It's been a been quiet around these parts this past week, I know, and I'm sorry. I am currently in the midst of packing up everything I own because I am moving this month, so the web has taken a bit of a back seat. On top of this, I have been toiling away on some exciting projects for my clients that are keeping me very busy, too. 

I do have a great post coming up for you tomorrow on Posting Frequency (irony, how I love thee), but in the meantime, please enjoy this guest article by my friend Jonathan Crossfield, from the great blog CopyWrite. This is the very first guest post I have hosted on Smithereens, and I do believe that choosing these carefully is important, because it's your reputation on the line as a blogger. But I couldn't imagine anyone I would more readily entrust my blog to than Jonathan. So please make him feel welcome - enjoy this post and leave a comment, and be sure to visit his site as well, it's chock full of great stuff!

-Daniel 

photo "Akron 293 AA Meeting" by watz on flickr, used under CC.

Blogaholics Anonymous

The room is stuffy. Dust floats in the narrow beams of light filtering through the broken Venetian blinds. In the centre of the room is a circle of old, metal folding-chairs.

Gradually, people arrive, nervously finding a seat. One decides to pass the time by Tweeting a message from his phone, until the accusing gaze of his peers forces him to switch it off. Another nervously slides a laptop bag under his seat, as if to to conceal it from the others. Even if he tried to explain that he needed to complete those spreadsheets for tomorrow’s meeting, no one would believe him. Best to hide it.

The last person arrives late, blaming it on her sponsor for confiscating her PDA last night. There are mumbled greetings and uncomfortable looks. A voice asks who wants to go first. The mumbling stops. After an awkward pause, I slowly get to my feet, my eyes never once straying from my shoes.

"My name is Kimota..."

“No avatars or screen names please.” The voice came from the group leader, sitting to my left. I cough nervously and nod, ashamed by such an obvious mistake.

“My name is Jonathan Crossfield. And I...I’m a… blogoholic.”

The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem

If you’re concerned about blog addiction, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve seen the damage blogging can do to people’s lives. But it is common for people to be completely unaware of their own addiction, missing the signs that indicate intervention may be necessary.

The following list of questions relate to 15 common symptoms of blogging addiction. If you answer ‘yes’ to more than 50% of these queries, there is a folding metal chair here in the circle for you.

1. Do you become agitated if it has been more than 48 hours since your last blog post – even if you have nothing to blog about?
   
2. Do you check your blog traffic stats more than once a day... even though your stats aren't much to look at?
   
3. Do you check your Alexa rank regularly...even though no one trusts Alexa?
   
4. Have you ever done a vanity search to see what people are saying about you and your blog?
   
5. Have you ever boasted to family members or complete strangers about how you’ve made it to the top 100,000 blogs in the world on Technorati... even though they have no idea what Technorati is?
   
6. Have you ever missed an opportunity for...uh... meaningful personal contact because you wanted to finish a blog post first?
   
7. Are you unable to resist dropping text links to your blogs into everything you do online?
   
8. Do you carry a PDA, laptop or other digital device around with you wherever you go for blogging on the move?
   
9. Have you treated arguments over whether Wordpress is better than Movable Type or Blogger more seriously than a general election for the ruler of your country?
   
10. Have you ever signed an online petition arguing for the reinstatement of Capital Punishment for comment spammers?
    
11. Do you find yourself choosing activities – such as movies, books or days out - based on whether they may inspire blog posts?
    
12. Do you know more about fellow bloggers who live half a world away than you do about your next door neighbours? Or some family members? (If yes, the latter counts for two.)
    
13. Do you get frustrated when someone you’re talking to doesn’t know what a Tweet is? Or an RSS feed? Or a widget? What is wrong with these people?
    
14. Does your ideal weekend involve hacking the code in your template, missing a bracket and then spending the next twelve hours finding your catastrophic error?
    
15. Did you spend more time updating and designing the header for your blog than you did repainting your kitchen?
    

These are just some of the major symptoms that addicted bloggers can display. Left unchecked, a serious blog addiction can affect relationships, destroy social skills and reduce mental capacity to the point that discussions over whether Plurk is better than Twitter seem relevant and interesting to you. (This is a late-stage addiction symptom.)

But luckily, there are some things you can do to make sure you don't fall prey to the medium's heavy grip.

Prevention is Better than Cure

Don’t let your blogging get out of hand. If you are worried about developing a blog addiction, here are some precautions you can take now to avoid disaster later.

