| Rayne Today Searching for dharma, in spite of the weather...
Nothing says lovin’… Like a blogroll in the oven. Yeah, I’ve been kind of lax about the housekeeping around these digs. I’ve needed a freshening-up of the blogroll, but I’ve not had the heart to mess with my OPML files. (There’s a boo-boo in the Resources file that I’ve not been able to fix, either! Talk about neglectful!) Anyhow, until I get my act together and do a seasonal clean-sweeping (probably in time for my upcoming anniversary), here’s a list of Salon blogs and Salon-affiliated blogs which I make a point to read regularly. Okay, maybe not daily, but at least once a month or as often as some of you post <wink-wink-nod-nod-you-know-who-you-are-slacker>. Playing with my food (Salon/VO team) http://blogs.salon.com/0001444 Fried Green al Qaedas (Salon/VO) http://blogs.salon.com/0001424 How to Save the World (Salon/VO team) http://blogs.salon.com/0002007 Pesky the Rat (Salon/VO team) http://www.peskytherat.com/pesky/ Virtual Occoquan (VO) http://www.voccoquan.com Radio Free Blogistan (Salon) http://radiofreeblogistan.com filchyboy (Salon) http://chronotope.com/chronotope Real Live Preacher (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001772 different strings (Salon) http://www.differentstrings.info The Barbaric Yawp (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001811 Emphasis Added (Salon) http://www.emphasisadded.com Rich Pure & Simple (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0002200 Ojo Caliente (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001919 Global Suburb (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001879 Maxine’s Radio Weblog (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001314 Secular Blasphemy (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001561 Reflections (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001476 Struggle in a Bungalow Kitchen (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001754 The Agora (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001147 Paulapalooza’s recommended reading (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001520 FIONA (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001705 Le Prêtre Noir (Salon) http://blogs.salon.com/0001823 Daihatsu Graceland http://blogs.salon.com/0002612 Patriotically Incorrect http://blogs.salon.com/0002379 Patteran Pages http://blogs.salon.com/0002065 Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You http://blogs.salon.com/0002153 Any chance you’re new to Salon blogs, having stumbled onto mine? Try these blogs above. It’s a lovely box of assorted chocolates, isn’t it?  comment []AOL Journals: The Clone War Quagmire My bad, I’ve been messing around all morning with the silly piece of fluff that AOL thinks is blog software. I should get the heck out of it and do something much more constructive, I know. Gah. Radio Free Blogistan’s xian doesn’t quite understand what my beef is with the 2500 character limit and the HTML code invisibility at AOL Journals. Easy: not only do my posts average over 2000 characters of typed text, I can easily add another several hundred with blank spaces (yeah, those count at AOL) and HTML code for the little features I use as index tabs (like the <div> tags for text boxes or the little glow boxes with a webding character. I simply can’t blog over there without always watching every character that leaves my fingers; what a crimp on creativity. Nor could I do any of the little things that I do here with each which personalize my blog. Any HTML that AOL embeds inside my post is also invisible; I don’t know at any given time how close I am to the limit of my entry or if AOL is shorting me character space. (Radio Userland may be cumbersome and quirky software, but I never feel a lack of control over my posts!) So why even play around with the silly piece of fluff? Several reasons come to mind, the first being that it’s like a train wreck about to happen – I can’t rip myself away, I want to see the outcome. Secondly, I’d like to understand what the experience will be for those AOL customers who think they’d like to get in on that cool blog thing that everybody’s talking about these days (will they come away saying, Hah! That’s a snap! Or perhaps, Bah! Blogging is garbage, based on their AOL experience?). Thirdly, I’d like to watch and see how that anticipated captive audience builds and whether AOL can really cash in. Personally, I just don’t think it can compete for better bloggers who will be on for hours at a time, the kind with larger amounts of disposable income. I think blogs will merely be the new chat rooms, pull away from the dreadful threaded conversations at AOL as well. Ah, I just thought of it, the perfect analogy: New Coke. It’s not better than Coke since that’s a subjective opinion. And the most likely market into which AOL Journals will dig is AOL’s own audience, already captive through email, chat and bulletin boards. They’ll be cannibalizing their own customers. Those of us born before 1980 can probably remember what happened to New Coke. Seen a can the stuff lately? --- p.s. In order to submit a post to my AOL Journal by cutting-and-pasting, I had to use the IM posting feature. The IM posting feature will only support 512 characters at a time, so I broke the post into 3 pieces, cut-and-paste each part from Word into IM editing, then sent it to the blog. What a nuisance!
p.p.s. This post is roughly 2000 characters, 2500 including spaces, not including any HTML for the header. I wouldn't fit at AOL Journals! comment []
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