Blogging is starting to be taken seriously by product promoters. Some time back I posted (rather bitterly I admit) about the exhorbitant price of a TV theme mobile jingle I bought. Someone at the TV listing company that had linked to it (not the actual jingle company who got the money) saw that post, tracked me down and sent me a refund.

A few months ago, a company that makes a multimedia CD for teaching Australian English spotted my much-in-need-of-an-update Guide to Australia and sent me a review copy.

More recently I mentioned that well-known organic chocolate maker Green & Black’s had been bought by Cadbury. This prompted a note from the guys at Cocolo, makers of fine Swiss organic chocolate, letting me know that their product is available in Australia, and asking if I’d like to try a sample.

Would I? Ha!

There’s something about this chocolate that I can’t quite put my finger on. Something that makes it utterly delicious. It could be that unlike most brands, you get just a hint of the cocoa within, without it dominating. The Dark Chocolate Orange in particular had a rather lovely tangy aftertaste, which showed up a few seconds after I finished chewing, and left me hesistant to take another bite, lest it vanish. The other one, the Milk Chocolate, seems creamy but without being overly so, and leaves the bog standard Cadbury chocolate (which I like, mind you) for dust.

Both of them have the kind of taste that you could enjoy immensely in small doses, without wolfing the whole packet down in a hurry. This is great stuff, and I’ll be watching out for it in the shops.

Isaac’s a little unwell, so I’m at home today. I was clicking around one of the real estate web sites, when I came across this superb example of great real estate photography.

Funny angle, thumb in the way… weren’t digital cameras meant to solve these kinds of issues?

After trying to stuff the Business section into its main News pages, and apparently getting flayed for it, The Age has now tried to stuff the Metro section in there instead. They say that Metro readers were sick of looking through the Sport section to find it. That’s probably true, but will they be any happier looking through the News section to find it? Is ease of navigation really driving the change, or is the Age just trying to reduce the number of tabloid pages it produces for some reason? Will the Metro section mysteriously shrink in times of crises, as the Features so often do?

So far those who consume newspapers in their paper format are probably still in the majority. But this will change over time, and as readers move onto the web, it also changes how they read the news.

The paper version only lets you browse, of course. No keyword searching. And you get less story precis per page, because it’s not just headlines to click on, it’s all of (or most of) the story right there on that page in front of your nose.

On the web, the story that may be splashed across half the front page of the paper version is relegated to just another headline (albeit in a bigger font). Any text you spot and get interested in is unlikely to be in the body of the article, but will be the headline or precis. Pictures are there, but the text dominates.

But whereas visitors to the web site will still browse, those coming through Google News or other search sites will probably find articles by keyword searching. They’re unlikely to see anything they aren’t actively looking for (unless it’s a false search result).

Over time this will impact the old-school media more and more, and they’ll have to adapt to get their content onto the digital devices of the future. It’ll be interesting to see where it all goes. I wonder how long it’ll take before I’m on the train to work in the morning, reading a digital newspaper rather than a paper one.

Dear Daniel Davidson Bowen aged 9,

Re: your comments:

cancel this website i’m daniel bowen age nine and my birthday is pon july 21 you idiot
– Comment by daniel davidson bowen — Wed 29 June 2005 @ 18:56

i hate you i am daniel bowen
– Comment by daniel davidson bowen — Wed 29 June 2005 @ 18:57

get lost and give me this website to me iam only a kid and need MONEY so gimme
– Comment by daniel davidson bowen — Wed 29 June 2005 @ 18:59

hi its me i want this web
– Comment by daniel davidson bowen — Wed 29 June 2005 @ 19:06

Welcome to danielbowen.com.

My name is Daniel Francis Bowen.

There are lots of Daniel Bowens.

You can’t have my web site. I got here first.

Get your own, somewhere else.

People arrive here by means of a number of different search terms. Some of them find what they’re looking for here. Some don’t. Here’s the top ones.

