Almost a year ago, the excellent India Ink was tagged for excellence in blogging, an award she rebranded as the Charles Montgomery Burns Award. Mr. Burns is the owner of the Springfield nuclear power plant on the Simpsons. Well, India’s blog is hot.

This is the exclusive award better known as the “excellent blogger award” — search those words and you’ll get more than a hundred million results. What a lot of excellence!

India (the only other India I know is the protagonist of Evan Connell’s Mrs. Bridge) characterizes the award as “a pay-it-forward linky thing.” The idea is that when you receive a Burns you pass it on to ten other blogs. This was one of the blogs she tagged, and I’m finally passing it along.

I don’t have a blogroll (instead I do link roundups must weeks), so this silly thing is my chance to highlight ten excellent blogs. I’ve tried not to duplicate blogs that already received the award. Of course many more could be named, but these are some I’d like to mention today.

1 Pieces and Bits. My sister’s fun, genuine, and unpretentious blog. A recurring topic is kayaking in Florida. (I would also mention my daughters’ blogs but I’m not sure they want the attention.)

2 The Weary Traveler. My colleague Jason Jose’s blog about travels in Europe. Jason has traveled to Europe every year for the past 13 years, and he has the photos to show for it.

3 Cheznamastenancy. This blog’s tagline is “eclectic ramblings from a long time San Franciscan,” but it’s actually a pretty focused blog directed to the subjects of San Francisco and its fine arts scene. I made Nancy’s acquaintance through my Frisco Vista blog.

4 Eightface.com. At Eightface Dave Kellam focuses mainly on design and typography. He kindly donated to this site the plugin near the top of the left sidebar that links to today’s entry on my book of days (this day in history). He would be a good person to be in touch with if you need a book designed.

5 Robert Peake. Robert Peake’s blog is devoted to poetry and poetics. It always thoughtful, informed by his capacious reading.

6 Madam Mayo. C.M. Mayo writes with wit and insight on creative writing, translation, and Mexican literature. She is probably disappointed that the Obamas chose a Portuguese water dog instead of a pug.

7 Pink Tentacle. I don’t know any of the people behind Pink Tentacle, a blog that pertains to my Asian art and culture site, 7 Junipers. Pink Tentacles always seems to come up with the most deliciously bizarre items related to Japanese art and culture.

8,9 Inner Diablog and La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo. I know these two through my site devoted to Mesoamerica and the Maya world, Buried Mirror. Inner Diablog is a completely original and personal blog that often references Antigua Guatemala. That’s where Rudy Girón does his extraordinary daily documenting of one of the world’s most fascinating cities.

10 Italy is falling. This blog is maintained by Ico, who wrote the Stray Random Quotes WordPress plugin that I use here (bottom of left sidebar and at my Museum of Folly site. Like, I suppose, most people, I dropped in to his site to pick up the plugin and read about it and kvech when something didn’t work and then split once that mission was accomplished. Only later did I realize what I’d been missing, as I came to appreciate the blog for its ruminations on Italy, gardening, literature, and more.

BTW, I didn’t care too much for the award logo (below) — it doesn’t say “excellence” to me (is it supposed to be ironic?) — so I whipped up one of my own, using the typefaces Amalia and Clan (above). Take your pick.

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More posts on community.

• Mailbag: Bellemeade Books and Jonathan Williams
• Mailbag: Electric Literature 2 (and party)
• Will Powers (1946-2009) and "The Printer's Error"
• 100 Best Curator and Museum Blogs; Or, Link-building Made Easy
• Why are you here?
• Amazon's appalling policy
• Writers reading Right Reading
• Rethinking twitter
• Mutanabbi Street reading
• Should publishing be open?

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Charles Montgomery Burns Blogging Award

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Tips for writers who blog

from the New Yorker, February 11th & 18th, 2008

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Mr. and Mrs. Right Reading at home

I’m not sure exactly why, since most of my photos that I put online go on Flickr. Still, I’ll probably post a photo here every week or two.

