The itch to write

Ladies and gents, it's summertime ! The air is warm, trees are green and lush, and students can nearly count leftover schooldays on their ten fingers.
Summertime rhymes with holidays, vacation, swimming pools, ice cream, adventures, love, gossiping, writing. It kicked off to a great start for those witty (heh Leo !) winners of the tagline contest who already have a myriad of ideas for their blogs.
The beaming Rose Hunt from http://rosehunt.blog.com, Blogland writes I see this as my chance to shine, and hopefully sell some of my writings. I promise not to waste the chance you have given me.
We're proud you enjoy blogging so much and it's for us, at blog.com, the most gratifying thing that can happen. We're eager to browse through your vacation blogs if you choose to go away to a remote destination, on a beach perhaps. Or maybe a grand tour of Europe... Or perhaps time with friends & family.

Today, June 21^st is also a grand day in term of travelling... space travelling that is. An ex-NASA member developed the idea of a solar wing, or rather a solar sail where sun particles (photons) would provide kinetic energy to the vessel. The launch of this technological marvel is due today, so stay tuned to the TV, radio, blog for updates. It sounds promising : trip to Mars in less than 2 years, speeds topping at some 16,000 km/h (that's very fast, ten times as fast as an Airbus).
Check out more at http://www.u3p.net/

You've been several to ask how to contact us and here goes.
Should you have any questions, please feel free to email us to the following email : hiker@blog.com.

It will be our pleasure to attend to you.

Our competition ended a little over a week ago and it turned out tougher than we thought to outline winners, let alone The winner. But here goes...

• In the category funniest tagline

« Does your Mother know what you wrote? »

• In the category Movie quotes

«  Blog.com - Life is like a box of blogs. »

• In the category Better late then never - submitted a wee bit after the due date...
  

« Blog.com - who says you can't take it with you? »

• In the category Speedy Blog

« Blog.com - at the speed of Life. »

• In the category Witty Blog

« Blog.com - right here, right now, write away. »

• In the category Let's get serious!
  

« Blog.com - what's your story? »
« Blog.com - your world, our eyes. »
« Blog.com - for everyone's life story. »

• And the Grand Winner is...

The very prolific Alexis with «Blog.com - one size fits all!»

All these taglines will be used as part of an online web campaign to promote blog.com. We would like to thank you all for taking parting in the contest. Winners will be contacted shortly. Our grand winner will be rewarded with a lifetime Platinum account whereas the runner-ups will be awarded a five-year Platinum account. Congrats ! We all hope you'll turn your blogs into dynamic spaces teeming with creativity.

Over the centuries newspapers have played an important role in keeping each and everyone of us informed and up-to-date on national and international events. However, newspapers had more than one purpose, they also  wrote about everyday people, folks that built the unseen side of history. Many journalists and authors wrote chronicles, these short stories, either fiction or non, about ordinary people about you. According to Merriam-Webster, a chronicle is «a usually continuous historical account of events arranged in order of time without analysis or interpretation.» Chronicle is derived from the ancient Greek God of Time's name, Chronos. A chronicle would therefore be a tale of our time.

America has been a rich source to chronicles, as it accompanied the creation of a new nation. Authors such as Walt Whitman and world-renouned Mark Twain wrote in newspapers to give accounts on daily.
In the past 50 years, John Cheever & Raymond Carver peered into everyday life seeking for the odd, analyzing our society. Robert Altman eventually directed a movie, Shortcuts, based on some of Carver's short stories.
More recently, David Sedaris took us on a trip down Memory Ln. in his latest book, Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim (see sidebar). He took his pen and acutely described events of a family he knows so well : his own. His bittersweet opus, first published in the New Yorker, will take you from the sandy coast of Ocracoke, North Carolina, to the remote villages of cheese-making Normandy, France. One can feel tears dwell up when he talks of his mother's death, and yet we cannot stop laughing at his purposely naive description of the Dutch Santa Clause : an elf-less dude cruising in Spain, and originally from Turkey. So much for the North Pole, Rudolph the reindeer and Mrs. Santa...
I feel blogs are the new generation of chronicles. The right to write is no longer reserved to an elite, but is available to all. Furthermore, chronicles are no longer targeting a narrow group of people, but can aim for the entire world. Blog.com allows you just that. And with a pinch of style and some punch, you can turn your blog into an adventure, a slice of your life, or an imaginary narration. Lastly, we can browse and find inspiration in everyone else's writings, and this is perhaps the greatest gift of all...

It's two thumbs up for Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim.

[from http://our.blog.com]

After a little over two weeks, our Find a tagline contest is over. You turned up many and we read the taglines as they came pouring in. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking part so many.
Shortly we will announce a winner and possibly several runner-ups, so stay tuned for more information !