If 2002 is what you witness as the beginning of blogging evolution then here is my guest Matthew Sheffield who was well-versed with blogs in 1999. When asked what invited his attention towards blogging, his ready response was: “The informality, the lack of pretension, and the approachability of the medium are all things that appealed to me about blogging.”

“NewsBusters” can be seen as the brainchild of Matthew in alliance with Media Research Center focused upon critiquing the rest of the journalistic establishment. Read further to know more about this mainstream blogger, who has established an entity of a renowned “Media technology consultant” for himself at blogosphere.

Matthew, introduce yourself to my readers and take us through your usual day at work.
I’m Matthew Sheffield and I am the creator of NewsBusters, which I run on behalf of the Media Research Center through my web consulting firm Dialog New Media. I came up with the idea of NewsBusters in 2005 after my work with RatherBiased.com which was dedicated to monitoring the reporting of Dan Rather of CBS. After Rather’s retirement, I figured it made sense to expand my efforts into critiquing the rest of the journalistic establishment so a partnership with the Media Research Center was only natural.

My typical day involves scouring the web for interesting stories, sorting through reader tips, and then blogging about stuff that interests me. I also file stuff away for a weekly column I just started writing for the Washington Times.

You are known to be the creator of the conservative form of blog sites. What led to the infusion of that spark within you and how would you define the term “liberal conservative?”
Before I got into blogging, I was working as a web designer and the online editor for my college paper. My brother Greg came up with the idea of doing a small web page about Dan Rather in 1999. With my background in web design, I wanted to make it a much bigger effort. As time went on after our 2000 launch, the RatherBiased.com site evolved into a blog almost instinctively for us. He’s since lost the political bug but I’m still bitten.

Liberal conservatism for me refers to a philosophy that realizes that there are some things that don’t need to change but that technology, exposure to differing cultural perspectives and experience are all things that we should partake eagerly of.

It also means being open to the idea that you don’t need to have a religious faith in order to be a good person or even to be a conservative. As someone who used to believe the opposite but now believes in no faith, I think that it’s important for people to realize that religion is a system of morality but that morality doesn’t come from religion necessarily.

You are known to be a politically minded and conservative person. Are these traits innate or developed during the course of time?
I don’t think politics is something one is born with. The average child thinks politics is boring and that is as it should be. Most of us tend to go along with the ideas that are presented to us whether by our parents, teachers, and friends. There is a lot to be gained from such encounters but in order to be fully actualized I think it requires one to examine all externally provided beliefs against those of others that may think differently.

When did you sense an inclination towards blogging? Are you satisfied with the functionality of the blogging eco-system or think there is a need for revamp?
I pretty much was blogging before there was a word for it. For me it came more naturally as an easy way to report news and express opinion on the web. The informality, the lack of pretension, and the approachability of the medium are all things that appealed to me about blogging.

I think the blog ecosystem tends to get too specialized. It’s important to engage the arguments of those with whom you disagree but on the other hand it requires more effort. I think there is room for more pan-ideological blogs which try to blend things together to foster conversation. Unfortunately that requires money and most liberal and conservative donors/groups are (probably rightfully) not interested in that so this is an area that I think that traditional MSM can fill.

How far NewsBusters is successful in offering immediate exposure of liberal media bias and neutralizing it?
Over the past three years since our launch, we’ve launched a number of stories into the national media conversation, everything from Hillary’s sniper fire, Chris Matthews’s leg thrills to just regular live TV snafus. We’ve had an impact but I will leave that to others to assess to what degree it is.

Point us to other active players in the industry practicing the similar web revolution?
A few other places I think are doing some innovative things are the Huffington Post, Pajamas Media, and Talking Points Memo.

Do you still realize the need of corrections in news media reporting? If yes, which are those?
Being accurate and fair in your reporting is the most important thing a journalist or blogger can do.

Blogs Or Media Sites. Which out of these two is more successful in maintaining the transparency and criticism expected out of media as an institution?
That depends on the site. Both bloggers and regular journalists have varying degrees of ethical standards. One thing where blogs do have somewhat of an edge is that other bloggers are less-inclined to believe you if you make assertions w/o providing evidence. Big media outlets do this on a routine basis.

