Jesse knows...

...what a sinus infection feels like. This pretty picture is me! It neglects the painful teeth though. And the cough I'm now sprouting thanks to the post nasal runoff.

It's wet enough around Georgia now to grow sinus infections from the earth, on little vines, waiting for noses to happen by and inhale them like jasmine.

Everything changes even while we're sick. The net stands still less and less often these days. I think that when we die we'll be summed up and remembered and forgotten before our bodies touch the earth. We will be vintage in 5 years or less. The age of an online antique reduced from 100 years to ten.

All the while, infectious agents will hold fast to the insides of sinuses everywhere.

Mama PR, Don't Let Your Good Bloggers Get Away.

Especially right now.

It's an odd thing. Besides my finger injury, which is now better thanks to all the funnies and encouragement you left me in comments, I'm sick. I know the routine by now, after all of these years. I get worked up over something incredibly important that's being discussed online, I try to make a difference, I realize I can't, and then I get a sinus infection.

Works like clockwork.

Does this mean that blogging makes me sick? Well, not blogging per se, but the twisting of blogspace by powerful non-participators who have not a clue what it means to be here--that makes me sick. The command-and-control oriented who don't know what it means to talk as people who happen to work in companies large and small, or for themselves, in the U.S., and globally, but as people first. Blog posers who use out terms like 'dialogue' and 'conversation' but don't understand what having one feels like. These folks make me spend my co-pay, and that gets me cranky.

The first step for the blogging clueless: Admit your are powerless.

Would it be so difficult, for example, for a company like Ketchum to admit that they've missed the blog boat but are correcting that by, say, encouraging their employees to blog, listening to what bloggers within the organization already know--striking up conversations (not defense arguments) with people outside the organization? To understand that the "PR Blogosphere" is not the some place out in the ether separate from the rest of the blogworld? To cop to the fact that it isn't just PR bloggers who think they've behaved stupidly?

To admit they have a lot to learn from others with commitment and caring and years of living in the blogosphere? And that they're ready to engage that expertise?

That some of these experts are the very ones they have systematically ignored within their own organization for years on this very topic?

To understand that blogging is about lowering yourself to the level of your market--to take off your PR Holy See robes and listen up? Not by "putting a blog up," necessarily, but by at least being interested?

And to help their clients understand this?

I could go on and on and cover old ground, talk about the conversations I had with my colleagues on blogging at a time when eKetchum barely had its "e". Back when I had Chris Locke, Gonzo-Marketing fresh, ready to talk with them about how they could leap forward in a largely undefined space by participating.

That's when Anthony Parcero and I were blogging from the inside, and even after I left, and blogging became "bigger," Anthony remained a participating-if-semi-secret-ketchum voice encouraging Ketchum, and PR as a whole, into the blogosphere--for the most part, without any sign that Ketchum was listening to its own clued employee.

Compare Ketchum's recent defense messaging with what Anthony has written in the past--someone who, as a technologist, is not at the top of the hierarchical PR food chain. From what I can tell as an outside observer over the last few years, Anthony kept his ketchum connection mostly behind the scenes. The reasons for that are his to write about or not. But his voice did not go unnoticed. Maybe even now noticed by Ketchum, as they scramble to catch up.

Compare and see if any of Ketchum's recent press sounds vaguely familiar to what one of its past blogging employees has been saying for a long time:

• Anthony on What is a Weblog
• Anthony on Interactive PR Strategies
• Anthony's Q&A

Kind of similar to the blogsong Ketchum is singing now. Except, Anthony's not there singing it anymore. It'll be interesting to see if Ketchum can learn to carry a tune. Won't it?

The fact is this: Ketchum needs to catch up quick and stop using the positioning that "blogging isn't always the right strategy" to explain its lack of presence in this space over the last five years.

Ketchum may need to take a page from the Edelman playbook and engage the services of a real live blogger (like David is for Edelman), to play devil's advocate and put a hand up when it's time to call bullshit bullshit.

It's a lot less messy than letting the blogosphere play that role for you.

Now excuse me while I go expel the toxins from my system.

typing without pointer...

With all the football i played as a kid, with all the horses I fell off of, with all the times my brother stuffed my clothes full of pillows and beat me to a pulp, with all the stairs I fell down, I must have never sprained anything. I know this because no appendage has caused me such discomfort in all of my God-given injuries.

