Today's blogger interview features TUAW phenom (as well as regular contributor to TVSquad and Cinematical), C.K. Sample, III.

What do you think makes blogging unique?

Quaerimur Ergo Sum. "I'm searchable, therefore I am." Recently, Jeff Jarvis, of Buzzmachine fame, while discussing the commodification of Google, mentioned that if you weren't searchable these days, you didn't exist (I'm paraphrasing here), and I think that's the beauty of blogging. It's a new grassroots publication system that makes you searchable. If you do a Google search for C.K. you will see a link to my profile from TV Squad as the 9th result. On the second page, you will see a link to my TUAW profile. On the third page, you will see my personal blog, Sample the Web. If you are my long lost friend Alberto who lives in Italy and whom I met in Germany and you think, "Hey, I wonder how C.K. is doing?" then you will find me (he did). That's valuable on a personal level. If you're an editor considering hiring me to write an article about iPods, you can search my name, find my site or TUAW, and search them for what I've written about iPods. That's helping to establish the brand of C.K. on the Internet, and that's valuable on a professional level. Now, you can see that blogging is valuable on both a personal and professional level for the blogger, but the beauty of it all is that people read what you write and they value it; I may just be writing about computers and television and movies, and little odds and ends that interest me, but people read it and find value in it, and I am thanked via comments and via email for what I've written and shared through my blogging. That makes me feel like I'm doing something for everyone else. Community participation. It's good for me and for the community.

How did you get into blogging?

Well, one of my favorite topics of discussion has always been myself, because, let's face it, I'm great. So, anyway, when I saw this uber- self-obsessed form of communication growing on the web, I felt impulsively drawn to it. I had tinkered with a few sites of my own and written for a few web-zines, but the weblog format just seemed easier, because you didn't have to worry about spending days and weeks and months kludging together a site design. Instead, you simply wrote and wrote and wrote some more and slapped a pre-defined template on that you could tweak if you liked or not. This fit me perfectly, because I've always been a writer, normally writing in my very horrible scribbly left-handed writing in a leather journal I keep lying around and which I myself can often not-decipher. I tend to look at the scribble and remember what I was writing when I scribbled it down and that's how I read it.

In any case, I started blogging in late 1999 or early 2000 after reading an article in Wired about blogging that featured a chat with Dave Winer. I first started in Manila, running a site called Kopfschmerzen, which has since been eradicated from the Internet. Around this same time, I started a Livejournal, called ck's (sub) conscious streaming, which was more a private journal than a blog. Blogging was more or less a way to let my family and friends around the planet know what was going on in my life. No need to spend long- distance phone call money on checking up on C.K.; just read his blog. This site was obliterated by myself about a year ago, because, similar to what Karina mentioned in her interview, I broke the cardinal rule of over-sharing one too many times. I also started the first iteration of my current blog, Sample the Web, in mid-2000. It was a Radio Userland site at that time, and I started a sub-category on the site called my iPod blog, shortly after the iPod came out. This blog had some small following, and has since been eradicated from the Internet and reincarnated over on some Blogger-owned space (http:// myipodblog.blogspot.com). When Apple came out with the 12-inch PowerBook, I bought one and I also bought a Nokia 3650 cellphone, so, naturally, I started a site called 3650 and a 12-inch and it was at that time that blogging really took off for me as something other than an endless space for me to blab about stuff and release the pent up energies that have always threatened to overthrow my over-thinking mind. This site grabbed a small following of readers and I had two very odd experiences as a result. Once, my brother Kevin called me up and said that his friend Lance had another friend tell him about this really cool Mac site, and when Lance saw the name attached to it, he had to call my brother to confirm it was me. They both lived in Mississippi at the time, while I was living in the Bronx. Something about the geography of the Internet became real for me in that moment. The other odd experience was being introduced to someone at work one day, and having the person respond, "Wait. Are you THE C.K. Sample who writes 3650 and a 12-inch?" In both instances, I was stunned, frightened, awestruck, and totally energized simultaneously, which is to say, I felt very alive, and I like that feeling, so that's when I really started blogging like a maniac. When Weblogs, Inc. finally came knocking on my door back in March, I was ecstatically overjoyed, but thinking in the back of my mind, "What took you so long? I'm clearly the perfect, crazed, frothing-at-the-mouth blogger you've been looking for!"

When did you join Weblogs, Inc.?

It was really crazy the way it happened. Jason Calacanis and I had played phone tag in September of 2004 and nothing ever came of it. We just kept not getting a hold of one another. I have a really funny email from him from September 10th, when I had called and left a voicemail message before running out to a dinner engagement. When I got home, there was his email, saying simply "i just picked up but you were not there!" Anyway, in mid-February Barb contacted me and said, “Wanna blog 4 us?” I was all like, "OMG, r u serious!?" and she was like, "lol totally!" and I was like, "LMAO THIS IS GREAT!" It was really odd, because I was just about to go on my honeymoon when I met Barb and Judith and signed my contract. So, I handled all of the paperwork for blogging for TUAW, then went away to Hawaii for a week with my lovely wife and returned refreshed. I started blogging on TUAW on March 1st, 2005. So here we are.

What's your experience been like at WIN?

It's great. Everyone loves what they're doing and they're making money doing it. I mean, we're getting paid to blog. One of my friends recently called me a professional hobbyist, as I have a job in IT that grew from tinkering with computers on the side, and now I'm a professional blogger. All of a sudden, I have a legitimate excuse to give my wife for the hours and hours I sit in front of my laptop: "I'm busy blogging." And, unlike before I was with WIN, she accepts this excuse because there's a nice extra chunk of change each month. It's really crazy to work with all these people that you've never met, too. I mean, the only TUAW blogger that I've ever met face to face is Jay Savage and that's because we were friends before he started at TUAW. But, Scott McNulty and I chat all the time and crack up and I feel like we have a real friendship and camaraderie from working on the blog together, and it's like that with all the people I work with. We all chat and crack up and have fun while we're working, and we're always online working because it's fun.

What do you do outside of blogging?

Too much, but I make up for it by blogging about most of it. I recently finished writing a book, PSP Hacks, which will be published by O'Reilly around the Santa Claus season. I also work full time for Fordham University in the Department of Instructional Technology and Academic Computing. I'm the Instructional Technologist who runs the Faculty Technology Centers; translation: I help the Faculty discover new technologies and facilitate the use of technology in the classroom. I'm an artist. I was a Fine Arts minor (one more credit and I would have been a double major) in sculpture and drawing. I like to play games, tinker, and build things. I also like hanging out with my wife, Kristin, and our pet Eclectus parrot, Mikhail "Misha" Baryshnikov, who can say, "Hello," "NO!," "Want some food?," "I love you," "All right!," and "Poop!" I'm also an A.B.D. doctoral student in English at Fordham.