Friday, June 25, 2004

What's in a name?

I've heard of Blogs but only learnt more about them in last 2 days. If I've anyone to thank for giving me the impetus, it was an American I met a week ago while assisting in a library tour for a group of foreign IT journalists/ writers. He goes by the name of Shel Israel. If you work in the IT industry, chances are that you'd know who he is. He's kinda famous, I gather -- anyone whose name turns up in the top 5 Google search results IS famous in my book : )

60mins ago, I was lying in bed with the dog at my feet. My wife was already sound asleep. Suddenly I had this urge to go forth and create a blog of my own. I'm shy by nature. Sharing my thoughts to the world at large is a bit unsettling, to say the least.

But perhaps I've become thick-skinned over the years and I'm not as introverted as I thought I was. It could be my subconscious reflecting on recent correspondences with Shel -- he suggests Blogs would be the Next Big Thing.

So 60mins later, I have a blog of my own.
"60mins!", you say?

See, I have this thing about names, as in, I want to get it right. Shakespeare wrote, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". I tell myself I can't smell a Blog.

233 words later (excluding this paragraph), I still have not written anything about being librarian or related to librarianship. At least I got the "rambling" and "incidental*" parts right.

===
*Incidental = small & relatively unimportant (Oxford Dictionary)

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous5:44 am

    Congrats to your welcome addition to the Blogosphere! Yo have been to my sire, correcting me, so I'd thought I'd return the favor. I am not famous. None of the 17 people who know me consider me famous. Yoyu made reference in your email to Chris Shipley and David Weinberger. Now they are famous and for good reason. Shipley, because she's an expert on innovation and Weinberger, because he's a co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto," the book that ignited the blogging phenomenon.

    You also take issue with me, for saying your blog begins the phenomenon in Singapore. You are only one of the first 3,000 or so island bloggers, as you point out. But that makes you far ahread of the curve. Just to see the scope of it, there are 3.1 million bloggers and the number is rising by more than 10,000 a day. In any case, welcome to the Blogosphere! Ivan, the Librarian.

    ReplyDelete

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