November 14, 2009
Ephemera from
November 14, 2009 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 01, 2009
The morphosis
Frank Kaufman awoke one morning after a night of uneasy dreams to discover he had 513 comments on his latest blog post. His laptop was balanced on his belly, and he had difficulty rolling off this back. His mother, not known for Sunday morning patience, yelled upstairs to her son that if he didn’t get dressed and come down soon she would spray him with insect repellent again.
The blog post had caused a ripple in the blogger community. The night before, there had already been 121 comments before Frank, at 2:36 a.m., finally decided to go to sleep. In the blog post, Frank had attacked another blogger for looking like a “douchebag” in a recent photo he had posted. The photo showed an adolescent male with a notable amount of hair gel sticking his tongue between two of his fingers which formed a V. The “V” was meant to symbolize the female vulva, both anatomically and semiotically
The “douchebag,” one Pavel De Kouchkovsky, was from Warsaw. He moved to the United States when he was still an infant. Pavel lived in Ohio with his parents. Frank had nothing against immigrants, or “douchebags” for that matter; he simply incited an online provocation in order to get attention. True, Pavel did look strikingly like a “douchebag,” but he was young and inexperienced with women—thus the unrealistic, almost endearing fascination with the vulva...
(flickr pix above by droїd)
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March 1, 2009 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 23, 2008
What’s a BLOG?
Guy Kawasaki finds a copy of an email from 2002, where he first hears about a new phenomena - What’s a BLOG?
HTTP errors drawn by cartoonist Adam Koford
"We stare at the computer
for hours every day..."
Congratulations! You have been selected to receive a free X-Box 360! Yippee
Un-related: Nelson Mandela pushes Thatcher off a cliff. (YT. From Idleworm)
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November 23, 2008 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 10, 2008
The world does not need another linkblog
Warren Ellis about the web’s patchwork years: The years 2001-2007, approximately, on the web were the crazy years. The patchwork years. The years the web was massively and chaotically pumped full of Stuff. 1995-2001 were pretty crazy, of course, but they were checked by connection speed and the limitations of personal publishing. By 2002, broadband was happening over a broader swathe of the world, and blogging had bitten in. Followed by the takeup of bit torrent, YouTube, podcasting, and every other damn thing.
One of the few sane responses to this explosion of production was to assume the role of curator. (Other sane responses include moving to the woods and considering a completion of the work Ted Kaczynski started.) The two most famous examples of same are Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom (est. 1997) — Barger is said to have coined the term "weblog" — and Mark Frauenfelder’s Boing Boing (est. 2000 as a weblog, previously a print magazine est. 1988), co-produced for much of its life by Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin. The latter, in particular, has spawned countless imitators, all deeply involved in doing the web-work of 2001-2007 — sorting out all the weird crap that’s out there and re-presenting it in some kind of ordered and aesthetically or politically filtered manner for our consideration…
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July 10, 2008 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 14, 2008
Blogging or non-blogging?
Jakob Nielsen asks How much of this page will you read? According to Jacob Nielsen, in a post of 500 words, readers can be expected to spend an average of about 45 seconds on the page, an amount of time in which they might read some 187 words, or less than three-eighths of the content. (From Right Reading)
Vanity Fair’s Blog Matrix
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June 14, 2008 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 03, 2008
The art of introduction
…”I don't do anything I don't love anymore... I loved the flashing lights vid so it didn't matter 2 me if someone one else didn't. While people chase money I pursue happiness. So many people talk about there investments or how much money they have but there's so many rich people who spend a lot of that trying 2 buy a piece of happiness. If there's anything my mom taught me is to enjoy life…” - Good words from new blogger KanYe West
The art of introducing Guy Kawasaki
An old ad: "Well-capitalized start-up seeks extremely talented C/C++/Unix developers to help pioneer commerce on the Internet"
Unrelated: Brook Benton sings Think Twice (YT)
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May 3, 2008 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 29, 2008
A red light over my head
Is Blogging Harder Than Writing A Book?
…I write the sports blog Deadspin.com, assembling more than 25 posts a day meant to enlighten, amuse and distract sports fans from the drudgery of their desk jobs. Every day, I write about 7,000 words; this means that every three weeks, I write the equivalent of an extremely long book. Sure, this book would be unreadable, and reviewers would certainly point out that none of the links went anywhere, but the word count would hold.
Recently, I wrote a real book, with words and pictures and a cover that will hurt you if you are struck across the head with it. It's an entirely separate enterprise from blogging, and not just because, when I finished a page, I didn't have people named CaptainCaveman and sexydogg1983 calling me an idiot. I wrote it in five months without taking a day off from the site….
