So why am I here on Ted Murpy’s dime? A couple reasons.  First of all, I think Ted has made some strides in trying to bring bloggers and advertisers together in a win-win fashion.  Blogging is a tough business, no matter what language you speak, or where you find yourself in life.  It needs more friends, and that’s the sense I get from where Ted is coming from.

With PPP, his intentions weren’t bad, but they may have been executed in a way that wasn’t completely kosher, particularly with whole transparency thing and what Google may see as gaming the link system.  Ted’s got something new brewing with Social Spark, as a new means of bringing bloggers and advertisers together.  It seems above board on a lot of issues I had ranted about before (no-follow links, in-post disclosure amongst other things) and one day soon, I may just try it out.

Second reason is that I’m getting the chance to meet a lot of people. I’ve got to say I love meeting other bloggers / new media folk, and so this is really no exception.  This evening, for example, I got to meet Brian Clark and Tamar Weinberg.  Neil Patel and John Chow as well.  Yes, I even shook hands with John Reese and Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker (the latter of whom was gentlemanly of enough to feign recognizing me).  I also got to meet some panelists that I’ll be moderating including Lea Alcantara, as well as Steve Spalding, both of who, I might add (along with Rob, Lea’s husband), are excellent company. ;)  In the upcoming days, I’m also hoping to run into Loren Feldman (again), and Merlin Mann, who is delivering the keynote for Saturday.

I don’t anticipate the whole conference to be a pitch-a-thon for Izea.  If it is, of course, you’ll hear from me on that.  But it really seems to be more about bloggers and how to make them better at it.  And if that’s the case, I’ll be glad I came, not only as someone who is helping moderate a panel, but someone who can always learn a thing or three about the craft.

Hi guys and gals,

In the upcoming weeks (and perhaps months) there is going to be a slow change at Deep Jive Interests in terms of its content (I think) and its author(s) (I hope).

For those of you who didn’t already know, although I blog about new media issues (a catch-all term for “whatever I think is interesting on the internets”) , my day job is being one of the Fellows (a very senior resident) in General Internal Medicine here in Toronto. I see sick patients in the ward and in clinic through all kinds of illnesses (depending on the month) and that’s pretty much my day.

I kind of stumbled into blogging almost two years ago while wanting to get back into technology, as medical school (4 years) and residency (another 2 years at the time) had taken me away from that. As I used to tell people, before the turn of millenium Tables (in web design) were de rigeur and “web standards” were still a bit of a pie in the sky.

Anyway, its been a happy kind of adventure over the past many months, and DJI has grown in a few ways as well, allowing me the indulgence of writing about things I want to write about with a few people actually noticing, and rarer still, people actually commenting back from time to time (thank you, all of you who have done so).

When I started blogging, I knew that there would be a time in the future when I’d probably have to stop for at least a few weeks straight … or perhaps even a few months.

That time is now.

… or, rather, it kind of was a few weeks ago.

The reason is that my Royal College Exams in Internal Medicine are here (or will be, in April and May), and seeing as they are the Final Exams one writes at the end of one’s medical training they are rather important.

Although my training won’t quite end, because I’ve decided to do an extra year’s training in Palliative Care, this Exam is the Big One. Its the kind where people sweat and stress, and really, start studying in earnest about a year before the exam date.

Its about t-minus several weeks until the first part of that exam, and to do it justice, Deep Jive Interests is going to have to change while I get down to brass tacks.

Rather than shut the whole blog down, I’m going to take this opportunity to do some experimenting.

This means that posting will get increasingly more irregular, but I’m hoping that it will change in a bit of a good way. Rather than focus on the daily tech issues of the day, I’m hoping that the content will change to reflect larger issues, perhaps more thoughtful issues around new media, and perhaps things that aren’t covered by Techmeme, TechCrunch, and any one of the larger new media blogs.

This might mean a change in content format, in favour of things like reviews or interviews, or giant lists. Or it might mean rambling essays in the rant-y kind of style that I enjoy.

So where do you come in?

Well, what I also want to do is put a spotlight on bloggers who need more exposure — bloggers who have a unique perspective and unique experiences in new media.

Yes, I am looking for guest bloggers.

If you happen to know of any — or, happen to *be* one — and you have a story to tell or a post to write, leave a quick message below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

To everyone who has been following my blog for a while?
A big “Thank You” for reading.

Through this period of “transition”, I’m hoping that the content will still be as fresh, engaging and as interesting as it ever was (if you found that it was), while hoping to introduce you all to some newer voices, some newer ideas and stories.

