Like many other people, I’ve been and continue to be critical of AOL, the company. I stopped being an AOL software fan somewhere around version 3.0. However, I have always been a fan — and still am — of their content areas, particularly their creative writing areas. Over 10 years ago I frequented the keyword: novel area inside AOL and would later start contributing short short fiction regularly starting in May 1997. This continued for a couple years culminating into almost 100 different original stories.

This was the last time I wrote any short fiction, moving onto more non-fiction, articles and a brief stint working on a new novel during the NaNoWriMo 2004 over the last 10 years. On my list of resolutions in 2007 is to start writing fiction again. It’s been 10 years, so why not?

Hmm readers who aren’t that interested in fiction don’t worry Hmm is not going to turn into my fiction writing site. I have shared a few past works here, see the 666 category, and will probably do that once in awhile in the future, but I’ve been thinking about this for some time and done some advance planning. In 2005 I registered a couple websites intended for past and future fiction writing and that’s where the bulk of my creative work will begin appearing. Although I stopped counting the words, I know there is well over a million words of fiction in my writing trunk that I’ve always wanted to publish somewhere, someday. Over the next 10 years I hope to see some of this work surface and get feedback. I’m working up the energy to follow the dream more seriously again.

Last week I came across the site ficlets.com which self describes as:

They’re really short stories. Really short, as in there’s not a maximum word count … there’s actually a maximum character count (1,024). There is also a minimum character count, and the number of that beast is 64.

Nice, a well timed discovery.

You start with a Ficlet (or should it be plural: ficlets?) and others can add their own Ficlets prequel or sequel, thus moving the story forward or starting in the past before the story. My first published Ficlet is available here dealing with the mysterious Thursawday and created today, Thursawday, of course. More updates will occur when the Thursawday website officially launches later this year. Each Ficlet has its own RSS feed to follow the story. As I write this I’m curious if you write a prequel if it will show up in the RSS feed before the other post or will it appear by post date? Guess I’ll find out soon enough.

Readers wondering what is going on with this Thursawday stuff might want to tune into the official thursawday.com website. Something unique about this site (I think?) is that it is only updated on Thursawdays. I’ve never built a site before where it could only be dealt with on one day of the week and that’s the primary premise of Thursawday. It’s not going to be a one to many site either, others including yourselves will be able to add to it as well.

But with the caveat: only on Thursawday.

For example, the Thursawday blog will be added soon and readers will only be able to leave comments on posts there on Thursawday. Everything that happens on thursawday.com is, was and will be created and published only on Thursawday. Strange? Intriguing? Different? What do you think?

To go along with this theme I’m encouraging others to add prequels and sequels to my first Thursawday Ficlet with the caveat that it only be written and published on Thursawday.

Since these Ficlets are happening on a third party site owned by AOL I have no control over when prequels and sequels are created and added by others, nor can I verify that people have written the work only on Thursawday, but to be considered an official part of the story, I’ll only springboard my future Thursawday Ficlets from prequels and sequels I see added on Thursawday.

All Ficlets are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License. I see that yesterday Ficlets was mentioned on Boing Boing from John Scalzi, a principle sharing additional details. Ficlets also have their own blog. Subscribed.

Update 5:37pm PST: Scimon from Glasgow, Scotland was the first to write a sequel to my Ficlet. Thanks Scimon There is still about 6 hours left of Thursawday if you’d like to create and publish a ficlet prequel or sequel. If not today, there’s always next week.

Download Hmmcast #77 mp4

None of our children like to read.

I’m saddened somewhat by this reality, but it’s time to face facts. We’re now having to force our youngest teen to sit and read aloud to me for a minimum 15 minutes each day. It’s the first thing he needs to do when he gets home is come see me and start reading aloud.

I never much cared for reading aloud, but love reading otherwise. My reading these days isn’t for adventure and suspension of belief like it was when I was younger as much as it is news (RSS feeds), documentation and nearly all non-fiction.

Blame it on … ?
What’s to blame for children not being excited about reading? When both your parents love to read and you are surrounded by books, I don’t think parenting is to blame. So what are the other distractions? What are driving kids away from the wealth of information and amazing places you can only visit in your mind?

