As we start another year, it’s time for me to take a look back at what struck a chord with my readers.

2008 was very good to this blog, and I have to take a moment to thank you, my readers, for an amazing year of growth!  Unique visitors grew by almost 600%, and total page views was darn close to 700%!  I hoped for a year of growth, but I could have never dreamed readership would be up that much!  Don’t get me wrong, this blog is still a long ways away from the major leagues… a long, long, LONG way… but it is still a nice amount of growth.

So, without further ado, the 10 entries that helped me see this growth.

Who Is The Best James Bond? - Who knew people were this interested in who made the best James Bond? Published in September, this post brought in more page views in three days than this blog got total in the year of 2007.  It is still getting viewed every day, some days only 1 or 2 views, but it is still looked at on a constant basis.  Quite surprising, I must say.

Anonymous Takes On Scientology -This post came in second with a very healthy showing (the Bond post has about 4 times the page views), and it was also one that took me by surprise in how it took off.  It didn’t hurt that members of Anonymous put links to it all over the Web, and with that in mind, I am sure I am now on the Scientology watch list.  -waves-  Hail, Xenu!

The Music Industry Vs Net Neutrality -This post was from January of last year, and was my biggest success to date at the time.  Net Neutrality is always a touchy subject, and the music industry seemingly want to wage war on it is not sitting well with anyone, and understandably so.

How To Watch Internet Videos On Your TV -This is a very popular post, and one on plan on revisiting soon as a lot has changed since I published this last February.  This was also part of the inspiration for the launching of StarterTech.com.

Olympic Beach Volleyball Uniforms -This was my second article about my anger over how women’s beach volleyball athletes were treated by the medie at this past Summer Olympics.  The first article, Olympic Beach Volleyball, was only a few hundred views behind this one, but I am counting them as one entry on this list.

I will admit, from analyzing the search traffic on these two posts, they are found for all the wrong reasons, and that being mainly people looking for pictures of the athletes asses.  Somehow I doubt they read the accompanying articles that say that is what I’m talking against…

Who Is The Best Doctor Who - Okay, I am not too proud to admit this was an obvious attempt to copy the success of the James Bond post, but apparently I went a little too obscure with the subject matter.  It obviously still did well as a post as it made this list.

JJ Abrams Unveils The New Enterprise From Star Trek - This is another one that surprised me with how well it did.  I guess people really, really wanted to see how the new Enterprise looked!

Dancing With The Stars Band - My dislike for the Dancing With The Stars band, and it’s conductor, Harold Wheeler, has turned this in to my most controversial post ever. I have received numerous nasty comments and emails about me and my opinion of these… “musicians”… and all I can say is… Keep it up! I always need more laughs in my life!

New The Dark Knight Trailer Hints At Joker Greatness - The massive upswing I saw in traffic to this post in October prompted me to write a post entitled “Just Put Down The Clown Makeup!” as I could see it was mainly being found by people looking for pictures of the Joker.  Sure enough, it was all about people trying to dress as him for Halloween.

Weighty Issues For Cheryl Burke of Dancing With The Stars -Poor Cheryl Burke took a real pounding for her non-existent weight issues on the fall season of Dancing With The Stars.  It was a whole lot of hype over a woman gaining a meager 5 lbs, and I personally found that the fact anyone was even calling her “fat” just silly.

Honroable Mentions - Somehow my review of a Combichrist/K.M.F.D.M. concert from 2006 was technically in my top 10 viewed posts… I have no clue why.  Also, my post on Armando Montelongo also made it into the top ten, but I like to keep this list about posts published in 2008.

So, there you have it, the top 10 posts of the year for this blog.  Just like last year, this list tells me entertainment related posts do well, but I will probably continue to talk about just whatever is randomly on my mind at any given time.  I will say that the increased readership has made me a lot more self conscience about my posts, and what I tend to pick as the subjects, but at the end of the day, this is still just a personal blog… filled with a lot of ranting.

Thank you all so very much for making 2008 such a great year here at SeanPAune.com, and I only hope I can keep you all as interested in 2009!

Well, with the craziness of the holidays, and my father’s recent knee surgery, I totally missed out on the group writing project, Internet Goals For 2009.  I only even thought to look in to this when I saw it had been a year since I wrote Blogging Goals For 2008, and I figure why not go ahead and join in the fun, even if I am late to the party.