The reach of your conservative media blog RatherBiased.com penetrated to an extent that it became the first Website that Google pulls up if you search for “Dan Rather.” What all ingredients do you count for its unmatchable success?
It helped to have “Rather” in the domain name but also that we produced a lot of content and marketed it effectively.
Tell us about your association with Dialog New Media. How does it functions and enables you support conservatives and libertarians?
Dialog New Media is a political marketing firm whose purpose is to help clients maximize the “bang for buck” when it comes to messaging. We’ve found that in the Web 2.0 age, the internet is the most effective way of driving regular media because blogs are so important within newsrooms throughout the country. That’s not to say, however, that traditional media outreach and PR techniques don’t have their place. They most certainly do. The way marketing has been conducted has changed irrevocably. Luckily for us, a lot of our competitors haven’t figured that out yet.

What is your take on Traditional Journalism V/S Contemporary Journalism V/S Blogs Evolution?
I’m of the opinion that blogs are what you want them to be. If you want your blog to be a news reporting publication than you can easily do that. Unfortunately in the early days of blogging there was a widespread attitude among older media professionals that blogs were written by unemployed people lounging around in their pajamas.

That attitude exists today more than it should but by and large the “old media” has learned the lesson. Every big media organization has many blogs as part of their web portfolio and most journalists consider blogs an essential part of their media diet. Lots of traditional media outlets have begun hiring bloggers in traditional positions. The New York Times hired a TV news blogger to cover the television business for it, ABC News hired former Salon.com blogger Jake Tapper as an on-air reporter, Time magazine hired a gossip blogger to be part of its Washington bureau and a number of papers such as the Hill, London’s Guardian, and my paper the Washington Times have hired bloggers as columnists.

The main conflict today in my view is that old media institutions haven’t become as transparent with their political viewpoints as they should be. While it is admirable to try to remove your personal perspectives from your coverage, a lot of times it’s just not possible. No one is that dispassionate and without a personal history. Bloggers admit that they’re human beings with perspective. Most journalists haven’t been willing to do so yet. They should.

Tell us about your ‘must-read’ or favorite blogs?
A few blogs I read regularly (besides ones I’m directly affiliated with): Ace of Spades, Patterico, FreeRepublic, Daily Kos, Matt Yglesias. There are lots of others I read on a slightly less regular basis.

Provide us with your five favorite posts you have written to date.
1.    One of my favorite things to do is to get big media figures and turn the spotlight onto them. They specialize on doing it to others but oftentimes don’t like to be the subject of attention. I was able to do that with Chris Matthews a few years ago when I caught him being hypocritical on the Valerie Plame story by ignoring it after news broke that sort of shattered his grand conspiracy theory about the Bush Administration. The story got up on Drudge and that same day, Matthews broke his hypocrisy.

2.    One of the more pervasive questions on the political right of late is how to modernize our public outreach mechanisms. I wrote on that last month that technology isn’t the savior that some people say but rather savvy, principled leaders at the top.

3.    I’m also interested in giving wider currency to stories that got missed in the hustle-and-bustle of the news cycle. Here’s a post I wrote about how former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan changed his book from what he originally intended it to be, a defense of the president.

4.    Another post illustrating the same spotlight-on-big-media approach I mentioned earlier involves an exchange I had with liberal PBS reporter Tavis Smiley who had made a series of offensive remarks about Republicans, never apologized, and then was amazed that many of them didn’t want to show up to a debate he hosted in 2007. I asked Smiley about the remarks since I knew no liberal journalist would do so.

5. This post chronicling how CNN science reporter fell asleep during a hearing about global warming presided over by Senator James Inhofe was a favorite of mine as well.

Your favorites:
1.  City: Miami
2.  Music: String quartets
3.  Food: Too many to list
4.  Book: War and Peace
5.  Gadget: Smartphones
6.  Color: Green
7.  TV show: TBS’s “Burn Notice”

What are those principles that blogosphere needs to learn from mainstream media or vice versa?
Bloggers should do more original reporting and research. MSM need to be more forthright about their opinions and be more transparent about their sourcing.

How would you like to be known as?
1.    Media Critic
2.    Blogger
3.    Entrepreneur
4.    Liberal conservative
5.    Writer
6.    Media technology consultant

I prefer #6
Your post on Vanity fair’s Blog Map points to Vanityfair’s selection of blogs residing across four verticals viz. News, Opinion, Scurrilous and Earnest. If Matthew is asked to handpick one blog topping each vertical, which one would those be?

