Successful Blog

Bloggy Life Question 28 — The Prince and the Pauper in the Blogosphere?

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From the A to the Z List

For those who come looking for a short, thoughtful read, a blogging life discussion, or a way to gradually ease back into the week. I offer this bloggy life hypothetical question. . . .


You went to school with a blogger who happens to be on the A-List. Everyone knows his name. Even mention it and folks get excited to hear that you know him.

Last night you had dinner with your A-Lister friend. He said that he was tired of the constant complaining about A-Listers not linking to people. He tried to make a case that A-Listers blog the same as everyone else. You tried to explain all sides of the issue without taking a stand.

Your A-Lister friend called today to say that he was about to make a free blog. He planned to put up a few posts on his usual subjects and comment where he usually does under an unknown name to see whether people treat him differently.

How do you respond?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Bloggy Life Question 27 — Can You Spare a Ten?
Bloggy Life Question 26 — Do You Wish to Comment?
Bloggy Life Question 25 — Would You Blog as the Opposite Sex?
Bloggy Life Question 24 — Hello, Blogger, I’m Her Parent!

Sunday Comics . . . 30 Links You Won’t Want to Miss

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I've been thinking . . .
I woke up this morning with a touch of nostalgia for the days when I was a child. I grew up about 85 miles from Chicago in a town of 20,000 people. Our hometown paper came out six days a week. It had about 12 full-sized pages or maybe 20. I don’t remember.

But I remember the Sunday papers. We’d get the big ones from Chicago — The Tribune and The Sun-Times. They had a Sunday Comics Section as big as our whole newspaper and they were in color. Sunday comics were so cool!

I’d lay the papers out on the living room floor and read them while my mom cooked Sunday lunch. The only things that made it even better were Flash Gordon on TV and the invention of Silly Putty.

So in honor of Sunday Funnies and great memories I offer you these links. Enjoy!

  1. Amazing Spiderman
  2. Annie
  3. Barney Google and Snuffy Smith
  4. Beetle Bailey
  5. BC
  6. Alley Oop
  7. Being Five
  8. Blondie
  9. Calvin and Hobbes
  10. Cathy
  11. Dog Eat Doug
  12. WulffmorgenHaler
  13. Bassist Wanted
  14. Soup — The Comic Strip
  15. Dick Tracy
  16. Dilbert
  17. Doonesbury
  18. Garfield
  19. Gaping Void
  20. Life on Pause
  21. Nancy
  22. Snoopy
  23. Tank McNamara
  24. Tumbleweeds
  25. What the Duck
  26. Ziggy
  27. Old Comic Strips Listing at As Our World Turns
  28. Stu’s Comic Strip Connection — a listing of syndicated comic strips.
  29. Create your own comic strips at Commix.
  30. Comic Strip Generator

Imagine the hundreds of blogging ideas you could find here!

Liz's Signature

Congratulations b5media on the New Website!

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Would You Look at That!

b5media 2006

The old b5media digs was getting a little tight. We’re 150 blogs strong with 14 channels and 2 million unique visitors every month. That many people, that many places meant it was time to get roomier — so that folks wouldn’t bump into each other and fall down.

Open the door to the next level — many rooms, plenty of spaces and new places to get folks where they’re going with the latest architecture. . . . simply elegant, well executed, and well, just excellent and just right!

The new b5media home page and the new blog — click to see them larger.

b5media.com home page b5media.com new blog

Congratulations to b5media — to the founders: Jeremy, Darren, Duncan, and Shai. Kudos and wow to Ben Bleikamp, the man who designed the classy website and to Aaron Brazell, the technology architect who brought it life.

Go on over. Do some exploring. Be sure to check out the elegant comment box Ben designed just for you. While you’re there, leave a word for Ben and Aaron — a toast or congratulations. Here’s a link to get you to the new b5media website.

