Most music fans were surprised enough when they heard that rocker Neil Young had followed his 2005 "Prairie Wind" album just seven months later with an anti-war album titled "Living with War."

Never one to categorize himself as conventional, Young also has managed to launch a fairly active online campaign to spread the Young love and the anti-war fervor that envelopes the album, which was produced and recorded garage-band style in an unusually short three-week span.

Over the weekend, a Living with War blog featured on the album's web site ranked No. 12 among the day's most-cited blogs. And one of the top posts included a link to an affiliate Web site where users can link to the entire album and play it free on their Web sites. The blog also includes a link to Neil's MySpace site, his official Web site and plenty of other resources (concert schedules, tickets, interviews, media mentions, a Showbiz Tonight video on YouTube, etc.)

Easy...and free
It's obvious someone in the Young camp "gets it" when it comes to promoting music in the new-media economy. No longer content to wait for music companies to handle promotions, the artists are taking a hunk of the responsibility themselves and making it available in multiple formats...on disc, online, and in multi-media commentarys.

The payoff: favorable reviews from listeners. Says one blogger about the ability to listen to the album for free online: "Cool." The blogger at MachineGunKeyboard is equally impressed with the free availiability of the music. Another seems somewhat shocked that Young has a blog. Even young music lovers are paying attention to the old rocker's music and message. Adds the Buttermilk and Molasses blogger: "It rocks. It really does."

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 11:04 AM

If you haven't heard of the fervent believers in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM), if you haven't been touched by his Noodly Appendage, if you haven't read about the Pastafarian movement, you obviously haven't been paying attention. At least not to the ongoing (and now approved) debate in the great state of Kansas, where "intelligent design" has been voted into the science curriculum as an alternative to evolution.

Earlier this year, when the Kansas Board of Education opened the doors to alternate theories about how the world started, Bobby Henderson, a 25-year-old, single, unemployed physics major from Corvallis, Oregon, walked right in. He wrote a letter asking the Kansas educators to consider teaching HIS theory that the world was, in fact, created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster (complete with a pirate side story and a nod to global warming). When he got no response, he posted the letter to a web site.

The FSM/"Open Letter" site has become a popular destination for bloggers, sporadically but routinely ranking among the most-shared links at BlogPulse.com. It's also launched a line of FSM/Noodly Appendage products (one of which recently sold on eBay for $510). Henderson describes the phenomenon in an e-mail interview.

Q. Where did the idea for Flying Spaghetti Monster come from and who was involved? Was it a spur-of-the-moment thing or had it been in the works for a while?
A. "The original letter was spur of the moment, written when I couldn't sleep one night. It was as much for my own amusement as anything. As for the Flying Spaghetti Monster himself, it was divine inspiration, I think. I never planned on putting (the letter) online...it was months before I finally got around to it. (I was) annoyed by receiving no reply."

Q. The letter/site has obviously spawned an entire movement. Were you surprised by the reaction?
A. "Yes, of course I was surprised by the explosion of the site. It's received well over 100 million hits now, currently at about 1 to 2 million/day (including hot-linked images, which I totally support - helps spread the propaganda). I have received more than 18,000 e-mails, currently 5,800 unread. I get anywhere from 50 to 300 e-mails a day, depending on the news."

Q. I'm sure you've been interviewed by news media outlets all over the place. Where, and what were the most unusual ones? (I'm assuming you've had international coverage as well?)
A. "I have no idea how many interviews I've done now, but I prefer the international ones. Had an interesting one from the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). The project caught their attention because at one point the Flying Spaghetti Monster (also FSM) was out-Googling their government home page."

Q. Despite your best efforts, the Kansas board decided (in early November) to adopt intelligent design anyway. How do you interpret the vote?
A. "The Kansas vote wasn't a surprise. But it is interesting that no one mentioned teaching FSM. (Check this out: If you do a Google search for "intelligent design," the Open Letter site ranks No. 5; the Discovery Institute (which promotes intelligent design) ranks No. 11). FSM is now the preferred theory of intelligent design, and still we're being ignored. It makes me think that the conservative Kansas school board members are actually closet Pastafarians, only pretending to be close-minded religious nuts in order to garner the support of the conservative community. Now that they've taken control of the Board, they're working from the inside, re-defining science to include supernatural theories, thus opening the door for FSM to be taught one day."