This pointer finger thing (see below; linking is too much work) is not so good and it's swelling and I can't move it so good. It's not broken I'm pretty sure because I can bend it and the pain is down low, near the part where the knuckle bends, but I don't WANT to bend it because it hurts. Four Advil Bad. Jeremy told me to take six. He just wants me off Global PR Week because I jabber during conference calls. I wish I could link--i'll come back in tomorrow and link. Right now my injured finger wants to stay stiff and sort of curled, like a claw finger, and george said no no make sure you keep moving it but put ice on it, don't let it stiffen up, but now it's 1:24 and i would kind of like to sleep.

I am learning how to send my middle finger in to do my pointer finger's job on the keyboard. He can reach all the way to "t" and "b" now, but it slows me down.

This means my fuck-you finger has to work harder and reach farther, but hey, he's never been shy before.

Traffic Jam

Damn, that traffic jam...how I hate to be late...hurts my motor to go so slow...time i get home my supper be cold...i say damn, that traffffiiiic jam. (name that artist).

So, I'm driving through more cobb county and north fulton FLOOD WATERS today, doing I don't know what with my steering wheel, maybe it was when I called Tom, maybe not, and then BAM somehow I had jammed my left hand pointer finger into the steering wheel in a way that made no sense, and the bottom line is, I've never had a finger issue like this.

Luckily, I can curl it into a typing position. However, DAMN it hurts and I can't move it side to side, as in wagging, as in baaaaad Ketchum, and I'd link over to Constantin but really this finger dilemma is making things quite difficult and i feel like halley suitt with her cocksyx or whatever it's called bruised from falling down, except i wasn't skating or anything, i was simply steering a car.

what on earth is up with that.

When We Are Hypocrites

I've been writing a lot about Technorati and its recent identity crisis ("I'm a portal! No, I'm a search engine! No, I'm a portal! No, a search engine! No, I'm a mess!") lately. I just don't understand how an essential tool in a specific space -- i.e., blogging -- can become virtually unusable after a round of publicized enhancements, supposedly tested out on beta users like me. I don't understand how Technorati's full-scale search failure over the last several weeks can go unexplained.

And don't get me wrong. I love(d) Technorati. I use(d) it for clients and for my own blog travels. I paid the money. I joined the party. I expect more.

And I'm getting a little miffed.

Because when it's someone like Dell that fails to deliver, more brick than click, the bloggerati jump up and down and demand satisfaction. They call in the legit media and launch a feeding frenzy.

But when it's me and the folks who comment here about Technorati's weeks of non-usability, you hear a lot of wind. Is that because we're supposed to all be friends? Not bite the hand that ranks us? Because Dave Sifry's busier launching Live 8 sites and sending bloggers backstage, and announcing top 100s, than he is making sure that we can search beyond the new Technorati wasted-space homepage?

Is it okay to take Dell to the matt while making sure one of our own is immune?

No it's not.

So what is it? Why no word from on high? Is it the price point difference between a Dell Notebook and a Technorati Watchlist? Is it a loyalty on the part of the Top 100 that Technorati has appointed that buys silence?

I have tried to search more than a dozen times in the past month. I have gotten an error message every time I've tried to go beyond first-page results. I've blogged about it. I've included screen clips. When I'm lucky enough to arrive at an actual page without an error message, it is taking upwards of a minute or more. Today, I didn't even make it to the first page results. Instead I got the old error message again.

You see, I don't like the big colorful icons and links to things I don't care about taking up space and costing extended loading time. I'm not a teen, I'm not a tween, and I'm not a twenty-something, so get over all the FUN you're trying to make me have, Technorati. Just cut it out and fix your product.

I don't know about you folks, but I'd like a few answers. I'm not sure who Technorati's PR folks are. Maybe I should snoop around.

And maybe Dell should stop making computers and start making blog search engines. No portals. No search engines. No portals.... They'd have it a whole lot easier when they screw up.

Priestcasting

AKMA's On! He posted the mp3 of his sermon and a comprehensive 'sermon report' from St. Lukes. I've been waiting for four years to go to AKMA's church. Amazing. Stunning. I have met the man as a friend and a blogger, and now I've heard him at work, executing that about which he is most passionate.

Now, if we can get some video behind it, and bring other denominations on board -- to podcasting, to videocasting, to places like Odeo and Kaneva -- if we can bring Baptists and Born Agains, Friends and Lutherans, Unity and Unversalists, then virtual congregations can do a kind of inter-denominational shape shifting, breaking down church walls and exclusive doctrines to attend services without the barriers of geography and ritual.

In secret or in the open we can commune.