1. Once per day, stick your head out of the window. That weird smell is what is known in technical circles as ‘fresh air’. Inhale.
   
2. Proactively dump the girlfriend or boyfriend. That way you have no relationship to destroy and you’ll never miss an opportunity for blogging due to an opportunity for meaningful personal contact.
   
3. Avoid having to repeatedly tell people about your Alexa and Technorati rankings by buying tee shirts prominently featuring your blog ranks. Of course, you may need to buy a new t-shirt every few weeks, and the Technorati one may only display the rank one day per week if you're lucky, but at least it will be much easier to keep your circle of family and friends informed.
   
4. On second thought, ridding yourself of family and friends may be more cost-effective and efficient.
   
5. Blogging on the move is great and PDAs and laptops make it so easy. But since doing so will help others recognise and criticize you for being compulsive blogger, it is probably best to just to stay indoors.
   
6. Ask your neighbours if they are bloggers. If so, you may be able to befriend them online instead without feeling overly awkward AND nurture a sense of commnunity within your neighbourhood.
   
7. Kill two birds with one stone - model your kitchen after your blog header.
   

Blogging may be addictive. But if you follow these simple pieces of advice, you may just avoid its sticky grasp. And next time you're about to lecture your grandmother for her ignorance of Twitter, take a deep breath and remember: there's always an open chair here for you.

Are you a blogoholic? Reach out to us in the comments. We're here to help.

I know, I know, you all probably thought Wordplay Wednesday was dead and gone, a relic of a bygone era (last month.) But alas, if you did, you were wrong. 

For this Wednesday, our date with clever diction will be kept! 

Well, on this Welcome-back Wordplay Wednesday, I thought it would be fun to highlight a common canvas of cleverness: The Witty Tee. (Or if you prefer, Wit-Tee-Shirt  works, too.) 

Plenty of online shops have popped up in recent years to cater to our inherent desire to wear t-shirts that make people think we think we're funny. But who has time to go through all those designs and find the best, most punny shirts?

Well, luckily for you, apparently I do.

That's right, just for you, I've scoured through some of the most popular tee-shirt shops online, looking for designs that in some way used wordplay to elicit the requisite chuckles (or groans.)  In the interest of keeping it G-rated, I also filtered out quite a few models (including a few entire sites that were decidedly NSFW.) 

The fruits of my labour? They're all organized nice-like in the slideshow below, complete with my own not-nearly-as-funny-as-the-shirt commentary. Enjoy! 

[By the way, if you're reading this in a feed reader, you'll most likely have to click through to the site to see the slideshow. Sorry! But it'll be worth it, I promise.]

[All the shirts in this show can be bought from Busted Tees (the vast majority), Threadless and CafePress. None of the above are affiliate links. The show itself was made using the very cool Slide.com.]

Also, Jon Jackson left a comment below with a link to his own little t-shirt boutique called Crossty.com.

There are some excellent punny shirts on his site, so check it out! Twitter fans might also like this one.  

--

So, dear readers, what did you think? Good ones or groaners? Let us know in the comments. 

Or do you have a favourite funny tee shirt that I didn't come across? If so, drop a link in the comments and let us join in on the fun!

Oh and here's another fun game we can play, as well: If you were going to design your own hilarious tee, what would it say?

I would probably go with: "Treehuggers are Sappy."  (Busted Tees, call me.)

Ok, your turn.

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UPDATE JUL 31/08:

I've been testing out Plurk today and so far, the discussion has been really lively. There have been some great witty tee shirt suggestions from fellow plurkers on the threads about this post over there, too. You can check them out here and here.

In my last post, I promised that I would update soon with a guide for other Blogger-bloggers who would like to know how to create Category-specific RSS feeds. 

This is something that can be done easily enough on self-hosted Wordpress, but it isn't quite so intuitive on Google's free blog-hosting service. Nevertheless, just because you're not ready to pay for hosting just yet, that doesn't mean you should be left out of the Category Feed Party! (Oh yes, it's a party.)

As a matter of fact, I've received so much feedback lately about certain things I've managed to do on my blog, despite Blogger's seeming limitations, that I have decided to start a new, ongoing segment on Smithereens called Things You Didn't Know You Could Do On Blogger. So sit back, grab a cool drink and enjoy this, my first entry in this new series. 

First of All: Why?

Right off the bat, you may be wondering: 'What's the point of Category-specific feeds anyway?'  Fair question. Well the short answer might go something like this: If Content is King, then Choice is the next-on-command.  

