Certainly, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd does, as she so comprehensively illustrated in her recent twinterview with Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams. “I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account. Is there anything you can say to change my mind?”Whereas Isabella at least conceeds that her lack of “getting” Twitter doesn’t stop her from understanding that there may be a use for it, Dowd plays the cocky, ignorant fool throughout her column (that’s paid journalist speak for “blog post”). She at one point, ironically, uses Twitter criticism from bloggers as some sort of limp punch.

I have little doubt that Dowd was using her shiny, NYT-branded soapbox not so long ago to attest the uselessness of blogging at all. I can almost hear her voice shouting out: “What? Give everyone a voice? But what will they say? Surely it wont be near as important or significant as my opinion. Why clutter up the medium with prole-speak?”

As many once assumed with blogs, Dowd seems to believe that just because Twitter is swamped with users, it means that by joining Twitter you are forced face first into the stream to be washed away by a current of nugatory life moments from strangers.

Throughout her interview with Biz and Evan she references the torrent of useless stuff people tweet about. But she rather tellingly avoids the real question–so what? People blog about the weather and how their most recent trip to the supermarket went–it doesn’t take away from the value of all blogs, it just makes those blogs useless. And like useless blogs, and columns for that matter, you don’t need to read them.

Likewise, there are entire forests being clear-cut to allow garbage tabloid and advertorial “newspapers” to grace newsstands, and yet we’re not calling into question the entire journalistic endeavor. So why then does Twitter get held to a different standard?

Twitter is a tool. It is a way in which a large network of people from across the world can communicate and share information quickly and topically. For myself, it keeps me up to date on current events, gives me access to tools/links/sites/etc. that I would not normally have heard of, allows me to economically and effectively communicate with a wide audience and gain multifaceted insight into an endless array of topics.

Twitter is what you make it. Judging Twitter based on its use by Ashton Kutcher, Oprah or Sally Mallrat does the medium a disservice. It is just that, a medium. A method. Calling it a “toy for bored celebrities and high-school girls” is a bit like calling the invention of the telephone, radio, TV or the Internet the same.

I’ll be tweaking some design elements over the next little while, but the biggest change is that I’m now importing posts I write at all my blogs (Lost Laowai, The Tech Dynasty, Dao By Design and Tip Trick Mod) into my stream here.

Though this blog’s focus is primarily on my expat life in Suzhou, I also want it to be a bit of a snapshot of me in general, and with so many writing/blogging projects on the go across the Web, I wanted a way to pull them all together.

If you are a reader of my other blogs, don’t fret, I’ll not be clogging up your feed readers with a bunch of duplicate content. The Humanaught feed will only contain articles specifically written for this blog. Also, all content coming from off-site (say from my new CNET Asia blog) will be clearly marked, and link directly to the original post.

Thanks for your patience if you happen to be at the site while I’m mucking about.

After I wiped away the tears and stopped shouting “NO YOU CAN’T LEAVE”, he asked if I would be interested in taking over the Little Red Blog, which is focused on technology as it relates to China – some may remember it was for a long time excellently written by another prominent China-blogger, Will Moss (aka Imagethief).

It just so happened Rick caught me at a time when I had been seriously looking at putting time back in my day for writing. Since starting my own design business about a year and a half ago I’ve had less and less time to commit to what really started it all, writing. I’ve come to realize that I’m the only one that can reclaim that time, as it’s never going to be handed to me.

So, along with committing to upping my post count here, at Lost Laowai, and Tip. Trick. Mod., I graciously accepted the offer to take over authorship of the LRB.

Sadly, after getting everything sorted with the folks at CNET Asia, I learned that the Little Red Blog moniker was being retired and I’d have to come up with a new name.

And so, after a failed attempt to convince the CNET Asia editor that Techanalects wasn’t too ambiguous, The Tech Dynasty was born.

I’ll be writing at CNET 2-3 times a week, and hope to maintain a similar posting schedule for the other blogs as well. It may mean I need to get a bit more methodical about my schedule, but I have a feeling that’s a positive step out of the rather chaotic timetable I currently keep.

As a first step towards that clarity, and as I’m sure some of you are questioning why the hell I have so many blogs, let me take a moment and outline each blog’s focus:

The Humanaught: Life in Suzhou

This is my personal blog, a place where I can spout off about whatever the feck I want without paying too much attention to its focus. On a macro level it covers, and will continue to cover, expat life in China, and more specifically in the city of Suzhou.

Lost Laowai

LLW is a multi-authored blog, so I have a bit less pressure to fill it with content all by myself. It is solidly focused on China, and being a foreigner (or “laowai”) in China. Topics run the gamut, but generally stay on point.

Tip. Trick. Mod.

Still relatively new, this is a blog that (the above mentioned) Rick and I started (and have pulled my friend Steven into). It, like LLW, is a multi-authored blog, but is completely un-China related. Posts relay everyday tips, tricks and modifications for customizing virtually anything around you. PC, Mac, Web, mobile devices, etc. are all topics (semi)routinely covered. PS: We’re still looking for more writers.

Dao By Design

My Web design/development business also has a blog. Mostly this is a place I can write about design-industry related things, share some basic design tips and announce the release of my various open-source plugins/add-ons for Joomla and WordPress.

The Tech Dynasty

For the first time, I have a blog where I can meld my love for technology with my location in China. The blog is part of CNET Asia’s network of great tech-related Asian blogs.