God willing, a new "flatter religion" is waiting for us there.

quotes of the day

Shelley: I'm not writing news; I'm telling a story.

Dave Winer: Now when they fuck us, we have a way of giving them a black mark. A little more metadata, and it'll start showing up on their bottom line.

Denise Howell: It's only taken me 40 years to stumble upon my epitaph, but this morning one spoke to me with perfect clarity: "She never took enough pictures."

Ray Sweatman: ...to where the morning doesn’t break but unfolds softly in a bloom

Broken Fema

Well sweet Mary, I want to get the good federal benefits and paid-for-PPO insurance that come with the tough job of wrting FEMA's communications. I could bring much clarity ot the process. I am even proficient in translating FEMA's instructions into Internetese: U R SOL, LOL!

Be well, Tom, and all-a you Floridians and neighboring southeasters.

SOLD to the highest bidder

Just really not keeping up. There are things I am doing that are taking way too much time, and things that I should be doing that aren't getting done. And it's time to clean out the garage and put every little not old thing (and every old vintage thing) on ebay, because it's time.

You know, when I think about ebay, I think back to when I first started selling--how long ago that was. The brink of dot-comunism. Back when life was good and no one was paying over-the-limit fees.

So today I signed in for the first time since I don't know when. I found that I owed $1.83 for some long forgotten transaction, and paypaled myself into good guy status forthwith.

Then I looked up how long I've been a member of that most wonderful "we can always get grocery money by selling the [fill-in-the-blank] on ebay, honey" community.

I could hardly believe it when I read: February 20, 1999.

That's 42 years in Internet time.

And of course, that got me reminiscing... about the good old days... about some of my finest ebay moments:

1) Shopping the dollar stores in 2000 and re-selling $1 items at a profit -- especially that particular little bear figurine for $15.75 -- and did you know that people with zebra collections are willing to pay nearly $8.00 for a $1 zebra pin?

2) A particular financially bad winter in 2002 when George and I found an interesting piece of photographic equipment in -- well near -- a dumpster, took it home and sold it on ebay for $150. We then spent the next Saturday afternoon doing dumpster drive-bys up and down highway 41. [Hint--plazas with new construction...]

3) The $75 I got for one of my old Barbies, which I managed to scrub off the ink I used to trace her body parts with a mixture of Melaleuca Oil and Irish Spring.

4) Selling the little pocket books I found in my friend's attic when we were 9 -- that her dad let me keep -- for $150.

5) Bringing in $400/month back in 2001 selling anything of value in our house until there was nothing of value left.

Then rebuying all that stuff.

The early ebay was very different from the ebay today. The entire 'automation' thing hit after I had been selling for a while, and power sellers really took over the marketplace. Buyers became discerning. Sellers became aggressive. Paypal became my bank. Everything changed at once. By the end of 2002, every original dollar store item had been sold four times over, and ebay buyers just plain stopped bidding for the thrill of it.

But I'm here hoping. Hoping that when I dig out our new good stuff from the garage, that ebay will come through. Hoping that supply chain and inventory efficiencies have not been completely achieved at ebay, leaving me room for my average six-day lag getting to the post office with my shipments.

Ebay 2.0

We'll see what it's got to offer.

Not fishing for compliments...

...because you guys have been supportive enough.

Today I start my second year of not smoking. The fourth of July was the one-year anniversary of my quit date. On the third of July, I grabbed an American Spirit and was going to have a puff until it was effectively lurched away from me.

Soon the feeling was as gone as it ever gets.

As any seasoned wanabee-smoker/ex-smoker knows, you never fail to justify the potential benefits of a future puff: "Well, it's an anniversary--of COURSE I can have a puff to celebrate the fact that I don't do it anymore!"

There are some readers to whom that statement makes perfect sense. God bless us.

So, you're wondering still, and I can tell you that naw. I didn't do it.

I still think about it almost every day.

Part of what has kept me quit is blogging. It's not accountability, per se, but something like that. Accountability by default. Or by laziness. In those moments where addiction comes knocking and I have every good reason in the world to have a smoke, I also think about this blogplace. The mind game goes something like this:

Man, I'll have to post about it, and Frank will tell me it's okay--one slip up does not a failure make; and Shelley will tell me to keep up the good fight, and RB will say RAH! You didn't drop Acid! Plus, I just told Don Park to keep at it and now I'm going to have one. McD will offer me condolences and encouragement, and Dean might stop by comments to say 'don't stop stopping'. Plus, if Winer did it, I should be able to do it. How lame am I that a year has passed and I would even think about writing an "I smoked" post. Sure, I'll call it: "So sue me, I puffed one." I can see the post now, talking all about how good it felt going down, blah blah, the same as it ever was.... Oh the hell with it. It isn't worth the effort it takes to post about it.

