The First Post

Welcome to the South Florida Daily Blog.

My primary focus with SFDB will be to do a daily review of most of South Florida's independent blogs and comment on some of the more interesting, unique, controversial or informative posts that are written during the course of any day. There is so much going on in the SoFla blogoshere, but at times it seems like everyone is scattered and doing their own things. With SFDB, I'd like to create a place where bloggers and blog readers can visit and get linked up to posts that are especially significant or noteworthy. At the same time, I'm hoping that people will find SFDB an enjoyable place to hang out, discuss the important issues of the day and interact with others who are just as interested as they are with what's going on in South Florida.

From Monday through Friday, we're only going to be posting a couple times each day. Specifically, we plan on wrapping up the day's posts in the evening hours and then get you started out the following morning with a look at what went on overnight. On weekends, we may do a little more and bring back one or two features that worked especially well at "the old place."

There are a couple features I hope to include on a regular basis here at SFDB.

Three Questions: For this periodic feature, SFDB will pose three questions to various South Florida bloggers. Not only should this help readers get to know the bloggers that they are reading, but, hopefully, it will also provide some insight into the practice of blogging itself.

The Water Cooler: Each morning after the morning wrap up is posted, SFDB will be open for the discussion of anything that is on our reader's minds. Readers will be able to use the comments to promote their own blogs, discuss current events, or just get something off their chest.

Best Ofs: Each week and every month, we're going to award a "Best of" to the most worthy of posts.

SFDB is equipped with the latest Haloscan commenting system, which should be a little easier to work with and read than Blogger comments retains the Blogger commenting system because, even with all its faults, it's better than the alternatives. Comments will be lightly moderated but vulgarities will not be tolerated at all.

SFDB will have categories set up in the sidebar so there will a running tally of how many times a certain blog has been mentioned on SFDB. The categories will also, naturally, allow for easier reference by readers. We're going to keep the Blogline blogrolls that continuously update so that you can easily see who has recently posted and we're going to keep them current, adding and removing blogs when warranted.

On Anonymity

Since I will continue to use just my first name here, I wanted to discuss my “anonymity,” since it was such an important issue for me at Stuck on the Palmetto. Plus, I've been dying to get this off my chest.

Every blogger who is writing out there is anonymous to some degree. Maybe they haven't told you about their criminal record. Perhaps you're not aware of their home address or cell phone number? Maybe they haven’t discussed how much money they make at their regular jobs or that they like to partake in an illegal substance every now and then. The fact is that no one knows everything about everyone. But is that really important?

I elect to keep my last name and place of employment to myself. That’s the part of me that I choose not to share with readers. There are plenty of bloggers out there who do the same. Go ahead. Take a spin around the South Florida blogosphere and see for yourself. And if you look at “national” blogs you’ll find even more examples. It’s not unusual at all. What made the discussion of my anonymity even more interesting, especially when the subject was being deliberated by the Chuck Strouses and Michael Mayos of the world who, by the way, probably never read a Stuck on the Palmetto post in their lives before the big blow up, is that my picture is posted on my Flickr account and I regularly attend South Florida blogger meet-ups and personally interact with other bloggers. In fact, my "anonymous" self actually invited people to meet me at a Panera Bread in Fort Lauderdale last year when I had some time to kill one afternoon.

It’s all such incredibly bizarre behavior for a person who is so “anonymous,” wouldn't you say?

So, no, for the purpose of this blog it isn’t important that I compartmentalize that part of who I am. Nor is it that unusual. It’s only important to the degree that it’s how I wanted things to be and how I desire things to remain. For those who still have a problem with that, and unbelievably, there are, let me suggest that before you complain you do a couple things starting with posting your home address and telephone number. If you have any cell phones, drop those numbers on us, too. Share with us your spouse's name and their email address. Have children? Give us their names and where they attend school. Or let us know what kind of car you drive and where you usually park it at night.

Because I'm thinking that if you feel like you are entitled to know everything about me, you shouldn't have any problem sharing the full details of your life with the rest of the world either.

Right?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

We get started bright and early tomorrow morning. Hope to see you there.

.