Jason Irwin dot Net

The Blogs I Visit the Most, and the Blogs I Miss the Most

December 26, 2007 Blogroll

It’s that time of year again, and everyone is giving their Top 10 lists of the year. Not to be outdone by others, I’ve decided to follow the crowd by presenting a list of my own. However, in keeping with the holiday spirit, I’ll share a little link love with some of the blogs I’ve found the most enjoyable over 2007. Not all of these blogs are still around, so I’ll split the list into “Active” and “Not So Active or Retired”.

First, the “Active Blogs” list:

LongCountdown.com – Nick and I are, from what I’ve gathered between our comments, rather close neighbours here in Kakamigahara, Japan. This past year has been incredibly busy for him and it’s been a priveledge to read about his journeys. From buying a house in Japan, to becoming a father, and everything inbetween. If you haven’t stopped by his site before, I strongly urge you to grab the notebook while digesting the holiday feasts.

MsDanielle – I happened to find Danielle’s site by accident, I think, because I can’t remember how I got there. But I’ve been a solid reader of her posts since March of this year and seen some of the most intelligent posts about PPC anywhere online get posted on that site. On top of being a useful source of knowledge, Danielle also brings us some casual posts, such as FlashBack Fridays that give readers the opportunity to remember some of our long lost youth

RobNeville.net – Although he’s been a bit busy lately, Rob puts out some great posts about technology and how it can actually be useful to humans. Before you say “I thought technology already was useful”, I suggest reading his post on Rethinking the Mouse-less Computer. This was the first of many posts I had read, and it was Rob’s clear thinking and writing style that kept me coming back. I look forward to some of this insights and rants in 2008.

MichaelMcKinlay.com – When not spamming his site with PayPerPost articles, he writes some pretty good posts Seriously, though, Mike is a long-time friend of Nick at LongCountdown (as well as lots of other people in Japan, it seems), and as a natural extension of participating over at Nick’s site, I started to read Mike’s. With the recent spanking Google has awarded so many PPP bloggers, we’ve been promised a different direction for MichaelMcKinlay.com in 2008, and I’m looking forward to seeing what that might be.

NihonHacks.com – I don’t know how, but I managed to stumble onto this site when it was just a week or so new. I think it had something to do with making seed planters out of tofu cartons …. Either way, I’ve been an avid reader ever since. Thomas is yet another blogger in Japan who is finding his way in the Land of the Rising Sun, and doing a pretty good job of it, it seems. My favourite article had to be the one about finding cheese in Japan. Many foreigners have a hard time finding really good cheese in this country, and some even give up. But this post will be sure to help lots of people get through those cravings for real cheddar, edem or swiss cheese.

Now, for the “Not so Active or Retired Blogs”

Nice4Rice (Retired) – This was my introduction to Nick at LongCountdown, and his ever positive attitude and inventive thinking. From this site I learned about a whole network of English-speaking Japanese bloggers and have been thankful ever since. Which reminds me … I still owe him that drink at Starbucks

The LiftPort Staff Blog (Not so Active) – I was introduced to this site after Brian from the same site left an amazingly well written rebuttal to one of my rants about space travel (he’s left many, so I can’t link just one), and it’s been exciting to keep up with the status of LiftPort in general. Unfortunately, the company has come under some difficult times, and updating their blog is not exactly high on the priority list. I will still keep my eye on them, though, as I feel space elevator technology is the most cost effective means of consistently escaping our planet’s gravity well.

CashForComments (Not so Active) – When the “Sneaky Bastard” Prija created this site he put a huge amount of effort into promoting the site and gained a pretty quick readership.  I had never seen a site get so much attention from so many people so quickly, and was just a little jealous.  All in all, the posts were enjoyable and even a little cheeky.  Prija offered many ideas on how to bring people to our own sites with techniques and he was quite open with most of his ideas.  But when BloggingTheMovie started to take shape, CashForComments just wasn’t an effective use of time anymore.  This site went from buzz to kill in the span of a few months.  But all’s not lost, for the site still exists and many of Prija’s ideas are sound enough to still work in this Google-altered Blogosphere … in the short-term, anyways.

BloggingTheMovie (Umm … Hello?) – As far as I know, this is Prija’s latest project, but his site has been pretty quiet about the status of this movie.  I know that putting together something of this scale is hardly easy, and I know that he’s been putting an incredible amount of effort into it, but there hasn’t been an on-topic post about the subject on the blog for quite some time, or any post for that matter.  Prija … what’s goin’ on?

But, on that note, these were the blogs that I visited the most in 2007.  For anyone reading their stats, I’m the guy that was always using Opera … regardless of OS.  If I didn’t include your site in here, don’t feel like I excluded you on purpose!  I read hundreds of blogs every week.  Most are through RSS, though.  If I haven’t actually visited your site often enough to be on this list, it means that I haven’t had any valuable comments to leave.

I’m looking forward to the coming year as the Christmas break is one of the two bumper seasons for people to start blogging.  With every new generation of blogger comes a new change to the ecology of the blogosphere.  And with that change, there’s always something new to learn.

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