(From Andrew Sullivan)
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February 29, 2008 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 21, 2008
Blogger Last Will and Testament
5 Things for Bloggers to Do Before Dying
Statistical Dangers of Died In A Blogging Accident
Blogging was invented ca. 300 AD
A blog about bent objects
Om Malik’s heart attack - Stress of Blooging May Be a Hazard to My Health. (Thank you, Eitan, for the warning)
4 Ways to Get Banned from the Technorati Top 100
The Secret to Building a Popular Blog
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January 21, 2008 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 27, 2007
Blooging gone wild
"Blogging isn’t that hot anymore" - Who Is Blogging And Why, by Alex Iskold
Blooging gone wild - Top Blogs Play Telephone with Nissan
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November 27, 2007 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 31, 2007
“The Heaven Virus” Big Giveaway
Prolific author & blogger Cliff Pickover is “giving away" an e-book version of his recent book “The Heaven Virus” to readers of the following blogs: Reality Carnival, BoingBoing, Neatorama, and Grow-a-Brain. A bargain at 99 cents (The print version of the book at Amazon.com goes for $23.95). "Inoculate yourself" today!
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October 31, 2007 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 12, 2007
107 year old blogger
COACD, the blog of a casting director
Historic kite patents are a freely available source of inspiration and ideas with their own kind of aesthetic appeal. Expired patents are often great kite plans for the DIY kite builder. Kite patents blog. (From Endless Parade of Excellence)
Blogger Play, stream of images that were just uploaded to public Blogger blogs
The Life of Riley, the blog of the world's older blogger
NxE’s Fifty Most Influential Bloggers. No 1 according to the list - Nick Denton with an estimated wealth approximately $280m based on the sale of his previous companies and the current value of Gawker Media
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October 12, 2007 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 27, 2007
“Blogs are not the future. Blogs are the present”
The "blog" of “unnecessary” quote marks
Why people are blogging less:
1. We got busy.
2. Scoble quit Microsoft. Just kidding.
3. Blogging isn't for everybody.
4. Believe it or not, some of us have better things to do than to be continually justifying ourselves to a crowd of passive-aggressive, self-loathing, loser fucktards.
5. The future we spent a long time evangelizing has already arrived.
6. They said what they had to say, then moved on.
Thirteen Blog Clichés. (From Jeremy Zawodny)
(gif above from Nasty Nets)
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Welcome back, diggers
August 27, 2007 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 01, 2007
Halfway there
Is my blog boring? - If you need to ask, you probably know the answer
From cat pictures and celebrity gossip to tech news and politics, the stars of the blogosphere earn plenty of dough, regardless of subject. Some bloggers start their sites intending to make big profits. How Top Bloggers Earn Money
Also, Chinese actor writes world's top blog
The blog of Burning Spear
No! Could it be that I never linked to Gerard Vlemmings’s The Generator Blog?! 100’s of Generators there
Not if but when, a beautiful photoblog by Brian Ulrich
There is no “first blogger”
The World's Youngest Videoblogger
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August 1, 2007 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 12, 2007
Fake blogs
Latest quote at the The Quote Blog "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere"
The Blognut, a blog about donuts
Fake Parody Blog Directory. Other "Flogs": Walmarting Across America, Winner of the best flog of 2006
A blog about passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers
10 Ways DNA Can Ruin Your Life from "Eye on DNA" blog
(DNA knit from Yarnivorous)
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July 12, 2007 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 09, 2007
An interview with Alex of "Neatorama" fame
Neatorama is a well-liked link blog, which features daily posts on science, technology, art, and odd news. Since the first post on August 9th, 2005, Neatorama had become extremely popular: It quickly climbed to join the top 50 blogs on Technorati, garnished thousands of shares on del.icio.us and had been highlighted many times on digg, reddit, Boing Boing and other blogs.
Of the many special elements that Neatorama successfully uses are the longer Neatorama Exclusive Lists, often composed in cooperation with others. There are also on-going collaborations with other blogs and websites like What is It? Blog, Cellar Image of the Day, Videosift, as well as cartoonist Dan Piraro, the writers of Mental Floss and Bathroom Readers Institute.
I asked Alex Santoso, Neatorama’s webmaster: What gave you the Idea to start a blog?
Actually, I wanted to do a fun project and blogging about neat stuff seemed like a good idea! I’ve always been interested in neat trivia, odd news, unusual art, and weird science – the stuff you see posted on Neatorama everyday – so why not share that with the world through a blog? And thus Neatorama was born.
There are more than 70 million blogs. What do you attribute your incredible success, and how did Neatorama become so popular so quickly?
A lot of that is luck - blogging on the right topic at the right time, but I do have to thank Neatorama’s authors, collaborators and readers. Last year, I started to invite other bloggers to write for Neatorama. They’ve added a lot to the blog: besides increased frequency of postings, they’ve added a lot of perspectives by writing about things I didn’t even know existed. This makes the blog really fun for me to visit – I can’t wait to find out what they write about!
Neatorama owes a lot to its readers – a lot of people told me that they found the blog through their friends. More than anything else, word-of-mouth really helped Neatorama grow quickly.