Q. Will Kansas voters do next year what Dover PA voters did this year? (for the unaware: they voted all the Intelligent Design proponents off their school board on Nov. 8).
A. "I suspect there will be a lawsuit disputing the Kansas school board's right to re-define science to allow magic (supernatural theories = magic). It's hard to say if the conservative members of the Board will get the boot in the next elections because you have to remember, the entire state of Kansas is crazy. They don't let you in unless you think the earth is less than 5,000 years old and that we all rode around on dinosaurs, etc.

"If I had a dinosaur, he would eat whoever I wanted him to."

Q. There's now an entire product line of FSM/Pastafarian/Noodly Appendage stuff. Do people just send you ideas? Do you have a quality control person?
A. "The FSM merchandise wasn't my idea. Everything for sale was asked for by [crazy] people. There have been somewhere around 20,000 shirts sold now. I actually saw someone with an FSM emblem on their car a while ago. I heard a rumor that FSM stuff will make really good Christmas presents. All proceeds will go toward The Cause."

Q. Pirates? Did you have any inkling that real pirates would, in fact, be in the news this year (raiding cruise liners?).
A. "I received hundreds of emails about that 'pirate attack' on the cruise ship. Incidentally, we saw no change in global weather because REAL pirates use swords. They don't have machine guns and speedboats."

Q. What's next?
A. "Next, we're going to form a 'real' church, set up as a non-profit organization, and then purchase a pirate ship for missionary work, completely tax-exempt. Anything and everything the other religions get away with, we're going to try. I'm totally serious about the pirate ship, by the way.

"Most importantly, there's an FSM book coming out in February (The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster). I am pretty sure the other religions are going to just give up after reading it."

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 08:38 AM

About a year ago, the 41-year-old owner of a document delivery business in Germantown, MD, printed 3,000 postcards with a message that invited their finders to write a personal, anonymous secret on the blank side and mail it back to him. Frank Warren left the postcards in art galleries, restaurants, between pages of library books and on subway seats. And as the postcards started trickling back to his mailbox, he began posting a few of them each week at what has become one of the web's most popular blogs: PostSecret.

PostSecret ranks 55th among BlogPulse's top 10,000 blogs (view profile), and it's soon to emerge as a hardcover book, PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives (HarperCollins, Nov. 29 publication). The project combines art, poetry and psychological candor in ways that few other endeavors have, and that's what makes it so fascinating to Warren, a self-described "accidental artist." (Some recent secrets on the blog, where about 20 new cards are posted each week: "By the time you read this, I'll be drunk again." "I've been giving oral sex to a pastor for the past 5 years. He's married. I don't believe in God." "I am a breast cancer survivor. Sometimes I wish the cancer had killed me." And on a New Yorker subscription card: "I think it makes me look smart to subscribe. But I only like to read the cartoons!").

One LiveJournaler calls the site "voyeuristic"; the blogger at Canned Platypus is drawn in because it captures both the "richness and weirdness of the human experience." Warren talks about the project's unexpected popularity and appeal.

Q. How many entries have you received for PostSecret?
A. "Even though I quit handing out postcards after the first 3,000, people started home-making their own postcards and mailing them to me. I started getting postcards not only from the immediate area, but from all over the country and from other countries as well. When I started the blog, I posted a goal of trying to receive 365 secrets before the end of this year. The year hasn't ended yet, and I have over 10,000."

Q. What's been the most surprising thing to you about this entire project?
A. "I'm not shocked any more, but I am surprised every day. I'm surprised at how candid people can be...the raw honesty and different kinds of surprises that arrive every day. Some of the postcards are funny, some are filled wiht anguish and remorse, some of the cards tend to feel like they're from people who are working out how best to deal with their own secret as they confess it to somebody else, and some look like they're sent by people who are searching for absolution."

Q. What effect has PostSecret had on you personally?
A. "Sometimes, I feel this project picked me instead of me picking it. After I started receiving secrets in the mail, some of them reminded me of secrets in my own life that I hadn't even acknowledged to myself. A humiliating childhood experience I hadn't told anyone about for 30 years sort of bubbled up. I wrote that secret down on a postcard and shared it with my daughter and my wife, and I mailed it to myself. That card has become part of the project. Sometimes I wonder if the reason I started this project was because there was this secret inside of me, below my own awareness, that was trying to get out and let me come to terms with it. But that's a pretty complex way for it to be recognized and dealt with."

Q. How do you explain PostSecret's popularity and appeal?
A. " The broadness of the interests and the different types of people participating in this project has been surprising. It wasn't that long ago when I was called by MTV2...they wanted me to do a piece on the PostSecret project. Later that same day, I had a meeting with the web director of the AARP, because they wanted to do something about PostSecret, too. That's how broad the interest has been."