Computers
I had a computer when I was younger (Vic-20 first) and started programming at a young age. There were lots of times I chose reading over tapping at the keyboard. The presence of a computer can’t be the main culprit. Or can it?

TV
Not in our house. We’ve had no TV service by choice for 250+ days. I’m not sure TV is stealing reading time like it did 15, 10 or possibly even 5 years ago. When I was a child I liked to watch TV, but I still enjoyed reading more. Give me a good Ray Bradbury story over anything on TV. Well, maybe except for Twilight Zone.

Internet
The internet could be guilty. Last night I went to help a friend with is LAN. The christmas present for his teenage daughter was a laptop and she felt like the computer was broken because it couldn’t get connected to the internet. Where was the first place she went to test the internet in the browser? MySpace. I’m glad none of our teenagers are that into MySpace.

Cell phone / Texting
At least in the case of my friend, this was non-stop while I was working on his network. His daughter was going back and forth text messaging with her friends. I could tell by the annoying sounds the phone made. She switched it to vibrate but it still made noise that even annoyed her father. His daughter seemed disturbed that our boys weren’t into text messaging. Is this trend more common with girls than boys? Our teens can’t get into text messaging because we don’t have cell phones. When I told my friend’s daughter this you’d have though my name was Fred Flintstone.

Video games (Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, etc)
In our household this is the primary reading time stealer. Our kids would much rather play videogames than read. Maybe games should have more reading rather than cinema type video. Text games like Zork would encourage reading. How about choose your own adventure type games. So much emphasis on graphics these days and not text.

Other
There are other activities like sports that could take away from reading and I’m sure readers can think of more to add in the comments below.

I told our youngest son (pictured above reading) that what would make us really happy parents is if he read not because we told him he had to but because he wanted to read. I don’t believe forced reading exercises work. Forced anything with teens can meet with unpredictable and undesirable results.

Idea: family book day
I think a family trip to the book store is on tap for this weekend. Everybody picks out at least one book. We pick a day each month and unplug from the games and the internet and read for pleasure. Think something like shutdown day but every month, not every year.

Any other ideas for positively promoting and encouraging reading in kids? Perhaps some incentive plans for them for reading books? To me the biggest incentive was being fascinated by the storyteller, but maybe today’s younger generation requires something more?

My earliest creative writing on the computer was done on the Vic-20 and later the Commodore-64. Saving most text to those flimsy but friendly 5 1/4″ floppies. Later when I moved onto the PC one of my early favorite word processers was WordPerfect and I graduated to 3.5″ and then the hard drive. I remember being amazed at how much writing would fit on my first hard drive and how fast it would read/write. Of course my first hard drive was a fraction the size of most thumb drives these days. Progress!

For my various creative writing endeavors WordPerfect just felt right. Somewhere along the line I fell out of sorts with WordPerfect and moved to competitor Microsoft Word. These days I prefer using OpenOffice Writer for longer docs offline and Google Docs for shorter docs online although I do have one license of Office 2007 waiting for a thorough testing on our new Vista machine.

Today I came across my old friend with a new face, the Corel Wordperfect Lightning Beta which promised:

- a Notes tool for word processing, note taking and copying text and images from email and the Web
- a Viewer to open PDFs, WordPerfect and Microsoft® Word documents
- a Navigator to organize your ideas and documents
- a free online account with 200 MB storage

After signing up to download (yeah, I don’t like that either), I downloaded and installed the app. Uh oh, the pitch at the end of the beta:

Argh (what was I thinking?) I don’t need another offline/online notetaking app. CNET took a stab at telling me what I was missing:

Navigator serves as a central repository for organizing content, while the Viewer acts as a reading tool to view such documents in Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, or WordPerfect file formats. Lightning Notes is designed as a lightweight word processor and note-taking utility. And Connector, which is powered by Joyent, is a suite of Web-based applications such as e-mail, calendars and address books.

Pass.

I really don’t like how after downloading the ‘free’ beta of something I’m being default checked into installing a free 30 day trial of the full Corel Office meal deal. Maybe I’m just cranky today after lunch. Tell me more about what’s cool in the comments below if anybody else tries and finds some redeeming qualities. Uninstall.

/me waves goodbye to an old friend. Lightning indeed.