To provide a real illustration, you may want to read my last entry if you haven't already to get an idea for why I felt the need to split up my content here on Smithereens into just three succinct categories. (Productivity, Persuasion, Prose.)

Next, you could take a look at the popular productivity blog Lifehacker as a secondary case study. While obviously not on the free Blogger platform, LH does cover a broad subject base-- anything related to productivity, from useful gadgets to scheduling haircuts with Google Spreadsheets. 

They also post a lot. As in often. So, to help readers whose interests may lean closer to certain categories than others, they too offer feeds by category (or "tag".) 

So now that you can't call me crazy because I've cited a wildly popular pro-blog that agrees with me, let's assume you're on-board and just can't wait to find out how you can replicate my categorical feed-burning.

Step One: Clean House

If you've decided that your readers would benefit from having more options when it comes to subscribing to your blog, the first order of business is to make your list of categories somewhat usable.

Depending on how old your blog is, this could take 5 minutes, or 5 hours, and it could very well be the most difficult part of this process. But trust me, it will be worth it. 

Many Bloggers (myself included, up until last week) fall into the trap of using Blogger's Categories as a whatever-pops-into-our-head list of tags. 

The result is an unwieldy and largely unusable list of random words, instead of a short, precise and intuitive list of categories that can be used for navigation. 

So, to avoid this predicament (if you're just starting out) or to fix it (if you're a long-time offender like I was), you'll need to either choose a short list of categories and stick to it (for the former) or go through and remove all your tags post-by-post and replace them with the useful categories (for the latter.)

(If you've been Blogging and miscategorizing for so long that it's impossible or just very implausible for you to actually go through all your posts and do this, another option is just to turn over a new leaf as of now: Draw up a more precise list and stick to it going forward. Your resulting feeds won't be comprehensive, but at least your Categories will be useful going forward.)

Ok, so come back to me when you have trimmed down your Categories to a list of ten or fewer (any more and you'll subject your readers to analysis paralysis.) I'll be here when you get back.

And when you do return, it will be time for the fun part: Burnination!

Step 2: Burn The Feeds

Now that you have a beautiful, simple list of Categories, it's time to burn a special RSS feed for each one and be done with it. 

I'm going to explain the process using Feedburner because it is both a) what I use here; and b) the most popular feed-burning service out there. However, you may be able to use part of these instructions to burn feeds in your service of choice. 

Head over to Feedburner.com and log in (or sign up if you haven't already.) 

Next, on the main page you'll see a box that says "Burn a feed right this instant..." (see screenshot above.) 

Into that box you're going to want to type the following URL:

 

http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/YOURCATEGORY/

Where YOURBLOG is.. your blog name and YOURCATEGORY is... ok, ok, just making sure.

Wait! I know Feedburner is beckoning you to "Burn a feed right this instant", but just hold your horses, because there is one more thing to consider.

If you have a large blog with lots of posts (especially if they are long articles) and if your category contains 20 or more posts, you will probably run into an error trying to burn your feed because Feedburner will basically tell you that you talk too much. Don't take it personally. 

But alas, I have a solution!

All you need to do to get around this issue is add the following string, "?max-results=10", without the quotes, to the end of your URL, which will make the final thing look like this:

http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/YOURCATEGORY/?max-results=10

If you didn't already guess, you're basically telling FB now to limit itself to only the last 10 posts in that category. That should shut 'em up.

Finally, add a Title, maybe something like "YOUR BLOG- YOUR AWESOME CATEGORY" (I know, I'm a creative genius) and you'll be done. FB will spit out a new feed URL that you can then link to on your blog, and those who subscribe to it will get only the posts that you Categorize accordingly. 

Lather, rinse, repeat with the rest of your Categories and Voila, you're well on your way to offering your own readers some great new options as to how they consume your content.

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Did you like this post? Want to see more like it? Then let me know in the comments or feel free to pass the word along on your social medium of choice. Thanks!

Is there a specific thing you're trying to do with your Blogger blog that you can't quite figure out? Well likewise, leave a note in the comments and I will try my best to help you out. And if enough people share your query, I'll make it the topic for my next installment of TYDKYCDOB. (Now that's a winning acronym if I ever saw one.)

A Quick Housekeeping Note:

As you can see, I've made some changes to the Smithereens template yesterday as well. But going to this new, whiter look wasn't strictly an aesthetic choice (although I do think it looks really clean.) Rather, it was the only way we could fix a loading bug that had been plaguing the site for awhile. 

