This is the companion blog to βThe Rough Guide to Blogging,β available now (Fall 2006).
The great thing about blogs? It fosters focus and obsession. For example, an entire blog dedicated to the lost art of proper shaving? Bring it on.
The Shaveblog is popular, famous, and here is its primer on “The Perfect Shave.”
Heck, I barely (need to) shave and I was reading this site for an hour just to find out about badger hair brushes, the scuttlebutt, and a zillion other wonderful shaving related tips, tricks, and historical facts.
Most cellphones have a pretty decent camera nowadays and people are taking advantage of it for mobile blogging purposes. I carry my Sidekick II with me at all times but often, I don’t have my digital camera. The Sidekick has a small (endearingly crappy) camera but for my purposes it suffices.
For example, capturing my recent weekend in San Francisco, exploring Golden Gate Park and the The Palace of Fine Arts. It also allowed me to document just how up close and personal I got with the kites controlled by this Chinese man in the nearby park. He had a dozen small kites daisy chained together and could make the contraption dip, float, and come soaring to within inches of your face with just a few controlled flicks of his wrists. Amazing stuff.
The Sidekick also allows me to send all these pictures to my “Hiplog,” which is just blog that T-Mobile sets up for me, already pre-synced to my phone. It’s awesome and I use it to exchange little moments of my days with my other moblogging friends.
Hey, what were you doing at 12-years old? Were you blogging for a worldwide audience? Were you simultaneously balancing growing up and a blogging career? Didn’t think so. David Wilkinson is doing it all over at Techzi.net and making us all look bad with his dedication and focus.
Young David is guest-blogging today over at ProBlogger about driving traffic to your blog. Follow along with his “3 C’s Plan” — Community, Communication, and Consideration.
Now there are officially no excuses not to blog. If a child can do it, so you can you!
And on a related (but un-related) note: Here’s an article from New York Magazine on “The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids” by Po Bronson.
There’s this thing: it’s like, basically t-shirts, but so much more. It’s about clothing, it’s about shoes, it’s about gear, it’s about style with substance, or just style. It’s about having the first before anyone else gets it. It’s underground, but also right in your face. The New York Times covered it in their The Brand Underground article; Theme Magazine has a nice spread on it — the X-Pollination of Streetwear.
It’s creeping into the mainstream but the “movement” as it were, is being documented and pushed along by blogs. That’s right, blogs. Check it out at Hypebeast, High Snobiety, Jeff Staple, or Mr Kim Says. Or any of the other inter-connected blogs that let you into a world of streetwear.
“This might seem strange, since most of us think of branding as a thoroughly mainstream practice: huge companies buying advertising time during the Super Bowl to shout their trademarked names at us is pretty much the opposite of authentic or edgy expression.
But branding is more complicated than that. It is really a process of attaching an idea to a product. Decades ago that idea might have been strictly utilitarian: trustworthy, effective, a bargain. Over time, the ideas attached to products have become more elaborate, ambitious and even emotional.
This is why, for example, current branding campaigns for beer or fast food often seem to be making some sort of statement about the nature of contemporary manhood. If a product is successfully tied to an idea, branding persuades people consciously or not to consume the idea by consuming the product.
Even companies like Apple and Nike, while celebrated for the tangible attributes of their products, work hard to associate themselves with abstract notions of nonconformity or achievement. A potent brand becomes a form of identity in shorthand.”
-The Brand Underground-
I tried to keep a running diary while watching the Super Bowl. I couldn’t do it. It got too hectic. What with an opening kickoff return for a touchdown, turnovers galore, and the general excitement of the game (not to mention no down time due to the “must-see” commercials). I gave it up just a few minutes into the second quarter. Trying to balance and protect my laptop amid screams and cheers got too difficult.
Doing a running diary is not as easy as it looks apparently. You try coming up with coherent thoughts a mile a minute and then posting everything in real time. Well, where I fail is yet another opportunity for someone else to succeed. Nice attitude right? My ancestors would have discovered gravity but we figured we’d let Ike do it.
Anyway, here’s the “Official CBS SportsLine.com Super Bowl Blog.” Yes, the game is over, but the memories will never recede. Re-live Peyton’s big moment and see how your experience matched up with Gregg Doyel’s.
Additionally, here’s an article about Will Leitch of Deadspin - a smart and snarky sports blog.
Don’t have Photoshop but need to crop that image for your blog entry? Why not try one of these online photo editors? When you need to just crop or resize a picture quickly, this is the way to go. I checked out all of them and really enjoyed Snipshot for its simplicity and ease of use.
