Well, it does for me anyway. For those who keep up with my blog (and I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, you are) may have noticed that things have slowed down considerably — even though I seemed to get better from the flu (as I posted over here). What I’ve learned over the past few days, however, as I was making the slow climb from 60 to 80% of normal was that blogging, for me anyway, requires a higher level of thinking than most things that I do.

It almost reminds me of a recent article in Time magazine about preparing schools and students for the 21st century. The gist of things was that schools need to emphasize a type of learning that teaches and reinforces basic concepts — and allows students to learn cross-disciplinary forms of applying those concepts. Schools in other countries around the world seemed to emphasize this kind of teaching, whereas in North America, rote learning was NOT a relic of the past, but a fairly common practice.

How does all that apply to blogging?

I suppose its all about how you blog and what blogging means to you. I have found that I try and keep regurgitation to a minimum, and otherwise, actually try and use the critical thinking portions of my brain.

• What news is interesting to me?
• Why is it interesting?
• How does it relate to what I already know?
• What are assumptions that have been made that are worth pointing out?
• Are they correct? Are they wrong?
• What happens if I assume the contrary position?

What I’ve learned over the past week is that even though I’m well enough to do most things, I didn’t have either the energy, or the brain cells to blog effectively. Oh, sure, I could blather on — and sure, you could argue that’s what I do *already*. But its funny how blogging — for me, anyway — requires a level of thinking, what I’d like to think requires a certain higher-order level of critical thought, that I didn’t quite appreciate.

Nevertheless, on the slow road back to blogging I’m hopeful that my blogging brain cells will kick into gear. Thanks for staying with me in the mean time. ;)

Diggers can be a downright angry bunch — and if you’ve incurred their wrath long enough for them to pull away from their mac-lovefests, bush hate-a-thons, and latest-gadget-of-the-week navel gazing, they can get downright ugly. If you have any questions, just ask Yahoo — who recently copied Digg’s vote (i.e. “digg”) feature on their suggestion engine for feedback, right down to the yellow, curved-corner, pastel voting icons, coupled with a description of the “suggestions” to the right of that.

Mat Ingram has a nice screen capture of Diggers gone buck wild on the site (it has since implemented a spam feature, flagging everything with “digg” in it), but it beggs the question (sorry, had to) “what makes Digg so damn unique?” After all, there are a hundred sites which use a voting style system. And there are even sites that like to use the same design elements as digg (some, like tribal war, or redflagdeals, are not small either) — so, what is it?

Well, its the community itself, silly. Yes, the same mac-loving, bush-hating, gadget-obsessing group that is so stereotypically like many others in that demographic it wants to make my hair curl — even if I don’t like George W. Bush myself.

Yes, its obvious “the community made Digg”, because there are many other Digg-like tools that exist, but aren’t successful because they lack a critical mass of users (cough cough John Batelle’s Search Mob cough cough). But, I do find it ironic that the reason why Yahoo is currently getting flamed is NOT *really* because of their Digg-like interface. Because I can find a bajillion of them.

(and as an aside, the design similarity that many of them are “going to war” over? Its the yellow pastel voting box. That’s right)

No, the reason why Yahoo is getting flamed is precisely because of what makes Digg “digg” — and that’s its users. Love’em or hate’em, Diggnation marches to its own predictable beat and is quick to defend its beloved turf … even when that turf hasn’t really been besmirched in the first place.

Well, when I first heard of the news a week ago, I had a hard time keeping my big mouth shut — but keep it shut, I did! Today, over at the BlogHerald, we’ve announced that Splashpress Media, the parent company of the BlogHerald has purchased Performancing.com.

The announcement was made by David Krug, which is particularly fitting since he negotiated the sale, and will assume the mantle of leadership from Nick Wilson to continue Performancing’s efforts to “help make bloggers succeed.”

My heartiest congratulations to one of the busiest “blog salesmen” in the business — and although its late, a toast to 2007.

It already looks like its going to be one of changes — and with Performancing becoming a sister publication of the BlogHerald, its looking like its going to get pretty interesting one as well.

Cheers!

PS Check out Aaron Brazell’s interview with David Krug over here at Technosailor, where I learned it was “Krug”, not “Kroog”.

Well, they stop blogging, that’s for sure. I did, anyway.

Past few days I was totally laid out by the flu. Fevers, chills, muscle aches, overwhelming fatigue, and even a bit of shortness of breath and a cough thrown in for a bit of good luck. For those who have never quite had the pleasure, the flu is NOT like a “bad” cold. You might have cold symptoms, such as a runny nose and sore throat, but you almost certainly ALSO have symptoms that have lay you flat on your back.
Like I did.

Anyway, feeling back to normal after lots of rest, liquids, and even more rest.

