severe linkage

We really need a local hub of blogs. A home base. Grand central for the grand local. There’s a rapidly growing family out there, and it seems kinda natural to have some sort of index.

Consulting Google for “victoria bc blogs” I get 2790 hits. The first is a pictorial taken by a lady in Las Vegas. A pretty site, to be sure, but hardly locals rambling locally.

Then there’s this RootBlog thingy, which I’m sure Aaron could explain, but doesn’t strike me as very local or hub-like either.

And while Weblogger Meetup and Xanga Meetup look very intriguing, and I’ll be going back to Meetup.com for another look, it doesn’t quite nail what I’m after. Meetup is a neat idea though. Local interest groups can sorta throw it out there and see what happens. Wonder if there’s anything for penny collectors…?

But I digress.

JumpToVictoria offers to help you find local blogs, but clicking takes you to infoblogs.com, an utterly useless category index that doesn’t seem to actually have anything in it. Except categories, of course. They do offer to take your money for the Premium listing service, however.

MuddyLaces.ca is the first personal blog to show up, and he’s got Davin in his sidebar links, of course. Finally we start to get local.

Next to show up is Perpetual Karma, or rather a page full o’ comments from when she decided to try to get to know some of her readers. What? Oh- it’s over here, from back in May. I’ve only recently been pointed in Julie’s direction, thanks to Photogroffee 1.0, the best index of which is probably still here. It was a world-class photogradventure organized & hosted by Jim of currently-M.I.A GirlRepair.com, and I missed the event in the hopes of recovering my health. I’ve kinda regretted it ever since. Anyway, Julie was there, and she took some mad-skilz pics, and her site is top drawer. Sooner or later I’ll meet her, and I’m hoping to become friends in case some of that talent rubs off. =)

The next Google hit I recognize is a page or so later, and it’s the blizg profile for Xentac.net! Chu! D00dman! Nicely done. I voted for you while I was there, rocketing you up to 62nd postion. I seem to have dropped off the map with my collection of negative & removal votes. heehee!

That’s followed directly by the blizg profile for Muddy Laces, and then things get obscure, with much randomness for pages upon pages. On page 10 there’s this thing called the blogmatrix which looks promising, but it’s hard to tell if it’s old or just undiscovered. It does the blogroll thing, which I’ve been meaning to find out more about. Consider it bookmarked for… sooner or later. Nevertheless, this ain’t local either.

So after ten pages, I’m ready to give up. If there’s a local index, then Google let me down.

Which begs the question- if Vancouver can do it with such rambling success, why can’t we?

What I’d LIKE to do is have a simple index page linking local blogs, and you’d have an option to map the subsequent links off those blogs (can we meta-data that sort of thing for simplicity’s sake?) so that we have a graphic map of just how far our direct network reaches. That sort of thing gets quickly carried away with secondary links and so forth, and it’s being attempted by somebody somewhere on a totally unrealistic scale (Aaron will remind me) but I think it would be fun locally.

The index doesn’t have to do anything else but list the links. Easy enough to add descriptions, or thumnails, or bios, or whatever, but for starters I’d be happy with an index.

I guess all that remains is for someone to do it. Just a simple single page that doesn’t even need its own domain. Additions and modifications (and screening) can be done by email. No categorizing or anything. Just a list of links. Any volunteers? I know lots of us have been talking about it for almost a year. I’m thinking we should start it before the list gets too much larger. I’m starting to suspect blogging isn’t just a fad. =)

If it comes down to it, I’ll volunteer, but then I have to clear the bandwidth thing with the Mill and so forth. Much easier (and prolly faster) if someone else steps up to the plate.

Then again, all I had to work with was Google. Maybe there’s already an index out there. Anyone?