This site, BTW, started as an adjunct to the Mercury House site that first went up in December 1994. Back then my personal corner was sort of resumelike, and some vestiges of that still linger on. One of my goals for this year is to clean, prune, update, and organize a lot of the older material.

The photo page links from the html home page here:

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A photoblog

Then there’s Technorati. Its ascension into the heights of the blogosphere was the result of its being the first search engine or aggregator for blogs. (Over the first two decades of the internet all that has been required for massive success has been one simple idea, but surely at some point more sophisticated thinking will be necessary.) What is Technorati good for now?

No, really — I can’t figure it out. Google Blog Search does a better job of searching blogs for content. (WordPress 2.3 has abandoned Technorati and now uses Google Blog Search to track backlinks.) Sites like MyBlogLog and BUMPzee are better at the social aspect of blogging.

I have a bunch of feeds designed to find new material on various topics, but the Technorati feeds have become entirely redundant and are not finding material that I can’t find more quickly by other means. I think I am going to have to delete all the Technorati feeds. Redundancy creates inefficiency and with a day job, several blogs, and free-lance work on the side I can’t afford to be any more inefficient than I naturally am.

So tell me, what is the use of Technorati?

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Has Technorati jumped the shark?

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Community building

Whenever I come across a new blog I read the latest postings and, if I like those, I add the site to my news reader. I always intend to go back and browse the archived postings but I rarely do so. Figuring that a lot of visitors to my site also never make it too far into the archives, I decided to pull together a selection of postings from my archives and create a free e-book.

It’s a handsome book in a narrow vertical format (a format often used in travel publishing). The Bodoni face seems a good choice for the subject. My only regret is that there are not more images, which would surely bring value and add appeal, considering the subject.

The immediacy of blogging may cause us to forget that the process is also a way of preserving content and building on it. I think this project is an excellent example of utilizing and repurposing the results of sustained, focused blogging.

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An e-book from blog archives

Outright spam is straightforward to deal with, but here and elsewhere I am increasingly receiving marginal, opportunistic comments that, while they may appear to contribute faintly, are mainly intended to benefit the commenter through their links and anchor text. I have struggled with how to respond to comments that fall into this gray area.

I don’t believe in the default WordPress nofollow function that is intended to prevent search engines from following links in comments. If you contribute you should receive benefit, and I am sticking with that position. But maintaining site quality is paramount — otherwise the time I devote to my websites would not be well spent and the visitor experience would be diluted.

Because I am posting them now does not mean that I did not also reserve these rights previously. I will be going back and cleaning up comments on older posts.

A link to the following statement will appear on all my blog pages (it’s in the left sidebar on this site).

• Comment moderation: Comments on this blog are moderated. I reserve the right to edit or remove any post or element of a post for any reason. That said, I do try to be as hands off as possible.
• Do follow: Links on this site have the nofollow function turned off. If people are contributing to the site’s content they should benefit from its links. (You can show appreciation by linking back or bookmarking.)
• No keywords in author names: Either a real name or a handle is okay, but if I think you are using an author name simply to target keywords, I may edit or delete your name, website link, or comment.
• External linking: Relevant links are encouraged, but comments and links intended mainly for site promotion risk being edited or deleted.
• Detente: If I suspect your posts of being spammy or mainly self-promoting I might remove your links. If you keep posting and stay on topic I am likely to reconsider and allow the links.
• Civility: This site supports free speech, but it also values civility. Abusive or offensive comments may be edited or removed.
• Range of opinion: Comments reflect the viewpoints of those commenting and do not necessarily express my opinions or the views of the website.
• E-mail: I answer most nonspam e-mail, often promptly but sometimes more slowly. Occasionally I might e-mail someone who leaves a comment.
• Privacy: I do not share user information.

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Policy statement

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Extended Live Archives and WordPress 2.3

In terms of both style and content, mainstream journalists and academics tend to be repelled by ‘edgy’ writing like this because they have been trained to move towards and assume control of the centre of the topic they are addressing.

Similarly, many people in the PR industry are perhaps more naturally inclined to the mass market side of communications rather than the long tail. They’d rather be a hub than a node, which is why as a group they tend to waste so much time on Facebook and why, in spite of an apparent knack for the construction of narratives, they have thus far met with mixed success in the new medium.

