Check out my friend Rolf Potts in Nicaragua in Slate. (It's called Virgin Trails: Travels in the Other Central America. More on the piece later.)

He's making his way round the planet top to bottom (and round again), in a nine-month Drive Around the World.

Think I should take his place?

Seriously. He needs to leave when they get to the bottom of Chile (or is it Argentina?) in a few weeks. He wants me to take over somewhere in SE Asia or India. I really want to, but a little uneasy about leaving this job for 4-6 weeks. Let me know what you think.

And definitely check out Rolf's Vagabonding book from Random House (he used to write the Vagabonding column for Salon), and his Vagblogging blog. He's a great guy and a really interesting writer.

(And there's a link to his blog on my blogroll to the left. In fact, it's at the very top of the list, and has been since about the time I restarted this blog this past summer. Rolf will keep posting reports from South America there.)

Every once in awhile, I still get a puzzled look when I use the word google, and I refuse to use meterosexual in a sentence, so the main terms currently causing befuddlement in my conversations are blog and Friendster.

You probably know what a blog is if you landed here, but Friendster may still require explanation. Pick up a copy of last month's Spin. The cover story is titled, "More addictive than crack?" and it's referring to the new breed of online software led by Friendster.

How to describe? It's one of those things that are tougher to see the value of until you play with it a bit, but here goes:

It's a way to meet people, not so much for sex, like most earlier profile-based sites, though I'm sure that happens. This breed is all about connecting to people. You post a profile with your interests, pic, etc., and you link to people who are your friends (you can start with me, if you like, if you're here and you've come back more than once), and you can see who they're connected to and they're connected to . . .

You can meet people that way, or just stay in touch. Or remember their name if you met them at a party. Does this graphic from the Friendster site help?

Here's a scenario: you go to a club or a party with a friend, meet some of there friends and there's someone there that you found interesting, but you didn't have a chance to talk much and find out a lot, and/or remember their name, and/or get a number. If they're on here, you can see their picture under your friend's profile, find out more about them, and message them. Blah blah blah.

Of course it depends on lots of people being on there, but these things have been spreading like germ warfare the last several months.

Friendster is the biggest one, by far, so far. (My profile here, though I just signed up two minutes ago, so I'm still friendless.) If you're straight, this is probably the place to start.

Gayboys and lesbos--or breeders looking to diversify their friend catalog--are likely to enjoy Connexion more. It was started by big gay billionaire/philanthropist/tech-wiz Tim Gill (he wrote the original Quark Express program and started Quark a few decades back, then started The Gill Foundation with $300 million of the profits). It has grown wildly in the gay community the past few months.

Connexion also seems to be a big improvement over friendster, as far as I can tell. The same exact basic format, but much easier to get around, to get to your friends' friends. Friendster is actually bugging the crap out of me right at this moment. Maybe user error, but Connexion was a lot more intuitive. I was set up in about a minute flat, and bopping around to different people immediately. You can check out Connexion and link to me here.

(But be prepared: The Connexion link will confront you with a more recent picture of me, taken on my LA trip a few months ago. I hope it doesn't scare you. I'm thinking about posting it on this site once I can get someone to photoshop out the ficus leaves. I think they're fine in the shot there, but I need to crop out the skin below my neck (not that much skin, but too much for here), and it's the oddest thing when I crop it close in all directions. Suddenly the few ficus remaining look like a laurel wreath, but less like Caesar, more like a wood nymph. So I'm holding off for now. But you can let me know what you think about the switch. I've been meaning to test-market the switch since I got back from LA.)

Of course both Connexion and Friendster are free, or I wouldn't be providing space here.

And Connexion is non-profit and assures no spam, ever, and also has an activist component (provides an easy way to register to vote online, tells you were your polling place is, etc., and you can join an activist network to respond to things.)

I have had quite the fun time with Connexion the past couple months, will have to let you know about Friendster.

So regardless of whether you want to play, at least you'll know what the hell people are talking about when they use these terms. Although you may be six months ahead of me. If so, do let me know what the latest thing is that I'm unaware of in the comments.

Anyone know what's going on with Salon stock? After years in the toilet, it is suddenly on an impressive gain this week. Granted, the stock price is still negligible. But it's an increase from just (I think 3 cents a share--or possibly 2 cents) to 10 cents a share at the close of trading today. But that's more than a 200% gain in under a week.

I couldn't find any stories on it, but there must be something going on. Who knows, it could go all the way to 12! (cents).

Disclaimer: I own some. I doubt it will ever be worth much, but I do hope they pull through. I hope this is a good sign.

Thursday Update:

It dropped 2 cents (20%) today, so maybe it's just in an odd volitle state. Still, it hasn't had this much upward movement in ages. Something must be up.

I've been accused of (hipdom?) And living in Denver, though in the process I confess to lust for NY. And being a writer.

Jennie Dorris, the nightlife reporter for the Daily Camera, Boulder's daily paper, has a blog called Boulder @night, and she just started a "Hip Denver Writer Series." Se was sweet enough or misguided enough to ask me to be the first profile. (I can't see a way to link to individual posts, so if you're reading this after Aug 1, go to the Aug 1 entries.)

There's a whole lot of blabbing from me there. She asked me a bunch of questions by email, and I played around with the easy ones, left the harder ones to sit for a couple days, and then realized around midnight last night that I had reached my deadline, so I went back in there and just started to ramble. I thought she'd just pick a few highlights, but she used it all! Which is very kind--I just hope I didn't make an ass of myself.