Within the political sphere, I would do it as follows:
•    News: Instapundit
•    Opinion: Matthew Yglesias
•    Scurrilous: Huffington Post
•    Earnest: Outside the Beltway

Where do you see the future of Blogosphere?
The future of blogs is synergy. There will continue to be personal blogs but more and more people will find out that banding together to produce content is a lot easier way to gain an audience. The MSM will continue to absorb, copy and read blogs. The number of “A-list” blogs will decline as consolidation happens. If Obama wins, right-leaning blogs will become the most popular. If McCain wins, left-leaning ones will stay on top.

Quick bites:
1. Hours you invest digging net: somewhere between 4-8 hours daily

2. Biggest blogging mistake you did: Holding back from reporting on the Dan Rather CBS document story soon enough. We followed the story as it was breaking on FreeRepublic but did not want to report it until we had solid proof that CBS had been tricked. We would have retained our credibility had CBS not been tricked but we could have navigated the line a little better at first.

3.  One hidden truth: People who specialize in original analysis and reporting are the people who do best in the blog world.

4.  If asked to post only on one blog (neither NewsBusters nor MatthewSheffield), which one would that be? Probably Ace. He’s a friend of mine and a very sharp writer and political analyst.

5.  Advice you would have given yourself five years ago? Think outside the box. There are so many opportunities out there for people who simply think of them.

6.  Life without Internet: Very inconvenient!

7.  Count of professions you have been into: 5

8.  First post you have written: I wrote a very basic update to RatherBiased.com detailing how Dan Rather was once convinced that the George Bush 41 presidential campaign was behind the Gennifer Flowers accusation that Bill Clinton had an affair with her.

Whom would you recommend as my next EliteBloger and why?
I’d recommend talking to Josh Marshall of TPM. He has built an impressive web entity without the millions of Huffington.

Give us your views on EliteChoice.
It’s a cool site.  Your interview series is quite divergent and wide-ranging.

Your turn! You can ask me one question. Where is my free coffee mug?
Well, you deserve more than a free coffee mug for fetching time and feeding my readers with such lovely responses. No I owe a treat to you.

We thank Matthew once again for accepting our invitation and penning down informative set of responses.

Ask any blogger running an established blog the number of posts he features during a day, supporting hands behind it, editors on job and you may not be wrong anticipating an overt two-digit response. But there is always an exception, which in this case is well exemplified by WebUrbanist. One post a day, five authors, one lead editor is the master plan behind the success of WebUrbanist.

Kurt Kohlstedt, Founder & Lead Editor, WebUrbanist stands firm on their policy of featuring one-article-per-day, identifying the want of quality over quantity. Besides this jumbo post, Kurt keeps himself engaged working on spinoffs and ways to tie together various articles and plugging in more valuable features following the rule of thumb: “Interesting, extreme, random, funny, obscure and otherwise sensational content.”

After a long oration, I propose you to read further to know more about Kurt and his Urbanist Den.

Introduce yourself to my readers and take us through your urban flow of day at work.
My name is Kurt Kohlstedt and I am the primary founder and leader editor of WebUrbanist, a weird and (hopefully) wonderful weblog about everything urban (culture, design, architecture art, travel and more) “ and some things that aren”t.

I used to be the primary author for the site but as it has grown we have brought a number of new writers on board and with them a healthy diversity of styles and subjects. I usually start my day as most people probably do: by checking my email. Back when it used to crash regularly, however, my first task was always to make sure the site wasn”t down.

Read the full story »

He calls himself ridiculously disorganized and smilingly derived his blog’’s name by getting influenced from sound and rhythm of the words. Lately, he quitted his fulltime job and is happy to reap the benefits via the surging popularity of his blog. Had he not being a blogger, you would have noticed me introducing you to an Elite Photographer. But who is this he?

Focused upon bringing forth the implausible paradigms of the world’’s most mesmerizing architecture, green living, inspirational design, phenomenal natural oddities, Stands Deputy-Dog, an active blog maintained by a pro-active face: Shaun Usher! One thing that he wishes to see is the discovery of the flying car, a concept that has been in maturity in various degrees for ages.

