PhotoDude.com

Happy anniversary, PD. But I think you sell yourself short, by about 4 years. Because it is not a Content Management System or hosting arrangements that make a “blog,” but the author’s desire to observe, report and share the world about him with others. And in the best blogs, that extends to a willingness to foster genuine 2-way conversations with readers and other people, which might even inform the blogger’s own opinions or change the blogger’s own mind about issues.

By that standard, looking back to your 1996 Olympic series, in this latest Olympic summer, you’ve been “blogging” for about 8 years. These days, too many blogs have become just “spew stands” where the author rails on and on for or against some set of fixed positions he feels strongly about, making sure to turn off comments and ignore links, so that any real communication isn’t “convenient.” But even back in 1996, before CMS systems like MT and TP were available, you were commenting and linking to other sources, and asking people to think about their ideas and reactions to news and events.

So stay engaged, and thus, gracefully age. There’s much to be said for considering our blogs our own learning tools, which is something you were observing back in 1996….

[been meaning to get back to this, but got electorally distracted]

But how could there have been a “blog” before there was a blogger?

I frankly didn’t know what I was doing back then. I just knew I had some web space, the ability to put up pages with words on it on any whim, and a camera to add pictures as well. It seemed so obvious to me, I was certain there would be a significant handful of people in Atlanta doing the same thing. I was rather shocked to find out I was the only one, when it seemed so … obvious.

I guess it was a “tool” issue. Obviously, there was no Blogger, MT, etc. in 1996, so you had to know how to hand code HTML. And it’s worth noting the other improvement in “tools.” In 1996, I was shooting slide film (digital wasn’t an option), having it processed, editing down the shots I wanted to put online, taking those slides to another vendor to be scanned, taking the resulting floppy disk home to run through Photoshop 3.0, and eventually FTPing the resized image to my site. It took a minimum of 24 hours from taking the shot to getting it online.

Today, with the advent of moblogging, that process merely requires a minute, and punching a button or two. People are snapping photos with their cell phone, which are then automatically uploaded to their web site. In a mere 8 years, the change is amazing.

So I appreciate your sentiment, but most people judge their “blog birthdate” based on the beginning of a continuous chronological archive of entries. And mine began July 16, 2000. Before that, there’s a lot of gaps.