John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

A T-shirt with local appeal

Regular readers will know I have a thing for T-shirts; I'm also fond of Signal, the locally produced blog. (Our titles are kind of fishing from the same [Deadman's] pond.) Signal is now selling some swag: check it out here.

Wicked Scoff goes to Mexico

One of the newer blogs with a local, um, flavour is A Wicked Scoff, which is published from New England (hence the "wicked" part - they use the term more fervently there than here) by an expat from Newfoundland (hence the scoff). Check it out, particularly this latest post with recipes for a salsa, guacomole, and grilled chicken with a lime rub. Yummy, indeed.

I can has synergistic, cross-pollinating web empire

Time magazine profiles Ben Huh, who is making a mint from a bunch of sites and blogs, from the Fail blog to GraphJam to I Can Has Cheezburger.

(Before we continue: Aside from the Lolcats trend that has kind of overstayed its welcome by, oh, many moons, I think Huh has something to answer for because of the Fail meme. I've quite had it with teens and young adults, with no practical life or work experience, instantly and angrily labelling something as "FAIL!!!" - not because it doesn't work, but because they simply don't like it.)

Huh's sites (more than 20 of them) are making a mint:

These spellbindingly inane blogs were built with the kind of user-generated content that has made Facebook and YouTube tremendously popular. But unlike these bigger sites, Huh's company has been in the black since its first quarter. Pet Holdings managed to haul in seven figures from advertising, licensing fees and merchandise sales during the first six months of this year, according to a report given to Huh's investors.

Laugh at that, cats.

We're blog of the week

I got a note today from Stephen Harris, who voluntarily looks after the Newfoundland and Labrador BlogRoll, that Dot Dot Dot is the blog of the week. Thanks, folks! You can see the members of the roll to the right.

The NL BlogRoll is back in operation after something of a hiatus, brought on when the Blogrolling.com site effectively ceased operations for a number of months. It's back, and so too is the updating on this and many, many other blogrolls around the world. If you're a blogger, I highly recommend that you manually ping your site; mine is supposed to do so automatically with each post, but it doesn't happen. The 20 seconds or so it takes to ping through this form is time very well spent: it means you get an asterisk, or some other marker, on blogrolls, which is a flag to readers that you have fresh stuff to read.

Been very busy

I haven't been spending much time on this blog lately; I've been very busy instead with covering the helicopter crash and its aftermath at work. Spare minutes have been at home with the family.

I hope to get back into the swing of things soon.

Light blogging for a couple of days

I'm hitting the road later today, pretty much the instant after I finish writing about today's release of the Cameron inquiry. I'll be in Toronto for a couple of days of training.

I may or may not be able to post on the road.

Clowdy forecast for the future of spelling

I groan when I see typos in public places - and not just on TV screens. (My colleagues will vouch for this.) I've made a few in my time, admittedly, but I like to think I've prevented thousands of spelling mistakes from ever seeing the light of day. English Fail Blog collects samples from users of how the language is being failed. It's also often quite funny.

Ormiston Online

CBC is putting a bit more pizzazz into how it's following blogs and other online chatter about this year's election. Susan Ormiston is piloting Ormiston Online, which is watching what Canadians are scribbling about the election.

Post title of the day

From Eric Eggertson, writing on, well, writing and tone.

Away from my desk

I'm away for a few days; blogging will be on the light side. Cheers.