As recommended by Avi from DarkRoastedBlend, the passing weekend I happen to ask Shaun for sparing time and his participation here and to my non-surprise his kind and timely response is the reason for his worthy presence here.

Roll over to have more interesting insights about Shaun and his Deputy-Dog!

Introduce yourself to my readers and take us through your usual flow of day at work.
Hi. My name’’s Shaun and I run deputy-dog (and more recently wordepletion), a blog about stuff. An average day begins with a couple of hours reading the enormous list of bookmarked websites I”ve built up over the years - I”ve never been one for the whole feed-reading experience as I find it far more satisfying to visit the site itself. I then just get on with starting/finishing posts ready to publish. I have about 100 posts that need finishing all in various states of “completion - as I”m ridiculously disorganized and have the attention span of a peanut. I seem to constantly begin new posts and then start another one after a couple of paragraphs. It’’s frustrating.

Read the full story »

We are running in 2008 and if we sit back and recall the evolution of blogging almost eight-years ago and measure its deliverables then the medium has achieved unrivaled success. And thanks to bloggers who now find themselves addicted to the system. Cherishing the tendency to get addicted to the blogging mechanism, here comes another addictive blog with a difference. Curious what am talking about I am in a addicted mode huh..and to give you a dope is the face behind Dark Roasted Blend (DRB)– Avi Abrams.

Avi, founder and writer, DRB offers a good coffee-break and visually its a feast for those tiring eyes, sick of being glued to PC for long stressful nine-hours. Likewise Jen, associate editor, PCMag is the weird hunter of technology world, it wont be fallacious to christen Avi as the weird hunter of the lively routine world minus politics, religion and celebrities. DRB has an eternal relation with “Thrilling Wonder Stories” science fiction adventure pulp and hence having made up amongst top 300 technorati blogs and standing at No.8 in the compilation of the most popular Blogger powered blogs, it is overt for Avi to be my Weird yet wonderful elite blogger

Roll over to know more about efforts invested for the current appealing form of DRB:

Avi, kindly introduce yourself to my readers’ and take us through your usual day at work.
I am the owner of the website “Dark Roasted Blend“, a fun place online devoted to all things “weird and wonderful” that you can check out during your coffee break - so it’s a safe-for-work, highly visual environment… like a large-format coffee table book. Read here to learn more.

My wife and I have two sons, aged 8 and 2, so my typical day at work consists of finding some actual time to do some actual work. We also travel an awful lot, so finding a place with a good wireless connection is part of the job. In the past I’ve been a computer animator, music video editor, electronics engineer, played in a rock band and wrote some science fiction - so I guess I am used to juggling various activities.

When did you sense an inclination towards blogging? Are you satisfied with the functionality of the blogging eco-system or think there is a need for revamp?
I wanted to start a site that would provide quality online entertainment, without low-brow profanities and/or haughty agendas.

A happy place, full of the “sense of wonder” and discoveries about our world and beyond. The internet in general is an awesome compendium of fascinating things (take Wikipedia, for example), but many people do not have time to wade through user-submitted content and various aggregator sites. They just need a “daily dose of awesome”, short and sweet. DRB provides just that.

Our articles, however, tend to be more in-depth than just a few links and an image. We provide a new themed article every other day - and in that we are different from link-aggregator sites like BoingBoing or Neatorama.

Elitechoice team is a savvy visitor of “weird and wonderful things” covered here. What made you expand this idea?
The fact that many people today have a broadband connection and can enjoy larger-format images together with a thought-provoking article. We try to combine great textual info and mind-blowing visuals in one package - all on one page. You can call it an “added-value content” concept, with a good measure of fun. It’s certainly fun to put together our daily posts. It’s also fun to read cool and educated comments we get on every article.

How do you define “”weird and wonderful things”?
I don’t. They are weird and wonderful - surprising and wild. You cannot “tame” or define “the sense of wonder”. One thing we guarantee, however - we steer away from crass, profane and idiotic, no matter how sensational it might be. Think of it as large-format “LIFE” magazine, devoid of politics, religion and celebrities, married with “Thrilling Wonder Stories” science fiction adventure pulp.

