This post is mirroring “microblog” posts I add to twitter.com/rexhammock through August 27th.

most recent tweets*

(Note: Mirroring is now stopped on this post, but appears on the right-hand column of each rexblog page.)

*On Twitter, “posts” are referred to as “tweets.” Also, if you see the “@” symbol before a word, that means I am referring to someone whose Twitter.com page can be found at the corresponding URL: twitter.com/USERNAME . The username is the set of letters after the @ — which reminds me of the joke about the country-boy who gets into Harvard and upon asking a fellow student where the library is @, he is scolded that Harvard students never end sentences with the prepositional symbol, @. So he responds, “Where’s the library @, asshole?”

Mark Glaser of the PBS website/blog, MediaShift has an indepth interview with Hearst’s Chuck Cordray, whose division has ramped up in size (they’ve hired 100 in recent months, mainly in technical and production positions). During the past year, the division has revamped several of the company’s magazine-related websites and has launched 14 new websites and five mobile sites since February.

Quote:

“The print subscribers who subscribe online are generally eight to 10 years younger on average than the ones who subscribe through the traditional methods. The online people are finding us sooner. And of the online subscribers, more than 90% of them are brand new to the Hearst subscription world — they’ve never subscribed to any of our magazines before. They look the same as our other subscribers but we’re getting them earlier.”

Dear Scott Karp: I was going to ditch the computer for a few days, but nooooo. You have to go and post some big news about leaving your job at Atlantic Media and starting a new venture. Congratulations. Can’t wait to see more.

Coolest feature: Provides an automagic, one-click way to dial up all of those Facebook friends.

Observation 1 (I know, I’m repeating myself): Don’t “friend” people who you don’t want to have the ability to have an automagic, one-click way to dail your phone number.

Observation 2: In my opinion, this is the best execution I’ve seen yet of a web-service optimized for the iPhone version of Safari.

More detail: Mashable.com

Later: No way is it as cool as iphone.facebook.com, but this is a clever marketing gimmick from a market niche that is infamous for its lack of clever marketing gimmicks: mobile.harpercollins.com.

A few moments ago, a 7 lb., 11 oz. girl named Iris Mae, entered the world. Her dad is the oft-mentioned Patrick, this blog’s director of hackology. Mom (Lorraine) and big brother, Issac, are all doing well. Patrick is neither live Twittering or blogging this event — however, he did send the folks here at Hammock Publishing a photo of a beautiful baby girl via iPhone.

For the past two months, I have followed the rough up-and-down saga of a family with grade-school-aged kids discovering the Mom of the family has leukemia. I have become part of a community of friends and colleagues who have followed that family’s journey through chemotherapy and disappointment and hope and remission and now, after two months in the hospital, the road to recovery.

I was able to follow this saga because the Dad of this family — a friend and business acquaintance of mine — set up a page on the website, CaringBridge.org, a non-profit “web service that connects family and friends during a critical illness, treatment or recovery.”

I do not want to call the site a “blogging platform,” as the word “blog” may cause some to project onto the service some connotations that miss the point. However, without using the word blog, let me describe it as a tightly-focused personal publishing platform that is geared towards one purpose — allowing a family going through a health crisis the opportunity to communicate in a systematic, efficient manner to a network of family and friends — and for that community to express their concern and thoughts, in return.

Often times, when I look at an online publishing platform, I’m analyzing user features or issues related to “openness” or flexibility. Or, I’m having to discuss why it is crazy to use such condescending terms as “user-generated-content” to describe what real-people do when they use online tools to communicate. However, I’ll admit, I haven’t taken the time to see if CaringBridge.org has an intuitive backend or RSS or uses Ajax. And I’ve never once thought there is the need to explain why those who “use” this site are not “users” and what they are doing on the site is not “generating content.” All I know is that for this family, and those friends and extended family who care, this service has been the most effective publishing platform I have ever witnessed. For a small band of friends at one moment in time, it is a publishing platform more effective than anything Google, the New York Times or any site ever termed Web 2.0 will ever conceive. That’s because what I’ve seen happen for the past two months is not about features or content — it’s about caring and connecting and love.

In addition to making a contribution to the “Run for Dori” fund, I wanted to note here that I’ve also made a small contribution to CaringBridge.org — whoever they may be.

I am also happy to report that my friend has been home for a week and, despite the heat here in Nashville, she is enjoying the outdoors with an appreciation few of us will ever know.