Q. The confessoins run the gamut of emotions and experiences...how do you explain that?
A. "Sometimes people visit the site and might initially come there thinking it's going to be some kind of vicarious thrill, but after they read a few of the secrets, they start to recognize their own secret or the common humanity that they're sharing with these strnagers. They can read something that touches them deeper than things they've talked about with close friends and family. The Internet can foster real human connection."

Q. What have you learned from the project about human secrets?
A. "There are two kinds...ones we keep from others, and the ones that we hide from ourselves. I like to receive and post secrets that are joyful and happy and optimistic and talk about an unseen kindness performed, but I don't get a lot of those. I think it's because by nature, secrets are those things that we feel shameful about and hide, or if we do have positive things like that happen to us, we're more likely to share them with our friends rather than bottle them up inside."

Q. How much time does it take to manage PostSecret?
A. "I get about 350 postcards a week now. I spend more time on PostSecret now than I do my own business, and my business was a lot more profitable before this project, but I feel this is part of the mission. It gives me a lot of gratification doing this kind of work. I get a lot of e-mails from people who talk about an experience of healing, or how mailing in a postcard allowed them to face their secret and deal with it, release it, literally and figuratively. That makes me feel good..."

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:25 AM

Like many political bloggers, Tom Burka got tired of yelling at television commentators during the buildup to the 2004 political election, so the 45-year-old New York City lawyer started blogging to throw his opinions into the fray. His blog tagline, in fact, captures the sentiment quite nicely: "Opinions You Should Have."

His tone is decidedly liberal and honed by very tongue-in-cheek satire. (BlogPulse Profile here.) Headlines such as the post-FEMA "Bush to Investigate Self: Will Ask 'Where Was I' and 'What Was I Doing?' " or "Bush Nominates Actual Blank Slates to Supreme Court" set the tone for the prose that follows. (An August post is my personal favorite: "Bush to Extend August Vacation to Clear 'Especially Pernicious' Brush"). Burka's blog ranks No. 234 on BlogPulse's list of top blogs.

Q. What got you inspired to blog?
A. "I was very worked up about politics. Cable TV was driving me insane, as my wife will testify. I would watch these so-called experts say completely untrue things, which everybody would accept as fact, and I would go completely bonkers. My wife finally said, 'You've got to get off your soapbox, or if you're going to stay on it, find a different audience, and I'm NOT your audience.' "

Q. How would you describe your blog?
A. "My niche is news parody. It's entirely gratifying that people laugh out loud, and that's one of the reasons I keep doing it. I rein myself in a bit because I want to make sure that there's a certain level of quality to the humor...that I'm not writing something every day just to say something. I post 3-4 times a week."

Q. And your day job?
A. "I'm an appeals lawyer, which involves writing a lot of legal briefs. It doesn't give you a lot of room for creativity. Occasionlly, there are some legally funny things you can write about, and I do occasionally write them, but it's not really an outlet for my sense of humor, and certainly there's no place for my political positions."

A. Is there anything you won't write about?
A." There are certain things I just won't make fun of...like big tragedies."

Q. Most of your posts take on the red-state right. How do you decide what to write about?
A. "I'm probably going to spend a little more time aiming at the Democrats themselves. I think that it's not just one particular party...in many ways, it's the political system itself that is to blame, and a good satirist keeps his sights on all the targets." (He considered a post about the Democrats' reaction to Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts along the line of "Democrats Divided On How to Sink Party"..."there hasn't been any progress in the Democrats' drive to define themselves," he says.)

Q. Have you cut back on your writing since the election?
A. Every blogger who writes about politics was going crazy right up to the election. People were eating, sleeping, drinking politics. After the election, there was enormous fatigue....I'm actually writing a book, and that takes a lot of the creative energy and time away from being able to update the blog constantly. And I've noticed that a lot of the blogs that started out as single-author blogs have in the past six months become multiple-author blogs. It's impossible for someone to keep authoring at that level unless it's your job. I certainly have considered doing that as well (enlist contributors), but I really don't know anybody who can write this kind of humor at the level which I'd be happy with."

Q. What's next?
A. "I've got an agent, and this whole book project is the result of blogging. The stuff that's happened to me because of blogging is amazing. I've been on CNN. My stories have been read on MSNBC. I've had an op-ed piece in the New York Times. The book is going to be a satirical novel about Washington D.C. HR 327 is the working title...it's going to focus on a guy who's been sentenced to do time in Congress."

