A week or so ago the AJAX-powered service usernamecheck.com was all the rage in the various tech rags for being able to check a bunch of different websites (all shown below) to see if a username was already taken. I held off blogging it at that time because the service was crippled by the attention, but the tide has passed and today you can reliably get there (knock on wood).  Before you wonder if I succumbed to the lemming blogger bug (definition: to blog something just because everybody else is doing it) read the next paragraph.

The first time I saw the service I thought immediately of a second, more appealing use: to explore some sites/services you might not have heard about before. This is something I enjoy doing online and if it’s something not blogged too much already, can generate interesting blog posts. If you find an entertaining or useful service it can be like opening a present at Christmas.

With that in mind, I looked through this list and was able to explore the 10 following sites/services (links lead to registration page, where possible):

1. Vox - YABS? (Yet Another Blogging Service). This one looks a little too familiar although PC Mag gave it high marks and it "works seamlessly" (whatever that means) with sites like Amazon, YouTube and Flickr. The web is littered with third party blog hosting services. Your Vox member name is not unique, which is kind of different. Registration email confirmation required.
2. visualizeus - picture bookmarking service. The URL is a mess in a del.icio.us sort of way, fortunately the dot com redirects. Uses YAFBE (Yet Another Firefox Bookmarking Extension). Registration email confirmation required.
3. Posterous - YABS with a slight twist: post by email from your confirmed email address to post@posterous.com and it blogs it. Your email can have photos, videos, MP3 as attachments and Posterous will include in your blog post at yourname.posterous.com.
4. Meemi - is there an English version of this site? Could have used Google Translate to help, but I passed on registering for this one. YAFSIDU (Yet Another Foreign Site I Don’t Understand)
5. koornk - YATC (Yet Another Twitter Clone). Bonus points for using OpenID but didn’t see anything that breaks this one from the pack. I asked my Twitter friends/followers if there was something nicer to say about this service. Registration email confirmation required.
6. isfingawesome - self-described as mixtape + microblog, my non-awesome description: YABS+YATC. Bonus points for default profile message that reads: "This profile is completely void of anything awesome" and the screenshot to the right, save the uncapitalized ‘d’ in my name (I’m joking, friends, just joking). Their logo contest has borne some cool fruit.
7. iLikeLoveIt - ??? Where is this ??? Link from usernamecheck bounced back to usernamecheck.
8. hexday - interesting concept. Choose a different color every day and see if herd mentality generates different color patterns. I like this one.

    
   I went psychedlic today: fuschia. What color would you pick to describe today? Would have probably chosen red yesterday for the history drop in the DOW (-777.7).

9. hellotxt - a microblogging aggregator, think a bunch of twitter clones (++YATC++), although they also aggregate Friendfeed and some networks. I tend to like aggregators as long as they aren’t sploggy-like because they save time. Didn’t see any ad play here which is good. Could be useful to heavy microblogging users but it’s a bust for me because I don’t want to share my microblogging passwords with it. API keys no problem, passwords are a big no-no.
10. FunnyOrDie - watched several videos from this site and might have even blogged one or two (didn’t check archives). Funny stuff, good production value and celebrity comedians. Prepare to laugh. Registration email confirmation required.

Note to owners/developers/webmasters of these sites that may appear in the comment/trackback section below: My brief overview comments above were based on signing up (except for Meemi and iLikeLoveIt) and looking around for a few minutes not an exhaustive review. Did I miss something cool about your service? Tell me about it below and I’ll be happy to look further. Call this the second chance saloon if you will.

Beyond that, save for hexday and FunnyOrDie, I wasn’t that interested in the 10 sites above. Not all prospecting is fruitful; sometimes gold, mostly dust. There are good services though in the overall usernamecheck list, so look through that.

If you compare the list in the screenshot to the list above, you’ll see not every site is duplicated that showed as ‘available.’ Commercial services are in there like Smugmug that I know about and have chosen not to pay to use and/or have used in the past (TypePad).

There is also some bugs with the usernamecheck service, like Virb where I already have an account (’TDavid’ not ‘tdavid’) and diigo which does not have this username available and is the reason I had to register ‘tdavids’ instead.