You had probably noticed that Smithereens always loaded kind of slowly. Well after a day of widget-chopping and CSS-wrangling, I, with the tremendous help of Rebecca Leaman (of the Domestik Goddess and Wild Apricot blogs) was able to get the loading time under wraps. To that end, every widget that wasn't essential has been banished from my sidebar (sorry Blogrush, Statcounter.com and Pepperjam.)

But even after removing these widgets, the site still "seemed" to load kind of slowly because the old dark grey background would load first and the white content background last, meaning that readers couldn't really read the blog until every single thing on the template had loaded first. To put it simply, by switching everything over to an all-white background, you can now read the content milliseconds after arriving on the page. Mission Accomplished. 

So, what do you think of the new look and load time? I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments.      

Can you even imagine a pun that is more high-brow than the one I just used in this post's title? (I certainly Kant.) But fear not, this post is not about deontological philosophy, it's just about categories. On this blog. And how important it was that I started using them effectively.

You see, I realized last week that my long-and-growing list of Categories and accompanying tag cloud (see left) was becoming unwieldy and largely unusable. Chris Pearson's recent post on the importance of keeping categories trimmed to avoid provoking analysis paralysis in your blog visitors really hit home and I decided to do just that.

And so from my old, never-ending list of 100+ labels, I pored through every post and pared them back to just three, which coincide with this blog's three main themes: productivity, persuasion and prose. (I also added a few others like "technology" to denote the tech-heavy productivity posts and wordplay-wednesdays and marketing-wednesdays to set apart my ongoing series.) But the main purpose here was to create categories that were actually usable.

Finally, my categories are specific and few enough to truly be used as navigational devices,  which Pearson advocates, rather than just a (pretty, but ultimately) useless cloud of stream-of-consciousness spouting.

Next, I went to work, looking for ways to leverage my newly trimmed categorical list in a way that would help my readers.

Enter the new navigational bar.

Yeah, My Blogger Blog Has a Nav Bar Now, What's It To You?

As you may or may not have noticed, Smithereens is sporting a spiffy new navigational bar across the bottom of the header (if you're on the site and missed it, scroll back up and admire, or if you're reading this in a reader, click on through and check it out.)

Now this may not seem like a very big deal, but the lack of easy nav bar implementation on Blogger blogs is a notorious shortcoming of the platform. It took some serious template tweaking to get it working. (Oh and if the header looks horrible to you, instead of slick and seamless, you're probably using IE version 6 or earlier. Why are you doing that? It's time to upgrade to Firefox. Or at least get IE7+ for the love of standards-compliant browsers! But if you're not on an antiquated browser and it still looks funky, please let me know in the comments as I'm trying to quash the last of the template bugs as quickly as possible.) 

But what's important about the new navigation bar (and relevant to this post) is the addition of the "Choose a category" buttons. Let me explain my rationale for adding these, and explain what it means for you.

The New Smithereens Blog Buffet (It's All-You-Can-Eat)

When I started this blog just 6 short weeks ago, I wasn't sure exactly where it would take me. I knew that my most passionate interests were (and still are) writing, marketing and general lifehackery, so I decided to set those three subjects (poetically paraphrased as productivity, persuasion and prose) as my basic slalom poles, to use a skiing metaphor. 

But one thing I have noticed recently is that having such an eclectic subject base can cause splintering among my readership. For example, the readers who were most enthralled with my Twitter Wit Writing Contest are not the same as those who drove my gadgety iPhone scoop post to 600 Diggs and beyond.

The problem came to a head when I started to feel as though posting about productivity and technology was putting off those who were more interested in writing or marketing, and vice versa. As the saying goes, you can't please everybody all of the time, only some of them, some of the time.

And so, I felt like I had to do one of three things to fix this issue: 

1) Split the blog into two - one on productivity/technology/gadgets and one on writing and persuasion, 

2) Narrow the focus of my blog down to just one or the other and stop writing about some of the things that interest me; or 

3) Provide mored ways for readers to dynamically choose what content they consume. 

After consulting with many of my trusted friends who've been blogging much longer than I, I decided that the third option was the best idea for now. (I don't have the time to properly maintain two personal blogs right now on top of client obligations, and I don't want to limit the scope of my writing just yet.)

And so, dear readers, now you can choose exactly which type of smithereen you want to take in on any given visit, and which you'd rather ignore. It's a buffet of useful ideas and now you can skip the salad bar and load up on dessert at your leisure. 

