I once did a blog inspired by what I considered to be the worst audio quality podcast I had ever heard. It came from internet darlings Boing Boing. This is a review of what the podcasters with voices made for print do best - blog.

First off, the blog name.

You're not going to forget the name Boing Boing in a hurry, but when you first land on the site and read the banner, it gets you thinking, wtf is this? Fortunately there is a sub-title that immediately lets the first-time visitor know what the site is actually all about. Or does it? What exactly is a directory of wonderful things?

What sort of a directory is Boing Boing?

Certainly, Boing Boing is not like one of those gazillion eye candy logo-riddled useless directory lists that promise all and deliver nothing but empty hope. This directory is a real content-filled erm, blog. The authors strive to entertain the reader with multitudinous posts comprising words of many syllables ably strung together with proper punctuation, and graphics and links and comments. You know, a blog of wonderfully interesting things.

Boing Boing content

So what exactly are you going to read about in wonderment? Bungee jumping, rubber balls, elastic bands? nah. Don't take the name literally, eedjut. Check out the authors for an insight into the filling in this cornucopia of writers' delight.

Co-founder Mark wrote about co-founder and co-writer, Cory: Meet Cory Doctorow:

Disney freak, science-fiction novelist and self-described "happiest geek on Earth." His peer-to-peer dream is to help obscure artists find their audience.

So the picture takes shape. Cory Doctorow is a sci-fi writer of some repute. And then there's Xeni, (Shay nee)

a tech culture journalist and co-editor of the award-winning weblog Boing Boing. She is a contributor to television, radio, and print venues including Wired Magazine and National Public Radio, and likes to float in spaceships.

And then there's David, the futuristic thinker with a retro nihilist website!

These insights sort of hint that Boing Boing has a science bent. And you would think that Technology abounds indeed with back-up from John Battelle, whose own blog is an eminent set of thoughts on the intersection of search, media, technology, and more.. But Boing Boing is not just a haven for tech journos and space cadets. Co-writer and co-founder Mark is into everything, judging by the best About me page I have ever seen.

So, to get a better impression of what is really going on with content, I snapped the feed reader. Co-writers seem to cover anything that isn't sport, finance, movies or TV entertainment?

Source of material?

It looks like you send them a link to a story and the Boing Boingers put their spin on it. A good way to involve the readership, and the standard of writing is most excellent and engaging. (Perhaps the authors want to use the same spell checker as Boing Boing on their own sites - "a" editorial and "an" speech!!! Tut tut!

The Boing Boing look?

They have avoided the newspaper layout and the blog feels like a blog. The design has plenty of white space. It is easy on the eye. I don't know that is a world-beating design, but it is easy to spend time surfing Boing Boing, so it works!

Is Boing Boing a cash cow?

Plenty of traditional money-making efforts are going on, and ads are enticing enough to get a click or three from the millions of weak-willed maxed-out credit card-holding visitors. At the same time, the ads don't detract from the content. Good balance.

However, having heard Cory Doctorow talk on some panel or other, TWiT, I think, it seems that ads are for pocket money purposes only. Boing Boing per se is a platform for marketing the contributors' writing and speaking skills in the real world. What a great tactic for sparing themselves the humiliation of watching blog stats like mad things. Instead they just sit waiting for the phone to ring.

Summary

There is no doubt the Boing Boing guys are talented, driven and well connected bloggers. Fair play to them for building up their little empire on the back of quality techno-science-art content? If you are into all that stuff, man, there is no reason why you wouldn't read every word they write. And then buy their books, commission them for articles, have them talk at your show.

Many thumbs up.

PS if their MyBlogLog logo is in The Pisstakers sidebar when Ed starts blogging Sunday morning, the Boing Boings will get another link to a featured post. How exciting is that!