What remains the criterion of selecting a prospective post on a particular day considering the blog covers diverse random subjects?
I have an associate hamster editor, that gets either excited or not about any particular post. Judging by how agitated it becomes, and the speed of hamster wheel rotation - the post either gets selected or dumped into “Fark /College Humor” pile. I noticed that the hamster does not get excited about various political agendas, cynicism, dark horror or pointless displays of angst. It likes exploration, photography, art, cool technology, beer, cheese and intense deep poetry.

What initiatives do you make to maintain the consistency of the popularity gained by DRB?
We keep posting on a regular basis, looking around various international sites for cool things (not just English-based, but also many Japanese, Russian, Israeli and Dutch sites). If the day would have 48 hours, you would have twice as much cool content on DRB. But we’re also looking at expanding our writer base.

Tell us about your ‘must-read’ or favorite blogs?
I totally love Neatorama, WebUrbanist, DeputyDog, Fogonazos, Modern Mechanix, DamnInteresting. Recently Reddit became more manageable resource, as you can now filter out the content you don’t want, and it moves much faster than Digg. Basically every site on our blogroll is great to visit: some coolest favorites include Bldgblog, Ectoplasmosis, PreSurfer, Treehugger, PaleoFuture and the list is endless.

Provide us with your five favorite posts you have written to date.
Kindly visit Most Popular/Hidden Gems, it lists our favorite DRB articles, and even cites the coolest stuff on internet we discovered during last year. It’s hard to chose, as I strive to make every post “the best” and do not publish it if I’m not completely happy.

What other areas interest you besides blogging?
DRB has sister sites: Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Experience, also our music recordings, travel photos and surreal writing. I try to play some groovy keyboards regularly and carve out more time for reading.

How would you like to be called as:

* Blogger
* Graphic designer
* 3D artist
* Writer
* Entrepreneur

None of these. I’m just looking for wisdom and beauty, everywhere it takes me. Plus, I am my kid’s dad, ‘enough said.

Quick bites:

Hours you invest digging net: I spend 8 hours a day running the site - it’s important to limit it to only 8 hours.
Biggest blogging mistake you did: Reading too many Reddit and Digg comments.
If not a blogger/writer, then. Song composer in the good old Merseybeat style.
Life without Internet: Ask the Amish, they seem to like it.
Number of bloggers behind DRB: I run the site and write the majority of posts, but we have contributions from 3 to 5 other writers.

What is that weirdest thing you have featured over at DRB?
The one thing too gross and weird to feature on DRB, so we had to publish it elsewhere is “Trepanation open up your mind, or…not!”. That has got to be the most shocking article ever written.

Is there any subject/area left for a prospective blog that a novice blogger can venture into?
Just follow your heart, and all comments / opinions be damned.

Whom would you recommend as my next EliteBlogger and why?
DeputyDog seems to be an interesting character, or the guy behind WebUrbanist.

Give us your views on EliteChoice.
Good job you do here. A wonderful outlet to feature some internet personalities who all too often remain inside their blogging caves.

You can ask me one question.
The name Zola sounds Italian… do you often visit Europe?
Not very often and I consider blogging addiction as a biggest obstacle to my earlier persona of a Rover. And I feel contented with my present role.

I thank Avi for sparing time for us and wish him luck for taking DRB to new, weird and wonderful levels of success.

Blogging has earned success in revolutionizing the functionality of the Internet ecosystem. Whilst there were days when search engines like Google and Yahoo use to dominate the homepage but current scenario makes more sense and befits the niche-needs of a person. Read the full story »

Another interesting blog and the multi-talented face behind it aptly fit well onto my Eliteblogger series. The tagline of his blog reads I think I think, therefore, I think I think I am, I think, making us think for a while if it is an extension of Desecrates philosophy but on inquiry David Szondy, founder, DavidSzondyEphemeral discloses that it can be seen as his take on the thought that there’s some thinking going on here, about which he no idea. He says: I’m of the opinion that I probably exist “or, at least, I think I might, but I’m not going to commit myself.

Szondy is a Washington-based freelance writer and webmaster for davidszondy.com, home of Tales of Future Past. In the past, David was engaged with chief corporations i.e. Boeing and Microsoft and is also the author of numerous plays; the most lately produced being an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s The Reluctant Dragon in Seattle and is a retired archaeologist.