Download Hmmcast #52 mp4

Windows Vista, procrastinus (links almost invisible until hover), Code to disable Snap pop-up previews:
http://www.snap.com/about/spa_faq.php?disable_spa=1

Reviewme review, Books for Soldiers

Writers and readers have an unseen contract. When the reader is lead in by title or teaser, they are expecting this contract to be fulfilled. In order to stay throughout the entire piece and be encouraged to read other pieces and perhaps even subscribe — woohoo! — the writer must answer five basic questions. These questions can be answered short form or long form, but they must be answered for the contract to be fulfilled.

This morning in IRC a few friends were talking about writers and readers and I listed the questions: what/who, where, when, why and how? Upon further reflection, I decided these questions were worth expanding upon and sharing here.

Five important questions every article or post should answer
Before publishing, reread your post and ask if it answers the following questions. If these questions aren’t answered, then edit before publishing or you risk letting your readers down.

1. What / Who. The title leads us to the first paragraph. You have about five seconds to suck readers past the first paragraph so don’t make these boring or too long. Make sure ‘what’ and/or ‘who’ you are talking about is clear in the first couple sentences. There are techniques to tease beyond the first paragraph, but most readers won’t go that far, either skipping ahead to bolded headings (do use those to break up ideas or points) or moving onto another writer. Also, many aggregators will grab the title and first few sentences with elipses (…), thus it’s vital to put the ‘what’ in the title and first few sentences so readers who are interested in the subject matter will continue. Starting with a picture or download link can also be very effective because it visually (or audio) provides the content.

Bad example
Well, I hope that you overlook the fact that I’m a bit late getting this one out, but due to a few unforeseen circumstances I had no choice. But instead of just dropping this, I really wanted to get this one posted for a few reasons that I hope you will see as you read this post. Enjoy!

This post comes from fellow VTOR Author jvastine and is an otherwise pretty strong post, but starts weak. Weave writer excuses that have nothing to do with the subject matter toward the end or make the excuse only one brief sentence at the beginning. Most readers don’t care about why you were delayed posting on a subject — or why you haven’t posted at all — when it has nothing to do with what the post is about. This writer’s second paragraph sings and the piece would have a much stronger beginning by using that instead, shown below.

Good example
Once again the Anshe Chung debacle fills the news and blogoshere with a myriad of articles. As expressed in my previous two posts: VR Legal Rights and VR Legal Rights Revisited, the regular readers of VTOR already know my feelings regarding this event, which are only being further strengthened as the truth continues to be exposed.

He identifies the what/who (Anshe Chung), links to prior thoughts on the subject (where/when and why), all in two sentences. He then goes on to answer the ‘how’ this happened (Anshe debacle) in the rest of the post. Job well done, reader satisfied.

2. Where. Linking is essential on the web. This isn’t print where writers can get away with a list of links at the end or bibliography page. If you quote anything, make sure to do the following: 1) attribute the soure (link, link, link) or 2) if number one isn’t possible, then explain where the quote was heard and why you couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t link to it. Whenever I see double quotes or blockquoted text and somebody saying something without a link, I’m interested in the context that surrounds it and wondering why the writer left the attribution out so I, as the reader, could follow along and see if the person being quoted was being quoted out of context. Leaving out the attribution can create writer distrust because we’ve all been quoted out of context at one point in our life or another.

Also, and this happened here yesterday to me. If you make a strong factual statement, make sure you reference (with link when possible) where the statement came from.

Bad example (my post)
This find is noteworthy because it might be the most ancient Semetic text ever discovered.

Yesterday, I made this statement ending a post on King Tut and Egyptians using ancient text to ward off poisonous snakes. It should have been linked or further clarified but wasn’t. To make matters worse, my attribution link was there, but broken (closing A tag was before the image instead of after). It is a strong statement that needs backup and generated a reader comment wondering where I got this from — and rightfully so. Thankfully Sterling was there to catch my fall.

Good example
Per Richard Steiner, professor of Semitic languages at Yeshiva University in New York, this find is noteworthy because it “might be the most ancient Semitic text ever discovered.”

