amok, Guy made some good points.  Somehow, I don't think he is as self-centered as he comes across.  I hope that's the case.

I have been a reader of Guy's blog since the day he started it.  Part of me wants to unsubscribe after watching this interview.  I don't know what I'm going to do, but I know this: if folks like me stop linking to Guy, he'll never make the Technorati top 10.

And wouldn't that be a shame.

It's time to start up my 3 Things series again.

Here's the list so far.  I started with the year 1965, because that's the first year I can remember 3 things about.

1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972

Other than finally becoming a teenager, here are 3 things I remember about 1973.

1) I remember watching Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a televised tennis match held at the Astrodome, where I had been a few years earlier.  Little did I know that I would one day call Houston home.  

2) I made Eagle Scout on November 26 of that year.  I got a little press coverage since I was only 13 years and one month old.  Say what you will about the Boy Scouts, but I learned a lot of stuff from scouting that I still apply on a regular basis.

3) I remember watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown, and wondering what a secretariat was.  His Belmont win is simply the most dominating performance I have ever seen, in any sport.  By far.

Thanks to Mike and and Jeff for commenting on my last post.  And thanks to Richard for pointing me to David, from whom I borrowed this great idea.