We need more egos

Back in April I joined my first Homebrew Website Club meeting and since then I’ve made a habit of reading the blogs from everyone there that day. The first post I read this Wednesday is from Thomas Vander Wal at his blog Off the Top. On this very hot summer day (108°F / 42°C) I’m reminded of blogs that used to have names, like columns or talk shows. I think of old ones like Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom, Dave Winer’s Scripting News and John Gruber’s Daring Fireball. Then I think of newer blogs I read like The Jolly Teapot from Nicolas Magand and The Beauty of Nature from Franz Graf. A blog with a name gravitates around a theme. The posts are its pulse, reminding the reader of the core idea that made it be in the first place. “Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.” W.H. Auden, A Certain World (1970) Personal sites take us through the discovery of ideas and events in a person’s life, more journal or diary than talk show. A personal site is closer to…