Onward to 2010.

As not only a new year, but the twentieth anniversary of Tapping The Ether rapidly approaches, I decided to sit down and think about what I'd like to accomplish with this blog next year. I'll be honest: this year was pretty hit and miss, and for that I apologize. Part of that was because I was on a learning curve; part of it was because of real life events taking precedence. Overall though, I was happy with what I learned and I'm confident next year's going to see some good things happening.

Here are some of the plans I've made so far:

More reviews: Particularly movie reviews. I love movies. I watch a lot of movies. Now I just have to develop the discipline to write a review after I've finished watching. I saw some great films this year, including “Red Cliffs 1&2”, the “Transporter” movies, “The Bank Job” and dozens of other—but nary a review to be seen. This year I will rectify that. I will try and post at least one review of some kind every week.

Videos and Trailers: This is one area where I learned a lot this year. I found some great sources for trailers and music videos, and learned how to embed them properly. This year the goal is to balance the video content with content that I actually create. It's so easy (and lazy) to just add some video when I don't feel like writing something, but then I end up with a solid block of videos and nothing from me. That's gonna change this year. I'm setting myself a limit of no more than two videos in a row (and preferably fewer than that).

More news: The Etherverse is a wide ranging cultural gumbo that includes music, books, movies, television (a little), art and aesthetics—I'm going to start blogging stories of interest that I run across in my meanderings through Etherspace. Up to now I've shied away from that, because I saw it as exploiting other people's work—now I realize that it actually promotes other people's work, and hopefully they will promote mine in turn.

More Promotion: Improving the blog will hopefully improve the readership, but improving the readership also gives incentive to improve the blog. This year I'm going to try and strike a balance between the two efforts, and hopefully my listeners and readers will help me out on that.. If you belong to a band's fan club, or a message board or something similar that overlaps with Tapping The Ether's focus, please let people know about us here in our little corner. But please, please don't spam on my behalf.

Culling The Blogroll:  I have some great blogs on my blogroll, but I've been noticing that some of them update even less than I do (!!).  Since there's a limit to how many blogs I can put in the blogroll, I'm going to start more actively managing the roll--giving precedence to those blogs that provide quality updates on a regular basis (and of course those who provide me with some recipricosity).


So there you have it: The basic outline of the Tapping The Ether plan of attack for 2010. Please check back often. Please participate: leave comments, check out links, watch videos, and (most importantly) listen to the show.  2010 is going to rock!