If you like gadgets and productivity but could care less about how to differentiate tricky homonyms, click the Productivity tab (which also encompasses technology articles) and go to town. If you entered the TwitWit contest 3 times (I'm looking at you, washwords), but all the iPhone chatter drives you batty, click the Prose tab, and maybe the Persuasion one, and enjoy reading only the content you want to read. 

Or if you're eclectic like me, and like all kinds of subjects, then...well... carry on. As you were.

But what about the many of you who follow my content by RSS or email? You're thinking: 'What do I care about all this? I never even go to your site.' (Thanks a lot.) Well don't worry, I thought of you too.

Brand Spanking New RSS Options, As Well

As of right now, not only can you get your Smithereens fix in subject-specific morsels on the site, you can also get separate post updates for free for any of the 3 categories. 

This endeavour took a bit of Blogger hackery as well, and I am writing up a brief tutorial to post later tonight in case others are wondering how to do this, but the point is, you RSS addicts now have options too, so it was worth it: 

For the Productivity feed, click here.

For the Persuasion feed, click here.

For the Prose feed, click here.

And of course, for the regular all-for-one-and-one-for-all feed, you can just click here. 

I hope you find these tweaks helpful, and a good alternative to splitting the blog up into different sites. But what do you think, will you use the new Categories for navigation, or not? Let me know in the comments, I really appreciate the feedback.

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By the way, I know there was more silence than usual these past few days - I hope you'll understand. Along with the many changes I've been making to the Smithereens template, navigation and feed architecture, I've also added a couple neat plugins, like the informative contextual popups you can see in this post from Apture (an article on this service is forthcoming, too - very neat implementation.) 

As well, I've been knee-deep in preparation for the launch of my first client blog for NewHomeAssociation.ca, an innovative company in Ottawa that is aiming to be the MLS for new home listings. It should be live tomorrow and I will update this post with the address so you can check it out. 

A story by Vito Pilieci in this morning's Ottawa Citizen (and possibly in many other CanWest newspapers across Canada) claims that Rogers' iPhone stock is the same as it always was for tomorrow's launch, and he all but accuses yours truly of flat out lying in my original post. A hat tip to Jon Newton of P2PNet for bringing the story to my attention early this morning, and for responding in my defence here.

You can read the online version of the story here, and read Pilieci's blog post about it here. (It's the top story there for now, although his blog provides no way to link to a specific article, so that link may not be so useful later.)

To begin, let me just say that this "news" piece is remarkably regurgitated and voiceless for a story that appeared in a major media publication. I also find its tone to be incredibly condescending.

Pilieci's blog entry is even worse, but then blogs aren't held to the same standards as the MSM. In any case, I'll come back to these points. First, the Rogers statement and my thoughts.

The Empire Strikes Back

The article quotes a Rogers rep (Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer John Boynton), who says:

Despite popular rumour mongering, which is always a popular sport on the Internet, we have more than enough inventory. In fact, we are getting our inventory plus some.

My initial reaction to Boynton's comments are that one of 3 things could have happened here: 

1) False Information

The information that Rogers gave to their own dealer principals last week, which clearly stated that initial inventories would be reduced and prompted some dealerships to lay off extra help... was...um... false.

Don't believe people were let go? Then take a read through the following email. It was sent to me directly just now by an ex-employee who read about this story on CBC.ca and wishes to remain anonymous for now:

Dear XXXX,

We regret to inform you that due to circumstances beyond our control,

we unfortunately will not be requiring extra staffing for the summer

and therefore your employment opportunity with Rogers must be

rescinded.  We appreciate your time and effort during the interview

process and the training that you may have attended.  We regret any

inconvenience that this may have caused.

As you attended in class training, you will be compensated for your

time.   As of 07/11/08, you can pick up your cheque at our XXXXXXXX

location.  At this time, we require that you return your copy

of the employment agreement when you pick up your check.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via e-mail.

Again, we truly appreciate your time and enthusiasm towards working at

a Rogers store this summer.  We will keep your resume on file in the

case a future opportunity arises.

We wish you a safe and happy summer.

A happy summer indeed. Needless to say, this option seems unlikely.

2) Ignorance is Bliss

It is possible that the inventory was depleted, but since no one but Rogers and Apple know what the original expected number was in the first place, there is no way we could know...so why should Rogers admit as much?

Furthermore, the "launch parties" planned for major urban Rogers Plus stores tomorrow (with breakfast even!) will probably have access to the bulk of the unit stocks, and this stunt could be used to obfuscate the significance of any shortages elsewhere. 

