zorca interviews xian: Suzanne Stefanac is writing a book on blogging called Dispatches from Blogistan (catchy title, eh?) for Peachpit / New Riders. Naturally, she’s been blogging the whole process and posting snippets of work in progress and the texts of interviews she’s conducted for the book. I know Suzanne from The Well, where... (Storytelling)

'BlogPopuli' at 'BlogRoots': Speaking of We Blog, the website for the book features a community blog called BlogPopuli where anyone can contribute posts about weblogs either using Movable Type's trackback feature or by filling out a form. The weblog to book to weblog dialectic bears watching.... (Weblog Concepts)

'Pictures of My Cat' Meme: Since the early days of personal home pages, the readymade shorthand for characterizing a lame website is to refer to the owner's cat pictures. Yet the most popular personal-journal type blogs have always revealed the intimate and the mundane. It's the close observation that sucks people in.... (Memes)

Recent Titled Posts (Radio Nav Enhancement): Thanks to a head's up from Lawrence Lee at Userland, I'm testing out a list of titles of recent posts in the navigation column of this page. OK, the first try was ugly. I've now put .recentPostTitle and .recentPostWhen into the style sheet in the template with the same characteristics as... (Weblog Concepts)

'We Blog' Book Out Soon: Also from bOing bOing, the blogosphere braces itself for the much heralded release of We Blog by megnut and matt-a-filter.... (Memes)

Old Grove Street Street: There was a street in Berkeley called Grove. It's name was later changed to Martin Luther King Boulevard. Some time after that the city posted a sign labeling the street "Old Grove Street." Subsequently, people would refer to the street that way, which made B and I joke that it was... (Memes)

On the Agenda: I'm overdue in putting together a tutorial for the Screen Savers' website for my appearance on the show Friday, hoping to finish that tonight. I've been working with Dreamweaver to adapt my blog templates, preparing for my next tutorial. So far I've fiddled with the color scheme at junk mail and... (Book News)

Copyediting for Fun and Profit: A website called knucklerap reported on a collaborative grammatical/editing discussion on Metafilter (although the knucklerap writer mistook one participant in the thread for the owner of the site). Part of the cited discussion: "The problem is that the conjunction 'as well as' introduces a compound object phrase which is not parallel.... (Weblog Concepts)

Dreamweaver MX Speed-Up Hints: Dreamweaver Team has posted some useful advice for optimizing the performance of Dreamweaver MX.... (Book News)

Survival of the Sluttiest: This AlterNet article on "The Virtues of Promiscuity" discusses the evolutionary benefits of female promiscuity; that is the contributions "slutty" behavior makes toward the fitness of a species. Here's a choice quotation: Even evolutionary psychologists, stout defenders of the meat-for-fidelity model, are beginning to acknowledge the benefits of women's "slutty" behavior.... (Miscellany)

AOL Discovers that Users Hate Pop-up Ads: In yesterdays New York Times, an article on AOL's management shakeup reported that AOL discovered its membership was fleeing in the face of increased pop-up ads: A study showed that when the number of pop-up ads was cut in half for a group of members, their satisfaction improved notably. That led... (Memes)

The Case Against Peace in the Middle East: The news from the middle east over the weekend made me sad and frustrated and brought to a head some of my thoughts about the politics of the region, so I wrote a short essay at Junk Mail (The Case Against Peace in the Middle East). Then I copied it into... (Memes)

e-Coffee: Spend 25c to Save 5 min.?: The Business Section of the the Rocky Mountain News has an article on Starbuck's new experiment with online ordering in advance: In this latest version of clicks-and-bricks retail, customers order through the Internet or a cell phone, and in five minutes, their coffee's ready at checkout. Charged to a pre-arranged credit... (Memes)

Confused by the Scandals?: This flowchart should help you sort things out.... (Memes)