Hello, my name is Christian and I'm monolingual. ("Hi, Christian!") Yes, I did note Michel Vuijlsteke's rapid rise on the Salon charts in the last few days, saw that the language of his blog was Dutch (or Flemish?), and even discerned that a lot of his traffic (more than Scott's these last few days) seemed to relate to Google searches for someone named Veronique de Cock.
Today he posted one entry in English:
I wonder what Radio Free Blogistan makes of me. Here I am on top of the Salon rankings by page-reads for the last couple of days, and they can't make heads or tails of the entire blog.As I commented at Michel's site, that English-language post is reason enough for me to link to him now, though I doubt my influence as a tastemaker.
Should I clue them in on why I suddenly shot to the top of the ratings? Would they actually care?
I saw the reverse cowgirl's blog (deservedly) shooting past me when she got a mention on Radio Blogistan, and I still see pornographer's picks (undeservedly) sitting up there at #4—I don't know about the other Salon bloggers, but I'm getting totally anal about checking Salon's rankings page as I see myself slowly but surely creeping up from 17th position to 12th position.
5:50:36 PM 
say what []
My Submissions to the Mirror Project. I've always admired online collaborations like the mirror project and I've respected it enough to not just waddle into my bathroom and snap some pictures and send them in.
Last week in New York I found myself in a beautiful room festooned with mirrors and I snapped a bunch of shots, some better than other. I picked three out of about five finalists, and then experimented with different crops to comply with the 300px max single-dimension limit.
Then I chose my favorite crops after side-by-side comparisons (some tough choices, largely dictated again by the format) and submitted them. Don't know how much of a lag to expect.
In the meantime, I posted the finalists in a quick and dirty gallery. I may add the best rejects as well if I get a moment.
Here's a taste:
[bodega]
categories: x-pollen
1:21:15 PM say what []
Have I mentioned I'm going to be on television today on "The Screen Savers" airing first at 7 pm, on whatever cable channel, digital or otherwise, you get your Tech TV network on. It repeats at 10 pm and then again some time tomorrow. I don't know when I appear on the timeline, as we taped it last week. Typically I show up around 25 to 40 minutes in.
I'm still kind of jazzed about this. New medium for me. Lots to learn. The first time I was stiff and anxious. First time for anything I'm that way. But even by the end of it I became more animated, as I got into our little semi-rehearsed, semi-real dialogue (more on that later). I learned right away (seeing the tape is key) the well known truth about TV being a "cool" medium. It does not like deadpan. You have to show some enthusiasm.
The trick, and I don't think I have the hang of it yet, is finding your own path between two unacceptable extremes: (1) just being yourself, and (2) falseness.
Just being yourself doesn't work because one's ordinary demeanor is not optimized for televised viewing. You can't dwell on the potentially million-large audience to the point of catatonia but you have to deliver something beyond minimal couch-inertia interest to the viewer. I'd love to think that my own free-from ramblings would make great TV but working with professionals teaches me that they know what works for them and it's up to me to follow their lead and learn the steps.
Falseness doesn't work because TV watchers have a finely tuned sense of bullshit-detection, except within a narrow vaudeville-derived ham tradition.
I'm not acting in a soap. I'm appearing as myself explaining something geeky. I have to reveal enough of myself to avoid falseness, but also work at kindling the energy and spontaneity that makes an experience worthwhile, live or recorded.
I suspect that blog wrtiing for me has similar straits. Self-revealing writing not perfectly polished creates comfort and credibility, while the effort exerted sifting through various inputs and deciding whether they belong on any RFB channel provides a degree of coherent usefulness that balances out the risk of self-indulgence and tedium. We hope.
So, back to TV, I'm still a beginner, learning, but I'm enjoying the ride. Meanwhile, the Amazon rank of Dreamweaver Savvy spiked after the tutorial went up on the Screen Savers site, and the topic ties in with the charter of this blog (the "being about blogs" thing) as well as a book I'd like to write.
Traffic is high today from the tutorial page and there's a growing number of (disturbing) Google searches for phrases like "megan morrone nude."
categories: fireweaver metablog x-pollen
11:07:16 AM say what []
(via Unsere Kleine Digitale Welt) InformationWeek warns CIO's about the risks of blogging in the corporate sphere:
If you think your staff spends inordinate amounts of time designing PowerPoint presentations now, just imagine what these would-be artists and authors will do to productivity when their creative powers are unleashed on the world of computerized diaries and ever-expanding hyperlinks.Worth pondering.
Finally, and perhaps most compelling, is the litigation issue. With the exception of research labs, where you write down everything to fight for patent protection and government certification, the last thing you want are uncontrolled and ever-expanding records of individual activities and opinions. As Microsoft has learned from keeping old E-mail too long, in this age of writs of discovery, what you've said way back when may really hurt you. Before you embark on a company blog initiative, best have a chat with your chief counsel.
On the other hand, I do see real opportunities in the world of the blogosphere, even if the acceptance of blogs doesn't quite pan out the way their proponents envision. We surely can expect to see the emergence of new business ventures for anti-blog filtering and tracking software. Maybe we can even provide employment for lawyers who can teach seminars on what you can, and can't, put on your personal company blog. If you come up with other entrepreneurship ideas, be sure to blog them for sharing with the rest of us.
9:00:40 AM say what []
