My company BlogMatrix has just launched it's latest product -- Onaswarm. If you use Facebook, Flickr, blogs and especially if you have other likeminded friends online, you should go over there and get an account.

What does it do? Simple: it imports all your feeds -- your content -- from the services you use on the net and collects it into a single place -- a "lifestream". If you have friends online, you can link your Onaswarm accounts together to create a "swarm", displaying what all of you doing.

• Here's a webpage showing what everyone in a Toronto technology group is doing
• Here's a calendar version of that webpage

What's really neat is that you can take these pages and put it on your own blog or webpage, to create (for example) an "active blogroll" showing what all your friends are doing, or an events calendar showing all the things you're doing.

• Here's an example of these widgets

I have just made a number of posts over at the BlogMatrix and Onamap blogs.

This is me at the Horseshoe talking on Agent X's phone to Tony Pierce about BlogMatrix, Nirvana, Matt Welch, and Ken Layne while having my photo taken by Raymi, whom I introduced myself to a few minutes earlier, just because it seemed like the thing to do.

Jason Calacanis (as recounted by Tris Hussey):

[how to] be an A-list blogger:

1. Go to Techememe
2. Blog something intelligent about the top story of the day
3. Link to and mention all the people who have said something intelligent
4. Repeat for 30 days
5. Go to a couple conferences a month
6. You're an A-list blogger.

The blogosphere is the ultimate meritocracy ... "It's not broken, you suck" (when someone complains that they don't get traffic).

Jon Koch of Mountain View Gazette has a profile of Darcy "Dust my Broom" Jerrom:

Drawing on his experiences as a member of the Ukrainian-Indian Metis community in northern Manitoba, Jerrom has become a controversial figure, characterized by one left-wing activist as a "Right-Wing Blogging Injun".

Polite, thoughtful and well-spoken in person, he's earned a reputation in the Canadian "blogosphere" for publishing one of best written and original blogs in the country, becoming a veritable celebrity online and in the native community in the process.

[...] While Jerrom's thoughts on the U.S. election helped establish him on the internet, the Gomery Inquiry in 2005 catapulted the Manitoba-native into the upper echelon of Canadian bloggers.

Jerrom used his status as an American blogger to circumvent the media ban placed on the inquiry, posting testimony which was viewed by thousands of Canadians, with Dust My Broom receiving up to 500 hits an hour at one point.

As a result of the exposure received during the Gomery Inquiry, Jerrom came into contact with other Canadian aboriginal writers, who have since joined him as contributors on the blog.

[...] Since arriving in central Alberta, Jerrom's audience has continued to expand, and Dust My Broom has expanded along with it to keep up with the traffic.

Initially registering only 4 - 5 hits a day in 2004, the Broom now registers an average of 10,000 visitors a day.

The site's increasing popularity has prompted Jerrom to add four more writers to the blog's staff just to keep up with the demands for content, and he's also moved to a bigger server twice since the site's inception.

[...] Since arriving in central Alberta, Jerrom's audience has continued to expand, and Dust My Broom has expanded along with it to keep up with the traffic.

Initially registering only 4 - 5 hits a day in 2004, the Broom now registers an average of 10,000 visitors a day.

The site's increasing popularity has prompted Jerrom to add four more writers to the blog's staff just to keep up with the demands for content, and he's also moved to a bigger server twice since the site's inception.

(BTW assh*les, I know how to disable Javascript on my browser) 

There’s an 85% 98% chance I’ll be attending this this evening:

For those planning to attend the Shel Israel blogger dinner on March 6, there has been a venue change [...] David Forde has managed to Shoeless Joes (401 King Street West) to throw in $3 beers, and free finger foods. Shel will be there, and there will be copies of Naked Conversations available to buy if you don’t already have one.

The event begins at 6:30pm

My condolences to Joey and his family.

(Look closely)

I should follow my own advice. I trashed my template doing some stupid stuff and of course I didn’t have a backup. I’m back though, with some clever hacking about.

This is my 3000th post on this blog. That is all.

I’m tired of deleting spam every morning when I wake up, so good riddance trackback.

I’m changing the tagline of the blog to “Skeletor Tries His Luck”. Previous tags:

• I am partially infused with infinity
• Never stop swimming till you reach the the ocean

As per the last time, kudos to the person who figures out where this came from. I’m putting the answer in the comments.

Damian has photos of last weekend's blogger bash. I'm there. Hint: sideburns.

Ken Layne:

[paraphrasing] Oh, by the way I had a kid on Saturday.

If you're not reading Little Tobacco, well ... you should be. Recent notables:

• what did the religious right get from Bush? This is what I always ask my Democrat supporting friends. The Republicans have mostly controlled the US government for the last 25 years, so why isn't abortion illegal? Maybe because they're not totally insane.
• "Our man in Washington".
• "Williams to speak at Empire Club". Also see John Gushue, Richard Gywn and especially Rex Murphy (if you can get past the subscriber wall).

And also in the clearly erroneous column:

• Pats (to) win Superbowl. I'm calling for Atlanta (based on my usual "pull a pick out of my *ass" methodology -- plus I think Michael Vick's pretty good).

To celebrate a new year of blog posting I'm changing the <title> of this blog. It used to be Never stop swimming til you reach the ocean; it's now I am partially fused with infinity.

A free Sparks! license for anyone who can name where both of those quotes come from.

Cool. I'm back for less than six hours and I've already pissed someone off. I may wade into the Tsunami/Canada does nothing of use debate tomorrow.

Thank you to Sean and Jay for coming to my defence over some incident with Warren Kinsella at the beginning of the year. It's no big deal really: I took a swipe at Warren and he took a swipe back; that's the way it should work, I'm not sure what the deal with the lawyers is all about and I hope it doesn't become a habit.

The best part of whole thing was the comment in my followup by some fellow running a blog called Living in a Society: making fun of Ontarians?. Sheesh. I get the feeling that if the society we're living in got structured more along his thought lines, my family would now be living in the meanest cinderblock apartment and always assigned last in line for our ration La Gruele (Product of Quebec).

Here's some other articles and blog postings on the Bloglines API, in case you're interested in what other folk are up to:

• Dare Obasanjo — Thoughts on the Bloglines Sync API: These limitations don't make using the Bloglines Sync API a terribly useful way for synchronizing between two desktop aggregators. Instead, it primarily acts as a way for Bloglines to use various desktop aggregators as a UI for viewing a user's Bloglines subscriptions without the Bloglines team having to build a rich client application. Thanks, but I think I'm going to pass.
• Brent Simmons (NetNewsWire) — Thoughts on the Bloglines Sync API: The API is simple and easy-to-implement. On one hand this should promote wide adoption, but on the other hand it’s easy to criticize it for not doing x, y, and z. My own take is that it’s like all software: you start with something basic but workable, get a solid base, then improve it in increments.
• Sam Ruby — Vacant Space: You know what people like in APIs? Hint: it is not where you put the blank line. People like it when you don't need to throw in the kitchen sink to make this work.
• eWeek — Bloglines Tackles RSS Bandwidth Issue (†Search Engine Watch)
• O'Reilly — The New Bloglines Web Services: This article will take a look at the new Bloglines Web Services and their effect on the RSS/Atom landscape