The Goals For 2008

Daily Page Views - My goal was to increase my page views by 50%, and I am pleased to report that my average page views are up around 200% a day over the same time last year!  Again, we aren’t talking huge numbers, but quite a respectable gain.

Google Pagerank - I was a PR4, and I was aiming to be a PR5 by this time.  Well, didn’t make that one, I’m afraid.

RSS Subscribers - I had 30 RSS subscribers and I hoped to be at 54 by the end of December 2008.  Well, depending on how insane FeedBurner feels on any given day, I have seen reports as high as 90.

Social Bookmarking - I wanted to increase the amount of social bookmarking back to my site.  Well, Digg still alludes me to no end, but I have had quite a successful year on StumbleUpon, leading to my biggest post ever, Who Is The Best James Bond.  The numbers for that post were astronomical.

Finding my niche -Ha… yeah… right.  I think my niche is, “Sean is a cranky old man, and he complains… a lot.”

Improving my personal skills -I wanted to write better posts, and I think I have improved them some this year, but not quite as much as I would like.

New design -Well, the designer I was working with at the time of that post completely flaked out on me, and I ended up going with Blog Design Studio.  You are looking at the results on my blog currently, and I am quite happy with them.

Internet Goals For 2009 - Blogging

Measurable

Comments -The number of comments is very sporadic, I would love to see some more sustained conversation going on.

Daily Page Views - Again, I am hoping to increase my average over this year, and though I am still seeing slight growth, it won’t be easy.  I will again shoot for a 50% increase, and hope to do this through writing more general appeal posts that result in better search engine traffic.

Daily Revenue - Something clicked this year, and I am actually making a tiny bit of money with this blog now.  It’s not bucketloads, but enough to cover my hosting costs each month.  I don’t ever plan on seeing this blog being a steady source of income, but if I could increase the daily revenue by even 50%, I would be quite happy.

RSS Subscribers - As of right now, FeedBurner is showing 64 subscribers (I swear that service is insane, yesterday it showed 77), so I will be cautious and aim for a total of 120 subscribers by this time next year.  You can help me reach this goal by just going ahead and subscribe to SeanPAune.com right now!

Social Bookmarking - Just once I would like to see this blog make the front page of Digg.  I know people debate if it is really worth it, but seeing as I have made it there multiple times with other blogging work, I would like to see my own blog make it just once.

Immeasurable

Writing Skills - Still trying to improve those skills.

Internet Goals For 2009 - Other

Scattercast - Scattercast, my weekly podcast, currently averages about 10 listeners a week.  I am going to be wild and shoot for the moon here and say I’d like to see an average of 100 a week by this time next year.  I plan to do this by:

• Get more serious about booking guests
• Focusing the content on more broadly popular topics
• Increase the number of subscribers (again, you can help by subscribing via iTunes)

Twitter - I currently have 1,504 followers on Twitter, I would love to break through 2,000.  You can follow me on Twitter if you like, and help me reach my goal!

Conclusion

2009 will be a year of refinement for me.  Just trying to improve what I’ve already got out there, and making it the best I can.

Apparently you just can’t keep me away from making podcasting and videos these days.

Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins, whom I worked with on the Machable Conversations video show, has launched a new tech news videocast named TENtech.   Besides Mr. Hopkins, you can expect to see weekly appearances by people like Art Lindsey, Steven Hodson of WinExtra, Mona, Saha, Paisano, Julia Roy, Alana Taylor and, yes, me.  I’ll be appearing each Wednesday and talking about the type of news stories I do on StarterTech.  So besides my personal series of podcasts, Scattercast, you will now get a second dose of me a week, but with video!

I’ve embedded the first episode below for you to see (yes, I am in this one), and you’ll be able to find the latest episode each day to the right of this post in that little window.  Make sure to give us feedback on the show, and do remember the one in this post is our very first episode, so it may be a little rough around the edges (especially my portion).

I think it’s time for a small change in how blogs give credit to one another for where stories come from.