How did you manage to become such a favorite with the reddit /dig /Boing Boing’s of the world? How much of your popularity comes from those relationships?
I have no idea – obviously I don’t have any control over what redditors, diggers, or other bloggers write about Neatorama.
I like digg’s yellow “digg me” button, but I try to use that sparingly on contents that you’ll find only on Neatorama – I discourage people from digging a post on the blog if they can visit and promote the original author’s website instead. Although social networking sites can give a website a huge influx in traffic, these “spikes” are usually temporary. I find that regular word-of-mouth works best in growing a blog.
Do you manage to read all the comments readers leave?
I try to read most of the comments, but this is actually quite a difficult task due to the sheer volume. Currently, Neatorama has nearly 30,000 comments – we hit about 10,000 comments in January 2007 and had since added 20,000 more!
I like an open comment policy, so I try to make it easy for people to comment (for instance, no registration or pre-approval required). Blog comments are a great way to interact with readers and to get new ideas for future posts. But there is a downside: one has to remain watchful for spam and hateful comments. Wordpress, the blogging engine behind Neatorama, has a really nice spam and “keyword” filters built-in. From time to time, however, things do slip through the cracks – then I get email complaints about a nasty comment someone left, so I’d have to take care of that.
What are your favorite post(s), or ones that made you proud by having the greatest effect on others? What is your favorite subject to write about? What do you think about bloggers as influencers?
Ah, if I have to pick a favorite, I’d say “10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World” is my favorite post, followed closely by “30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits” and the “Top 10 Coolest BBQ Grills (And Then Some!)”
I think bloggers can be a great influence: the “rise” in blogging is akin to the advent of the printing press – it allows information to flow more easily. Influence coattails information, so yes, bloggers can greatly influence things (either positively or negatively) in real life. For example, it’s interesting to see how bloggers and the Internet (for example, through sites like YouTube) will influence the upcoming presidential election.
You often write (or at least edit. i.e. “copy & paste”) longer articles & descriptions. How much time do spend every day on the surf & search of material VS. the composing itself? How much of your interesting links come from reader submissions?
Many of the longer articles come from the good folks at mental floss and Bathroom Readers Institute. These articles don’t take up much time for me to prepare (although the long ones are a bear to type up!) and are a lot of fun to read. If I have to pick two things I really, really like about the blog, these two collaborations would be them.
In the beginning, I did a lot more surfing to search for materials. Now, I’d say reader submissions make up about a third to a half of my posts. After close to two years of blogging, I’ve developed quite a long list of blogs in my bookmarks that I visit regularly – this really helped speed up gathering materials for posts.
You post little about politics. Obviously your site is “clean” and kid friendly. What are your rules of subject matter?
Simple: don’t post things you wouldn’t want your parents to read. I don’t tell Neatorama’s authors what to post or not to post (well, actually with this exception: I did ask them not to post nudity or inappropriate contents).
How do your wife & family tolerate your blogging time? How’s your baby daughter?
Oh, they’re fine about it – I get a lot of crazy ideas in my head and creating Neatorama is actually one of the saner ones. My wife is a loving, caring and wonderful woman (Hi Tiffany!) and my baby is much too young to understand why her Dad is always sitting in front of the computer in his spare time.
Maddy is 11 months old and is happy as a clam scooting her cute little tushy all over the house. Her favorite activity? Banging on my keyboard to mess up whatever Neatorama article that I was working on! (And thanks for asking, Hanan!)
Has the extensive advertising on the blog become a significant source of income for you? What other opportunities present themselves from running a successful blog? Do you see yourself retiring soon & becoming a full-time “blogger”, and if so, how?
Advertising is a necessary evil when it comes to running any large blog. The flipside of having a popular blog is that it takes a lot of computer power to run it: Neatorama uses a dedicated server to serve up the HTML and a separate image server for the pictures. Bandwidth is also extremely expensive - for instance, the Magnificent Tree post I wrote about above, gobbled up 1 terabyte in bandwidth in just 2 days!
I wish I could become a millionaire blogger and live in a tropical island somewhere sipping Margaritas while blogging, but for now, I’m content with my job and can’t see myself retiring just yet!
What are your other non-virtual interests?
Actually, I really like building things – besides virtual bits and bytes of the blog, I like to work on a myriad of home improvement projects. If only I understood electronics and not actually afraid of fire, then I’d be making a giant robot that shoots flame from its mouth.
What’s next for Neatorama? Where do you see yourself in two or three years? Do you have a bigger goal / dream related to the internet?
In two or three years, I’ll be two or three years older, but probably none the wiser (LOL). I have a couple of things neat expansions planned for Neatorama, but it’s hush hush for now, so stay tuned!
Thank you, Alex, for your time. Continual success to you and your blog.
(Neatorama Monkey above by Adam Koford. Other monkeys)
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July 9, 2007 in World of Blogging | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