And back to blogging. ;)

• Information “Speak-Easies” in China
  Well, a fancy name for an Internet cafe anyway. Washington Posts’s great article on how Chinese youth are circumventing censorship laws. Censorrrific!
  (tags: youth internetcafe censorship china washingtonpost)
• Virgin Airways “Games” Its Way to Digg’s Frontpage
  By hosting Diggnation in the “air” on a Virgin Airlines plane. No, they didn’t do it by pimping the top30 diggers, they did it the old fashioned way, with a great marketing plan. Richard Branson, I tip my hat to you sir.
  (tags: revision3 marketing games virginairway diggnation)
• Learn Ruby on Rails: the Ultimate Beginner’s Tutorial
  If you’ve ever wondered how this stuff works, this is a great tutorial. Its nothing like PHP, and its nothing like Wordpress. Tut-astic!
  (tags: sitepoint howto rubyonrails tutorial)

Some pretty startling numbers over here about print publishing’s declining revenues. Honest and ruthless sentiments courtesy of Colin Crawford of IDG publishing:

In the US, our online revenue now accounts for over 35% of our total US publishing revenues. Next year, for many brands online revenues will be greater than print revenues, if fact they already are at some of our key brands and by 2009 – approximately 50% of IDG’s US revenues will come from online.

People talk of watershed moments? I think THIS is a watershed moment for print publishing — when online revenues begin to exceed off-line ones. Jeebus, when did *that* happen? In retrospect, I knew something was afoot when I got married, moved out, and realized that I didn’t actually miss reading a physical paper. Seems like the New York Times is already making their move to the online arena as well, in earnest.

Scott Karp’s opinion is that print publishing is on its way to die. I think it *will* suffer in an unimaginable huge-train-wreck-in-front-of-millions kind of way for their investors, but it won’t die completely. Much like other media forms, particularly radio, print publishing will be forced to evolve … except faster than anyone has the stomach for (particularly investors, ironically). And like radio, “print-only” plays will find a niche. Really small niches, but niches all the same to survive.

• Think tabloids and supermarket counters.
• Think free throw-away newspapers in the subway and transit.
• And think glossy magazines at your local bookstore.

To really survive, print publishing has to embrace the concept of being “a-media” … that is embracing all kinds of media at once. They have to evolve out of the medium that it was born into, and grow into every other kind of medium that will take it, if its worth growing into (and selling adspace on). Think about this. When your local radio station puts up a website, its just gotten into print (online print, sure). When your television stations puts up a website and publishes podcasts, they’ve just done “radio”. And when print media starts publishing videos, they’ve done “tv”.

It’ll be interesting to see how the year plays out — but, I’ll take Colin’s sentiments on this one. I think print’s change will be faster than anyone expected. It might not be “dying”, but for some, it’ll be just as painful.

[SMUG ALERT] If my rant sounded familiar, its because in my “2007 predictions” the ruthless evolution of traditional (and print) media was predicted in number three[/SMUG ALERT]

So I read Steve O’ Hear’s post on Barack Obama’s new website with great interest. For those not interested in US politics, or perhaps, John Stewart’s Daily Show, Barack Obama is one the leading candidates behind the presidential election of 2008. Of course for more information head over to the Wikipedia’s entry on the man.  His website is introducing “myspace” type of functionality where Obama’s supporters can exchange messages, create a “blog”, and set up meetings and so on.
My knee jerk reaction was one of extreme lameness. A politician using MySpace-style tactics to encourage people to “blog” about their experiences and “create meetings” with his blog? Doesn’t that just smack of someone who is trying to capitalize on another web trend?

Well, I thought about it for another five minutes, and like most things, my answer evolved into — “that depends”.

What does it depend on? It depends on how much “buy in” Barack Obama has into the concept itself. Sure, he released his video announcing his canadidacy for nomination of the Presidency on YouTube. But one video on YouTube doesn’t a web savvy politician make.

The real power is whether or not he can mobilize his own supporters to use the site — for everything it *can* be used for. That means he’s got signage at every event. That means he has people promoting the site at every event. And it means the man himself, during interviews and on stage, using the site’s URL every time he wants to announce a new meeting, *use* the site every time he wants to create grass roots events, not be afraid, for example, of promoting people’s blogs off-line.

I’ve seen the kind of fervor that is painted on the faces of folks at these kinds of political rallies. If there is a consistent buy-in for such a 2.0 tool comes from the top, there is a distinct possibility that folks who have NEVER used anything remotely web2.0 (ever!) might be introduced to an entirely new world of online media.

Could Barack Obama do more for the “web2.0″ than Mike Arrington ever did?

Maybe. But only if Mr. Obama believes in the concept himself.