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:57 AM

By day, he's the early-30s senior veep of marketing/business development for a national company whose name shall remain nameless. But when he has a thought or two about the state of politics in Texas, he's just Charlie, author of the Pink Dome blog ("politics written with our tongue planted firmly in our cheek"), which is this week's Blog of the Week (view the Pink Dome profile here). Yes, Texas, home to recently-indicted Sen. Tom DeLay and the place where recently nominated Supreme Court Justice Harriet Miers started her non-judicial law career. So what is it about politics in Texas? Let's find out...

Q. How and why did you start Pink Dome?
A. "I've been using the blog medium for several years as a personal tool, so I knew about blogging. I wasn't completely fresh out of the gate when I launched it Jan. 31, 2005, a few days after the legislative session in Texas started. I knew that I could have a unique voice because there weren't a lot of political blogs dedicated to Texas when I started. Now there's a bunch... But I knew I could have a voice and stand out from the rest of those by using a sort of irrevent tone toward politics and politicians. The 2005 session was the first time that all blogs jumped on the state legislature. It gave us a wealth of material. Texas politics is more entertaining than anything you'll see on TV."

Q. Is your background in politics?
A. "I used to work in politics, as a staffer for the GOP, so I knew how things work. But I'm not a Texas native...I knew nothing about these politicians and I have no history with them, so it really frees me to write about them. I'm not invested in these people. I'm not a native (grew up in Charleston, S.C., and has lived in Austin for two years). I don't have Texas state pride...I just call 'em as I see 'em."

Q. What's so 'entertaining' about Texas politics?
A. "South Carolina is whacky, but they don't have the chutzpah that Texas politicians have. They have a swagger about them here in Texas, and it's really entertaining. They're much more willing to go for the throat. In South Carolina, they'll go for the throat, but they're much more polite and genteel about it."

Q. For example?
A. "Texas passed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as one man/one woman...and I always add to that, 'one donkey.' They focus on social issues like sexy cheerleaders, and despite two special sessions couldn't pass anything on school finance but they were passing bills to help out businesses, so it was a great source of fodder for political bloggers..."

Q. Why don't you use your real name on your blog?
A. "I use Charlie only. For a long time, I was completely anonymous, but we started getting some media attention so I had to use my first name."

Q. How do you view the role of blogs in politics?
A. " 'I am the most important person in Texas...a voter with a voice, just like you.' That's the whole message for me of blogs when it relates to politics: being a voter with a voice. I don't think blogs will replace mainstream media, but I do think they're influential among their key readers. I know that legislators in Texas were reading Pink Dome as they were on the floor during debates."

Q. Pink Dome? Where'd that name come from?
A. "Some people though it was a gay web site, but the Texas capitol is made of pink granite. 'Pink Dome' is the insider's reference to the capitol building.

Q. You've got a governor's race coming up soon. Care to comment?
A. "The mud slinging is already going on. Kinky Friedman is running, and I wouldn't rule him out. People are so disgusted with the current leadership, that if the moon is aligned with Venus, there's a possibility he could sneak in with some votes. What Texans still love about Kinky is that he just says it. He doesn't have that political filter, and that's one of the things that makes Pink Dome great, too. We try not to have any filters as well."

Q. Any advice for other bloggers?
A. "Be interesting. Content is king. People know that if they come to Pink Dome in the morning, they're going to see something, and if they come in the afternoon, they're going to see something different. (Pink Dome's contributors also include an anonymous liberal feminist and an anonymous politician). Lots of Pink Dome's readers don't know if I'm male or female...I try to write as a sassy, drunk, political junkie. I don't think people want to come and read things that are always so negative or hate-filled and anger-filled, so I try to keep it edgy, because quite frankly, in Texas, you have to laugh to keep from crying."

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:43 AM

Oh, the blogging world is full of fun stuff today, including The National Enquirer, of all things, earning a rank for the most-shared link (is he?) and Phil Donahue rising from to TV-host obscurity to the day's burstiest person for his tete-a-tete with Fox's Bill O'Reilly.

But it's Friday, and time for another Blog of the Week profile, and today, we find out about the blogger at Protein Wisdom, BlogPulse's 46th top-ranked blog (BlogPulse profile). Protein Wisdom's tagline: "because not just anybody can summarize the news."