3. When. Date and timestamps with timezone are vital for the reader to understand chronology. Posts must have date/timestamps somewhere not because that’s what makes them a blog, but because it helps readers understand when something was written. This can have a bearing on reader perception if they know a piece was written before an event happened versus after. Comprehension is improved by understanding the order of events, without dates and times not only of the post/article itself but of the events described in the article.

Even if the content is sorted by date it isn’t immediately apparent what was said when by who without a date and timestamp. It’s also important if updates are made after the post date to add the timestamps with timezone. Why is the timezone important? Because it’s a global audience and if readers don’t know what the timezone is they will have to try and dig around to figure out what timezone was used. Don’t make readers dig for basic information. Chronology is also needed by other bloggers who would like to know which blogger said what and when so that the order can be written about (and linked, hint, hint).

Bad example
There is a party coming soon.

Leaves reader wondering how soon? Where did you find out it was coming soon?

Good example
Not sure when, but the website (linked) says there is a party “coming soon.”

Reader understands where author found out that the party was coming soon and doesn’t have the information about how soon.

4. The author’s interpretation or newsworthy description of why. While this is #4 on the list, it’s probably the most important question for bloggers. Why do you think it’s important enough to share with readers? Why is it important to you? Why did you take time and write about this? Why do you feel the way you do about the subject? If it’s a newsworthy piece, the editorial isn’t expected however the why is still a question needing an answer. If there is no clear answer why something happened, then that needs to be explained in the piece.

With millions of other bloggers out there it’s important to be unique somehow. What you choose to write about is one way to be unique. If you just parrot out generic descriptions of popular news and current events in your niche, then you’ll be doomed to doing what too many other bloggers do and the readers will search for somebody more unique. Meatier subject matter. Somebody willing to insert some raw instinct into the piece. A writer willing to put their feelings and beliefs on the line and be open to criticism.

Don’t be vanilla. Don’t be predictable, unless you’re predictably detailed, informative and/or entertaining.

5. How. Of the five questions ‘how’ might not always be relevant and is intentionally left last, but it can provide background information on certain pieces how readers can get involved or how to do something. For example if you are writing about a project that needs volunteers, the ‘where’ question will be a link to the place volunteers would sign up, but the ‘how’ part could be a summary or detailed description of what is required of the volunteers before they head out to register. It could also be a link to a how-to page answering two questions at once.

How-to posts like this one naturally must have the ‘how’ component. Another example, with programming-related posts, share a snippet of source code and explain how it works. How to register for a site. How to obtain a beta invite. You get it.

Exceptions
There are exceptions to every rule. Linkblog posts don’t answer all of these questions and can’t. I’m not suggesting every post should be a certain length, but enough words should be used that answer these basic important questions in a full post or article. In a linkblog the only questions are ‘what’ and ‘where’ — not enough space to go further. Also there are podcasts and videoblogs which have slightly different concerns than text posts and articles.

I don’t want to get into the discussion of what does and doesn’t make a blog because that horse is beaten and dead, but it’s important as the writer wearing the trusty editor hat to ask: is this necessary? Being able to prune as much as the entire post is an important writing skill to learn and execute. Many newer writers need the most help in this department.

Yes, it sucks writing 1,000 words and never using any of them, but that’s something you need to learn if you’re going to be a successful writer long term. Don’t worry if you aren’t that good at it in the beginning because you’ll get better with time and experience. You’ll never improve if you don’t practice. As I’ve mentioned before, blogs provide a great format for writers to practice the craft.

Did this post let you down?
Alas, the payoff, the ending. Let’s analyze this post and see if I was successful. I’ll need your help since I’m the writer, not the reader, and thus you get the strongest vote.

Who/what in the first few sentences? Did I link out to anything I quoted (where)? Is there a date/timestamp on this post? Is the chronology of the events, if any, in this post clear? Is the order of the items discussed easy to comprehend and follow? Did I explain why this was important to me as a reader? Why I felt each of these five questions were important to answer? Did I tell those of you who are also writers how to answer these questions?

If you made it this far and I answered those questions, the job is done. Thank you for reading.

