Well, take me to the airport and feed me Cinnabons: Your humble Weblog is among today's Radio Top 40, and not even entirely due to my own edits and views. Not due to my eloquent, insightful content, either — gullible clicks from my Radio 8 review on WinPlanet, which UserLand CEO and Weblog kahuna Dave Winer kindly plugged in Scripting News today. Dave also sent a gracious e-mail of thanks for the writeup, but no thanks required; just doing my job like I've lo these many years, trying to shoot straight and tell folks what's good & bad & is & isn't worth spending their money on hardware & software. Radio 8 has tons of rough edges, as Alan A. Reiter and others far more HTML-savvy than me have noted, but when impressive enhancements like the spam-proof e-mail icon slipstreamed into the product after only a few days' release, I knew we were seeing something different in software.
I smiled when Dave referred to WinPlanet as "They say"; I may have multiple personalities, but the only difference between this log and WinPlanet or Hardware Central is that the latter two have a teeny-tiny freelance budget. I've never met D. and didn't discover Scripting News until last year, when he joined Walt Mossberg and Dan Gillmor in exposing and rousing the masses against Microsoft's Orwellian, intolerable plan to add Smart Tag links of its choosing to every page on the Web. Now I wonder how he manages to get any software work done between writing the archetypal Weblog and thin-skinnedly hyperreacting to any BBS- or forum-style flamer who criticizes him (an "Underground Radio" site that combined Reiter-style product suggestions with some unauthorized banter about UserLand's privacy policy or hacks vs. callbacks would be cool, but coming in as an outsider, I can't imagine why D. pays attention -- as CEOs like, say, Bill Gates do not -- to every teenage pissant who spews personal vitriol at the level of a macro that types "DaveSucksDaveSucksDaveSucks"). Not to dismiss the "how Usenet veterans must have felt about clueless AOL invaders" note in my review, but I think the biggest contribution UserLand, Pyra, and others might make is to move personal Web publishing beyond the insular, "let's give each other referrals," "let's nominate each other for awards" clique impression that the pioneering Weblog community can give.
That said, I'm going to contradict myself and put a few more referrals to Weblogs I find and admire in the navigation links, even if they're written by the happily married or underage or unattainable women I mentioned earlier (you go from lurker, to linker, to stalker). And by the way, I'm serious, I may have high blood pressure but my cholesterol tests came back OK, take me to the airport and feed me Cinnabons.
8:57:13 PM 
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