It’s a highly competitive workplace and the bestseller mentality, wanting to be one, and to work with others in that same category, may be preventing PRs from fully grasping the transformations in their industry.

Blogador’s follow-up post is here.

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Controlled chaos and blog journalism

Let’s try it out. The link (“archives”) is in the group of tightly bunched links near the top of the left sidebar, between the right reading tagline and the drop-down categories menu. (The page links are separated with bold superscript periods.) So what were we doing last October? First, I see I was still mixing in the offbeat stuff that I’ve since moved to Frozen Culture (I should probably 301 redirect some of this); more recently I’ve been keeping this blog more focused on print and electronic publishing issues. I also see that I posted my piece on copyediting Shakespeare, which was picked up by the journal Rosebud; on a more serious note, I put up my Mercury House introduction to Henry Handel Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom; and I started my whimsical left face/right face project.

Download the plugin from Sons of Skadi and follow the installation instructions at 24Fighting Chickens.

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Extended Live Archives | One year ago

• Capitola Kite Classic
• San Francisco skyline from Alameda / Oakland ferry
• Old De Young
• San Francisco Bay Blues
• Pan American Unity
• Pelli Clarke Pelli / Hines: “a sense of lightheartedness”
• Stuck in second
• Resignation
• Green flight
• Litquake
• The Belgum Sanitarium
• P. Joseph Potocki
• Lady from Shanghai
• Free Days at San Francisco Bay Area museums
• Rummy at Stanford
• Golden Gate Bridge in the fog
• Death of the Hippie
• City of riches
• Summer of Love

At Buried Mirror

• View of temple 1, Tikal, from east plaza
• Maya stela
• The Black Christ of Esquipulas
• The motmot
• More Carnival in Merida
• The Maya vote
• Carnival in Merida
• El Bus
• Platanos en mole
• Pink Floyd and Chichen Itza
• Mas trafico con BlogRush?
• Easter carpets in Antigua
• Felipe
• Lycaste skinneri var. alba
• The Art of Political Murder
• Runoff
• Guatemala election polls
• The Garifuna Journey
• Photography of Ivan Castro
• Rigoberto Menchu campaigning in Poptun

At Frozen Culture

• How to think like a dog
• The oldest blogger
• Cursor kite
• Are the Pythons Anti-Semitic?
• Swiss cow bingo
• For the headlines file
• Any Road
• Elvis Potter
• Capuccino coast

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End-of-month companion sites roundup

It does require putting in some time, however. It might be worth hiring and assistant or a professional consultant. M. J. Rose at Buzz, Balls, and Hype offers sensible suggestions. As in any kind of book work, market research is the most important element. The author embarking on such a tour must spend some time researching blogs for sympathetic content and getting to know their authors. Then: “Offer to come and guest blog. Or to do a Q&A. Or to give an except.” That’s sound advice.

MORE LINKS
The origins of virtual book tours
New York Times on virtual book tours

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Blog tours for book marketing

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Labor Day

Meanwhile, here’s a review of August. Rightreading is command central, so this roundup gets posted on this site but not on the others (I don’t list what I’ve done here). I try to do this on the last weekend of the month.

FRISCO VISTA (San Francisciana)

• BART plans
• Toll Drive
• San Francisco cable car lines, 1893
• SF Trek
• My Bad
• Lily and snake
• Another record for San Francisco
• Bay Nature
• If you’re going to San Francisco, it’s still okay to wear flowers in your hair …
• Encyclopedia of San Francisco
• Fisher Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio
• Testing the limits
• Transbay Terminal designs
• Free San Francisco WiFi Spots
• Sixth Street
• “The Cancer of the San Francisco Chronicle”
• A scholar’s rock by Zhan Wang
• “The worst-programmed major museum in America”
• What is it?
• Coyote pup killed in park

BURIED MIRROR (el mundo Maya)