Back in May 2007, I wrote an article about “The most insane trackback ever?“, and how a picture of some storage under stairs had made it’s way from blog to blog without any acknowledgement given to the original site that had posted it.  Here we are a year and a half later, and I have found another situation that seems to follow in the same… vein.  (you’ll get the joke in a moment)

The victim this time is a antique vampire hunter’s kit that sold recently at an auction for $14,850.  I first read the story at The Inquisitr yesterday, it got my interest, and I decided to go to the source they listed to read more about it.  SlipperyBrick was next, and they didn’t have much more info, so I decided to go to their source in hopes of more information.  PopTherapy was next and… yeah, still had to go to their source for more info.  Neatorama failed me also.  FINALLY!  Antiques and the Arts Online seems to be the source!  Not only are the source, but they ran the story five days before The Inquisitr.

So, it took four jumps for me to get back to the source of the image and the story, and that is where I don’t think this is fair.  Now, mind you, I am not specifically saying the four sites involved are bad sites, or that they have done something wrong; this is a common practice on the Web, and that is what I am speaking to.  While I feel credit should be given to the site that brought the story to your attention, I feel it is only right you should also try to give credit to the original also.  So to give credit, you would do something like:

[via SlipperyBrick and Antiques and the Arts Online]

Why is this important?  Well, I think credit should be given to those who deserve it, and I also think that it is only fair from a search engine optimization standpoint.  By giving credit only to someone that is three steps removed, you are giving them the search engine credit, but none to the people who did the real work.

Again, I am not slamming the blogs involved in this bread crumb trail, this happens all over the web, and it has become what we tolerate in this business, but I think it’s time for this to end, and credit should be given properly.  Do I think people will change their policies?  Doubtful, but I think it is worth at least some thought, especially on a niche story like this.    Considering some of the complaints I’ve seen over linking policies, it surprises me that no one else has brught this up yet.

Who’s with me?  Just do a couple clicks on stories like this, find the original source, give them credit when and where possible.

Today marks the second annual Blog Action Day.  While last year was about how to live a bit greener, this year’s theme is “poverty”.

When I first heard what the theme was, I struggled with it.  While I have lived at a lower income (think coupon clipping), I certainly have never been at the poverty level.  How could I possibly wrap my brain around something this complex and come up with a post that would do such a weighty subject the justice it deserves?  I went to my mother and asked her advice, and she said four words to me that turned on the light bulb for me: “Think about your grandfather.”

Dr. Lloyd Antonel, D.O. was one of your old time doctors.  Sure he could have made a lot of money over his career, but he was a doctor for the sake of being a doctor.  Long before I was born he was doing things that may sound insane now, but they proved how he was really there to help people.  One of the stories about him that is from my mother’s childhood is when someone in their neighborhood got injured and they immediately rushed the person to my grandfather not knowing what else to do.  He threw everything off the kitchen table and performed surgery right there in front of his children.  Today he would probably be hit with malpractice for not operating in a sterile environment, but back then he did what he had to do.

My grandfather’s legacy of helping those who were less fortunate than himself goes way back, and he was the type of doctor that if you couldn’t pay him, you couldn’t pay him, or he would take payment in whatever you felt like you could afford.  He was once paid in chickens.  Another time he was paid in the form of a spider monkey… no, I am not kidding.  (The monkey hated my grandfather and would climb the fig tree in front of his office and throw figs at him… no one ever knew why as my grandfather had never hurt the monkey in any way)

As a child he had lived through hard times and he knew what it was like to go without food.  As he made his way through his career, and had made some money… and not more animals, he would donate food to shelters.  If he needed 10 pounds of onions he would buy 100 and donate the extra 90 to a soup kitchen.  One of his favorite places to donate to was the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix.  When he decided to “retire” from private practice he was out of work a full hour before St. Vincents snapped him to get their clinic into shape.

While this was a paid position he worked tirelessly and far more than they paid him for to help those he could.  He did get the clinic in shape, and as he had been a pharamicist before he was a doctor, he figured out how to build them a full pharmacy with donations of sample medications from other doctors around the city.  He worked on this for approximately 8 years before he simply couldn’t do it any more.

What does this have to do with poverty?  Well, it shows you that it isn’t always about money, but offering the talents and services you have in your personal arsenal.  Are you a doctor?  Volunteer at a clinic.  A lawyer?  There are numerous centers for free legal aid.  Plumber?  Help out a soup kitchen with their plumbing needs or those of the people who come in.  There is an endless amount of things any help center could use, and don’t think you won’t get something out of it.  My grandfather thrived in doing this, and sometimes he brought home as much food as he took to them due to them getting more food than they could handle.  (I swear that man’s fridge was always stocked to the top with convenience store sandwiches.)

