While this weekend’s edition of the annual Blog World Expo was all about the ongoing revolution in electronic media, Mr. Gutenberg’s pioneering analog blog format isn’t going away anytime soon, of course–which is a good thing in my book. (Hey look–a pun!) While Barnes & Noble had a large display in the convention hall selling several existing books on blogging and new media, there were two new books of note discussed at Blog World:
Austin Bay gave me the galleys of his upcoming Fourth Edition to A Quick And Dirty Guide To War–right after Steve Green was done holding up the book, Brian Lamb Booknotes-style, during his interview with Austin for PJM Political on XM and PJTV on, err, PJTV. This is a sprawling (the galleys are over 600 pages) overview of the current wars of the world, and what could come in the future, written by two authors who also review what they accurately predicted–which was quite a bit–over 20 years ago. (Here’s the Amazon link to an earlier edition of the book; the new edition is scheduled to hit the streets later this year.)
At the start of the month, I had interviewed Scott Ott for PJM Political. Scott is the proprietor of, and chief satirist in residence at Scrappleface, on the floor of the Republican convention (while Joe Lieberman was performing his sound check on stage in the background). He’s contributed a chapter on politics and journalism (Scott, not Joe) for the upcoming book titled, The New Media Frontier, edited by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton, whom I interviewed on Sunday at Blog World. Their book, featuring an introduction from Hugh Hewitt, debuts at the end of the month. My very early first take? If you can picture a book aimed at Christian Americans that combines Hugh Hewitt’s Blog book with some of the broad 3000 mile “medium is the message” overview that Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler have provided, you get a sense of The New Media Frontier. I’d even suggest it to the non-religious, who can skip the more proselytizing chapters, for a pretty nifty look at the ability to use the Internet to build broad social networks and virtual communities.
Finally, speaking of books, Stephen Michael Kellat of a Website geared towards libraries and librarians stopped by the booth and interviewed Steve and I about Pajamas Media and PJTV as part of their weekly podcast. I haven’t a clue why a library-oriented podcast wanted to talk to us, but hey, we were there and happy to talk to anyone who stopped by, including those who stuck a mic and digital recorder in front of us.
Tune in here to listen; Steve and I appear about 15 minutes into the show, which requires no iPod–or library card!–to hear.
(And click here to see a slide show featuring about a babillion photos of the exhibitors (including Pajamas) and the weekend’s events.)
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