• shaolin soccer (8th hit on Google images) — I get hits for this ‘cos I posted a picture of the poster in my review. But the IMDB listing is probably a better place to go for more detail and pictures.
• doctor who 2005 (3rd hit on Google images), doctor who logo (1st hit on Google images) and “doctor who” (7th hit on Google images) — I’ve talked about the new episodes a bit, but there’s much more information and pictures on the official site.
• australian culture (1st and 7th hits on Google images) — Dunno how this happened; the first hit is my picture of Bruce the shark eating Andrew Bolt. If you want some real information on Australian culture, my Guide to Australia has heaps of stuff.
• driver licence (4th hit on Google images) — and oddly enough, a fellow Victorian is the first hit. You can find out about Victorian driver licences at VicRoads, or contact your local equivalent agency.
• scrabble (30th hit on Google images) — Ah yes, my naughty Scrabble game. Probably more useful information on this fine game is available from the official site.
• laundry pile (1st hit on Google images) and pile of laundry (2nd hit on Google images) — Well if you were after a picture of a pile of laundry, I guess what you found is just the ticket.
• brand names (1st hit on Google images) — Ah, so you found my image of a stack of different brand names, and the accompanying rant about capitalisation. Fair enough. I don’t know what you might be looking for though…
• containers (14th hit on Google images) — Yep, that’s pretty much a picture of containers.
• motorola e365 (2nd hit on Google images) — I didn’t like this phone, so feel free to read my initial thoughts or my subsequent rant when I sent it back. Or you could read Motorola’s propaganda on it.
• origin energy (18th hit on Google) — Their official web site is here.
• diary of an average australian (1st hit on Google) — It’s a fair cop.
• there’s only one catboy (11th hit on Google) — He’s over here (and his old blog, which didn’t forward to the new one, naughty naughty, is over here)
• 50 cent coin (5th hit on Google Images) — Maybe try this coins page from the Museum of Victoria

Tony: (Daniel’s blog was) my original inspiration for blogging - I’ve been reading him for years.

Kristy: I’ve also noticed that a link to this page has been added to the ever so famous Diary of a average Australian page (by the way, thank you, it makes me feel very special).

Andy: I have always been inspired by people such as Daniel Bowen who had the ability and the inspiration, determination and dedication to create cool websites.

Aw shucks, guys, I’m just playing around with this stuff, you know… But if anything I manage to stumble through inspires someone else to go and do good stuff, I’m all the happier for it.

Anyway, Andy and Josh have inspired me to do this: to compile a list of keywords people are searching for when they come to this site, and where they should go instead.

But I’ll put that in a separate post, probably tomorrow.

I’ve been thinking about death recently. Not enough to become really morbid or anything, but pondering what will be left in the way of memories. Will I leave my mark on the world? Will my thoughts and deeds live on?

Not that I’m in any hurry. Life’s way too good. But I wonder what to expect. Will it be an empty nothingness, a void? Or an afterlife? Reincarnation? I know I had one dream as a kid which was so vivid that it gives me reason to believe there’s something there. (Hey, you’ve got to get your beliefs somewhere.)

Kerry Packer famously had a near-death experience and claimed there was absolutely nothing there. Others have claimed they’ve seen things.

Maybe like in Sam Lowry’s last dream, you see what you expect to see. End up where you expect to end up.

An article on BBC online recently pondered whether websites live on after their owners die. Some people are lucky enough to find their sites archived by bodies such as the National Library of Australia (myself included — and those of you who leave comments here may be interested to know those are archived there too). The rest of us will only last as long as the domain name and hosting bills get paid, though many will live on as long as archive.org is around.

One story last week discussed plans to download peoples’ brains into computers, a bit like the holograms in Red Dwarf. An interesting idea, but it’s not immortality. No matter how good the software, it’s still a simulation of you; it’s not you.

In the mean time, I’m trying to make the most of the life I’ve got.

Dear Blogger users,

I’m increasingly reading blogs through an aggregator. This is a software tool that grabs text from lots of different web pages and puts it in one place for me. It saves me time, and allows me to read more blogs in less time. More people are using them all the time.

To enable this, many blogs have site feeds, using technologies such as RSS and Atom, and provide a link somewhere that people can plug into their aggregator to read it that way. But most Blogger sites don’t have this turned on by default. If you use Blogger and haven’t already done it, make the time to switch it on — the instructions are here — it should only take a couple of minutes, and (if it’s what you want) it’ll make it easier for people to stay up to date with your blog.