There is no doubt that finances are tight for many Americans, but have you ever thought about just how much your time and talents are worth to those with less than you?

October 15th will agaib be Blog Action Day, and as opposed to last year being about how to be more green with your life, this year will be focusing on the subject of poverty.

While I’m not sure that this year’s subject has the potential for quite as much impact.  Don’t get me wrong, I think poverty is an important issue, but it is harder to get people interested in a subject that does not directly impact their well being and every day life.  Most people will immediately think the only difference they can make is by making donations, but hopefully the thousands of posts that will come out that day will make some people think about the differences they can make.

If you blog, give some thought to signing up to participate, and if you are just a reader, expect to see a lot of posts about this subject that day.

BlogDay is all about honoring those blogs we love reading, but maybe don’t get enough attention. Well, I heard about this the day after it was over, but I figured since it was a holiday, oh well, I’d do it anyway.

Unfortunately, working two full time jobs does not leave me much time for recreational blog reading, but I’ll still give it a shot to maybe pass on some notice to those bloggers that actually earn some of my precious time.

Darth Mojo - A special effects artist that works on Battlestar Galactica and has interesting insights into what gets cut, what inspires the looks of ships, his slavish devotion to bridging the original series aesthetics to the new one and just all things sci fi geeky.

Garfield Minus Garfield - Not a traditional blog, but my day is a little sadder any time there isn’t a new post of this oddly addictive comic strip which is missing its title character.

Little Lost Robot - I stumbled across this blog during the 2006 winter Olympics as I was looking something up that happened at the games.  JL is an Emmy winning television videographer who is… well, let’s be blunt… a huge geek, but that’s what makes him so much fun.  Since he has a full video editing bay at his disposal, he also makes kickass videos we all just wish we could.

Rizzn’s Personal Blog - Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins and I work together at Mashable, and through our habit of bonding over slamming our heads against the wall anytime a new bitchmeme pops up, we’ve become buddies.  I also really enjoy watching when he annoys the entire blogosphere with something that seems fairly innocent on the surface… I sit back with popcorn and watch.

Valleywag - There is something oddly addictive about reading about the gossipy happenings of the Web 2.0 scene.

What are your fave blogs?

Remember when I mentioned I was writing my Daniel Scocco over at Daily Blog Tips is having a group writing project where he’s asking the question of “What Is A Blog?“  Seeing as I am never one to pass on someone else giving me an idea for a post, of course I’m going to participate.

I’ve thought up until recently that blogs were pretty much any news source on the web, but that has drastically changed for me over the past year.  While I write on this site, and have always considered it a blog, when I started blogging professionally in July of 2007, I realized that the only similarities they shared was that they are both published on the Internet.

While the style I write with at Mashable has bled somewhat into my personal blog, it is still a drastically different format and subject matter.  So my definition of a “blog” has shifted to more of a publishing platform than a style of writing.  Just as movies have different genres, so do blogs: news, personal, informational and on and on.

I would say at this point that any site that conveys information in a chronological style format pretty much qualifies as a blog.  Daniel stated things like comments and RSS feed would fall in his definition, but I have seen to many sites that meet the criteria of informational and chronological, and then miss one of the other two, that I’m not going to be quite as strict.

So how do you define it?  Leave a comment, or if you have a blog of your own, join in the project!

Heard of Provigil?  Neither had I until this morning, but apparently it’s all the rage in silicon valley amongst start up entrepreneurs.

This came to my attention today when TechCrunch wrote up that people are loving it because you can stay up for 20 hours, repress your appetite and it’s non-habit forming.  Is it just me, or does this sound like the sales pitch for speed?  True this isn’t supposed to be as bad for you as methamphetamine, but it sure sounds similar to me.

According to Valleywag, the drug is actually for the treatment of sleeping disorders, but leave it to people to find a way to abuse it.  The TechCrunch article says it is making the rounds in Silicon Valley as a way for the heads of new tech starts ups to stay up and get more done.  I’m sorry, everyone can say it’s non-habit forming all day long, but if you are abusing it to stay up and do work, there is some sort of problem going on here.