Q. Basic biographical info:
A. Jeff Goldstein, Denver, CO. Fiction writer/teacher.

Q. When and how did you get interested in blogging?
A. Shortly after 9/11, I started looking around on the net for supplementary information on al-Qaeda, Islamism, "blowback," Afghanistan, etc. It was then I stumbled upon blogs - Instapundit, Matt Welch, Andrew Sullivan, a few others - and immediately got drawn in. I guess when you're hungry for information, sites that update frequently are a powerful draw.

Anyway, after reading blogs for a couple months - and tired of shouting at the pundits on TV - I decided I'd join the online conversations I'd been reading. Plus, I have an almost compulsive urge to type the words "Kos" and "Atrios." So I figured, why not?

Q. In 25 words or less, describe the philosophy or tone of Protein Wisdom.
A. Imagine Sean Hannity on acid. Now replace Sean Hannity with a dolphin in a
pea coat. And there you are.

Q. Where did the name Protein Wisdom come from?
A. "Protein wisdom" comes from a line I wrote in a piece of fiction. In its original context, it had to do with a very vivid drug trip. Not sure how accurate the description is, though. I shy away from that kinda stuff.

Q. What other blogs do you read regularly and why?
A. Who has time to read blogs? I sure don't. It's all I can do to get one written. Although I do end up reading many in a given day thanks to reader tips and links that fill up my inbox.

Q. Five years from now, where you do see the blogging phenomenon headed?
A. Insofar as blogging has democratized "publishing" and the dissemination of information, I think it's a good thing - though it has, to a certain inarguable degree, coarsened political discourse. Which, I'm not so sure that's a bad thing, necessarily. But none of that matters, really, because five years from now, I expect the world will be run by our nanobot overlords - with information beamed directly into our heads by the evil little bastards. And if I know nanobots, we'll all be thinking about nanochicks. Like, constantly.

Q. What do you like to do in your spare time? (hobbies/interests/quirks, etc.).
A. I don't have much spare time - I take care of my son pretty much full time these days - but at the end of the day, I tend to watch a movie and drink a glass of Guinness. I'm a big movie buff - particularly 70s cinema. I'm also a big reader, though again, since my son was born, I haven't had time to read much fiction. I have a stack of books sitting on my nightstand collecting dust that I hope to get to soon. As far as quirks go, well, I like to talk to apples and my pants. Does that count?

Q. Fill in the blank: The last new CD that I purchased was:
A. Johnny Cash: American IV: The Man Comes Around; Kris Kristofferson: Greatest Hits Box Set.

Q. Is Protein Wisdom your only blog, or do you have others that you'd care to talk about?
A. This is it for now, though there are plans in the works to open up a protein wisdom "community site" as soon as I can figure out how to do it from a software and hosting perspective. Mostly it will a discussion space and a portal for a few other bloggers to cross-post material and, when they have time, put up original material.

It's tentatively called "The PW Pub" - which is where classical liberals and conservatives hang out; Internet progressives hang out in places called "Cafes."

Q. Is there anything I didn't ask that I should have?
A. I've always wanted someone to ask ME how many licks it takes to get to center of a Tootsie Pop. Because the answer is 19.
19.
And people have the right to know the TRUTH.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 09:16 AM

It's hard to imagine anyone riding out Hurricane Katrina from inside New Orleans, but blogger Ernest "Ernie" Svenson did it, from his father's 10th-floor condominium near the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. His blog, Ernie the Attorney, emerged as one of the major sources of hurricane-related information in the first few days after the hurricane hit and the enormity of the damage, including the levee breaks in New Orleans, became apparent. View the blog's BlogPulse profile here.

Through an email exchange and interview via a friend's cell phone, BlogPulse caught up with Ernie in Kansas City, where he ended up with family and friends after leaving New Orleans on Tuesday.

On leaving after Katrina hit
"My dad has a condominium right next to the Audubon Zoo, next to the levee, which is one of the highest points in New Orleans. He had stormshutters that were supposed to be safe in winds up to 140 mphp or something, and, in fact, turned out to be safe, as predicted. After the hurricane went through, I surveyed my house nearby...checked roof damage and did some minor repairs...checked out friends' houses nearby. Then we kind of gathered all of our stuff and tried to figure out the best way out of the city. We ended up in a caravan with some other drivers who seemed to know where they were going, so we followed them."

How he blogged from New Orleans without electricity, Internet connection
"I could do it from my cell phone, and while we were driving to Kansas City, I could post from my phone. When we stopped at a hotel, it had wi-fi connection and I could blog from there. I was also sending text messages to a friend in Orlando and she would post them for me. The only way to communicate with people, if they're in the city, is to use a cell phone to send a text message, because cell phone service for voice and Internet data doesn't work at all. By now, I'm sure people's phone batteries have run out."