Delve into the straight responses coming from David’s end:

Introduce yourself to my readers and take us to your typical day at work.
Hello, I’m David Szondy, the founder and webmaster of the blog Ephemeral Isle and its sister site, Tales of Future Past. I am a former archaeologist and university lecturer based outside of Seattle, WA where I now make a living as a freelance writer/editor.

Like most writers, I’m afraid that my work is less interesting to hear about than to read the final products of, as it generally involves many hours of scribbling, staring into space, glowering at a screen and coming up with an excuse to make another pot of tea. My work days tend to veer wildly between the structured and chaotic. When I have a client that needs me to travel, I can be anywhere and doing most anything.

When I work from my home office, my routine is basically to start the day by taking care of my email, scanning the news feeds and alerts for anything that might be of interest for Ephemeral Isle, and sorting out any future projects that are on the horizon. If it’s a a good news day full of interesting items I usually have the blog done inside of two hours. Otherwise, I put my notes aside to work on later while I concentrate on other writing projects and making sure that my two incredibly insecure dogs get enough attention.

Your blog davidszondy.com is known to be the home of Tales of Future Past. Can you elaborate Future Past for us? What is the focus of your blog?

Future Past is my word for how we used to look at the future. Other people have called this retro future or paleo-future, but I’m a bit more specific in my definition. Future Past is that era (give or take a decade) between about 1908, when Hugo Gernsback publish Modern Electrics, the first popular technology magazine, and 1964, when the New York World’s Fair took place and the Space Age was at it’s height. This was a time when people were making predictions about the future (They did is before and we still do that today), but very predictions that, taken as a whole, were very consistent and foresaw the 21st century as one of a very small number of alternatives “usually ones that involved flying cars, jet packs, food pills and robots as props.

It’s a fascinating field because so many of these predictions were treated as virtual blueprints for a future world where an article on, for example, a new kind of airplane wing would be accompanied by a detailed drawing of a giant aircraft using that wing that pointed out where the staterooms and loading ramps would be. Or, as in the case of the ‘64 World’s Fair, you had mock up displays of future technologies that looked as if the designers were just waiting for someone to come along and deal with the tiresome detail of making that thing actually work. You don’t get that sort of confidence these days.

Tell us about your experience while writing numerous plays? Do you count yourself as a born author or you have developed this skill during the course of time?
Playwriting is one of the most rewarding and frustrating types of writing. A play allows a writer a lot of scope to express ideas yet, because it’s so much a spoken medium, it forces the writer to really learn how to handle dialogue and pacing. I’ve been very fortunate in my playwriting to not only see my works produced and even win the odd award, but also to collaborate with some very talented people, such as my wife Lela Szondy, with whom I co-adapted The Reluctant Dragon for the stage and Amy Walton, who worked with me on the award-winning Circling the Drain before heading off to Hollywood to pursue a film acting career. It’s also a very heartbreaking job because plays take an incredible amount of work, often over years of writing and rewriting, and with the hard times that live theatre has gone through in recent years one has to stand by and see a lot of hard work by a lot of good people go by the way when a project is abandoned.

You seem to have a deep relation with pen. When did you sense an inclination towards writing?

I got into writing at a very young age when my boyhood daydreams started getting more elaborate and episodic until I was putting together actual stories. Then I noticed that I was getting irritated by a lot of things I read or saw on television and came to the conclusion that the rubbish I came up with was better than their rubbish and I started putting it down on paper. Fortunately, very little of this juvenilia got into print, so we’re all pretty lucky.

Which all projects you are working upon currently?
I’m still working on Tales of Future Past, which has many more pages still to be added and I’m hoping to adapt into one or a series of books in the near future. I’m also have a couple of other plays in the works, one of which is a comedy about the Normandy Invasion, there’s a panto, an adaption of E. M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, an independent documentary project on science fiction and technology, and I’m involved in a couple of projects in Hollywood and London that are still in the planning stages.

