Tuesday, February 20, 2007

February 20, 2007

After months of obstinance, I've finally decided to convert the Journal into a blog. Blogs have been a constant topic in professional development trainings I have attended. I understand why, but I don't think they are going to revolutionize media. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is why my family bought a Beta instead of a VHS. It just feels kinda like the late '90s Web boom. There's a great documentary about that heady time called "Startup.com." Two longtime friends in their 20s start a Web site that allows people to pay all government-related fees (parking tickets, taxes, licenses, etc.) online. They're handed a a lot of start-up money by venture capitalists. The business goes bust, and soon enough they've turned on each other with all of the accompanying greed, malice and vitriol you could imagine. I hope that isn't the end result of this blog, but I guess I'll have no one to blame but myself. I'm not sure yet how to deal with the Journal archives in relation to the blog.

Part of the allure of the blog is the enhanced search ranking possibility. Sadly,
campchicago.net has always been buried on the 20th page of a search--even for strings like "moraine view state recreation area." The name of the blog is "driftless area" after the hilly, unglaciated portions of Illinois and Wisconsin. My second and third choices were Possible Watershed and Squirrel Rampage, respectively.

2 comments:

Saskia said...

Thanks, Bob! You rock. I love the blog title.

Steve said...

Since I mostly use my blogs to communicate with friends and family, I liken blogs less to the faddish internet start-ups of the 90s than to e-mail, which really did revolutionalize communication. The one great advantage a blog like this one has to its website predecessor is that it encourages feedback in comment spaces like this one.