Wired back together: Wired, the dot-com and Wired, the magazine, are reunited thanks to $25 million from Conde Nast. Other than hard-core geeks and hard-core magazine wonks, I doubt more than ten residents of the real-world knew they were owned by separate companies. (If you actually did know the two were owned by separate companies, you are free to go to the bonus round related to the ownership history of Ziff Davis and ZDNet.)

I’ve been hanging out on the web way, way too long because when I saw this news, all I could think of was this long-ago ‘post’ on Suck.com (which I’m amazed is still archived).

Technorati Tags: magazines, wired.com, suck.com

What I learn from Mr. Roboto: Gee. If I didn’t have the RSS feed from Nashville blogger Mr. Roboto, I wouldn’t know that Nicole Kidman purchases her household cleaning products from the same Target I purchase mine.

Technorati Tags: nashville

Dell’s blog attempts to reduce bloggers’ karmic power: They followed Robert Scobel’s advice. (Explanation.) Robert responds: “I think we should institute a two-week moratorium against saying anything bad about a new corporate blog.” And, in Dvorakian style, Nick Carr (who shall remain linkless) asks, “Who’s ‘we’? — or, more accurately, “Who’s us.” (Okay, here’s the link.)

For the record, I believe one thing is certain: The Dell Computer corporate weblog is far superior to the Apple corporate blog. (Fun Google search: apple corporate weblog.)

Update: What Scott Karp said:  “Beware of orthodoxy, ideology, sanctimony, hypocrisy, and most of all, remember that if this IS a conversation, we need to treat people on the other end with a certain degree of respect. (This is a lesson that I have learned and continue to learn through blogging.)”

This is a snippet of a conversation that is difficult to follow as it’s taking place on the posts and comments of several blogs. There have been lots of good points made regarding big-corporate blogging, however, I’ve decided not to point to them as even the good comments remind me of a debate between Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin: I still haven’t figured out why some people feel it necessary to preface a point of disagreement with a “greeting” like, “Scott, you ignorant slut.”

Technorati Tags: apple, blogging, businessblogging, dell

Trick question: Dylan at FishBowlNY thinks my earlier Rocketboom quiz (Which is better? A. Floundering in the spotlight B. Being brilliant in obscurity) is a trick question. He’s right.

As for the message that’s now on the front of Rocketboom, personally, I would have just run the video with no explanation, and especially, no apologies. Of course, I think the old baseball-catcher-wheeling-across-the-screen-with-car-crash-sound-effects-gag is always good for a laugh.

Technorati Tags: rocketboom

Second quote of the day: “Assigned seating is to Southwest what “New Coke” was to Coca-Cola.” (Roger Abramsom’s take on the test SWA is running for eight-weeks on selected flights out of San Deigo to see whether assigning seats will speed up the boarding process.)

My take: Is this Southwest reacting to a customer taste test that shows people think Pepsi Jet Blue is better?

Technorati Tags: southwest

The best advice you’ll ever receive: Robert Scoble provides the rexblog quote of the day and the secret to making your business blog effective: “Link to your enemies. It takes away their karmic power.”

Technorati Tags: businessblogging

What I know for sure: One of five things Simon Dumenco says he “knows (kinda) for sure” is this: “Blog culture has made the mainstream media even more lazy.”

Quote:

“Over the past year, as much as the mainstream media has bellyached about bloggers — mainly about how so few bloggers do original reporting, which turns the blogosphere into one giant masturbatory echo chamber — it’s increasingly become accepted practice for the MSM to act suspiciously bloglike. For example, who could have predicted even just a few years ago that all the celebrity weeklies would make cover stories out of a Vanity Fair cover story — the Jennifer Aniston interview — with one actually putting a thumbnail of the Vanity Fair cover on its cover? What makes that acceptable? The blogging “pickup” mentality that’s come to pervade mainstream media — the idea that all truly relevant, au courant media must succumb to the chattering-about-chattering contagion.”

I know this for sure: While I may be in agreement with Simon on his “lazy” observation, I know this for sure: “Blog culture” isn’t responsible for such laziness nor is it responsible for the “pickup” mentality nor did it create the chattering-about-chattering contagion. That happened when media started hiring people to chatter about media.

Also, I apologize. I must have missed that day in blog-school when the blogging professor told the class that blogs were supposed to be for original reporting. For six years, I’ve been trying to figure out what this thing was for. Now I know.

Technorati Tags: media