For those who don't already know, on top of this main blog I update on a regular basis, I also maintain what's known as a "link blog," which is basically a simple list of other interesting stuff I come across on the web each day just on my own, along with a couple of smartass remarks about whatever's being linked to. There are lots of services out there for maintaining such a list, services that are also sometimes called "online bookmarking" ones; I use the Yahoo-owned del.icio.us, for example, because it's free and it works well and there's lots of third-party apps for it and I've just been using it for a long time to begin with. (As of today, for example, I have just over 500 links to interesting things now saved there, created over the course of several years.) del.icio.us makes it insanely easy for me, in fact, to use their service almost hassle-free; among lots and lots and lots of other innovations, they have a special plug-in for the Firefox browser I use, so that on any web page or RSS feed item I'm on that I find interesting, I can simply right-click on it to send it to my del.icio.us account. Such a thing brings up a special pop-up window right in Firefox, for letting me add a custom headline and description and tags; the entire thing basically allows me to send a bookmark to my account in under ten seconds, without me having to open any new external windows, just the trick for getting me to use a service every day for years straight. And besides, it's fun to share the weird and interesting and timely stuff I'm always coming across while reading my feeds each day; you know, it makes me feel all Boing Boing and sh-t.

del.icio.us generates a standalone page over at their website for my links, which is where the term "link blog" comes into play; because technically that page over there is its own standalone blog like any other, only with the entries there much smaller than the typical entry at BlogSpot or LiveJournal or whatnot, and with it always being simple links to external stuff other people originally created. And del.icio.us also offers this cool little Javascript code on top of everything else, that lets a person display their link blog as a sidebar item at their own blog; that's how I've been mainly displaying it here at CCLaP since the site opened this summer, with me otherwise not really calling much attention to it. But a reader recently suggested that I re-run all the links I collect as a blog entry once every 24 hours or so as well, for those reading via RSS or who forget to check the sidebar of the site while visiting; and I thought this was a pretty good idea, given how many other people I see do it, and given how easy it is to skip over such an entry if you're not that interested. Anyway, so that's what you'll be seeing here regularly starting today, on top of the usual long-form essays and short reviews and obsessions of the moment and photos of the day and top-ten lists, for those who had never noticed the sidebar before and who needed a little explanation. Enjoy!