I used to be one of those people who thought I had to go without sleep to get a ton done, but now that I do get sleep, though still not enough, I find I get more done.  I work two full-time jobs, exercise, write two personal blog projects daily, spend time with my dogs, get in a little video game playing at the end of the night, chat with my friends as I work, watch television… and all without the use of any drug outside of coffee.  I don’t credit coffee as I started drinking it when I was about 12-years-old and it has next to no effect on me now.

This all has to do with learning time management, which I certainly don’t claim to be an expert of, but that is what it boils down to.  Sure there is more I want to do with my time, but I have also been a much healthier person since I started making sure I didn’t push myself quite as much a few years ago.  I also think there is a certain badge of honor amongst people to say, “Well, I haven’t slept in two days!”, which all it says to me is you’re a moron.  I’ve done it, it accomplished nothing, take the nap and manage your time better.

As for taking drungs, “non-habit forming” or not, I don’t recommend it and find it incredibely stupid.  It’s not worth ricking your health for a couple extra hours of work.

I have returned from SummerMash Seattle, and in the words of Karen Hartline of Mashable… “We rocked it out.”

For those not sure what a SummerMash is, it is a tour of seven cities Mashable is holding networking events in, where our sponsors can set up to meet people, and Mashable employees can talk with fans and startups.  So, thanks to Sun Startup Essentials program, Yoono (who is nice enough to be taking pictures of all the attendees who want them done), MySites (hi Rameen!) and SocialMediaCamp.

It was nice for me because I got out of my own town for a weekend, and finally met some other Mashable folks.  I have worked with the company for a year now, and this my first chance to meet Pete Cashmore, the CEO of the company, and the man who hired me.  (For those who are interested, you can click the image for a super-sized version of the image… it’s very exciting)  It was nice to actually get to talk to him in person and go over some of the stuff going on in the background at Mashable, and getting instant feedback on it.  I am hoping to make it to some unknown future event, but we shall see how things work out.

And no slight to Karen Hartline!  She is a fairly new hire at Mashable, and it was nice to meet her also, but Pete won first mention as for the past year he has been the guy with the funny accent (he’s Scottish) that I have talked to a grand total of 3 times on the phone.  Karen is fun, and our event planner, so much credit to her for putting the event together.

Anyway, much fun was had, and it was a delight to finally meet some of the people I work with and write about.  Do make sure to check out Mashable for info on the next six stops in the tour!

I’ve made it to Seattle for Summer Mash Seattle, and no, I can’t see the Space Needle from my room.  (I can see an office building, but everyone seems to assume I can see the Needle)

I was up at 6:15 AM, which for me is unheard of.  The only time I ever see 6:15 is when I’m heading to bed, but see it I did.  The flight wasn’t as awful as I feared as they took pity on me and put me in an exit row, but that’s where it got a bit odd.

As you know, to sit in an exit row, you have to be willing to open the door in case of an emergency.  Well, the person closest to the door was a tiny Asian woman who couldn’t have weighed more than 90 lbs.  The door weighs 49 lbs… you do the math.  The stewaress talked to her about if she was comfortable with this:

Stewardess: The door weights 49 lbs, are you sure you can lift it?

Woman: … yes.

Stewardess:  It’s pretty heavy.

Woman: … yes.

Stewardess: You’re sure you understand your responsabilities?

Woman: … yes.

Stewardess: You’re sure you can lift that door, we can move you, but if you’re sure you can lift it, we’ll leave you.

Woman: … yes.

Stewardess said “Okay”, and walked on.  Um… she didn’t answer the last question correctly!  The guy behind me and I both asked if she was sure the woman understood her.  “Well, she answered ‘yes’.”  Guy behind me and I informed the stewardess that, yes, she answered “yes”, but that proved nothing.  She went on her merry way.  So the guy asks me, “Are you sure you can lift a 49 lbs door while shoving aside a 60 lbs woman?”  Iinform him he should be ready to catch her as I fling her over the seat.

I have nothing against the woman, but it was pretty clear her English wasn’t that good, and the Stewardess should have made sure the woman could actually speak English before deciding a bunch of “yes” answers qualified her for the exit row.  Luckily nothing happened, but I wasn’t really looking forward to flinging a little woman over the seats.