• Bloody build-up to Guatemala elections continues
• Palo volador, Chichicastenango
• Felipe Carrillo Puerto
• Hot waterfall
• Manioc
• Tulum and Dean
• Vanilla or Chocolate?
• The fountain at La Merced, Antigua, Guatemala
• Casita in Mixco, Guatemala
• Kites
• National Geographic’s Maya Feature
• Revolution in Guatemala, 1944
• Deadly elections in Guatemala
• Zacatenango
• Antigua Door Knockers

FROZEN CULTURE (Freeform)

• The student’s dilemma
• Glass Squid
• What a performer
• Mission statement generator
• Inspirational (?) Star Trek Posters
• Photos Taken with and without Flash
• The classics
• Beware the beheaded rattlesnake
• Bush sees new threat
• Buffalo vs. lions
• What American Accent Do You Have?
• Barbie Cello
• Dog Bites Man
• Fatal error

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End of month companion sites round-up

FRISCO VISTA

• Virgin Airlines
• Tu Lan
• Wildlife uprising, part 3
• Secret List of Buildings You Can’t Photograph
• Golden Gate Bridge, Sunset
• Wildlife uprising continues in the city
• Newsreel of 1906 San Francisco earthquake
• San Francisco Magic
• The Josh Kornbluth Show
• Taxi fare finder
• Cleaning the Bay

BURIED MIRROR

• Gibson Girl
• Stela B, Copan
• Are we done now?
• Borges at Uxmal
• Apocalypse 2012
• The Railroad All-Stars

FROZEN CULTURE

• Muslims and Evangelical Christians “have significant similarities”
• Good dog!
• What do you think — Did these people inhale?
• Thriller
• Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan
• Bao Xishun marraige picture
• “Gay Sweaters” were McCain’s downfall
• Dept. of Weird Headlines
• You Can’t Take the High Horse and Then Claim the Low Road
• Dept. of Unintended Irony
• Department of images that tell the entire story
• You have delighted us long enough
• Xensen Simpson

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Companion Sites Roundup

But there are plenty topics that I write on that don’t fit all that well. And these include some of the most popular pages on the site, such as ones on Chinese jades, Taoism, the Yi jing (I Ching), East Asian printing, travel-related writing and photography, and so on. And then there’s also all the weird and goofy crap (like this, this, this, or this) that amuses some people and annoys others.

For all the sobrante – the left-0ver and miscellaneous stuff — there’s Frozen Coagulated Culture. FCC was my first blog — well, my second after a LJ one that is now used mainly for personal and family stuff. The name comes from my first book-length translation, a technical translation done for a big international corporation back when I was a student, called Frozen Coagulated Cultures in Wine, Cheese, and Sauerkraut Production. You’ve probably read it.

I’ve had that blog hosted on blogger. But blogger still lacks the functionality and flexibility of WordPress. You can’t use widgets or trackbacks, for example. So I’ve moved FCC over here to be served up via WordPress. I’ve decided to start mostly fresh, so I haven’t ported over the old material. No doubt posts will pile up quickly. A blank canvas (and a new theme), woot!

UPDATE: How to send a trackback with blogger (using third party sortware or services).

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Splinters Revisited

Print media, however, has mostly failed to keep up with the social media revolution. Books reviews in papers have been dropping fast, but those that remain still by and large do things the old way: an editor assigns a book to a reviewer who produces a review to a certain specified length, which is then run without comment, except for the occasional letter to the editor in a subsequent week. Reviewers take pride in not being influenced by the opinions of others (in theory; in practice most recycle the publisher’s press release). But if print book reviewing is to survive it will have to figure out ways to engage a community in a more participatory product.

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Book Reviews in Blogs and Newspapers

Swiss Miss called my attention to this excellent blog called “Strange Maps.” Many of the maps aren’t really strange, but almost all are interesting. Shown is Jack Kerouac’s map of a cross-country trip that served as fodder for On the Road.

Compare Kerouac’s map to this one, the Bellman’s ocean map from Lewis Carroll‘s “The Hunting of the Sanrk.”

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Strange Maps

People, this is getting really old. And really stupid. Just turn the damn thing off already.

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