So keep in mind just because a site/service in usernamecheck might show your name as ‘available’ it might be taken and vice versa.

Happy exploring to you!

I’ve seen all kinds of different things done with podcasts over the last few years, but don’t often get pitched on Batman Ringtones instead of the podcast itself:

What’s wrong with this picture? Besides the fact that the post and podcast doesn’t have anything to do with Batman: in Google Reader, one of the most popular RSS Readers currently in use, following the words "Listen to the podcast" there is a Google Adsense ad for Batman Ringtones. A great way to get people to click the ad if this was intentional, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.

Here is what the actual post looks like if you click through to the website:

  

Will Steven Hodson, who refers to himself as a "cranky old fart" get cranky when he learns this? Not trying to pick on him here, rather trying to share something that’s happening with a number of podcasts out there that rely on embedded players (and other embedded widgets) that don’t show up in RSS readers. If you are a podcaster who wants more listeners, listen up.

How people are getting to your show

Before you say this is no big deal, most people follow podcasts using a podcatching app like iTunes, iPodder or Zune (the three most popular podcatching apps according to my podcast stats), ask a podcaster to check his stats. Here are stats for one of our podcasts, provided by our podcast hosting provider Libsyn:

This podcast gets 91.6% of its traffic directly from the web. "Web" could be from people clicking on the media file link inside the RSS feed and/or blog post. Moral of the story: don’t make it hard for them to find the download link.

If every reader comes to your blog post to read the post, they will see these slick embedded players, but how many people read your blog in their RSS reader of choice and never come to the website? In the pie graph above, we don’t know specifically how many clicked the link on the blog post vs. in their RSS feeder.

Since, I’ve read Steven state in the past that he doesn’t use Google Reader, I looked at the podcast post in several other RSS readers to see the results.

• Firefox - helpfully serving up the attachment as a link. No sign of the embedded player.
• IE7 - same as Firefox, no embedded player, link to the attachment provided by IE7
• Safari - also provides handy download link for attachment, the embedded player doesn’t show
• Newsgator - looks similar to Google Reader: empty white space and advertisement, this time no Batman, it’s an ad to iphonegeek. Newsgator added a link "add to my podcast" so they must have picked up on the RSS attachment.
• Bloglines - my how this once mighty RSS reader has fallen The most recent post showing is a post from yesterday at 11:49am. Guess Bloglines readers will keep waiting.

For those using the plugin, does the Podpress embedded player show up in any RSS reader? Thank goodness for feed readers that recognize the RSS attachment and provide that as a link, but I feel for podcasters who are using this plugin and missing out on listens because readers don’t or won’t clickthru to the website to get the file.

Podcaster tip: always include HTML download links in blog posts to media files

There’s an easy solution to this issue. If you aren’t including an HTML download strip with your podcasts, I’d encourage you to start doing so immediately. Especially if your podcast is mixed with normal blog posts like the one shown above.

Here’s a screenshot of the HTML download strip I use for our (now seldom updated) Hmmcast:

Notice the icons, file extensions and resolutions for the video files are shown. I’m missing the running time and file size, which would be helpful to add as well. If your podcast is audio only as shown in the example in this post, then show the file extension as .MP3 (or whatever else it is) along with file size. Although storage space is not an issue with people on their desktop machines, it can be an issue with portable devices.

With every new podcast blog post you could start by copy/pasting a strip like this into each post at the top or bottom where your readers cannot miss no matter what RSS reader they are using. Sure, this will be redundant information for RSS readers that identify the attachments, but this won’t create awkward moments of saying "listen" or "watch" this … and then there is whitespace and/or some third party advertisement.

Are you a true writer? Not ‘true’ as in a super secret club that only published authors or elite snobs belong. If the only writing you do is on a blog that you think nobody reads, you could still be a true writer.

You could be a true writer and not even have a blog. Heck, you could be a true writer and not even have an internet connection. It’s not where one writes that is important, it’s what and how one writes that does.