And shortages elsewhere I'm sure there will be. 

My source's response to the Citizen article and its claims was this:

Well some stores are now getting only 15 phones, so obviously Rogers is lying about getting "our inventory plus some."

My source is expecting a surge of business at their store between 9am and 10am, at which point they expect to be out of units. If a stock that small was "the plan", I daresay it wasn't a particularly good one.

3) Unlikely Scandal

The third and least likely possibility is that Rogers has indeed received "inventory plus some" from Apple as a last minute arrangement, perhaps arising from Rogers'caving and offering a 6GB (basically unlimited data) plan. 

This is highly unlikely, given the fact that it would have involved Apple hoarding stock and releasing it contingent on pricing demands. However, there is the question of why Rogers waited until today to make this official announcement, if their stock was truly unchanged throughout this week.

My So-Called Retraction

Anyway, as I clearly said in my original post, we may never know what truly went on behind the scenes this week, and that remains as true as ever.

Oh, and speaking of things I clearly said in my original post, here's another for you: "I am going to post a very plausible rumour that has caught my ear..."

That was in the opening paragraph of my original article. Or if that was too difficult to read for Mr. Pilieci, he might have caught the words "Plausible Rumour" in my article title.

But no matter, that didn't stop him from claiming in his print story that I "have been reporting on the relationship between Apple and Rogers, stating that Rogers' cellular data pricing is too high and that Apple is not happy about them" and that I have "since retracted most of [my] story, now referring to it as a "plausible rumour." 

Interesting time-line, Vito. 

That's some stand up investigative reporting.

Voiceless Regurgitation

But wait, no investigative reporting was really involved here, was it? The entire story reads like a Rogers Press release, and quite frankly, I can't believe the Citizen let it go to print like that.

Apparently, Pilieci's idea of a neutral second source is the president of a Toronto PR firm.  

"This is a case where the people who scream the loudest get the most attention," Carmi Levy of AR Communications was quoted as saying in the piece.

Well, not really. If that were true, then I would have been picking up my stories on this lowly blog from mainstream sources, and not the other way around.

Perhaps the reason my little rumour expose was so popular is because, even if it had not been true, it resonated with a deep-seated dissatisfaction among Canadians with their wireless pricing.

But I digress.  More to the point, where is the comment in Pilieci's article from someone closer to operations than a Marketing VP, like say, someone at store level who isn't being paid to make the company look good to the press? Where is a comment from anybody on the "other side" of the story for that matter? 

The Pot and the Kettle

The most ironic part of Piliesci's piece is its unbridled condescension towards bloggers and its inherent hypocrisy.

First he puts down blogs and bloggers in general, playing right along with Rogers' claims about internet "rumour-mongering." 

He then quotes this inflammatory statement from Levy: 

If you are a blogger, unlike a real journalist, you are not subjected to the same checks and balances of real media and you can pretty much say anything. Whether or not it is backed up by fact is almost irrelevant.

There is some truth is Levy's comment, to be sure. There is a lower standard imposed upon bloggers when it comes to knowing-for-sure before going "to print",  as it were. And in my opinion, that is part of the beauty of the medium. We wouldn't have ever known about Lewinski were it not for Matt Drudge, after all.

But to imply that that immediacy somehow makes the medium illegitimate or that bloggers are somehow less "real" than print journalists is just silly.

Those of us in the blogosphere who care about our readers are not going to make up stories for attention and throw our reputation under the bus.  That in itself is a check and a balance.

And what about the myriad prominent journalists who maintain their own blogs. Like... oh, I don't know... Piliesci himself!

Finally, the icing on the cake here is that just to clearly demonstrate the superiority of the print medium, he included this statement in a "real" journalistic piece that reads like little more than a re-written Rogers press release.

Canadian Consumers Are Just Confused

But the condescension doesn't end there. Not content to have only put down millions of online publishers, he turns his attention to Canadian consumers as well.

In what I can only assume is a party line directly from Rogers, Piliesci informs us that the reason for all this hulaballoo over data pricing is that "Canadians are confused about what it means to pay to download cellular data" and that "blogs and websites full of false reports are confusing customers further." 

Oh my gosh, I feel so foolish! Here I was thinking that we consumers were legitimately concerned about the amount of data we have been getting for our buck, especially compared to pricing in the US... when all the while the issue has been that we just don't understand how great our plans really are.

And then it's sites like this decidedly unjournalistic blog that are only muddying the waters even further.

Well, for that, Mr. Pilieci, I do apologize.