Cheers
Tony Hung.
p.s. so yes, if you want to be one of those voices leave a comment and we’ll try and work something out. :)

• being on-call a lot at the hospital, and being called in. “Home call” — faugh!
• contending with a summer cold that my son gave me (and my wife, and my wife’s mother, and my wife’s mother’s mother. Thanks Ian!
• … and a presentation that I had to give yesterday that took much, *MUCH* longer to prepare than I had anticipated [it had to do with the association between proton-pump inhibitors -- like nexium, for example -- and hip fractures if you must know]

At any rate, thanks to everyone for sticking around, and a few other miscellaneous thank-you’s that are outstanding, namely:

• Patrick Gavin at Text-Link-Ads who continues to sponsor this blog
• Curtis Sund over at FindInternetTV — who incidentally figured out the CSS hiccup that was causing DJI’s theme to not display correctly in MSIE7 (but not 6, or 5, or Safari, or FF or anything else)
• Chris over at GeekFitters.com. Who is Chris, you might ask? Well, he’s the guy behind GeekFitters, which is an online concern which outfits geeks in t-shirts [translation: its a t-shirt company].

Anyway, being a bit of a geek requiring outfitting, Chris sent me a few shirts to try out earlier this month. One day soon I’ll post a picture of me in one of them. Nevertheless, the service was fast, friendly, and the t-shirts themselves are actually quite nice. Specifically, the “Vintage cut” is actually a nice fitted t-shirt. Its not loose and billowy, and the cotton has a nice feel. Its a bit of a lighter weight, so its ideal for summer. Of course, the graphic on the front is a bit cheeky — and I chose the one that said “I put the STUD in STUDY”. Which would be apropos given that my royal college exams will be coming up in the new year, and I will in fact be studying like a banshee (if banshees were to study real hard). If I had any complaints it would be to give the actual site and shopping cart a bit of a make over — it looks a bit long in the tooth, shall we say.

In other news around people in blogging that I may have missed there are two things of note:

1. Jason Kaneshiro has joined the BlogHerald, joining a stellar cast of bloggers already. Who’s Jason? You might know him already from his own blog Webomatica. Jason will be dishing thoughts and things he’s learned from blogging a la “Blogging 101″ every Wednesday. Jason’s been on my radar for a long time, so check it out! (and his blog, if you’re not already doing so!)

2. Aiden Aidan Henry of Mapping the Web got a regular gig over at Read/Write Web. Aiden Aidan is another blogger — and Canadian, naturally — that I’ve been keeping my eye on, at his own blog Mapping The Web, which has a nice web2.0 focus. Congratulations to Aiden Aidan, as I understand he fought tooth and nail through 4 rounds of interviews, applications, and actual, real, physical combat to secure his position. That Richard MacManus throws one helluva round-house, I hear. :)

Anyway, I should be back to blogging over the next week — thanks everyone for their patience.

The winner of the Spock.com beta invite was David Bisset of DavidBisset.com. Congratulations, man!

Spock.com, for those still paying attention, is a search engine focused on finding people. I still plan to write my own opinions about it, but suffice it to say, its kind of interesting to claim your own name.

Well, actually, I did run another small test, just for the hell of it.

You may have heard that Vator.TV launched the other day? Its a new media concern that allows companies to post video clips of their elevator pitches in hopes of securing VC funding. Webware.com, a CNet production that reviews web applications and web2.0 companies, did a small review on Vator.TV — but also featured a clip from Vator.TV as an example.

As I was watching the clip, I thought — “Man, this guy [who's doing the pitch] has a great voice. No wonder he’s the chief of communications. I wonder if he’s ever done any professional work before … ? ” So, of course I powered up Google to find out a little more about this dude, named Mil Arcega.

After all — how many “Mil Arcega’s” could there be?

Probably not as many as “Tony Hung” (almost 2 million entries), right?

Anyway, it turns out that Mr. Arcega was a former reporter and anchor for a local Washington news station, and affiliate of NBC. That, and apparently he likes Chinese food. That’s what I was able to figure out from a quick Google search. Also, by actually going to the Vator website, there are a few other tidbits, like the fact that he was the “Business Correspondent for the English Language Services at Voice of America.”

So, you might wonder … how did Spock.com fare?

Well, it showed up a Mil Arcega’s MySpace page. This one. That’s it. And to be honest, I hope that’s not *really* Mil Arcega, Chief of Communications, and award-winning reporter … because he doesn’t really look like someone you’d give VC funding to. Maybe a couple bucks for a coffee, but that’s it.

If you’re interested in a Spock invitation of your own, I might be able to hornswaggle a few extra invites in the future. Leave your name and comment below, and considered yourself pre-entered into a future Spock.com contest!