Your blog Ephemeral Isle seems to be driven by your thinking and imagination. What remains the nature of posts/writings that reside here?
The format of Ephemeral Isle is pretty much my reaction to modern life; specifically, those news items, gadgets, bits of popular culture or even things that happen to me that cause me to go bloody hell! or words to that effect. Having said that, the key to a successful blog is consistency, so I then take items that catch my attention and sort them out until those that remain fit into the major themes of the EI, such as the erosion of civil liberties in Britain, remarkable new scientific or technological advances, cool new gadgets, the threat of Islamic extremism, the absurdity of modern life, and how progress often deserves to be met with a goggle-eyed stare rather than unqualified applause.

How different is its tagline I think I think, therefore, I think I think I am, I think from what Descartes said: I THINK, THEREFORE I AM’?
Descartes was way too cocky when he said that and I hope someone told him so. My take on it is that there’s some thinking going on here, on whose part I’ve no idea, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’m of the opinion that I probably exist “or, at least, I think I might, but I’m not going to commit myself.

Ephemeral literally means short-lived. What made you add a suffix called Ephemeral?
I got the name from James Lileks, who has or had a section of his remarkable website called Flotsam Cove, which he used to toss out ideas that he hadn’t determined were worth keeping. At the same time, Ephemeral Isle was a phrase that had popped into my head that I thought amusing and since my blog was a place where I made my transient observations and rants about modern life, it seemed that Ephemeral Isle fit the nature of the beast quite nicely.

Tell us about your association with corporations like Boeing and Microsoft.
I’ve had them as clients on and off over the years and because they’re such huge companies the nature of projects can very greatly, but I generally find that I’m less interested working for corporations on anything put a consultant basis because they tend to get rather set in their ways.

How many radio plays have you done? How do you find your stay being engaged with radio industry? Which radio plays of yours you like the most?
How many have I done? Not as many as I’d like. Radio is probably the most exciting medium there is for a writer because every single second of a radio play has to be filled with sound and words, so you can’t get away with writing they fight or a badger falls from the balcony and hope that the director sorts it out later. You’re the one who has to make it work by putting the right words in the character’s mouths. It’s also interesting because it’s so different depending on where you are. Britain, for example, has a thriving radio industry with plenty of scope for new dramas, comedies and documentaries while in the States it’s much rarer because the market is dominated by music, sports and talk. On the other hand, the Internet has brought us the podcast, so anyone with a modest budget can set up their own Mercury Theatre On The Air if they like, which is incredible when you think about it. As to my favourite play, I’d say Phone Call of Cthulhu, which is about a collision between talk radio and H. P. Lovecraft.

How you would like to be known as?
Writer
Author
Archaeologist
Free lancer
Blogger

I think I’d like to be known best as a writer because it’s what I always wanted to do first and I feel that it encompasses all the others.

Quick bites:
Hours you invest digging net: I use the Net so much in my work that if it weren’t for my family I’d probably never leave my desk.

Biggest blogging mistake you did: Not having comments on the site from day one. Visitor feedback is absolutely vital.

One hidden truth: To be a real success at blogging you’ve go to feed the dragon every single day. That means being willing to prostitute your private life and embarrass your loved ones by resorting to personal anecdotes when you run out of material.

If asked to post only on one blog (besides DavidZondy.com), which one would that be? That’s a good question. Blogs are often such personal things that I’d feel like I was poaching if I posted on someone else’s. I’ll say eggbaconchipsandbeans because I like breakfast a lot.

Advice you would have given yourself five years ago? Listen to your wife.

If not a writer, then Threadbare and penniless. Hang on, that’s me now.

Life without Internet: Horrendous! I’d have to go back to scrounging every secondhand reference book I could lay my hands on.

Count of professions you have been into: Seven, if you count Dialect Coach.

Where do you see the future of blogging in coming five years?
Two things:
1) Its going to be much more interactive with much more high bandwidth content such as video.
2) It will be much more powerful as it cuts further into traditional journalism’s territory.

Whom would you recommend as my next EliteBloger and why?

James Lileks at lileks. He is the funniest writer in America today and his Bleat is a daily treat, though he is incredibly busy.

Give us your views on EliteChoice.
I never fail to marvel at the human ingenuity your site showcases or the sort of things people are willing to part with good money for.

Your turn! You can ask me one question.
Are people really daft enough to put treadmills at their work stations?
Yes, as long as manufacturers like to play with their wild levels of creativity and come out with such revolutionary offerings’.

We thank David for managing time for us and wish him luck with his “Tales of Future Past.”

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