I do mention my favorite place to go out in Denver, and it's a club called Amsterdam, so if you happen to live here, go tonight, because I don't want to be there all by myself at 4 a.m.

NPR just launched a new show yesterday called Day to Day, in partnership with Slate. Sounds pretty interesting. It's hosted by Alex Chadwick whom I've never heard of and "founded" by JJ Sutherland, who I have. He produced the one segment I ever did for NPR, and he was really great at it. Amazed me that so much went into a four-minute segment.

Chadwick has a weeklong diary about getting the show off the ground, that was a pretty interesting read. Unfortunately, I won't be writing with my take on it here, because Colorado is not among the 50 stations carrying it.

The Dean campaign is doing another one-day web-fundraising push today (Monday), with hourly updates on the blog. Here's the gimmick this time: They've got a TOP SECRET logo beside many of the posts, with this teaser:

And wait til you see what we plan on doing with the additional money you help raise today. It's top secret, but we can tell you this-- it will surprise everyone.

Hmmmm. I do enjoy surprises. Hopefully it will be a good one.

I just checked my mailbox, and 5280 (Denver's city magazine) was there, with my story on Colorado bloggers prominently placed. A few excerpts (I'm going to focus on quotes here, to give you other bloggers a voice):

[From TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt on why she loves to blog]: "When I'm on [FoxNews'] Hannity & Colmes, a milllion people may see me," she says. "But how many of those people are really interested in what I have to say? But when I blog, people are reading me because they're interested in the liberal viewpoint." [Then later in the piece:] "It's the response that keeps you going," she says. "People are really reading. And through the comments, you can see they're thinking and discussing. You know you've hit a chord, and it pumps you up."

...

"Everyone wants validation of their opinion," says Denverite Andy O'Reilly, one of four writers behind WorldWidRant.com. "Or at least to get in a fight about it." He chuckles at the last line, but he's not entirely joking. LIke any political junkie, he hungers for the stimulation of a vigorous debate.

And I'll give away my ending:

"I could either yell at the TV or write it and put it on the Internet," [VodkaPundit's Stephen] Green says. "I found it was a lot more fun to put it on the internet, although I do still yell at the television."

I loved that last quote. I knew the second he said it that I wanted to open or close the story with that idea.

They gave the piece really nice play, too. It was supposed to just be a little half-page quickie, but I wrote way long and they gave me the real estate. With graphics, it fills the whole page, too, the front page of The Atmosphere, which is the opening section of the magazine. (It's actually on the second page of that--the first right-hand page which is much better; reader eyes tend to see go right to the right-side pages, often miss the left).

Thanks to everyone who participated. I hope you're happy with it. Do let me know. My editor took out a bit of the fun stuff, but gave me the extra space (I wrote more than 50% longer than assigned and they gave me nearly all the extra real estate). All four bloggers on focused on are intact. Shew! They are: Jeralyn of TalkLeft, Stephen of VodkaPundit, Andy of WorldWideRant and Walter of WalterInDenver.

There's also a box listing "Ten Great Local Blogs," with urls to everybody's sites. I'm going to reproduce it below, because it will be a lot easier for you to click than to try to type it in from the magazine. I'll see if I can get them to post this on their site. And I will leave it in my intentionally misnamed "Eight Great Denver Blogs" link in my blogroll in the left column:

• Talk Left: The politics of crime from a liberal perspective
• Vodka Pundit: Politics, war, satire and recipes, from a libertarian angle
• The World Wide Rant: Politics, religion, science, etc.
• Rover Pundit: Eclectic: politics, computers, great big trucks
• Walter In Denver: Libertarian politics and golf
• Rant-O-Rama!: Fun-loving anecdotes
• Resurrection Song: Politics and culture, moderately conservative
• The Blog of the Century of the Week: Eclectic: movies, technology, unemployment
• Coyote Gulch: Detailed election coverage, especially local
• Amygdala : Libertarian politics

And one I didn't know about when I turned in the piece:

• Mike's Weblog Streams of consciousness from a queer Denver lunatic (his words; but he's pretty sane.)

The mag hits newstands tomorrow. It will be in all the grocery chains, but may take the distributor a few days. Tattered Cover normally gets it up in the morning, as it's their bestselling magazine (including nationals like People or Vanity Fair). If you're not near Denver, you'll probably never see it, but I'll start posting outtakes in a few days, once I get my story in.

Just talked to my 5280 editor.

The issue with my piece on Denver-area bloggers hits the newstands tomorrow.

I haven't seen the final version, so hopefully most of the people I spoke to are still in there. I went way over my assigned word-count trying to include you all, so one or two may have been cut. It's only 600-1000 words, but should be prominently featured in the opening section, Atmosphere. I'll let you know more when I get my copy.

I hope to include some outtakes from the interviews here as well. I got such great material and could only include a whisper of it, so I'd love to share more great thoughts from blogging, particularly from Jeralyn of TalkLeft, Stephen of VodkaPundit, Andy of WorldWideRant and Walter of WalterInDenver. All that may have to wait till I get my current story in, but the issue will be on newsstands for two months.

(FYI: 5280 is Denver's city magazine. This is the mile high city, because supposedly the altitude is exactly one mile, 5280 feet high. I linked to their website above, though they don't have a whole lot on it.)