...and by then, the craving has dulled. I shake my head and move on with my day.

So thanks ya'll. You did it.

Tsk Tsk Tsk

I've gotten into that very bad habit again, that cheating on my blog habit: reading books.

You know, those sqare things with pages that you turn? No typing required?

Freaky, I know.

Recent Reads: My sister's keeper; Ruby Fruit Jungle; Not Tonight Honey, Wait Until I'm a Size 6; and just beginning: Broken for You.

A million good reasons...

there are a million good reasons for me not to be out in the sun all day, from practical reasons to health reasons, but when night time falls and I'm home with jenna tucked in and the ceiling fan is blowing just so, and I'm cool from the pool and baked hot from the sun, I am so relaxed, just smoked and toasted relaxed, just warmed and smoothed with lotion relaxed. No drug in the world, no drink in the world, makes me feel as warm, as free, as bone hot tired.

My favorite thing is my little floatable raft, and lying face up as it carries me across the water, with my extra good sunglasses that let me watch the clouds paint the sky, overlap and touch, brush by, and swirl brighter white.

Information at the Speed of Syndication

I can't keep up.

Even with bloglines I can't keep up. Reading blogs is now like whiplash for me: gnomedex over here--no! look over here, Yahoo's got some social network beta, NO! look over here, technorati's got new features but they don't work, no! look over here, Yahoo's mindset is in beta! NO! Look over here, Weinberger's in Amsterdam with Edleman! NO! Look over here, gmail! HEY look here--Ketchum's still not blogging! NO! Wait! Over here! Scoble says a whole new way to comment is coming! NO! Look over here, blogads wants you, HEY, over here lady, what about grokster?

If you're like me, you're tired of trying to shove as many blog sandwiches down your cake hole as possible at any given sitting.

That's why I'd like to introduce the NEWEST beta--designed to change the way you consume blogs!

It's called Blog(between-the)Lines(SM), a new aggregator/reader that serves up the three most important words from across all of the blogs you subscribe to each day! You can get your Blog(between-the)Lines WordPack 2005 delivered to you via email, via text message, or stamped on your head with a branding iron underneath the Free Download Code Number, 666.

That's EVERY day. And TWICE on Tuesday!

We make you more efficient--so you can subscribe to tens of thousands of blogs and read the naughty bits in no time flat. YOU'RE on the golf course before 10 because we've done the heavy lifting for you, aggregating the most important text nuggets from the blogosphere and tossing them back at you the way you want them.

Here's a sample of a Blog(between-the)Lines Email Message summarizing Wednesday's Activity:

Weinberger Amsterdam Halley Tailbone Doc Google Scoble Scoble Scoble Web 2.0 Technorati Yahoo Google Technorati beta beta beta Winer thanks RSS gnomedex canter beta beta beta.

SEE! You're up to date in 10 seconds flat.

Why waste time with all of those useless articles of speech and prepositions. MEANINGLESS! And flowery adjectives, or hyperactive adverbs? FORGET THEM.

With the new Blog(between-the)Lines reader, Bloggers CAN be Choosers(TM).

You get the choicest morsels in the blogworld: NOUNS NOUNS NOUNS. Direct Objects. Subjects. That's it.

(Disclaimer: An occasional gerund or two may slip in--we're working on that.)

And all of this is yours for only $29.95. (per minute)

Paypal me today and I'll get started on it.

Technorotty

Susan Kitchens has a new term to describe the new Technorati feature that keeps you from looking yourself up: Bruised Ego Surfing.

It has a certain ring to it, non?

HELLO TECHNORATI--Is anyone home?
I NEED YOU TODAY!!!
REAL ENTERPRISES ARE INTERESTED.

T-shirts:

"I beta tested technorati and all I got was this damn squid."

Give Me My Name Back.

Halley's got an interesting post at misbehaving on maiden names and who gets what name in a divorce, and who can call herself what, and what an ex-husband should and shouldn't be able to ask his ex-wife to do in terms of his last name.

As evidence of the complicated times in which we live, check out the comments, and see if you can follow the bouncing ball on marriages, remarriages, taking names, not taking names, and oh yes, kids.

