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Relaunch of Interesting Thing of the Day: Next week!

On May 31, 2005—almost exactly one year ago—I published the last of the 365 consecutive daily articles that made up “version 2” of Interesting Thing of the Day. Since then, there have been no new articles, but the long wait is nearly over: the site will relaunch next week!

I am pleased to announce that Interesting Thing of the Day will return with NEW articles, new features, and a completely new look and feel next Wednesday, May 31, 2006. I’ll be spending the upcoming long weekend putting the final touches on all the site’s revisions. If all goes well, the official roll-out of ITotD version 3.0 should be complete before the end of the day on Tuesday.

At that time, I’ll post a complete list of what’s new. Some of the things you’ll notice are:

A new logo and site layout, with easier navigation
Never-before-published articles
Improvements to podcasts and RSS feeds
Buzzword-compliant “Web 2.0” features (if you have to ask, you don’t need to know!)

One other major change will involve the publication schedule. Next week, there will be new articles on Wednesday (May 31) and Friday (June 2). Thereafter, I’m shooting for two new articles per week (most likely on Mondays and Wednesdays) and one recycled article (to appear on Fridays). However, I intend for the schedule to be flexible. If the site’s income warrants more-frequent articles, I’m happy to oblige; if circumstances require a reduced workload, I may cut back here and there. In any case, expect to see more articles by guest authors—and if you would like to become a guest author yourself, please see this page for information.

May 25, 2006 by Joe Kissell Blogging

Of Backups and Updates

Today saw the release of Take Control of Mac OS X Backups version 1.2, exactly 53 weeks after the initial version was published. My, how time flies. This ebook had been growing increasingly outdated as more and more backup programs received major updates—particularly Apple’s Backup 3. Now it’s once again completely current, and I’ve expanded it significantly to cover photo and video backups, as well as adding 20-odd pages of details on using Retrospect (whch has a notoriously unintuitive interface). Still $10, or free to those who purchased any previous version.

I also decided it was finally time to get a new graphic for the header of this blog, and make a few other little stylistic corrections. The CSS is now 15% less ugly than before, and though it still has plenty of room to improve, I can at least look at it without cringing now.

Summer of S((c)h)wag

A couple of weeks ago, I got an unexpected package in the mail: a large tin of delicious chocolate-covered cherries, sent by my publishers as a sort of congratulatory token for having finally completed the very long project of writing Take Control of Now Up-to-Date & Contact. There’s just nothing better than getting goodies in the mail. Actually, many things are better than that, but let’s just say it’s really nice.

I’ve had a real run on surprise goodies recently. Last month, a reader who’s a professional photographer sent me a lovely print from a Moxy Früvous shoot he’d done in the early ’90s. A couple of weeks ago, I received a large gift basket of hot sauces, which I agreed to review and write about as a follow-up to my Interesting Thing of the Day article on Tabasco Sauce and my blog post about Measuring Spiciness. (Stay tuned. The wheels of progress are spinning slowly this summer.) A couple of days ago, I received two CDs from This American Life, courtesy of a reader I’d helped out with some technical questions. Just this morning, the Fisher Space Pen Company offered to send me a prototype of their latest model for testing—with purple ink, natch—as a result of my article on Space Pens. And yet another message in my Inbox this morning was from a reader and regular correspondent who wanted to know if he could buy me a gift subscription to Z Magazine.

Well, this is all quite extraordinary. I’m pleased, touched, grateful—even in the cases where a commercial motive is perhaps lurking behind the scenes. Of course, I would never, ever want someone to feel obligated to send me stuff—or even a thank-you note—for doing them a favor. Favors shouldn’t have to be repaid. But if you choose to send me stuff simply as a way of spreading some good karma around, I am certainly happy to accept. (Well, usually. When I wrote about Castor Oil, a reader offered to send me some castor bean seeds. As I have no outdoor space available where I could plant them, I had to decline.)

Because I’ve spent so much of my life at trade shows and conferences, I’ve become accustomed to using the term “schwag” to denote free merchandise, usually of a promotional nature. (Trade show attendees invariably walk away with all sorts of odd tchotchkes, usually emblazoned with corporate logos.) So by extension I’ve been referring to the items I’ve received recently as “schwag” too. Some cursory research this morning, however, turned up some curious facts. Apparently, there are three distinct spellings: “swag,” “shwag,” and “schwag,” which—though sometimes used interchangeably—have developed rather different primary meanings. As nearly as I’ve been able to determine, they (usually, not always) break down as follows:

swag: Typically used for stolen goods. Please do not send me any of this.
shwag: Typically used for marijuana of poor quality. Please do not send me any of this either. (And no, I don’t want it even if it’s high quality.)
schwag: Typically used for free merchandise (promotional or otherwise). You may send me this if you wish.

But please do me the courtesy of letting me know in advance if I should expect a package from you. As much as I enjoy surprises, I prefer to have a general idea of what I’m opening, times being what they are.

September 1, 2005 by Joe Kissell Blogging Books Food & Drink

If You Ignore It, They Will Come

I just got an email congratulating me on the fact that Interesting Thing of the Day has, for the first time, made it onto the Feedster Top 500 list “most interesting and important blogs.” (It’s #470.) This list is based on how many other sites link to yours. The last time I’d bothered to check that statistic was many months ago. If you’d asked me to hazard a guess yesterday, I might have said a few dozen. The actual number: 847.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, being the 470th “most interesting” blog is no great shakes, and given the billions of Web pages out there, having 847 of them mention my site must also be considered a comparatively minor achievement. That’s not to say I’m not incredibly pleased at this development; I am. But I’m also a bit mystified, because I haven’t written a single new article for the site in more than two months.

This mystery runs deep. When I went “on vacation” from ITotD at the beginning of June—for the sake of my sanity and health—I imagined that the number of readers, and the income generated by the site, would taper off. Sure, there’s sorta-fresh content there, in that I’m recycling old articles every weekday, but I assumed the Web surfing public would soon tire of that. Curiously, the number of visitors has remained almost exactly the same, and the income (at least from AdSense clickthroughs) has actually gone up. Significantly.

The implications are a bit mind-boggling. There I was, spending 30+ hours per week working on the site and getting very little recognition or income. Now I’m spending maybe 1 or 2 hours a week on it (mostly replying to inquiries and fixing bugs), and the site gets more recognition and more income. It almost seems as though there’s an inverse relationship between effort expended and reward received.

Clearly, if I want it to become the number one site on the Web and achieve fame and fortune, I should ignore it completely for a year or two.

No, I’m not really going to do that. The site will get its promised overhaul, and begin displaying new articles, as soon as I can possibly get to it. But this phenomenon sure gives me pause: for better or worse, content seems to be much less important than visibility. So when I return to spending significant time on the site, you can bet that I’ll be putting a lot more effort into publicity than into writing new articles.

August 16, 2005 by Joe Kissell Blogging

Relaunch of Interesting Thing of the Day: Next week!

Of Backups and Updates

Summer of S((c)h)wag

If You Ignore It, They Will Come

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