On the enormity of the damage to his city of birth
"You really can't grasp it unless you grasp it piecemeal. We didn't have a TV, and only heard bits of news on the radio. We heard from other people that it was really dire and they were telling us to get the hell out, and now that I look back, I would have moved a little faster if I'd have known how bad it was. I don't consider myself to have a great window into what's going on now. I look at the damage on TV now, but I don't have a sense of that at all. I was in a fortunate part of the city."

On thoughts of rebuilding New Orleans
"I was listening to somebody on the TV -- maybe it was (President) Bush-- about rebuilding, and he said something about not only rebuilding New Orleans but making it better. Make it better? I can't relate to that. It's not going to be better. It's going to be different. Whatever it becomes, it's going to be so different from what it was -- from what gave New Orleans its character -- that I don't know how it can be better."

Is there a positive side?
"Looking at the images and the horrors is the negative side. The good side is that I've gotten all these emails from people who are offering to help, collecting money, offering a place to stay for me and my family. One guy emailed and said he has a farm, and extra room, and if people could help him with farm work, he could take in two families. It reminds me of what happened after 9/11...people are expressing a willingness to help and are reaching out. That's the thing I find most endearing and most touching. I know the news is covering some of that..."

On the future of his blog and law practice
"I'll keep the blog going. I just haven't had a chance to post things because I've been on the road. I was driving all day Thursday and I'm still getting settled. My tendency isnt' to blog little chunks of information. I'm thinking about larger-scale things and need to process it now."

His 55-lawyer firm, with about 100 total employees, plans to conference by phone on Saturday to discuss plans to open a new office in Baton Rouge or Lafayette. Their New Orleans office is apparently destroyed.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 01:33 PM

BlogPulse's most recent upgrade included a new tool called BlogPulse Profiles, and today's entry goes one step further with a new feature called Blog of the Week, whereby we talk to various and sundry bloggers about what motivates them, who they are, and why they blog.

First up is Jeff Jarvis (blog profile), who made waves last week with his "Dear Mr. Dell" post at BuzzMachine, detailing ongoing function and customer service problems with a laptop computer (conversation here). He graciously answered some BlogPulse questions by email, so without further ado, heeeere's Jeff Jarvis, first in a series of Blog of the Week profiles:

BlogPulse: Why do some companies tend to ignore bloggers/online consumers?
Jarvis: "Interacting with blogs is no different from interacting with consumers; they're just people. So smart companies will interact wisely; dumb companies will mess it up. Blogs simply make it easier for customers to become publishers and do more damage to your PR if you don't pay attention."

BlogPulse: Does corporate America "get" blogging?
Jarvis: "...Boards don't run companies, executives do. And I think an executive would have to be blind not to see all the press blogs are getting. The question is whether they yet realize the impact this has on their companies -- on the real public relations, on the ability to build a new relationship with your constituency, on the greater danger of not caring about what your customers say."

BlogPulse: What could Dell do to change your mind?
Jarvis: "They could do many things, starting with simply responding in public: Leave a comment, send an email, start a blog... just do us the courtesy of entering into the conversation..."

BlogPulse: Five years from now, where will roost in the media hierarchy?
Jarvis:"I think it's a mistake to judge blogs as media. Blogs are people, consumers, citizens. Blogs give you the chance to listen to and talk with the people you want to serve. Bloggers can tell you how to design and market and support your products and help you do it... if you let them. Media never could do that."

BlogPulse: What CD is in your CD player right now? What's the last movie you rented?
Jarvis: "What's a CD? Haven't played one in ages. On my iPod, I have been listening to podcasts (like Diggnation) and foreign-language podcasts to help me brush up on my language (Schlaflos in Muenchen is a favorite) and NPR programs (On The Media, This American Life)."

BlogPulse: In your "down time," what do you do to relax or disengage your brain?
Jarvis: "I wouldn't say it disengages the brain, but I do find blogging enjoyable and relaxing and I do it when the kids are sleeping. Otherwise, when not working, nothing can beat playing with your kids... even when one of them is your webmaster."

BlogPulse: What's YOUR favorite blog to read?
Jarvis:"Like a Hollywood starlet on a talk show, I never answer that question.... because I read too many and because my list of favorites changes all the time."

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 04:32 PM