Dino Baskovic Can’t Lose

It's simple, really. I will blog about whatever the first 10 people tell me to blog. Ten posts in all, first come first served according to datetime stamp. Even if I haven't a clue as to the subject matter and I have to ad lib as I go.

The only stipulations are that you must tweet me your suggestion at @ProfessorDino via Twitter, and only one entry per person, please. No changing your mind, so make your tweet count.

Nothing's off the table here, and I can't guarantee you'll like what I write. But I will of course credit you for your suggestion.

So, what say ye?

ESPN blogs about the Tribe Social Deck, an experiment to drum up excitement (with apologies to John Adams) and boost attendance for Cleveland Indians home games.

The idea is to select Tribe fans that will gladly trade their score cards for press credentials in anticipation that they will cover games online and generate positive buzz. Even though the Indians could stand for more wins than bloggers, it's a worthwhile experiment that costed their PR team virtually nothing to produce.

Being a Cleveland boy myself, it will interest me to see how the Tribe Social Deck plays out. At least one local blogger and the Waiting For Next Year site have sounded off, and I wonder if other sports venues will follow suit.

For now, my Tribe is four games behind the Twins in the AL Central. Tweets are great, but so are stats.

Mr. Sachin Agarwal
Chief Executive Officer
Posterous.com

Thinking I'm done with Tumblr and torn between keeping Posterous or moving back to WordPress for my own blog.

Image courtesy of J.DoyonPhotography's photostream on Flickr

As I lamented on Facebook earlier this week about my pathetic foraging for rabbit food (fennel to be exact), an old high school chum chimed in with her shared disdain of my sissy snack habits.  We scoffed at people that drink organic beer, because really, organic beer?  C'mon.  Carefully stuck into our cursory exchange of witty banter was a simple question:

"And what is with the blog?"

My reply:

"The blog is my soap box: half personal, half professional. I get paid to play with social media for a living. And I smell good."

Smell good.  Soap box.  Get it?  Ahem...

Lately, my blog feels like a soap box.  Which is fine, 'cuz I have been paid to stand on one for the better part of my career.  Still, I can't help but feel like I need to shake things up a bit.  Admittedly, I'm losing interest in half of what I write.  If I write one more diatribe about social media I am going to gouge my own eyes out.  More than enough maharishis rant about why the web is this or that, and this is one swami sick of the same elixir.

I need new material.  Not that I will shelve the social stuff altogether.  After all, it pays the bills.  But this happened once before, long ago, in a magical land where there were no blogs or citizen journalists.  Just brazen geeks with a text editor in one hand and a Dortmunder in the other.  I had a pretty lil' web site with a respectable readership, I got bored with it and let it whither on the vine.  Why?  Many reasons, but namely I got bored with it.  Why?  Because after a while, I felt like I had nothing interesting to say.

Blogging means being compelling, engaging, intriguing.  You know, interesting.  Enough people tell me I am interesting.  I choose to believe them.  My writing at times reads like I am trying to sound interesting.  That's dangerous.  Then I am blogging just to blog.  That serves no purpose.  Like people that tweet every itch they scratch.  That sucks.  Less filler, more barley.  That doesn't suck.

Time to get off my soap box.  Time to make things interesting.  This will be fun.

Photo by Tim Samoff

My mind is swirling with ideas lately, moreso than normal.  I go to bed dreaming up all manner of hair-brained schema, theorems and mousetraps.  And, when my conscious least suspects, the ultimate escape-from-reality plan.  Should any of you find yourselves wanting to part with a prototype RAH-66 Comanche and a gorilla that can mix drinks, then Skype me.  No questions asked.

I am toying with writing my first book, submitting to The Rapidian -- a new hyperlocal in Grand Rapids, Michigan -- and testing a new online strategy for myself.  Yes, that whole personal branding thing that I'm trying to give its fair shake.  In short, sharpening the proverbial blade that will reach far beyond blogging.  Killing two birds with one stone, I want to get those lost manuscripts locked up in my noggin and put them onto paper.  Make that a Kindle.

Getting published has been a big deal for me ever since I was faculty at Lawrence Tech near Detroit.  Not like it was "publish or perish" for us lowly adjuncts but I nonetheless felt a wee bit of pressure.  I taught web design for eight years and felt it necessary on occasion to edit a textbook, do some interviews, score a byline or two.  Looks good on a CV and gets me on stage once in a blue moon. 

I figured a better fit would be to write for web design-related sites such as SitePoint and WebMonkey that I naturally plugged in my syllabus.  Proving grounds for technical articles, POV pieces on best practices and code examples.  I'll be damned if I ever got around to any of that.

So when this hit my inbox earlier today, I was thrilled that SitePoint remembered I still had an account:

So maybe SitePoint's no longer the best fit for me.  Nor is WebMonkey, though I still need that gorilla.  I bet I can find something to write about.  It might be business, but it may be bacon.  Or bologna.  Even baloney. 

Either way, drop me a line if you have some insights and Skype hasn't yet deactivated your unused credits.  I can't promise every piece I write will be riveting, but it's better than letting my works get rusty.

I don't get Technorati.  It confusing.  How do I find blogs with this?  Androids and widgets, am I suppose to use those or what?

At long last, I drag my spouse kicking and screaming into the blogosphere.  And she likes it that way.

Laptop Confessions is a blog for the guilty conscience in us all.  The first post is all trash talk and it gets tawdier from there.

I'd tell you more, but it's late and she's dimming the lights...

What up, Parns?  I am such a slacker that I meant to post up yesterday just for the word play but couldn't make my own midnight deadline.  A precocious 5-year-old with a 104-degree fever will do that to a daddy's blog.

And slack I shall.  I have a few posts in mind (e.g. customer service clashes with PR, the web wages war with the AP, bloggers do battle with the FTC) but each of those require more research and writing than can be done in 140 characters or less.  Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I shoot off a few bullet points from other blogs at random, merely because I can:

• Sidewikis.  Just one more freakin' thing.
• GeoCities.  A small tear shed for my old haunt.  Otherwise, buh-bye.
• SocialSafe.  Finally, a way to back up Facebook, 150,000 limbo accounts notwithstanding.  Not necessarily a way to restore profiles, but it's a start.
• Mountain Dew and Pushead.  I am 13 again.  Not to be confused with AMP's new iPhone app which actually is targeted towards 13-year-olds.
• Dyson's new bladeless fan.  If Fast Company, Wired and Engadget are that enthralled (and two outta three thumbs up ain't bad), then I'll probably run out and buy one tomorrow then never use it like my Wii Fit.

See, this was good.  Cathartic, self-serving and an utter waste of time -- like most tweets.  Not a lick of context nor any real purpose.  I should scrape off my feed reader more often.  This is crazy delicious fun.

UPDATE: Gizmodo's review is the best.  True dat.  Double true.