Something on my New Year’s Resolution list (unpublished as of this writing) is reading more fiction. I bought Cell by Stephen King clear back in February 2006 and later in the year unsubscribed from the magazines I was reading via Zinio (MacWorld and PC Magazine). I only read about 100 pages of Cell on my Tablet PC and then was sidetracked and never returned to the story. I like reading on the Tablet PC, but it’s a bit bulky and gets kind of hot. Also, as my wife pointed out, there is something attractive to the feel of a book in your hands and portability (no batteries required). The way you can twist the cover behind, the smell of book paper. I know, I know, sounds strange, but books give a different physical experience than any digital reader I’ve ever tried. The future is digital reading and as much as I’m excited by this future a part of me still wants to hold on, literally and figuratively, to paper.

Eric Rice posted about receiving a Sony Reader for Christmas and a couple people, myself included wondered where the pictures were. Eric delievered pictures via Flickr. From looking at the pictures and viewing the specs, I’m having trouble getting past the price tag.

$350 for grayscale?

That seems so Palmesq to me. My first Palm was grayscale and seems forever ago in tech years. The Sony Reader looks like a sleek, smooth device, but seems a step backwards when one could get something more powerful in color. Still interested in looking closer at this device but trying to steer clear of Sony products. Conflicted. Damn you, Sony.

What about books in color? It’s hard to compare the Sony Reader to a book when some books come in color. What about magazines? Looking at the pictures in the RSS feeds Eric is subscribed reduced my interest in the device.

I wish somebody would get a UMPC at or below the $500 price point and that to me would be a great device for e-reading. My Pocket PC is too small to use for e-reading and my slate Tablet PC is a little too big. The UMPC fits the sweet spot middle ground, doubles as a small PC that runs the full Tablet OS and is in color. Least expensive UMPC I’ve seen is the EO v7110 from TabletKiosk ($899 USD).

My favorite magazines growing up were Mad and Compute! The thing I liked about Compute! were the programs you could type in and run. Today Popgadget shares a bunch of archived magazines courtesy of Atari Magazines including Compute!

Oh yeah! All these exclamation marks make me wonder if Compute originally inspired Yahoo?

I don’t have any of the Compute! magazines any more but I fondly remember reading, typing and playing around with the programs from those magazines on both the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 computers (my first computers). I also enjoyed reading the Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four and Iron Man comics. I’m looking forward to seeing the Iron Man movie.

What were your favorite magazines or comic books when you were younger?

A healthy discussion on Scoble’s blog is following the Niall Kennedy / hotlinking on company responsibility for employee actions and mistakes as well as the more cliched bloggers are journalists meme.

On the latter part, will people please stop trying to compare blogs/bloggers as a whole to journalists and reporters? Not all of us are trying to be journalists writing in the blog format. At times a blogger might take on the persona of a reporter like in live blogging or when getting more details on a story, but I am certain if I ping all of my friends who have blogs and ask them if they are trying to be journalists most, if not all, will respond with a resounding “no!”

I’ve written before several times that I don’t go out of my way to research every side of every story covered here at Hmm. Let’s be realistic, this blog isn’t my job nor do I think it’s my job in the blog format to spend hours trying to get a story posted on a blog 100% right the first time out. My opinions and point of view are based on the information before me at the time I’m writing them. Readers who don’t understand this initially, will pick up on this over time.

The part that originally and continues to attract me to the blog format is the rough draft published nature which allows me to develop a story over a period of time out in the open publically. This means I fully reserve the right to strike original text I’ve written (not delete once published), change parts or even alter my opinion entirely on something I’ve writtten previously. I reserve that right to change my mind as more facts emerge.

Haven’t you ever heard a story from one or more sources and formed an immediate reaction? And then later when you learned more facts about the situation your opinion changed? That’s happened to me from time to time in life and through the blog format I’m excited that I’m able to capture that progression of time and circumstance. It’s the rough draft which sometimes very quickly becomes a more final draft and readers can experience that along with me.

I like that about blogs. It’s the primary reason I’m excited about this style format.

The fiction idea that’s been done before
It’s relatively unique to any other type of writing. With the fiction novels I’ve written, readers haven’t seen the numerous drafts that went through to the final draft.

I might experiment someday with writing a novel in public in blog format. I know that’s not an original concept, but something that has definitely been a recurring thought and minor fascination. Perhaps most readers wouldn’t be interested in a project like this, but I bet some might. Would you be interested in seeing a novel evolve in the blog format? Would you read along?