Criteria for being a true writer

I’ve come up with nine qualities that no true writer should be lacking:

1. Desire. If you experience withdrawal when you don’t write, even when it’s material that others may never see, that’s the mark of a true writer. You must do it. You are driven. It’s not a choice. You don’t write only to have others read, you write because it’s an insatiable need.
2. Read. You can’t write if you don’t read. It’s how you learn the language and the beauty of the craft. It could be argued that the best true writers read more than they write. Much more.
3. Furtive imagination. You often think about what you are going to write when you aren’t writing. Perhaps it’s laying in bed or on a long drive, but the cogwheels of your brain never stop spinning.  They might be spinning at this very second.
4. Quality control. You hone the skill of recording your raw imagination and thoughts to paper or digital ink. Accurate, honest and laced with passion. Through editing (#7 #8) you can make these thoughts even better, but before writing down an idea you measure its worth through your own quality control.
5. Practice.  You understand that you can’t get better if you don’t actually do something. You make plans to write something down regularly, even if it’s only a partial thought and/or something you don’t publish today.
6. Fresh meat. You do not like to trip over what you’ve already written and despise plagiarism. If somebody else saw what you did and published first, then step aside and give that writer credit. In the blog format where retelling and word repackaging is the norm, not the exception, this can be very difficult. Being fresh and original in a sea of talent might be the most challenging aspect of the blog format. This shouldn’t stop a true writer but it should weigh on his/her mind.
7. Trunk. I don’t know any true writers who are trunk-less. The trunk used to be a place for unpublished works and drafts, but these days is a set of digital computer files or unpublished database(s). True writers understand that what you’ve written today could be more or less useful in the future. The trunk is a snapshot in time. Knowing when to pull material from the trunk and publish is part of a true writer’s quality control skill. 
8. Edit. It’s the one part many writers hate, myself included, but it’s a cruel reality. You must edit. I enjoy the blog format of publishing because I can get away with less editing than all other formats combined, but total editing abandonment isn’t the mark of a true writer. You must learn to delete words, sentences, paragraphs, pages and even nuke your favorite posts. Just because. Yes, this is different from #4 Quality Control, because editing happens after the words are in place. Your quality control filter happens before it is written and after it has been edited. An editor takes what is there and shapes and molds. While the editor role in internet publishing might seem to be a dying art, a true writer knows how important the editor role is in improving the work.
9. The dreaded ‘other.’ There can be no true writer list without the ever important ‘other’ entry. This wildcard is your criteria for what quality makes a true writer. You, friendly reader, are what make published writing satisfying. The payoff for unseen mental blood, sweat and tears. What is the one quality you think every true writer must have? What have I overlooked that no true writer should be without?

I’ve read famous authors like Stephen King describe writing as an obsession; something he couldn’t imagine ever not doing. Sure, with fiction you need fresh ideas, but there are always ideas and it’s hard to keep an active imagination like his down. I’m reluctant to go as far as labeling true writing an addiction, but it is on some levels.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been a true writer. The blog format fits the bulk of my current publishing output, but some other type of format could come along and claim my writing time tomorrow. Someday I might stop writing at this particular blog, but I will never "retire." A true writer never retires, s/he dies. Perhaps at the keyboard, caught eternally in mid-thought.

There have been a couple web personalities who have talked about quitting or retiring from blogging recently and at the risk of falling into a potential attention whore trap I’m not going to use names in this post. You probably know these people as I’ve written about writers (I hesitate to use the term ‘bloggers’ as I think of blogging as a format, not a type of writer) like this in the past in posts like: Is it the blog or the blogger that holds subscribers? One of my goals in 2008 was to avoid falling into linkbaiting schemes and writing too much about web personalities. These people get far too much undeserved attention already. Call this my fresh meat filter tweaking. This leaves more space for highlighting passionate, compelling work by unknown true writers.

How many true writers are reading this post? I’d like to subscribe to you, please make sure your blog URL is in your signature.

The Mloovi widget uses Google translate to create machine translated versions of text in RSS feeds. According to data from Google Analytics readers from Canada represent the second largest group for this blog, so it seems like making a French version available should be higher up the site admin priority list.

