I'm experimenting with a photo blog, mainly as a means to share snapshots with far-flung family and friends.

Uses a bog-standard template at the moment (with helpful tweaks from friend Riri). If I decide to continue with the idea, I'll get round to polishing and personalizing the design a little.

WDYT?

Target, the gimungous US retailer (often rumoured to have Canada's Zellers in its sights), has added what just has to be one of the strangest, hokiest new fashion accessories to it's store catalogue - Kabbalah Red String, suitable for making your own Madonna/Paris Hilton-stylee bracelets (original pointer courtesy of Gawker, btw).

For the bargain price of US$25.99 (plus tax and shipping, natch), you too can knot a piece of red thread around your wrist to ward off the "evil eye".

Oh, but not just any old red thread, of course. No, no - a special bit of string that has "...traveled to Israel, to the ancient tomb of Rachel the Matriarch, and returned, imbued with the essence of protection."

Yes - the same Kabbalah Red String we can all freely refer to by name, without fear of trademark infringement, thanks to those fearless heretics at the US Patent & Trademark Office.

If you don't quite trust Target, you could always order your "official" string (only a penny more) from kaballah.com.

Or ship your knotty twine straight from the source, for as little as $9.99,

Or even pick one up for as little as two bucks on eBay.

What the heck - if you really want to do this right, get yerself down to your local knitting shop. You can pick up a whole damn armful of string for about six bucks. Forget "evil eye", singular. This shit's gotta be good enough to ward off an entire Republican convention.

And any colour you want - never mind slavishly following the fashion tyranny of Esther.

Taupe is the new red!! Kaffe Fassett is the new... um... what was I saying...?

It really was a terrific speech. Natural, confident, direct.

I think he can win (with or without balloons).

This man has a balloon fixation.

[With thanks to Peter Shankman for posting the sound file]

"But my dad...hunched over the soggy hamster and began to administer CPR"

No contest.

And while we're on the subject of things that might make the next president of the USA cringe, there's always this.

Nearly forgot. Oops.

Congratulations, Doc.

Definitely 57, but definitely not one of life's passengers.

Sadly, goballoons.com is already taken. It resolves to this.

...don't let the baby chew on one!

What were you thinking?

"I need more balloons! Where the hell are all the balloons?! What the f*#k are you guys doing up there? We need ALL the balloons! GO BALLOONS!!!"

Yes. One can never have enough balloons.

Just a scant few days old, and Suw Charman's Strange Attractor blog already has a near-exclusive on news from The Guardian about the upcoming launch of a new games-focused blog.

As Suw points out, The Guardian is one of the very few UK publications to have a clue about the growing influence of the blogosphere (although the UK edition of PR Week also recently demonstrated that they're beginning to stir and detect the faint scent of arabica).

It's appropriate, then, that they chose to leak this news into the blogosphere. After all - it's a story about a blog, of appeal to the blog trend watchers (most of whom are, of course, bloggers). So why not let a well-known blogger launch the news first? Makes sense.

There's a mildly interesting little PR conundrum in this though. Think about it: here we have one of "the big media" launching a sector-specific blog, with a mission to cover "every game genre and every major gaming platform, including PCs, consoles, the net and mobile phones".

The real audience they want to reach with this news, of course, will not likely be reading Suw's new blog. Blog pundits and new media trend followers are not going to help them attract the video game fanatics they really want to reach (sorry Suw - I just don't see too many 14 year old boys in your target demographic :-).

But where do 14 year old video game junkies (or fans of any age, for that matter) get their news and reviews?

Well, apart from word-of-mouth, most of their news probably comes from online games sites (including the game authors' own sites) and chat rooms, plus the traditional glossy print magazines.

The problem: none of these existing sites or magazines would be interested in talking about the Grauniad's new blog, as it's setting up to compete with them for the exact same audience.

So if you're The Guardian, and you want to get the news out about your brand new games blog, who you gonna call?

It's loosely analogous to GM launching a blog focused on the machinations of the auto trade. How do they get the news out? Call Car & Driver magazine?

This is an interesting little conceit, and not worth spending a lot of time pondering, but as the lines continue to blur between readers and writers, publishers and consumers, reporters and PR people, big media and small -- it's one small example of the kind of quandary we're likely to see a lot of in the months ahead.

Just came across this old post at the blog of Kevin Mark's 9 year old son.

I think it might be the simplest explanation I've ever encountered of how Googlejuice works, and why you just can't fake it.

...and becomes important enough to have flacks spreading the good news for her ;-)

The news first: the fragrant and talented Suw Charman -- author of the superb Chocolate & Vodka blog and ever-present, ever-genial hostess (if that's the word) of the #joiito IRC channel -- has just been appointed editor of a brand new blog in the Corante stable.

The new blog, Strange Attractor, will focus on the business of blogging, with scouting missions into other, adjacent territories, including: related social technologies, writing, screenwriting, e-learning, digital rights, and the changing world of participatory journalism. In Suw’s hands, it’s certain to be an interesting, entertaining, and beautifully written new venture.

Congratulations to Suw, Hylton and Stowe.

As an aside, there’s been something rather ouroborean about this exercise. I spent part of today pitching the news about Suw to a number of bloggers and tech reporters I thought might be interested (I'd offered to help out in a discussion with Stowe last week).

So here we have a blogger (who happens to be in PR) pitching a story to some reporters (most of whom also happen to be bloggers) and bloggers (many of whom are or once were reporters) about a fellow blogger (who has also spent time as a reporter) getting hired as an editor at a blog-based news service.

I feel like I'm in a Christopher Nolan film.

From the bizarre messages that pop up shortly after you arrive, it looks like this innocent, homely little amateur site - ilovebees.com - has been hacked, or hijacked, or just royally screwed up somehow.

If you're curious enough to dig (or Google) a little deeper, however, it quickly becomes clear that both the site and the hijacking are all part of some elaborate pre-release marketing for the next installment of the X-Box game Halo, from Bungie Studios.

They've even gone so far as to set up a blog, wherein "Dana" (fictional niece of the fictional owner of the ilovebees site) posts about her efforts to fix the damage to the site, dropping more clues to the convoluted treasure hunt as she goes along.

It's a cute touch that they're using a bog-standard Blogger template, and also that it's an ad-supported site on BlogSpot (Blogger's free blog-hosting service) .

Looking at the volume of comments on the blog's first 10 posts, and the way the site is creeping up through the Technorati rankings, these bees are certainly starting to attract a lot of buzz.

Just cruising through Rannie Turigan's terrific photoblog, and I'm thrilled to come across this shot of the "secret swing", tucked away in a grungy, much-graffitied alleyway just a couple of blocks from my office:

Rannie also points to some other posts and shots about the swing - reading the stories and comments is just fascinating.

Whoever installed this swing is a stone cold genius in my opinion.  Who doesn't love to swing?  The thought that I can pop down there for a few minutes of liberating flight in the middle of a muggy, grey Toronto day is quietly exhilarating. I'm going to have to pop down there tomorrow to check it out.

Must make sure to bring the home swing team down to check it out some day too.  All big swing fans in our house, as you can see:

   

Been very...um...unbusy.

We were off up North, looking at plenty of this:

Back now, but about to get very, very busy again - lots to tell you about. More soon. Promise.