I added my two cents in comments about being both a wife with her husband's domain name, and a kid growing up with a mom whose last name was different from mine.

But the issue Halley presented was really about a guy friend who had gotten divorced and was thinking about asking his ex to take her maiden name back rather than keeping his.

I actually know a couple where the husband asked for this in the divorce decree. Guys, it's something to think about. If you don't have kids, and you want your name back, put it in writing because some folks will tell you it's a control issue for you to want your divorce to be complete, in name and all.

I don't think so. I think you're right to want your name back. I think most women who take their husband's names, who have no children with the man and end up in divorce court, ought to not fight the guy if he asks for his name back. It's like a family hierloom from his side of the family. If it was his when he entered into the marriage, and there are no children who could beneft from his great-great grandpa's pocket watch, YOU GIVE THE THING BACK.

I think if you have kids, you do your children a disservice by asking their mom to become the person in name she was before she had them. No no don't do that. It fucks with kids' minds.

But if you don't have kids, tell her you want your name back. Or better yet, put it in the divorce agreement because her girlfriends are going to tell her to hang on to it, along with that pocket watch from your great-great-grandfather.

;-)

Dear Technorati

When I sent my beta review mail to you, Technorati, I asked for a way to have the main screen just a tiny bit customizable so that I can at least CLOSE the boxes (and keep it that way if I'm signed in) that I dont give a flying crap about. In other words, if you're going to now clutter the homepage with things that most of us don't care about, the least you can do is give us a way to get rid of that crap.

HERE are just some of the things I don't care about that you are sticking in my face when all I'm trying to do is a vanity search:

Top Searches This Hour
1. Itunes
2. Google Earth
3. Itunes 4.9
4. Tom Cruise
5. Google
6. Grokster
7. Bush
8. Iraq
9. Podcast
10. Necc

Special Event
There are 9,303 posts from 2,525 people about Live 8 right now.

Join the conversation

I just wanted to tell you, I don't want to join the conversation, not about Live 8, Tom Cruise, or Iraq. I want to use your tool to do what it used to do best: SEARCH BLOGS.

Why, oh why, when I search on my blog's URL do you keep giving me error message after error message. I just got it again.

Technorati, my most valued tool, has been useless to me for searching on information for my clients and myself for two days.


ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://technorati.com/search/allied.blogspot.com

The following error was encountered:

Zero Sized Reply
Squid did not receive any data for this request.

Your cache administrator is noc@technorati.com.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Generated Wed, 29 Jun 2005 03:46:41 GMT by www.technorati.com (squid/2.5.STABLE7)


Noc, my cache administrator, consider this your notification.

I would appreciate it if you would turn your tool back into a search tool first, and give me some options on HOW I WANT to experience the world live web--which is really cute by the way. I do like that.

However, my idea of fun and work might be different from yours.

For example, you might enjoy the nice layout and images on the first page of search results you return for me.

I, on the other hand, WANT TO SEE MORE THAN FOUR SEARCH RESULTS WITHOUT HAVING TO CLICK AND WAIT MINUTES ONLY TO GET ANOTHER ERROR MESSAGE.

You say you will show all of my most recent posts if I click: Show all 437 links from 333 sources » but you lie.

You just throw another error message in my face when I click it.

Technorati, I have always loved you. I know I have used you in the past, but I'm trying to tell you something here that will make both of our lives better...

...Don't forget what you are, Technorati. Lesser companies have failed to survive that single mistake.

-------------------
BONUS FEATURE

THINGS I DON'T CARE ABOUT ON MY TECHNORATI RESULTS PAGE NUMBER 1:

Most Popular
News: New Ideas in Global Health Get a $437 Million Assist - New York Times »
Movies: Batman Begins (2005) »
Books: The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection »
More in Popular »

MORE THINGS I DON'T CARE ABOUT:

Sponsored Link Matches
Google Ads

And EVEN MORE THINGS I DON'T CARE ABOUT:

There are9,303blog posts about Live 8 right now.

So, in case I haven't made myself clear.....

THE THING I CARE MOST ABOUT ON YOUR SITE:

Love,
jeneane

Still looking for that hybrid acronym...

That explains what I do working full time from home, business owner from home, and mom from home, by myself when george is on the road mom. The SAHM (stay at home moms) and the WM (working moms) have endless debates on forums and in chats on who's making the tougher sacrifice. Well I do what both sets do, and not only do I want the world to know that the kid part is hardest, but I also want my own stinking acronym.