So here you go, French readers, a machine translated version of MakeYouGoHmm.com:

Mloovi only provides partial RSS feed translations which forces foreign language readers to click through on the permalinks to see full Google translated pages that look like this:

From what I’ve heard from those who speak multiple languages (I don’t), human translation is far superior to machine translation, so I wouldn’t expect a very good quality translation. However, if you do speak some other language a lot better than English — which begs the question how would you understand this post to begin with? –  this tool might come in handy in getting the gist of what is being spoken about in blog languages.

I’ve used Google translate in business to help me out in understanding non-english websites and it has been useful.

With that in mind, consider the above French Mloovi Hmm feed semi-official until some kind soul who could translate these blog posts manually or until a better machine comes along. Thank you for reading.

If you are using Site Meter for your stats you might want to remove (or at least comment out) the tracking code until they fix the bug that is causing sites not to display in Internet Explorer.

Update 8:19am & 8:57am PST: In the comments Luboš kindly offers a good post on some alternate Site Meter tracking code workarounds that don’t require nuking the Site Meter tracking entirely. This includes an IE7 fix that will allow you to view websites that haven’t fixed the tracking code yet.

When IE7 users visit a site using Site Meter the following error prompt is shown:

When "ok" is clicked this is what happens to the page:

Upon verifying the issue, I immediately disabled the site meter code on our group blog VTOR (Update: I have since added back the tracking portion, without the IE7 offending JavaScript). According to site meter (graph below, gray color) some 43% of visitors to that site can’t get there?! Screw that, goodbye.

We’re also running Google Analytics at VTOR so we can get stats details from that until this issue is resolved, but there goes the transparency convenience that Site Meter provided. I’m not sure our group will want to put Site Meter back after this debacle. This is a serious flaw. Fortunately MakeYouGoHmm hasn’t used the Site Meter code since I learned of disturbing allegations on May 27, 2007, so IE7 browser users can view this site just fine.

This problem painfully illustrates why using third party code carries huge risks.

Sidenote and source credit: I first learned about this issue from Duncan Riley’s FriendFeed message this morning which pointed to a post by him saying the lack of this important story showing up on TechMeme has a bias .  Duncan is miffed because his publication The Inquisitr broke the story and despite several blogs linking to it including Mashable that appears on TechMeme all the time, the story isn’t showing up on TechMeme. I just visited TechMeme to verify that it still wasn’t on the current page or via search. Nothing yet. Gabe Rivera, creator of TM, has commented here in the past, maybe if/when he sees this he will offer some explanation why TM has failed to highlight this important story.

Update 9:59am PST: This story is on TechMeme now.

Now please excuse me why I go write an apology post at VTOR for the 43% of users who couldn’t get to the site because of third party code. I hope they will come back and give the site another try. Grrr, not a good way to start a Saturday morning. Fix this ASAP, Site Meter, this blows!

Update 8/4/08 7:01 am PST: Site Meter has fixed the issue and posted to their blog.

(lights off a firecracker)

2008:
1,565,266 total published words from 4,763 posts
12,402 comments

Wow, here we are and it seemed like yesterday that I published the first post, 4,762 posts ago. If you look at the monthly post counts along the right of the home page, you’ll see the writing has slowed somewhat this year, but I’m feeling good about the quality of posts being published. It’s a different blogging world than it was in 2003.

What the numbers above don’t show are the 77,835 total unpublished words from 318 unpublished posts. These numbers continue to rise with each passing year and one of the biggest things that makes me go hmm is what to do with these posts. Someday hopefully they can be published in some form or another. I think about this now and again.

The state of blogging in 2008
Today there are too many blog posts that cover areas already blogged. I hope over the next five years more bloggers will stop before hitting publish and ask themselves if they are truly adding anything new to the web. Some bloggers are and they deserve to increase readership. Others are adding to the post landfill in a blatant attempt to grab ad views. There are very few quick bucks that hold value over time in the world.

Tip for readers with blogs: put a little more of you into your posts. Blogging became popular in great part I think because of the individual voice. Refine your voice. Making sure each published post has you in it somewhere helps to separate your posts from thousands of others that are similar.

