I had a great con­ver­sa­tion with Chris from Click­Pop­Me­dia Sat­ur­day about the future of this blog. Let’s say it’s very bright. What’s in store, you ask? Think gal­lons of data flow­ing through the strip: I’m not going to go nuts and try to dri­ve every­thing I cram into Friend­Feed in here, but there’ll be plen­ty of con­tent com­ing in from all over.

Is there a hint of data fetishism rac­ing around the web right now? Absolute­ly. Can it be a lot of fun? Total­ly. In fact, that’s the basis for pulling my Twit­ter, Tum­blr, Flickr, Mux­tape and more into Black­mail Is My Life. Addi­tion­al­ly, I’ll have tabs, prob­a­bly in the top nav­i­ga­tion, to my Google Shared Read­er Items and my cal­en­dar as well.

Sound good? I hope so.

I know I’m a day ear­ly, but I don’t get down to Isgro’s Pas­tries every day.

I’m still work­ing on turn­ing this blog into some­thing a bit more vital. I’m look­ing into pulling RSS feeds from my Twit­ter and Tum­blr, as well as Flickr pho­tos, to turn Black­mail Is My Life into a liv­ing doc­u­ment of what I’m into from moment to moment. I think it’ll be a great change of pace here since I hard­ly ever have time to sit down for a long essay, though I intend to write much more fre­quent­ly once this redesign is finished.

Be back soon. Really!

Anoth­er quick update:

• I’m tweet­ing like a fool here. Even if you think Twit­ter isn’t for you, you should just give it a try. It won’t hurt you, and it might even be a bit of fun. Really!
• I had a great meet­ing to dis­cuss the redesign of this very blog last Wednes­day. It’s going to be so much sim­pler, clean­er and eas­i­er to read. It may seem sil­ly, but there’s some­thing about work­ing on a site that a lot of peo­ple use every­day to change your mind about web design.
• We bought Phillies sea­son tick­ets. Sev­en­teen games. We’re sit­ting right behind Pat Bur­rell in left. It’s going to be excit­ing as long as the Phils don’t go 0 for April.
• We’re get­ting stuff done to the house too! We got a quote on pour­ing con­crete in the back­yard that was very rea­son­able. It should be done soon, mean­ing all kinds of BBQ mad­ness all sum­mer long.
• We’re shar­ing a full share from Greens­grow with our friends Dan and Maris­sa. Greens­grow’s just around the cor­ner from us and we’re thrilled to have re-upped with them for anoth­er sea­son of great, fresh food. If you want to know more about what they’re up to, watch this video that Phood­ie shot recently.
• Also, Mem­phis Tap­room will be open soon!

I was catch­ing up on Val­ley­wag this morn­ing — they have SXSW too, and it’s even nerdier — when I came across this item that caught my eye. Maha­lo CEO Jason Cal­ca­n­is writes:

Don’t buy a phone sys­tem. No one will use it. No one at Maha­lo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Every­one else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Every­one has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is NOT on the phone. Sav­ings? At least $500 a year per per­son… 50 peo­ple over three years? $75–100k [Empha­sis mine.]

What I’ve found last week is that if you want some­thing to be done, whether it’s set up a meet­ing or an inter­view, it’s still hap­pen­ing on the phone. I can wave all sorts of things at pub­li­cists to get their atten­tion, but unless I call and let them know I’m seri­ous, noth­ing hap­pens. At all.