In short, I’m in Seattle, I like it here, though I’m still forming my final opinions.  It seems to be full of contradictions between the old andthe new, the mainstream vs. the non-mainstream.  Very interesting place.

Working on Mashable Conversations with Mark Hopkins has gotten to me, but in a good way.

I have toyed with the idea of adding a weekly podcast/vlog to the site for a very long time now because I like the freedom it gives you to do much more in-depth pieces without having to write enormous pieces.  People are much more likely to listen to you talk for 10 minutes instead of reading a blog post for 10 minutes.

So, with the experience I’ve gained from doing the Mashable show, I am going to launch a weekly podcast of my own next week.  I actually have a tenative arrangement to interview someone from a gadget company for my first episode, so that one is set, but after that, it will be up to you, dear readers, what I talk about.

Do you want to hear me discuss movies?  Technology?  The Web?  Television?  Would you prefer a mixed format?  It could even be something entirely new, but it all depends on you to tell me what you would like to hear, at least in these early stages.

I will be embedding each episode here on the blog, and once the first episode is up, I will also be attemtping to get it added to iTunes for subscriptions.  I also need to come up with a name for it as I don’t think “SeanPAune.com Podcast” or “Sean Rants Abotu Stuff” will work real well.  So, please, leave some comments and let me know what you would like to hear out of this!  I am very excited about finally giving this a go, but I can’t do it would all of you!

Ages ago I talked about the possibility of me working on some video blogs (vlogs), but it ended up never happening until this week.

The original project ended up never happening, but I ended up doing one episode for Mashable’s new video series, Mashable Conversations, a few weeks ago.  After a few false starts, this has now morphed into a daily video cast co-hosted by Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins and myself.

Our first episode went up on July 2nd, and features Mark and I discussing the current blogosphere thoughts on Digg, followed by an interview with guitarist Ryan Newell from the band Sister Hazel about his involvement with iVideoSongs.  Most episodes will follow the format of Mark and I discussing a topic of the day, followed up with an interview with someone from the web 2.0 space.

The second episode is out now where Mark and I discuss domain name changes (well… only Mark was on the video for that part as I messed up my recording) with Rob Johnson of EventVue, and then followed up with a discussion of what his company is about.  (I liked the concept a lot… as I said numerous times on and off cam)

There is a definite learning curve to being on cam when the only person you see is yourself, and you have to ask yourself questions such as, “Have I nodded enough?”,  “Why am I smirking?”, “I shouldn’t have had those beans for lunch…”.  I think I’m getting more comfortable with each recording session, and since I have several more weeks of episodes to do under the current promotion, hopefully it will get better with each one.

I’ve embedded the first episode below for you all to check out, feel free to give me comments and feedback on it!  Just try not to rip me apart…

I hope you all like it, because it’s here to stay for a while!  I’ll be adding little tweaks, and please let me know if you run in to any bugs/problems, but I think we got those all worked out last night.

Just as an amusig aside, I couldn’t believe how different browsers did different things to the page.  As an example, this image of the search bar shows the magnifying glass out of alignment with the rest of the line.  This problem only showed up in Safari, but not in Firefox, Flock, Internet Explorer or Opera.  It has now been fixed, but what an odd little pecurality to show up, and in Safari of all places.

Any way, long story short, I think everything is working now, just let me know if you find anything else we might have missed!

Well, it’s just been settled and I will be attending my first, and possibly only,  Mashable party.  For those of you in the tech world, make sure to mark your calendars for July 12th for Summer Mash Seattle.

Besides myself, boss man Pete Cashmore and Karen Hartline will be in attendance, so no need to worry about just talking to “the list guy” all night with nothing else going on.  “This one time, I wrote a list, and it had over 120 items on it!  Why are you falling asleep?”

When: July 12th, Saturday, 7:00 - 10:00 PM
Where: Showbox SoDo, 1700 1st Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98134
What else?:DJ El Toro, Light Appetizers, Drink Tickets, Door Prizes and more…
RSVP?: Tickets will be released through Eventbrite, 21+ Only
Socialize: Facebook, MySpace, Meetup and Upcoming

I’ve never been horribly comfortable with self-promotion, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do it. With that being said, I would like to introduce you to my newest time consuming project, StarterTech.com.