Today there is also way too much emphasis on fragmenting discussions around posts. Giving readers the ability to comment somewhere else is a good thing in concept but puts unnecessary reliance on third party sites to stay up and running. One only need examine the scaling woes Twitter has been having to analyze that this isn’t always a good thing. I’m still not convinced the current generation of commenting elsewhere will stand the test of time, but we’ll see. I reserve the right to change my mind.

Today on a positive note, sharing on the web is all the rage. It’s great to see so many different ways to share ideas, thoughts, blog posts, pictures, videos, podcasts and so on with others. The spirit of sharing has never been louder than it is today. I just hope with all this sharing with relative strangers online, that people don’t forget about spending time with the people who aren’t strangers offline.

I have been spending more time with family and friends offline in 2008. I started playing guitar again regularly and practicing with a band offline Sunday nights. This has eaten into my blogging and online time but it’s giving me perspective that will help fuel my future writing. As human beings, we need to experience new and/or different things to make use of the valuable time we’re given on this earth.

My wife was teasing me that I have been “reliving my high school days” lately. There is a kernel of truth in this observation. Sometimes it’s good to go back and find things that gave you pleasure in the past and see if you can incorporate them into the present.

Now let’s walk back through time here at MakeYouGoHmm.

2007: 1080p Yowsa!

1,371,277 total published words from 4,354 posts
9,867 comments

In 2007 there was a focus on trying to videoblog or podcast five days a week. I made it a good nine months before being buried by video editing time. Probably would have made it if I skipped the whole HD video experiment. But who can forget the series of SAW Hmmcasts including the one below:

Of course the whole ThurSAWday project turned out a failure, but it was fun building up the promotion.

2006: Families more fragmented these days?

2005: v4: Cheap Tablet PC car stand

2004: v3: Day 1-2 in Silverwood

2003: Tabasco Scratch Cards

The future of MakeYouGoHmm
Today and throughout the weekend I’m going to kick back and party with the family. Next week it’s back to work. Oh, and yes, let’s do another 5 years of blogging here at MakeYouGoHmm? I mean, come on, did you expect me to quit already?

Thank you for reading MakeYouGoHmm.com.

“and miles to go before I sleep …”
- Robert Frost

Disclosure: As of June 1, 2008 I’ve been helping with Zune podcast submissions in the Zune Marketplace. Do you need help with your Zune podcast submission?

I’ll get back to this disclosure shortly since it’s new to readers. It’s the first time I’ve mentioned this gig in a blog post here. This news has been part of the new MakeYouGoHmm about page added last week.

Zune links
A Friendfeed everyone search for keyword ‘zune’ just led me to a new Zune feature this morning: Zune links.

To use the tool, just enter in keyword(s) and the tool will return matching links to: artists, albums, playlists, music videos, podcasts and videos. I’m curious how the playlist search works especially because I have my privacy settings set to allow “everyone” to view my Zune social settings, but don’t see any of my playlists. Maybe that will be a future feature?

Here is an example link for the the Hmmcast (stale, I know, it’s been over 5 months since last update), which I added border=’0′ to it:

Hmmcast

You will need the Zune software installed on your computer to follow that link.

As Sean Alexander, a Microsoft employee, points out, the iTunes Music Store has had this feature for awhile so it’s nice to see the Zune team add it. Sean adds:

My personal favorite, the Zune Social experience. The links take you directly to Zune Social where you preview the songs, see stats on listenership, read a review and more.

Sean also makes a good suggestion for somebody to possibly create a Live Writer plugin. Developer readers, there’s an opportunity.

Why are you helping with Zune podcast submissions?
It shouldn’t be a huge surprise to long time readers that I’m helping out in the Zune podcast area. I have been podcasting and writing about podcasting since the word was penned and this gives me an opportunity to get knee deep in podcast submissions all over the world. I also have written positively of the Zune player since launch (do a search for past ‘zune’ posts). Also, my whole family has been beta testing at Microsoft HQ in Redmond for several years, although I think we won’t be able to do that any more (?).

