This week in the Blogerati Files - Mike Nowland's "slowmotionlandscape"

Describe your blog in 10 words or less.
D.I.Y. urban archivist geek meets Martha with graffiti markers.

Why did you start your blog?
I started blogging because I was interested in the technology and how "word of mouth" communication was empowering a new voice of consumers and socially affecting change to the advertising and PR world. Along the way I dove deep into stealing and or liberating top search links and google keywords from big corporations, local events and other government and tourism organizations.

Evil as it was, it was all done by very simply writing and posting honest content, while tuning my posts and reverse engineering my opensource stats to decipher what the 3 big engines google, msn and yahoo were doing behind the facade. The result was lots of emails from people all over the world asking where they could find different places I had photographed. It was my own little Alt tourism, urban galleries, abstract sports news, media watch and documentary of forgotten and gentrified spaces.

All that said, the heart of the blogzine is a channel that allows me to create, explore, collaborate, share and document the people and places that move me, and the more I put out the bigger the returning tidal wave seems to gets.

Has blogging changed you or enhanced a personality trait?
Not sure. Even with the thousands of images I have posted I have yet to post myself in full blogstar view on the site without a mask, camera or reflection to keep my identity from the viewer, so I guess I still hide behind my camera. I love collaborating so I would say the blog has opened all kinds of doors and introduced me to lots of great people.

Do you have a favorite post from your blog?
I can't say I have a single post that sticks out over and above all the rest, however all the secretarial short films are very special to me because it was the transition from photoblogging to blogging daily life in a very different and more collaborative way by combining images, motion, and audio.

The beauty of secretarial is that it is more then just a photo blog or personal zine because it is a collective effort between me and a close friend. Together we began creating live performance sound sketches that we attach to daily video clips I was collecting with my digital camera. As time went on, secretarial evolved one step further to include drop in guest musicians who would hookup and record live 1 takes collaborative sessions that we would use in part or whole for the films. Aside from the films, the content is a great place for exploring blog cross linking as well as other things like independent music distribution via mp3 downloads all RSS enabled and licensed under the sampling 1.0Creative Commons License.

Fav blogs currently? Why?
http://www.woostercollective.com - respect.

What's happening in Toronto right now that the rest of us should be watching?
The city is sleeping but my cats are playing tag on the ramp, Duster is blowin' up the scene but it's ok because they are still in training for the pet version of the x-games and when it comes around. Ginger will be ready too.

You wake up and discover you're a flesh eating zombie. Now that you're undead, who are you gonna mange first?
Yikes! I'm vegetarian.... ummmmm well if I was undead I would still
have to pick another vegetarian so I would say Cassandra Peterson aka Elvira: Mistress of the Dark Source. Minus the super sexy silver screen dungeon fetish things, anyone who has rules for dressing like "Rule #3: Remember that a little rubber and a few metal studs will add a sophisticated touch to all your lingerie" written on their site, you know you're in for a good party.. I mean mange, gulp.

Anything else you'd like to tell the world?
Now accepting model submissions for the next blog reality show sponsored by national society of vegetarian and vegan zombies lovers - it's like star search with a twist. As Not seen on T.V.

Send submissions to:
society_for_veg_zombies_in_search_15min_of_fame@nowland.ca