** Though his time in China has come to an end, Rick will still be writing at CNET, now at a Japan-focused blog called “Tokyo Shift” – which, at the time of writing, is still being set up.

There were three blogs that immediately became my favourites, and have largely remained so in the nearly four years since.

• Mask of China
• Sinosplice
• The Peking Duck

That I’ve now had the privilege of (re)designing two of these sites is something, I don’t mind admitting, I’m a bit proud of.

Derrick’s site, Mask of China, which has gone from a blog to an online showcase of his amazing photography, was the first site my biz, Dao By Design, ever did. He was the one that took a chance on me and kicked off my transition from ESL teacher to full-time Web designer/developer.

And as of sometime late last night, The Peking Duck joins Derrick’s site in my now year-old portfolio.

In the time between the two, I’ve designed, migrated, implemented, or otherwise fiddled with nearly two dozen other sites (including my own little pieces of the Web: The Humanaught, Lost Laowai, Hao Hao Report, Dao By Design, Tip. Trick. Mod. and Your China Pal) – however, I can’t think of a project that had me as nervous as redesigning The Duck.

Richard, TPD’s creator and primary author, is a legend in the China blogsphere. With six years and 4,500+ posts in his archives, he routinely gets more than 100 comments per post – even on posts that barely reach a paragraph in length! Needless to say, a lot of folks were going to be looking at this design – folks that liked to speak their mind.

Add to it that his commenters tend to be some of the most opinionated and critical (alright, occasionally in a discerning way) folks cruising the China blogsphere (hell, I’m one of them), and well… you can likely see why I was a bit more apprehensive of the wave of feedback to come than say the comparatively anonymous consultant firm’s site I designed not long ago.

That said, Richard couldn’t have been a better person to work for. With the exception of just a few guiding principles, he virtually gave me full creative license.

My focus with the redesign was to freshen the overall look, bring it up to date, incorporate some of the things that have become standard blogware (social bookmarking links, gravatars, obvious rss links, etc.) in the years since the original design, and – perhaps most importantly – update the damn map.

Anyone that’s read The Duck knows that Richard has made several moves across Asia in the course of the blog’s life. However, the site’s map – which detailed Richard’s travels between Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore – hadn’t been updated to reflect his additional move to Taiwan and somewhat recent return to Beijing. As a reader, it had always bugged me, so was nice to be the one to finally draw in the lines.

On the technical side of things, the project also called for a migration from Movable Type to WordPress, a switch in the right direction in my books. Though MT once ruled the self-hosted blog world, there’s little argument that WordPress has (some time ago) usurped the seminary blog platform as the new king. When it comes to support, features, and scalability (through plugins, widgets, etc.), WP wins hands down.

Anyway, go take a look, and let me know what you think. If you notice any problems, please do let me know – before the piranhas in the duck pond get me.

I’ll not reiterate it all here again, as I’ve already posted about it at Lost Laowai, but bare bones:

In an effort to tie together all us sinobloggers, we’re launching the China Blog Network, a (appropriately enough) network of China blogs that all link together in a ring-around-the-rosie style (we’re praying we don’t all fall down).

Though most of us link to each other through our blogrolls, I thought it might be more convenient, and fun, to have a method by which we can create an actual blogging network, whereby we can explore new related blogs and show a bit of solidarity for our blogging niche.

Membership to the network is free, but limited to English-language blogs about China. Noodle blogs, corporate blogs, tech blogs, rant blogs, whatever, if it’s China-centric, you’re all welcome.

So, if you’ve got an English-language blog about China, be sure to head over and join the China Blog Network.

For anyone not reading this in their RSS feed reader or on a splog, the changes should be pretty apparent. But I’m going to run through some of them anyway

First, I should mention, I’m not a big fan of switching themes. I think a blog develops some of its character from the look of it, and if it’s changing all the time, I feel it takes something away from it all.

That said, I really wanted to have a design that was all mine. Design, coded and styled from the ground up by me. It’s actually a little pecular that this site, my first, was the last one to get its own custom design.

Well, I should give some credit to Chris Murphy at Far From Fearless for giving me some healthy inspiration. His excellent design played a heavy influence in how I wanted my new look to look.

So, what’s new?

The blogroll has been shortened. Instead of listing one massively long list of links, I’ve limited it to a short random selection that changes every time the page loads. You can see all the links on the Links page.

The comments are now equipped with Gravatars. If you don’t know what Gravatars are, here’s the definition from the site:

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

It’s a cool way for you to personalize your comments on this blog, or any blog that supports gravatars. You just sign up for a free Gravatar account, upload your photo, and it does the rest. It works off of the e-mail you use when you comment. So if you sign up now all the posts you’ve commented on here will magically show your pretty picture.

Another change I tried to keep focused on with the redesign was attempting to clean up my sidebar. It’s not perfect, but it’s a bit more thought out than the previous one.

I’ve done my best to make everything as cross-browser compatible as possible, but I’ve very likely missed a few things here or there. Please let me know if anything is acting stupid.

Well, it’s 2 a.m., and I have to host a “Last Day Of English Summer Camp” party tomorrow morning… this boy needs sleep.

And for anyone that’s curious:
Version One of this blog was the initial blog I started upon moving to China back in January 2005.
Version Two was when I first moved to WordPress.