Recently in Blogging Category

Do you suffer from Email Apnea?  Do you hold your breath while writing?

As I finish staring into my navel -- my gaze turns outward -- and I am, once again, reflected back in your eyes while my head explodes, in super-slow motion, all over our brand new Pair Networks QuickServe Dedicated Server!

UPDATE:  April 23, 2008.  This Urban Semiotic blog -- and all of David W. Boles' domains and blogs are now solely hosted by Pair Networks!  We will give you more information soon.  We are leaving this article online to protect the chain of understanding and we will update this space as necessary.

As you know, we recently moved this Urban Semiotic blog from WordPress to Movable Type 4.1 and we were hosted by the fine folks at Pair Networks. We are grateful for their previous love and support as we announce today yet another move of this blog - as well as RelationShaping.com and WordPunk.com - over to my pre-existing Media Temple 3.5 dv-Rage server and Movable Type Open Source 4.1.

It is my honor and delight to announce today the creation of a new blog I'm writing -- RelationShaping -- where we try to give form and meaning to the way technology re-frames and transforms the human body in a relational universe.  Here's our new semiotic semantic logo that serves our mission:  "The Spear of Technology Piercing the Body In Situ ->(" and we are grateful for your company.

UPDATE:  April 23, 2008.  This Urban Semiotic blog -- and all of David W. Boles' domains and blogs are once again, and now solely, hosted by Pair Networks!  We will continue to leave article online to protect the chain of understanding and we will update this space as necessary.

(UPDATE 4/18/08:  We are now using Movable Type Open Source 4.1 on Media Temple.  Here is the story why.)

Hello, and welcome to Urban Semiotic!  This blog is now running -- racing, really -- on Movable Type 4.1 hosted by pair Networks!

This blog used to run on WordPress and then on WordPress.com and you may be wondering why we decided to move to the MT4 platform.  We'll tell you the whole story now.

If you write a personal blog -- are you now, or have you ever been -- a Burned Out Blogger? If so, how did you pull yourself from the ashes?

Okay, so I have David W. Boles' WordPunk ™ up and running and Going Great Guns over at TypePad. Now there's the problem of identity and branding.

I came up with this simple logo. I love logos that look like text but are really images. Here's the single-line logo:

(UPDATE:  UrbanSemiotic.com is no longer hosted on WordPress.com.  We now run on Movable Type 4.1.  We are keeping this article in publication to preserve the record.)

Over the past few days I have noticed something curious happening with this Urban Semiotic Blog and Google. For some strange reason a lot of our articles are no longer being returned in a basic Google web search and that is killing our readership because Google usually sends a lot of traffic our way.

Those articles used to appear in Google -- they still appear in Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search as the top returns -- but they have been removed from Google view. We'll see if this article you're reading right now ever appears in Google and remains there or if, it too, eventually mysteriously disappears from Google's search returns.

We have discussed why it is important to use your real name on the internet; we have also dissected the difference between Hate Mail and Spam and concluding there is no difference. Now the New York Times explains the research behind Web Rage.

I have decided there is no difference between Hate Mail and Spam. Nobody wants to get either one; they each share the intent to bother and wound; Hate Mail and Spam live to burden and bother.

Do you agree Hate Mail and Spam are the same thing?

If not, what's the difference between the two?

What is the worst piece of Hate Mail you received?

What was the silliest Spam you found in your Inbox?