Not Off The Grid Until the 23rd...

...We're just ignoring you until then. 

Really though, we're headed east to North Carolina for some family beach trip action and some time with old friends. We'll be checking email and wrangling comment spam sporadically until then.   Please talk amongst yourselves.

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A Great Big Thanks

I wish I could comment on every blog post and link back to all the good folks that say nice things about us as a result of the videos.  Unfortunately, I haven't been so good about keeping up, and that's a shame. 

The truth is, you've been amazing in making this all come together.  It's been a wild ride to see the videos get passed around and to see our name on so many sites. It sometimes feels like a dream.  As one indication, we're currently the 813th most linked-to blog according to Technorati (for today anyway).

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So About Those Delicious Bookmarks

Perhaps some of you may be thinking "Why did Lee make such a big deal about adding del.icio.us bookmarks to his RSS feed and then stop bookmarking completely?"

The answer is that I've been scared to. At some point a few weeks ago, Feedburner's Linksplicer (the tool that adds the bookmarks to the RSS feed) added some goofy characters to the feed and made it invalid - broken in a minor way.

If finally got this fixed (thanks to Feedburner's responsive support folks) and now I'm a little gun-shy. The bookmarked items will come back soon, I just want to make sure my feed stays valid along the way. We all need more validation, right?

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Big Ups to Kris Krug

Just recently I was hanging out with Anthony, a great friend who has helped with the Common Craft designs over the years. He mentioned, quite candidly, that he wasn't a big fan of my buddy icon for this site. Being a designer and friend, I took his advice to heart and started the search for a new one.

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Common Craft Video Productions

Common Craft (the company, not the blog) is in the midst of a change. It appears that we're becoming, quite fortuitously, a video production company.

This is our story:

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Related Miscellany, Why Do You Mock Me So?

As many of you know, the Common Craft site has gone through a major transition. It was migrated from Moveable Type to Drupal and received a nice new design. One of the outcomes of this has been a complete disruption of 3+ years of blog post categorization.

For years I used a tight set of 6 categories, like:

• Weblogs in Business
• RSS and Syndication
• Social Design

These aren't too bad, but still quite broad. Then I had a catch-all category called "Related Miscellany", to which 250+ post were attached.

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Off-Topic Bookmarks? (Feedback Please)

Dear Common Craft reader, I want to know your thoughts. Just recently, I added del.icio.us bookmarks to this blog's RSS feed. If you're an RSS subscriber, you've seen the once-daily digest of my recent bookmarks (which also appear on our zeitgeist page).

Presumably, you subscribed (or visit occasionally) expecting some consistency in the form of community-related content. While the blog posts will continue to be (mostly) on-topic, I'm considering loosening the restrains on my bookmarking and perhaps veering wildly off-topic.

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Looking For RSS Plain English Video?

We're having some on-and-off technical issues.  If you're looking for the RSS in Plain English Video, you can scroll down the front page of the blog , or watch it on Blip.tv or YouTube.

Hopefully these issues will be resolved soon.

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It Snowed Today

When I was a kid, growing up in North Carolina, it would snow a few times a year and before each storm, I would get very, very excited. In hopes of preparing me for potential disappointment, my Mom would always remind me "Lee, you know, it might not snow."  We still joke about this cruel tactic.

Fast-forward 25 years and I'm still looking forward to snow.  Last night, just as I posted the RSS in Plain English video , I turned to Sachi and said "I think there is a chance that this video could make waves."  To which her reply was "Lee, you know, it might not snow". Cruel I tell you! Cruel!

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Well, That's Encouraging

I care about you, dear RSS reader and when another one of you subscribes to Common Craft - it makes my day. Like so many other people, I keep tabs on the count of subscribers Feedburner provides because I think it's a good measure of salience. That's why I'm so encouraged lately.

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