In the midst of the recent AOL Journals banner-ad debacle, Jason Calacanis (of Weblogs, Inc. fame, who is now a member of the AOL team) asks, “Where are all the AOL bloggers?” He’s compiling a list, hoping to uncover an AOL exec.’s blog in the process. He’s even offered to get an AOL exec. blogging with their own vanity domain and fancy design as incentive!

If you’re an AOL employee blogger, go and leave a comment and self-identify! Microsoft, Yahoo, Google … they’ve all got tons of bloggers. Where’s AOL’s bloggers? There have got to be a few dozen of us, at least, right? Right?

I don’t know why, but I’ve had so many things I’ve wanted to write in the last month (yes, it’s been almost a month since my last update, sigh) but for some reason, I just haven’t been able to commit my thoughts into words for long enough to get a coherent entry written.

(I know what you’re thinking: like this entry is coherent, either? Okay, fine — that’s my point, get it?)

I generally try to write fewer, but longer, entries because I know how hard it is to keep up with folks who post lots of little entries all the time, but now I’m realizing: they probably do it so they can get a thought off their chest rather than not posting anything, like I have been all month long.

Maybe I should try an experiment for November, where I write entries of whatever length they happen to be, and just post stuff. Those of you who read this will let me know if it’s okay or not, right?

Joi Ito codifies five great tips for people who take their blogging seriously. I find it fascinating when really smart people, like Joi, can explain in just a few words what I’ve been struggling to understand for a while. While my thoughts have been circling around the themes that Joi points out, I’d never had the kind of clarity I needed to really act on the ideas until reading what he wrote.

I’d like to try and summarize his five points in my own words, just to see if you all think I understood them correctly. It’ll also help me better internalize his suggestions, which I wholly agree with. Points 1 and 2 both remind us that everyone likes to feel smart about something; let your audience feel smart about something and they’ll gladly share their smarts with you. Point 3 tells us to not just be a talking head; be a real person, with your own beliefs and opinions, because it’s okay to be a person, because that’s what blog readers are looking for. Point 4 is the old lesson of “give, and you shall receive” from the Bible (Luke 6:38). Point 5 says that frequency is important, more important than being right or being complete sometimes.

I urge folks who, like me, are serious about their blogging to look over Joi’s entry (and the rest of his blog — he’s a great writer and has a long legacy of being at the core of lots of Internet ventures, and offers lots of wisdom from that perspective, too) and tell me whether you think I understood his points or not. Thanks!

It’s finally official (after Rafat Ali at PaidContent.org said yesterday) that AOL has acquired Weblogs, Inc.!

I wonder if this means WIN properties will start linking into AOL content more. Regardless, it’s a good move for AOL and I hope Wall Street gets it, too.

I stay pretty “plugged in” to the flow of information with the help of ego feeds, feed aggregators, real-time searches, etc. I generally look for places where I can get involved in conversations, but periodically I find a new voice who decides to either quote me or mention me by name or with a link. Recently, I’ve discovered The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns and while her blog doesn’t have a biographical page that tells us a lot about her, she’s a prolific writer judging from the number of entries in the 3 months her blog has been up, and a well-written one judging from the quality of her entries.

The reason her blog showed up in my ego feed? She has my blog in rotation on the “random blogroll” section of her left-hand nav. Clever idea on her part, I have to admit. I have a feeling that while her blog is new, she’s not a newbie to the web publishing space and we’ll continue to see more clever stuff happening on her blog.

I just hope I can get her attention before one of the larger professional blog network guys snatches her up. We’ll see.

Mena Trott (of SixApart fame) writes about kitchen drawers filled with candy at the SixApart office. Talk about a cost-effective employee perk as well as a clever recruitment ploy! I mean, what geek wouldn’t want to work for a company that gives you free candy?

I hope SixApart’s medical benefits includes a really kick-ass dental plan to go along with the candy, though.

This week’s Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers #14 was done by Danny Klein. If you’re interested in finding new blogger voices from New Jersey, it’s a good way to find them! Here’s the snippet about my submission this week:

You really can buy just about anything through Amazon.com, as Dossy finds.

Click the logo below to see the upcoming carnival schedule or to submit your own link.

As an aspect of my loneliness caused by a lack of meatspace geek friends, I’m always on the look-out for people with serious interests in technology and new media in New Jersey. As part of this search, I found the Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers, a weekly summary of blog entries by Jersey bloggers or about Jersey, submitted for posting.

In the latest posting, Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers Eleven, there’s a link to Jeff Jarvis‘s recent entry about how he’s finally cancelling his AOL subscription after some 12 years of benig a member. While I couldn’t find anything that definitively confirms that Jeff’s in Jersey, I’m assuming he must be if the Carnival of the New Jersey Bloggers linked to him. Of course, I sent Jeff an email yesterday asking if he’d confirm, but I haven’t gotten back a response yet: perfectly expected, considering how busy he is and how he has no idea who I am.

I’m looking forward to finding new bloggers through the Carnival and maybe even get to become friends with a few of them. If you know of any Jersey bloggers, either point me at their sites in a comment or email me. Thanks.