This is a new blog which, as the tag line implies, tries to simplify technology so that anyone can understand it. The new project was born out of my own mother’s problems with trying to educate my 60-year-old father about technology, and her constant exasperations with him. She finally asked me one day if there was a blog that did nothing but explain various aspects of technology as simply as possible, I said I didn’t think so, and thus StarterTech was born.

Technology is something I have always been passionate about, but I don’t think it is nearly as all inclusive as it could be, and those of us who live with it everyday sometimes forget that people don’t just “know” all of the ins-and-outs of it. I learned several years ago to try to take a much more patient approach to teaching people about technology when I taught an adult education night course in computer basics. I had agreed to do it because a friend asked me, and it really opened my eyes to the fact that -gasp- not every one is computer savvy or a tech geek! After a few false steps, it really gave me a sense of satisfaction to convey my love of tech, and what it can do for us, to people that were just learning, no matter what their age.

I am hoping to do the same with StarterTech, just with a broader audience. And, no, it is not lost on me that people have to know how to use a search engine to find me, but there is not much I can do to teach them before they even find me. This is part of the reason I am trying to write the simplest headlines and phrases I can in the hopes it will aid them in locating the site.

While it is done in a blog format, I am trying to make it so people who go to a search engine and look for an answer to their problem won’t have any trouble finding it. Yes, it is being written in a normal chronological fashion, but it is much more about being a reference site and trying to explain how to do things on the web, as well as explaining basic concepts.

The first article went up on April 12th, so I am still trying to get the body of work up to speed, and right now I am trying to cover very basic ideas that will be referred back to numerous times, such as What Is Social Networking?, How To Pick A Password and even things like Web 101 Guide To Acronyms.

I am actually fairly excited about this project, and I plan on getting guest bloggers in to do articles about fields I don’t understand myself, such as capturing video from your TV. This is very much not just online tech, but all technology.

So, please stop by the site, or sign up for the RSS feed, and join me as I lose my mind as I add yet another project to the 5,000 things I already do! And to all my tech-guru type friends out there who will probably laugh at me, why not drop me an email or comment about guest blogging on a subject near and dear to your heart?

It seems all I am doing this weekend is writing: here, Mashable, an upcoming project I don’t want to discuss yet.

And when I’m not writing actual articles, I’m working on tweaking WordPress templates, reorganizing categories, trying to figure out a pixel issue at another blog, and more.

In short, I am attached to my keyboard more so than usual even by my standards this weekend, and not one bit of it is for “fun”. And all of this is bringing up the laptop debate again, but I have the answer that as soon as Windows XP SP3 comes out this month, I am going with a PC laptop. One of my co-workers at Mashable made an excellent point that I can basically get two PC laptops for the price of one Mac, so think of it as a really odd extended warranty.  All I know is that I need a new laptop ASAP, this one has seen better days, and the “d” key has a mind of its own.

Alas, I must get back to checking over 20,000 articles by hand to find something.  Good times.

RSSDay.org has decreed May 1st Is RSS Awareness Day.

I admit I was late to the Real Simple Syndication (RSS) game, as I said in RSS - Is it for me?, but as I later said in RSS Revisted, I can’t believe how much it speeds up my day now.  Where I used to go around to all my favorite blogs several times a day in hopes that they had updated, I now just click a tab in my browser every so often to check Google Reader.

So, the goal is to get as many blogs as possible to talk about the benefits of RSS on May 1st, and that’s all it takes.  If you run a blog of your own, just plan to to discuss it on that day, and look at it this way, you’ve got one less subject you need to think of for a post!  For those of you who wish to promote the event beforehand with a post, or posting a banner on your site, up through April 30th, you can even win a prize.  It seems like a win-win situation to me!

And while we’re talking about, either click here, or on the huge RSS icon in this post to subscribe to my feed.

The New York Times ran a piece this weekend entitled “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop“, and considering the play it is getting in the blogosphere, it seems to have hit a chord.

Basically the article talks about how bloggers are working in unsustainable circumstances, especially in the technology field, and it is leading to health problems: sleeping disorders, weight issues, possibly two deaths and a heart attack. They also point to the fact that most bloggers are paid by the piece, leading to a drive to produce as much as possible, no matter what the consequences. The article also points to other problems, such as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch gaining 30 pounds since he started his site in 2005.

