eCache

You certainly have a long litany of complaints. I can only try to address the ones pointed at me.

1) Yes, it certainly is February. That has not deterred a literary agent from signing on to promote the project. It is possible that publishers will agree with you, in which case the proposal I am making out of this year’s posts will serve as a model for a contract to be delivered for next year.

2) When the phrase “try to make money off” is uttered, it is usually an allusion to snake oil or some such shady enterprise. There are much better ways for me to make money (I write annual reports, for one thing, and the pay is much better). There is a considerable amount of work involved in this compilation, and people vote with their dollars. If enough dollars say this SERVICE is a good idea, I’ll do it. If not, I’ll do something less taxing. Doing it is the only way to find out how the majority (yours is the first complaint so far) feel about it.

3) “The blogosphere is far too dynamic”. That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that there’s a proven business model for gathering top-quality material under one umbrella. (Readers’ Digest and Time-Life are well-known for repurposing material in this way.) In researching this book, I’ve learned that not all blog posts ‘date’ badly, and some serve as good time capsules. Many of them go offline within a year, so without capture they are lost forever. (Several of the posts in my collection had to be deleted or retrieved from Google caches, because the link had gone bad.)

Still another reason for a book is that a book allows for layout possibilities and reading flexibility (i.e., the park, the tub, Africa) that a computer won’t allow.

There are other reasons why translation into book form makes sense, but I do get the sense you’ve made up your mind. So be it. If I found a convincing reason to put it aside, I certainly would.

By no means should you stop your proposal based on my thoughts. I just think books like this are more fleeting than substantive. Even Hewitt’s book, Blog, is a tough read as it deals with stuff long after the fact. I wish you the best. I suspect you are correct in that if it does fly, it’ll be more likely for a 2006 edition than 2005.

Bob, I get the feeling that you misunderstood the rankings I produced. These are not the most-linked New Jersey blogs, simply those with the most links in the 35 Carnival posts at which I looked. They really are those who have consistently tried to push something into the weekly roundup.

I found 17 links to eCache, by the way, although 2 were to comments and one was to your top level page, so really 14 of your posts.

No, I understood. The Carnival is a way for each of us to pimp his own blog. And when one out of four submissions are left out, it just seemed too much like begging. I think there could be a more efficient model.

Any system can be improved. The carnival model is not perfect, but it’s better than writing this all down on rocks and hoping archaeologists discover it some day.

That’s a pretty low standard, eh? Enlighten’s Carnival is a fine thing. It is no different than any other carnival. It just seems that the attention to detail of many who hosted was less than . . . adequate for my needs.

Twenty-five percent of the time my submission was neglected. That’s problematic.

Ah, but 50% of those errors were corrected expeditiously. As I pointed out, You had 14 linked articles.

Like I said, not perfect, but then again not as flawed as you make it out to be.

See my comment above about begging. That is how they were corrected.