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A few years ago, when a couple told me they first met one-another through comments they posted on this blog, I was dumbfounded for two reasons: 1. Because this is more a “personal” blog than a “topical” blog, the “community of commenters” tends to be small and tightly focused. 2. As far as I know, that was the first time I’ve played even a minor role in introducing a future couple — I’d never even set up a blind date.
I thought their chance meeting was very wonderful, but no way did I think any such commenter match-making could ever be repeated.
So, when I was informed recently by another couple, now engaged, that they first discovered one-another through comments on this blog, I was even more flabergasted. What are the odds?
But perhaps there is some logic. While there’s not a lot of commenting on this blog, what does take place is civil and respectful of one-another. Perhaps because “Nashville” is a recurring focus, there is a sense of “place” that comes with it (although the engaged couple aren’t both from Nashville).
For whatever reason of fate or logic, I’m glad to say that “match-making” is a now officially one of many reasons why I blog.
And I’ve decided that I should suggest it’s a reason why more people should comment here (and, okay, on other blogs), as well. But only if you feel passionate about the topic of the post. I imagine it’s more a matter of two people discovering they share an interest than the mere fact they’ve crossed paths here.
And with my heartfelt best wishes, I’ll warn the second couple (and any others) what I warned the first couple, who, I’m glad to report, are still happily married (and about the most perfect couple you’ll ever meet): Please don’t blame me if things don’t work out. “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”
[Note: This post is rated: Geek.]
While I know in doing so, I’m supporting Facebook’s march towards turning the “social” part of the internet into a corporate-state, I nonetheless decided to add a Facebook “like” button to each post on RexBlog so I could understand what life will be like in the future when we must choose among three chips to have embedded in our foreheads: Google’s, Facebook’s or the CIA’s.*
The information on Facebook.com about adding the button seems fairly simple and I’m comfortable with cutting and pasting code in/on WordPress* files. But I have a rule that goes somehthing like this: If I can’t get a coding thing to work within five minutes, then it’s over my head and I’ll wait until the weekend to tackle it.
And that’s what happened with the Facebook “Like button.”
So, last night (Friday), I asked Nashville WordPress developer Mitch Canter (@studionashvegas), if he could recommend a WordPress plugin for adding the “Like” button.
Well, as it says in the good e-book, “Ask, and it shall be given.” Sometime during the late night/early morning, Mitch created such a plugin and I’ve just installed it — and it passed my five-minute test.
If you have a self-hosted WordPress site and know how to install plugins, you’ll know what to do. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then don’t try this at home.
Thanks, Mitch. I like it.
*Kidding aside, there are some important issues anyone who uses Facebook should review regarding privacy and how information about you is collected and used. Here are a couple of blog posts to read:
NYT Gadgetwise Blog: “How to Opt-Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization”
Lifehacker.com: “Restore Your Privacy on Facebook”
**WordPress is the open-source software on which RexBlog runs.
If you have just received a blast of about three weeks of posts, I apologize. It means you’ve probably not received those posts during the past five weeks. I believe the issue that caused that to occur has been fixed. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
As I noted last week — I’m on the “content marketing” bandwagon if content marketing is what marketers want to call what Hammock does. My friend Joe Pulizzi, the leading evangelist of the term content marketing and the head matchmaker at Junta42, a service that matches marketers and content providers, sent me a note congratulating me on actually using the term “content marketing,” knowing of my past, well, lack of enthusiasm for it. Anyway, I just was notified that RexBlog is the #11 blog on Junta42′s top content marketing blogs — and #4 among those with “content marketing” as their primary category. So, if you were ever wondering what this blog is about (I know I sure have), now you know.
As people who read this blog know, a regular topic I write about is the magazine industry. That should make sense, as Hammock Inc. publishes magazines for several associations and corporate clients.
For their August issue, the business-to-business magazine Publishing Executive invited me to write a guest column about things I may have learned about magazines from nearly a decade of blogging.
As most of what one reads about magazines and blogs tends to place the two media in adversarial roles, what I wrote for the magazine may surprise you.
Here are nine things I’ve learned about magazines from blogging. The full column, which explains what I mean with each point, can be found on the magazine’s website:
1. Magazines and blogs are made for each other.
2. People in the magazine industry are consistently inarticulate in their attempts to describe the qualities of the magazine format.
3. No one will ever collect NationalGeographic.com.
4. The people who say print is dead don’t actually mean print is dead.
5. Successful magazines succeed for three reasons: a passionate niche, they are required reading for that niche, great design.
6. More magazines play a role in a non-publishing business model than in a publishing business model.
7. A digital magazine will never replace a printed magazine.
8. The magazine format can contain content that is “journalism” or it can contain content that’s anything but journalism.
9. Make lists end on a random number other than 10.
Again, some of these won’t make sense without reading the entire column.
Later: By auditioning a link to this column on Twitter, I’ve discovered that some people really like #3, which is a short version of my description of the common-sense observation that a physical magazine is not a digital website, and therefore, the two platforms that share the same brand should be and are different.