Essentially the entire article seems to imply we are all big quivering messes of nerves, ready to turn into pools of jelly at any given moment.

I am sure someone at the paper is patting themselves on the backs for the amount of attention this piece is attracting. As Mathew Ingram aptly points out:

Obviously, the Times has learned the first rule of getting attention from blogs: talk about blogs. The Times also seems to have learned the second lesson, which is related to blog “trolling,” namely: associate blogs or blogging with some kind of apocalyptic or otherwise incendiary statement, viz. “Blogging kills.”

I’ve gone back and forth on my feelings about this piece, but I think I am coming to a similar conclusion as Mr. Ingram: We got gamed, and we got gamed hard. The deaths of Russell Shaw, 60, and Marc Orchant, 50, while tragic, certainly do not point to some form of trend in the industry. Even the article aptly states that they can’t be sure if blogging played any factor in their passing, but it certainly did not stop them from casting a shadow over the industry as a whole.

If anything positive came out of this mess of a “news” story, it is that the payment structure of some blogs are taking advantage of their writers. While I still think a union for bloggers is a bad idea, I do think that these low paying blogs will eventually be weeded out as their employees discover there are sites that pay a fair wage, and don’t drive you to insanity. When I started doing this professionally last year, I did run into some crazy pay situations, and I accepted them because I knew I had to build up my body of work. You will, however, notice that I am down to only one paying job now, Mashable, and I am quite happy there.

The New York Times, as well as others, are now enjoying making analogies that blogging has turned into “the digital-era sweatshop”, or that what we do should be called “flogging“, a thinly veiled analogy to the days of slavery. I think both analogies, especially the sweatshop one, are horribly off base. Blogging is bigger than ever with a wealth of opportunities out there for writers, and more appearing each day. Unlike a normal job, you can switch blogs extremely easily, sometimes working for one only a matter of weeks, as I did a few times. This is not some form of indentured servitude.

As for the other accusations the article levels at us (driving ourselves to exhaustion, poor health, etc), I say this life is what you make of it. Yes, I am tired, but anyone who has known me for any length of time can you tell you that I’ve been tired since the day I was born. If anything, blogging has made me get more sleep because I know I have a tighter schedule to keep. I make sure to exercise at least every other day because I am aware I am sitting more, and I also force myself to eat better because of the schedule I keep. If anything, I think blogging has made me more health conscience. And, I’m sorry, but it’s not a bad life: during a slow moment during my shift today, I laid on the floor of my family room, in my pajamas, and let myself get ravaged by three cocker spaniels all trying to lick my face. If that’s what sweatshops are like, I think I want to work in one for the rest of my life.

I think they may have had their heart in the right place, but they went about it all wrong. We are not slaves, we don’t have whips at our backs, and this career is what you make of it. If you are working in poor conditions, more than likely you can change it if you really want to. Perhaps I have a different perspective due to my age (I am the oldest employee at Mashable), but I honestly think we’re working in a pretty exciting industry, and I hope to be doing it for quite some time to come.

Back in December I posted my
Blogging Goals For 2008, and one of them was about finding my niche.

Finding my niche - For too long I have meandered hither and from with my content. The idea that I could write about whatever was on mind my day that was just too enticing, and I gave in to it far too many times. So the time to settle in to just a couple of subjects has probably come, but picking those categories will be the tough part. I think my biggest problem is that everything I am passionate about (movies, music, tech, etc) are already extremely well serviced markets. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t still room for another well focused blog, it’s just a matter of buckling down.

Well, here we are four months on, and I still haven’t done it.  So, I am turning to you, my readers, for help.  What is it that I write about that keeps you coming back?  What don’t you like?  Do you want to see me blogging more about tech?  Movies?  Television?  Things in life that annoy me?

I have complained many times about how it’s sometimes difficult to come up with a subject each day, but I think if I am more focused it will actually be easier.  Instead of looking at sources across each subject, I’ll eliminate at least one step to my writing process, and that will take a lot of stress out of the process.  This doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be the occasional random post, it wouldn’t be me if there wasn’t.

So, dear readers, I ask you to leave comments and tell me WHY you continue to read my blog via comments, email, IM, Twitter, whatever method you choose, it doesn’t matter, just let me know what it is!  Yes, I am really serious about this, I never know why you all come by!