SAHWAHM - stay at home, work at home mom.
SAHWFHM - stay at home, work from home mom.

The above two choices suck because you can't make words out of them.

WMSAM - (william sam?) working mom stay at home mom.
VCKTWM - vomit cleaning keyboard typing working mom. [Yidish I think]

PBJLHOCCM - peanut butter jelly lunchtime home mom on conference call. [Also resembles the sound made when a child vomits.]

NSWOSAHM - never stop working or staying at home mom

TWS - trick work sally

c'mon bunky--give me an acronym!

You Go, Guy.

I'm always up for a good rant--and Tom Murphy delivers on PR Opinions.

Blogs will not perform a slash-and-burn on the PR toolkit. Instead blogs are an important additional element. Do we think that blogs will turn an unnewsworthy press release into something that's newsworthy? No. Will blogs turn badly written content into well written content? No

.
Forget press releases; I'm just waiting for blogs to replace the throw-up can we've been using the last few days.

Meta Meta Redundancy and SAHWMs

I haven't been blogging because I've been writing about blogging offline, which leaves me more than a little spent and feeling as though I've already blogged, forgetting of course that a post is not a post unless it lands in a blog.

Mr. O'Connor Clarke, I hope, will not mind me singing his praises as THE GUY you want to pay to put on his strategy thinking cap and edit your most important 20 pages or so. What a pleasure having his expertise and assistance on this recent white paper, coming soon to a blog near you. Michael's got one of those brains that can shoehorn just the right concept in between two strings of thought to pull together a completely new (and oh-so-much-more meaningful) idea.

Yowsa!

In other news, I have decided that I am of the new breed. I am a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM) and a Working Mom (WM) which makes me a Stay At Home Working Mom: SAHWM.

Let's hear it for the SAHWMs! (pronounced saw-ems, which is what we fantisize doing to both clients and children on our worst days).

We aren't large in numbers, but we have the distinction of being the worst dressed women at the grocery store, at odd hours, if we leave the house at all.

I haven't left the house since Saturday--I mean not even out to the mailbox, because jenna started throwing up in the middle of the night Saturday and got blindsided by strep over the weekend. She appears to be on the mend on the meds.

While I was working on a TON of work this weekend, I had to write about 13 pages cold out of my brain, and I did this lying flat on my bed with Jenna off to the right, the small garbage can in between for me to heft under her chin while I patted her head and said nice things as she hurled and gagged and puked. Rinse out can. Time for suppository. Yes I'm sorry too. Has to be. Insert. Wash hands. Tuck in kid. Turn to Disney. Sound down. Back to the keyboard. Time for meds. Bribe and coax. Yell and threaten. Give meds. Tuck kid in. Grab can. Pat and coo. Wipe vomit. Rinse can. Wash hands. Back to keyboard.

I did this for 12 hours straight, though the throwing up subsided after the second suppository. Thank heaven for little girls and small favors.

This is what I do for a living. This is what I live doing.

I only wish I could double bill for nursing.

I love my kid so much.

Dear Feature Creepers

Two of my favorite blogging tools, Technorati and Blogger, have done me some favors I didn't ask for this week. Again. Blogger is infamous for this. It's like this: You don't like donuts but that's really neither here nor there because you usually don't run across donuts in your morning travels. Then one day you wake up to find that someone's put a donut on your face while you were asleep.

That's what using Blogger is like when they decide to improve things.

I don't like the "I'm to lame to live" new image upload feature. Yes, it allows even the most helpless blogger upload an image, as long as they pay for blogger pro, and at the same time, forces the bloggers who had been happy uploading them into their long-standing subdirectory and layng them out as they wish, into yet another pat process.

On to Technorati. I was part of the beta review bunch and sent a rather thoughtful email on my various likes and dislikes. I never got a response, so I don't know if anyone read it. But it was nice to be invited to participate and I love checking out betas.

I thought I made the point in my feedback that the most important thing technorati does--it's a search engine after all--is to provide search results, not all these fluffy 'current books' and 'what watchlists do I have today' everywhere I look.

So, when I do a search on my own URL as a blogger, you know, it would seem logical to give me those results -- not JUST FOUR of them, but maybe 10-20 at a time (or however many at a time we want to see on a page--let me decide) WITHOUT HAVING TO CLICK A LINK TO GET ALL FOUR MILLION LINKS -- A LINK THAT TIMES OUT BEFORE IT EVER GIVES ME THE REST OF THE RESULTS I'M LOOKING FOR.



By the way, who's Squid?