Rob Greenlee who is the lead for the Zune podcast area, invited me to guest co-host several of his WebTalk podcasts some time ago and mentioned that they could use my help reviewing podcast submissions. I jumped at the chance and as of the first of June 2008, here I am. If you are a podcaster and reading and need help with a podcast submission pending in the Zune Marketplace, please feel free to drop me a line either through Skype, Twitter, email (Gmail to my name works great) through the Zune Social of course or any of the dozens of other ways to contact me online where I’m currently active. I’m also regularly checking the official Zune forum podcast area and have already gone through the 1,400+ posts made there.

I’m also doing keyword searches for zune podcasts and tracking conversations elsewhere on the web (hence the genesis of this post), so don’t be surprised if I show up in your comment area if you’re talking about the Zune Marketplace podcast area and/or blog here and trackback to you.

Without getting into too much more detail, this is a contract gig for our online business and will be additional work, not something that replaces any of my current jobs. I still very much co-own an offline business and our online business and have been happily self-employed for 14+ years. I am also happy to be helping in the Zune podcast area and helping the podcast community at large, which I hope is crystal clear in this post.

Accordingly, I’ve added a ‘Zune’ category and will be adding the disclosure at the top of this post to any Zune-related posts where relevant going forward so that readers are clear of my professional involvement with the Zune team. I think you’ll see me promoting more new podcasts I’m discovering in the coming days more than writing that much more than I have in the past about Zune, but felt it was important to make the professional connections clear.

This new Zune link feature will make it easier to post direct links in the Zune Marketplace to these cool podcasts other people share with me and I discover through helping with the podcast submissions. So far I’ve already found some really well done podcasts that I didn’t know about.

Being a videoblog/podcast host is a transitory profession. Don’t sign any long leases.

Remember Amanda Congdon who had a popular gig at Rocketboom and then went onto presumably bigger, better things at ABC, only to last less than a year. Enter example two, Veronica Belmont, the initial video host of Jason Calacanis’ current video brainchild: Mahalo Daily. Belmont ditched Mahalo Daily awhile back and is starting June 5 as the new videoblog host for Qore, a paid subscription-based videoblog show which sounds to me like paying to watch commercials for games on the Sony Playstaton 3.

In fairness, let’s review what the official PS3 blog says will be part of the Qore subscription:

Qore has been developed to give PS3 users early access to game related content at a level of quality, interactivity and depth. Everything is filmed in HD. Qore will feature exclusive news, developer interviews, in-depth game previews and behind-the-scenes looks at PlayStation games and special access to game demos, special beta invitations, game add-ons and other downloadable game-related content.

Calacanis was smart enough not to charge viewers for his paid advertorial for Mahalo, what is Sony smoking? Why are they are charging for “special access” to game demos? Some commenters on the PS3 blog post are rightfully complaining while at least one commenter says this is in line with print game magazines which charge too much for information you can usually find on the web already. Nevermind that many of these print game mags are struggling to stay afloat. This is 2008, not 1998.

Shooting the video in all HD is smart and the game add-on part might be worth paying for if they are giving away songs to games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero but my guess is most of these add-ons will be lame things like different characters or backgrounds. Yeah, yeah, maybe it will be only [sarcasm] $24.99 a year for a Qore subscription of 13 episodes, but I’m skeptical that it will be worth $2.99 (single episode price) per episode. For Sony’s and fellow gamer’s sake I hope I’m wrong. I will happily buy in if they put some good exclusive add-on content in there.

Let me throw Sony a bone. Get us access to HOME — for free. Quit delaying and give us more games in the Playstation store. I’ve only been saying this since launch day and doubt any gamers will disagree. Sony could have bought Atari (ATAR stock had been floundering) dirt cheap and put all of their games in the PlayStation store and didn’t do it. No, instead they want to charge us for the privilege of being teased about some bright gaming future (Look at what’s coming in months … years). Advice to Belmont: don’t put all your eggs in the Qore basket. As popular as the Wii is (where can one buy Wii Fit at anyway? Sold out everywhere), she would have been better doing a Nintendo Wii show — perhaps an exercise show to go along with Wii Fit — that was offered for the special price of — drumroll please — free. Strike that, horny gamers would pay $2.99 to see a good looking girl doing Wii Fit workouts.