3. No one will ever collect NationalGeographic.com: OK, here is my suggestion to those in the magazine industry who haven’t figured out how to compare magazines with the Web (see point #2). The magazines we love are not merely things we read and enjoy; they are expressions of who we are. We display them on coffee tables and desks the way people wear designer labels on clothes or purchase one model of car over another. People collect magazines, trade them and display them on decorative racks or in frames hung on the wall. Magazines provide us with mementos of our life’s journey. They allow us to savor our passions and save special moments. The magazines we love are so important to us, they make us feel guilty to consider throwing them away. The Web is a wonderful thing when you want to drink information from a fire hose. But the magazines people love are like bottles of fine wine: Even if you have to wait a little before opening it, there’s something a bit exciting about the anticipation.
Apparently, I hit the publish button on a post well before I was finished with it. So if you’re reading this in an RSS reader and there’s something that makes little sense right before it, when I get around to posting it, it will make a little more sense — not much, but a little.
As I don’t always like reading multiple posts on one topic in reverse chronological order, I’ve created a page on which I’ll display “Thoughts on Twitter” posts chronologically. At some point, I will also create the eBook, Kindle, PowerPoint and audible versions, as well. (That last sentence was a joke.)
Here’s where to read the one-page chronological version: http://www.RexBlog.com/thoughts-on-twitter
Monday, I’m traveling or in meetings most of the day, so I decided to embed a widget below that displays my Twitter posts (tweets) and web content I may bookmark or other items caught by my FriendFeed.com account. Monday night, I’ll be attending the ContentNext Mixer my friends at PaidContent are hosting before Tuesday’s Future of Business Media Conference, that I’ll also be attending. At 8:30 (ET) Monday, however, I’ll be slipping away from the mixer to find a friendly tavern in Manhattan where I can cheer for the Titans to make it 7-0. That’s when you’ll likely see the most “tweets” below.
[Titans fans: If you'd like one of those 7-0 buttons for your blog, feel free to grab or "img src" it from this link.]
widget now removed
I’ve received a few e-mails and direct messages from people who know I’m in Maine, accompanying the 18 year old on a college visit. I thought I’d answer with this map. Yes, there’s a hurricane heading to Maine. No, I’m not in its path. However, in a few minutes (Sunday, a.m.), I’m evacuating Brunswick for Portland where I’ve located a sports bar with a screen dedicated to the Titans game.
I’m sorry if you’ve had problems attempting to comment on this blog during the past few days. For some reason (translation: operator error), the setting got changed so that someone had to be “registered” on the site to make a comment. As I probably have “registering” turned off, that made commenting problematic. Sidenote: I’m trying to install the Disqus and FriendFeed plugins but the blog’s custom theme is making the installation of both a notch above my skill-level — I’m close, but not quite there. I’ll tackle it this weekend. That is all.
One of the great things about blogging consistently over a long period of time is being able to do this:
10 steps of political scandals: It worked then, it works now. [August 28, 2007]
2002 Olympics closing ceremonies: My first real-time blogging of a TV Olympics ceremony. Twitter is my real-time “quip” platform these days, however. [February 24, 2002]
Due to technical difficulties yet to be determined, the RexBlog is not picking up my daily post that aggregates (or, perhaps, aggravates) the bookmarks I add to what is now the less-dotted web service, Delicious.com (formerly del.icio.us). You can still find the bookmarks at the easier-now-to-remember-and-spell-address: Delicious.com/rexblog or any of the social networking, lifestreaming, RSS-reading places where some of you may be reading this. I think it will start working again tonight.
Next day update: Still no links. I’ll keep working on it. It’s not Delicious with the problem as I have it working elsewhere.
Philipp Lenssen has a post that displays some hilarious image results that are occurring on Cuil.com, the heavily financed new search engine that all those mean bloggers are ganging up on.
Philipp’s results are so amusing, I thought I’d do another ego search on my name to see what happens. And whoa, the screen-grab below is what I found. While not me, the guy on the left is my friend, Joi Ito. He’s taken my photo a few times, and I his. So, other than him living in Japan and me in Tennessee, I guess I see the relation. As for that photo on the right that accompanies a Nick Bradbury post that mentions me, if it looks like a pregnant man, well, it is. Huh? Oddly, the pregnant man image shows up on a Google Image search for me, as well — thanks to this post related to my annual warning before April Fool’s Day. I guess the April Fool’s joke was one me.
 If you follow me on Twitter (twitter.com/r), you may have caught me mentioning I’m planning to go “Neo-Amish” for a few days. I hadn’t heard the term until earlier this week when Kevin Kelly, who coined the term many years ago, wrote about bloggers, blackberry addicts or the kind of people who stand in the line at an Apple Store, who decide to abandon the devices they use to stay plugged in. No way am I going to do that permanently, but if I wanted to, hey, no problem, I could do it — no, really.. I could quit using this stuff anytime I wanted to. Cold turkey. Really.
In reality, I’m going to be spending the next several days involved in a project that involves cutting up wood. If all goes as planned, I’ll be making a looped-back windsor chair that looks (if I’m lucky) like the one pictured. It’s going to be a full-time focus for several days during which I’ll be spending time with a very talented guy who enjoys teaching people how to keep from cutting off their fingers while making things like windsor chairs. One way to keep from cutting off ones fingers, I’ve been informed, is to avoid text-message while using a lathe. The same goes for using any power tool while Twittering, blogging, or being obsessed with loading apps onto a new iPhone 3G.
Making a windsor chair, I’ve determined, is very 18th century. So I’ll be “offline” entirely during the project.
For the record, I won’t be gadget free. I’m documenting the experience for a magazine and video project. In other words, I’ll still be digital, just not conversationally.
See you back here on July 21.
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