Rumors should be denoted as rumors
If something being written about is a rumor and I know it’s a rumor that is always disclosed in the post. I’m not trying to mimick a gossip rag here, but some rumours and gossip make me go hmm. If I doubt the accuracy of the source I’m quoting on something, I’ll say it. If I receive first party clarification and change of anything written about here I’ll update the post. Always. My Skype name and contact email are clearly on the home page of this site and have been for years. I’m easy to contact and leave messages.

Now let’s get back to stuff like what happened with Niall Kennedy. Should I run down Niall to get his side of the story before writing anything on the blog about that? Niall made the comment on Scoble’s blog that Robert should have done so. This got me thinking if I should have too and the answer I came up with is in most cases: no.

If I start doing that I’ll spend more time gathering facts to write about instead of writing and reacting. This blog lives and breathes in a format that encourages reaction. It’s not called Things That I Research In Depth That … Make You Go Hmm. If I have or know somebody I’m writing about on my Skype or in my email list is it absolutely necessary for me to contact them first to get their side? I don’t think so. Why not? Because they can respond here out in public for all to see or choose to respond privately. I’ve had this happen many times from people I know and don’t know. CEOs, authors, bloggers, software developers, etc. In some cases I’m absolutely, positively convinced if I had not written anything here I wouldn’t have gotten any response.

There are many times the blog format can be utilyzed as a better communication tool than email. I’ve lamented the fact before that email is dying. It’s not dead, but it is four of six feed down and starting to rot.

If I have something private to say I’m never going to do it here on the blog, I’m going to contact the person privately. If I have no way to contact that person privately and it’s important I might utilyze the blog format to ask others for help in reaching someone that I need to speak to privately (but not disclose the private information).

Notes while trying to reach contact with Niall
Now that you understand why it’s after the fact, let me give you some facts on how last night’s blog entry came to be and what I’ve done to try and get Niall Kennedy’s side of the story. I saw Todd Bishop’s blog entry and didn’t see the image on the Microsoft RSS blog that Niall had changed. I wrote that in the first paragraph of my post that I hadn’t seen the image. Among the things in this story I would like to have seen is the image to assess if it truly was pornographic or not. After writing and publishing the post I’m reading mixed opinions if it was truly pornographic and instead might have just been a picture of some guy’s ass. That in and of itself is not pornographic. Context needed.

I was also curious if this was only Microsoft that Niall responded to this way. This morning Randy Morin reminded me of another incident involving Niall Kennedy with an insightful comment on Scoble’s blog:

I’m pretty certain such publicity compounded with previous instances [sifry.com/alerts/archives/000297.html] suggest a recurring behavior that other employers and partners are likely going to avoid.

I didn’t remember the Nazi helmet image conflict until Randy brought it up but this guy is starting to develop a bizarre history with using controversial images at the wrong place and time, isn’t he? Read what Niall had to say about that situation on his blog and then compare to this one:

I have since realized the imagery was in bad taste, especially to the organizations involved. I used the logos of other corporations I felt represented the printing press at the fingertips of the masses and associated those companies with an image of a dying American soldier, a rifle butt, and barbed wire. It is not the type of image I would want associated with my business. I apologize to the companies and open source projects pictured.

Last night I attempted to get a direct response from Niall by using his contact form as he wondered why Robert wasn’t doing at the top of this comment thread.

I sent Niall two comments, one by email and one with a Skype text comment. He did reply via email briefly saying he could talk to me on Skype — and ignored answering the questions I asked in the email — but I had already left the office last night and was unable to catch up with him then.

As another non-journalist like Scoble, I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to get to extract Niall’s side of the story, but I have tried to do so where one of the individuals directly involved complained that people weren’t getting his side of the story.

This morning, I sent Niall another message (7:57am PST) on Skype: “Missed you last night, Niall. You there now? Just a couple quick questions so I can get your side of the story down.”

Within 10 minutes he responded and we chatted briefly.

My Skype conversation with Niall
While I didn’t ask for or receive permission to quote the exact text of our Skype conversation I’m going to only relate primarily the pertinent details with the exception of the screenshot shown at the top of this post. That is there simply to prove that indeed I did successfully have a conversation with Niall and isn’t meant or intended to break any confidences.

