Category: Our Web, Ourselves.

About a week ago, I put We’ve Got Blog!, a collection of essays and journalistic pieces about weblogging next to my toilet and would reada little bit whenever the spirit and nature moved me. I finished it up this morning and must say, I’m inspired. While I’m not entirely sold on the idea that weblogging is a full blown revolution, it does appear that citizens are reading, writing, staying informed and commenting more than ever, four of my favorite things in the world. Media is shifting, ever so slightly from a solemn pronouncement to the noisy buzz of a crowded birthday party. Information hierarchies, while still in place, are trembling. How we choose to learn, to stay informed is becoming increasingly a personal choice and a social responsibility. And being up on things is also becoming cool.

I don’t think the world is about to be ruled by freaks and geeks, by cool-to-be-smart wankers like me and those I like to keep close. But I feel like there’s a larger space at the global cafeteria table than there was before.

*grinning*

My friend Heather, the brains behind The Mirror Project got it all featured in the upcoming issue of Oprah Magazine. Way to go girl!

Turns out San Francisco, despite being the cradle of the Internet revolution, has placed a mere 6th in terms of percentage of wired citizens. This probably has something to do with the bozos at the cable company who have steadfastly refused to offer cable modems in the city (“More business? Nah, we’re okay”), the overzealous cretins at the phone company who have spent the last four years advertising DSL service to residents who aren’t wired for it (and getting fined millions in the process) and the general infrastructure of San Francisco which is still very old and in need of an upgrade (via Jish).

Kvetch is gone. I will miss it and its random jolts of negativity. But when I had lunch with Derek a few weeks ago, he was already thinking about killing it. I guess it was only a matter of time.

Does anyone quite understand blog chalking? I’m just getting my arms around the mechanics of it but I don’t quite get the point. I get that you can mark you blog with where you’re from but untiul someone collects that data and starts mapping it, what difference does it make?

Do you know?

My story is this month’s at Fray. Like, two years ago, I went to my first Fray Day and said “I’d like to do that someday.” And here we are. Thanks Derek for the opportunity. And the faith.

I just found out that Kevin Fox, whom I see rarely but enjoy his company quite a bit is leaving the Bay Area and going back to school at Carnegie Mellon. Is the take away lesson here that you must must must read someone’s weblog if you have a prayer of staying in the loop?

Pamie’s back.

Am I the only person out there who took one look at this story about the supposed strife between webloggers pre and post September 11 and said “Say what?” I’ll admit I have about as much a finger on the pulse of weblogging as I do on say, the latest trends in railsplitting but,

PULLLLEEAASE.

Does this sound like another exercise in “everything was different after 9/11” horsecrap? Or the NYT engaged in its usual “We-don’t-really-understand-the-story-so-we’ll-phony-up-some-drama-for-it” nonsense? My vote is for both.

And yours?

It appears as though blogroots, once it goes live this week, will indeed fufill the need I indicated earlier for some sort of repository for all that is being written about weblogs these days. We appear to have learned from the gold rush days of the web where no one kept historical records of anything and are now trying to piece that piece of our history together from shards and scraps. So bravo to those behind this project. I’m glad good ideas get spread around.