As frequent readers may remember, I've been a vocal admirer of Jason Gurney's Lowpost.net, a fully-automated NBA blog aggregator which sorts posts from all over the blogosphereYou know you're a geek when you casually use the word "blogosphere," but for those unfamiliar with the term, here's the Wikipedia definition: "Blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all weblogs or blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture." into relevant conversations. (It's one of those things that difficult to describe but easy to grasp once you check it out.) I became hooked soon after discovering the site back in November, which eventually led me to share numerous email conversations with Jason, first about his site and then about blogging, the NBA and sports in general.
As a baseball fan, I knew that the technology Jason developed for Lowpost.net would be perfect for baseball. As rich and deep as the basketball blogosphere is, there must be at least five times as many baseball blogs out there. On the one hand, it's a lot of fun for baseball fans to read so many different opinions, but on the other hand it's awfully easy to get a bit lost and miss out on some really great content. So after some urging on my part, Jason eventually developed a baseball version of Lowpost.net, launching Striketwo.net back in March.
At the time, that was enough for me. I was happy to have another cool site to add to my daily rotation, as it made keeping up with the rest of the Majors Leagues that much easier as I otherwise focused most of my attention on the Pistons and the surprising Tigers.
But then earlier this month, Jason approached me about helping taking Striketwo.net to the next level. While it was a useful site for someone like me, who's not only familiar with the world of sports blogs but also a sports blogger myself, Jason thought that adding a human editor to highlight some of the best material might make it more appealing to first-time visitors, and a bit easier to understand by newcomers who are just starting to notice the internet's recent explosion of blogs.
Think of it like this: if Lowpost.net is the big map in the middle of the mall that shows where all the good stores are, Striketwo.net is like adding the great big red "You Are Here" arrow. The map alone is useful, but even more so with a little bit of context.
So, with that said, I invite all of you to check out the new Striketwo.net. The new version has been live for only a couple of weeks, but it's something that has kept me very busy over the last few weeks. One of the biggest perks I get out of writing for DBB is engaging in conversations with some pretty intelligent fans, so as always I'd be happy to hear any feedback you may have.