Come on, Sony. Really.

I’m not into ‘why I haven’t blogged’ posts and try to spare you the exercise. For future reference, I write when:

1. I have the time
2. Something external (another blog post, news story, new site/service, etc) moves me and/or
3. I have something (fresh, preferably) to say or share

With #3 I’m being more challenged lately. This blog has well over 1.5 million published words and has covered a lot of different web terrain. Fortunately it isn’t niche, so finding something to make us both go hmm for the rest of my lifetime shouldn’t be rocket science. It’s not as easy any more, though because I keep getting literary deja vus. I’ve got to get back to more deeper web exploration.

You don’t care, I get it, just publish mon, publish!

I’ve found the editor in me getting much more picky about what gets published though. That’s really the problem. I just looked in the draft queue and see I’ve written around a dozen posts since April 2. Blame the editor, that’s it.

I digress. Recommendation: use the Hmm search or click the archive links from the home page to revisit the keyword(s) of your liking. There’s a lot of gold in them thar hills. I’ve been thinking about creating a couple pages with links to heavily trafficked past posts. Maybe one for the highest rated ones too, as that function is getting used more than expected. We tried a rating post feature here before and it bombed. I wouldn’t say the second time is a huge improvement, but more readers and visitors are using it. That helps determine what you like and dislike, so please take the time and rate every post that you read all the way through.

Providing fresh material should be every writer’s goal and I’m seeing — right or wrong — this blog as more like a book than a place to repeat something said days, months or [gasp] years ago. The five year anniversary for this site is fast approaching (July 4, 2008) and then I’ll need to make the call what to do the next five years, health willing of course. A few ideas are percolating. I might bring in some hired guns, what do you think of that?

Missing you
I do miss reading some of my friends when they don’t update their blog for awhile and wonder what they’ve been up to. I’ve been asked: hey, why no Hmm? Is everything ok? What’s going on? Those are questions that a 21 day off period don’t answer. I remember giving blog buddy Kent a friendly stick shake when he went AWOL and he’s been kind enough not to return the favor during my blackjack period.

The picture at the top of this post should answer where I’ve been — at least in part. Yes, I’ve been practicing playing my guitar instead of publishing blog posts. I have been writing a little bit here and there, but time where I’d normally be doing the blog exercise, I’ve been practicing so I can jam with the boys on Sunday nights offline. I’m hoping we get good or bad enough to shoot some compelling video because the Hmmcast is starting to grow some nasty looking cobwebs. It’s not much fun watching video, even in HD, of an average garage band, so that footage might never come to fruition.

The calluses on my left (playing) hand haven’t been there and needed to practice time to build up. This has turned me into one of those guys you see carrying around their guitar everywhere. I’ve always thought that was neat when I see people doing that. Every musician knows that practice is the only way to get better. Heck, any skill takes lots of practice. I’m stealing my writing practice time for guitar practice.

Oh, and couldn’t stand for playing live my 20+ year old electric guitar any more, so threw down for some Gibson Les Paul studio action at one of my new guilty pleasure stores: Guitar Center.

I’m a sucker for red guitars and this red wine style is a beauty. Oh, and it comes with a sweet case too.

What do you think? How many Hmm readers play guitar? I must admit with some embarrassment that despite buying this new guitar a couple weeks ago, it is still unplayed. I brought it home, told my kids they’d be cursed for life if they touched it, set the lock on the case and stored it away in a safe, dry place.

Now before you get on me too much, I bought it to only play live, not for practice. Maybe I’ll feel differently later on, but I’ve never owned a pro quality guitar. All my gear has been fairly low budget. I’ve wanted a really good guitar since I was 14 years old and the timing was right.

I also had a pickup installed in my Washburn acoustic guitar and it sounds great. I’m planning on bringing both of these guitars to our next jam session this coming Sunday night. I’m hoping to become regularly invited to the group which involves three other guys (two are younger, one is older). They asked me to play back after the first session so that’s a good sign. Much too premature to speculate on if we’ll ever get out of the garage. Last time I played in a band was back in high school, so lots of rust to knock off for me.