After the conversation, I told Niall I was going to amend my post last night which I’ve already done to some degree and may make further amendments later once he’s made his blog post.

The biggest point of contention is that Niall insists that the image he used was in fact not pornographic. He pointed me to the official story that Seattle PI ran in their business section which said nothing about it being a “partially censored image of a naked person.”

I indicated I would change my original title to reflect this information (I struck the word “porn” and added “controversial” because that’s certainly the case).

Unfortunately, Niall refused to provide me with the original and swapped image so I could examine them and judge for myself (anybody have a cache of the image to share?). However he said he will republish both images on his blog along with his own explanation, perhaps as soon as later today.

At first Niall somewhat evaded my question about his current relationship with Microsoft, but when pressed further he responded by saying that he felt he had a “pretty good relationship with many people at Microsoft.”

I remain confused if this was the case why he didn’t just contact them directly before swapping out the image? He confirmed to me that he contacted them after the image was swapped out. I think that timing was still wrong regardless if the image was more tame. He should have made an attempt to contact them before swapping that image with something controversial. If it wasn’t pornographic, I’m more in favor of him swapping the image, but since I haven’t seen it, I’m taking him at his word that it wasn’t that bad.

Keep in mind this is the same guy who thought the Nazi helmet image wasn’t that bad when he originally posted it and upon further reflection admitted it was in “poor taste.”

Our conversation was cordial and professional and he thanked me for the research.

Enough playing the journalist card with (most) blogs
I’m growing weary of people playing the journalist card with blogs. Most of us who write using the blog format aren’t professional journalists and are not trying to be. We’re seeing and commenting on a story which in some or many cases might be factually inaccurate. In the case of Mr. Kennedy, this is a great example. I realize when I read most blogs that the information/commentary they are providing might be based on misinformation or facts that aren’t completely accurate or developed as what appears to be the case here with Mr. Kennedy.

Good intentioned, reputable people will update and revisit their posts based on new information/facts that arise as both Robert Scoble and myself have done time and time again. Conversely, those who only want to report one side of the story won’t update or allow comments for others to offer information that could/would change the writer’s perspective and opinion on the story.

If I was writing a story for the New York Times or researching something for a non-fiction book, newspaper or article, the bar of fact checking and journalistic responsibility I’d employ prior to publish would be higher and more strictly enforced. If you doubt this then seek out any of my published works and compare to the format used here at Hmm.

This isn’t to say I’ll never do research or fact checking with things posted to Hmm. Sometimes I’ll do everything the same way I’d do it for a published piece. The beauty is readers here get to see beauty and the beast. The beast is the rough draft and it can take time to tame the beast into beauty.

Don’t most readers of blogs understand this? Am I wrong? Right? What do you think?

When writing here at Hmm, I use a few acronyms fairly regularly. I do try and explain their use the first time they are used in parenthesis to assist in reader comprehension, but in the more regular used cases like BTW (By The Way), I don’t. As a reader I know the annoying feeling when I come up against an acronym and don’t know what it means.

Fortunately, there is a search engine called, what else, abbrievationz (redirects to stands4.com), to quickly and easily find the answer to WTF these acronyms mean. Some acronyms have multiple meanings which adds to reader confusion. I had no idea that WTF had 61 definitions.

In the screenshot pictured at the top of this post you’ll see in red the advertising area in red and the search form above and contents below the fold which is one thing I do not care for about Abbreviationz. As of this writing they cover an impressive 411,330 Entries, 134 Categories and indicate having 311 editors. You can sign up to be an editor if you like, sort of DMOZ-like.

The Abbreviationz tools section provides one click search addition for Firefox, Google Toolbar and a right click context menu for Internet Explorer.

Friendly reader reminder: you can also add MakeYouGoHmm search to Firefox with one click by scrolling to the bottom of any Hmm search results page and clicking the “add search to FF” link near the copyright message. I dogfood this search regularly. Try it out. You can also subscribe to any Hmm search result keyword by RSS (just look for the orange XML button on each search results page). Useful for finding out if/when your site/service/product/blog is mentioned here.