I’ll wait here. I’m still nervous about getting lost in space again.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article,
Two Blogs in One: A Good Hack Gone Bad

Net Neutrality 11-05-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Mudwrestling At The Goldberg’s

. . . The issue seems pretty simple. Videotron wants to preserve the gatekeeper status they enjoy as a cable television provider. That’s why they oppose net neutrality. In a world where many competitive alternatives exist, that might be tolerable. In our world — the world where your choices are cable or the incumbent telco — it shouldn’t even be on the table.

Do we, as consumers and producers of content, want a return to the end-to-end integrated model of the entertainment networks, or do we want choice? There’s enough crap on the tube. Let’s vote for choice and see what happens.

Want to know what you can do?
MA Bell Monopoly Versus the Free Internet — Tell the FCC Net Neutrality Is Not Negotiable

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Two Blogs in One: A Good Hack Gone Bad

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Two Blogs in One

On Tuesday Open Comment Nights while the comments are flying at one or more per second, Joe says Successful-Blog has a time warp. Come and see for yourself. He seems to be onto something. Yesterday I thought Is there a space warp too? It sure felt that way.

The problem started Thursday night — folks could see their own comments, but couldn’t see mine. Had I fallen out of my blog into a black hole? No, a server move met my way of finding unique problems to solve.

Not everyone could say they had two, two, two blogs in one.

Thank you, Jeremy for telling me what was going on. I didn’t know you were moving house, yet you stopped to find out, so I would know.

Thank you, HART for the screen shot of what you saw — it helped solve the problem with fewer words.

What I Saw What You Saw that HART Sent

A Good Hack Gone Bad

The smartest technology architect from b5media, who had plenty to do, Aaron Brazell saw that I was still on the old server blog. He found a forgotten hack in my computer. It was made months back to fix an issue I hardly remember.

Helpful hacks can be problems waiting to happen. This was a case of a good hack gone bad.

We deleted that hack. Suddenly, I was back on the blog inside your computer.
Thank you, thank you, Aaron. I so appreciate every minute you spent.

Gosh it’s great to be back. Yeah I know, most folks say I’m lost in space anyway. So what’s new?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

PS. Please don’t ask why I never thought to check one of the other 8 million computers in our house. I was lost in space. I didn’t know where I was.

Of course, when I finally told my husband what was up, that was the first thing he did. Go figure.

When Did AT&T Become Not For Profit? Was I Absent that Day?

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Tom Evslin at Fractals of Change has been following Mr. Whitacre of AT&T more closely than I have. Tom’s detailed account of the merger with BellSouth is quite clearly focused. I’ve only pulled highlights. Read his analysis at at&t Blames Commercial Entities for FCC Delay.

Mr. Evslin’s report begins with the fact that the FCC has again delayed voting on AT&T’s merger/acquisition with/of BellSouth. He includes these lines from the NY Times in which AT&T is quoted as saying:

“While we regret that the merger has been delayed by the self-interest of commercial entities and their litany of unreasonable demands, we look forward to the F.C.C.’s approval so that we can get about the business of providing the overwhelming benefits the merger represents to consumers, to the economy and to the public interest.”

. . . we regret self-interest of commercial entities?

Excuse me? Are you implying you’re not part of that group? When did AT&T become not for profit? Was I absent that day? If you’re going to imply something untrue to me, please have the decency to be convincing.

Dear Mr. Whitacre, CEO of AT&T, first you said you will charge me and my destination to use “your pipes.” Now your company says that commercial entities are in the way of your “overwhelming benefits to the public interest.”

Tom Evslin says,

It’s the hypocrisy that’s annoying. Much more important is that this acquisition is significantly anti-competitive and is NOT in the public interest, far from it.

I have to agree with him.

Refusing emergency wireless voicemail access is only one in the list of things NOT “in the public interest” AT&T and BellSouth have done to date. MA Bell is back. Do read on. I missed most of this until Tom Evslin put it in one place.
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