I’m compiling a list of songs I can play either in part or all the way through. Here’s the current list as of this writing:

Electric
AC DC - Back in Black, Dirty Deeds, Walk All Over You
America - Horse with No Name
Ben E. King (on bass) - Stand By Me
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Blue Oyster Cult - Don’t Fear The Reaper
Dokken - Alone Again
Iron Maiden - The Trooper
Judas Priest - The Hellion, Livin’ After Midnight
Metallica - Fade To Black, For Whom The Bell Tolls
Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train, I Don’t Know
Styx - Suite Madam Blue
Ted Nugent - Cat Scratch Fever
Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak

Acoustic
John Mellancamp - Pink Houses
Five Man Electrical Band - Signs
Ritchie Valens - Donna

Have you got some good guitar song suggestions to add? There are a bunch of songs I’d like to learn how to play and, in some cases, learn how to play again. The song list shrinks if you don’t keep practicing.

Bought a bass for son
You might have noticed in the list that I snuck a song on bass in there by Ben E. King. Stand By Me is a great bass riff and fairly easy to play. My son was having trouble learning the guitar so I bough him an Ibanez bass. He’s learned a few songs on there and seems to find it easier to play with his smaller fingers.

Our third Guitar Center purchase was a set of Simmons electronic drums and drum amplifier. They sound great and we’ve been jamming a bit with bass, drums and guitar. My son who plays bass is also working on playing the drums too. We got a double bass pedal for it.

Rock Band full albums
I think what has gotten me started back into this was the game Rock Band which I’ve given high marks in the past. And speaking of Rock Band, Harmonix which makes the game yesterday started offering the first complete album: Judas Priest most excellent Screaming For Vengeance available for 1,200 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. We bought this and played last night for a little while. Great stuff, this could give the music industry something to cheer for as I can see fans buying their album multiple times.

Worked for Judas Priest. Last night we took our youngest to dinner for his birthday and then we went and bough a CD. Which one? Screaming for Vengeance, of course.

Not sure I mentioned it, but we’re on our third set of Rock Band drums now. The newest one seems more heavily reinforced and maybe (hopefully) will last more than a month or two.

Time for me to jump back into my reading list which shows 1,000+ in Google Reader and 1,446 in reBlog and grows by the hour. Before the day is done, I might cheat and mark all as read, but we’ll see how things go.

Please share in the comments below what you’ve been up to, especially if you’re a blogger. Are you publishing less blog posts these days? Playing music or some other hobby offline? It’s good to have some variety in your life.

I’ve been in need of a quick reference resource for people that are unfamiliar with the different types of blogging and came up with the following 8 different types of blogging in 2008.

1. linkblog

Some call this social bookmarking, but it’s only social if you’re sharing the links with others. e.g del.icio.us

2. moblog

Sending pictures from a cameraphone or mobile device. e.g Flickr

3. podcast

Audio recording, typically in MP3 format and served through RSS feed enclosure. e.g Utterz, Odeo

4. videoblog / vlog

Video recording offered in one or more popular video formats like mp4, wmv and served as enclosure in RSS feed. e.g blip.tv, YouTube

5. microblog - a short text message which may or may not contain a shortened URL. Popular with mobile users (SMS). e.g Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce

6. miniblog / reBlog - using a more significant amount of content from a third party in a post versus creating original material. Typically these posts are shorter than a regular blog post, but don’t have to be. e.g Tumblr, reBlog

7. liveblog - covering some type of live event like a sports event, press conference, tv show, etc. e.g Engadget live coverage of Macworld 2008, coveritlive (tool)

8. blog - a collection of other types of blogging mentioned above and/or typically longer, more detailed postings that could also be labeled as articles. Some blogs offer series or collections of posts around a topic. A blog can be self-hosted using software like Wordpress.org or by using a third party service like Google’s blogger.com. e.g. the blog you’re reading this on: MakeYouGoHmm.com.

Missing/corrections/updates
If I missed a key important point that somebody newer to the world of blogging might need to know, please include below. This is not intended to be an exhaustive reference but something that will point somebody new in the right starting direction.

Has some other new niche developed that I’m not following?