Introducing a new sidebar widget - NeatoHub

Last September I announced that I was beginning an affiliation with Neatorama which involved my authoring articles for that website.  The relationship has worked out quite nicely; my productivity there has been modest (about 250 items, which is about one/day), and despite the fears of some readers here that such involvement might diminish TYWKIWDBI, I don't believe my participation there has hurt this blog.  I have posted some of my better material at Neatorama, but to compensate for that I've created a subcategory here with links to all of my Neatorama posts, so it just takes a click and a few extra milliseconds for visitors here to access the material.

During this past year Neatorama has also evolved; in addition to some cosmetic layout changes, the most striking innovation has been the addition of a subset of internal blogs, called Neatoblogs.  The Upcoming Queue was the first, arising in January of 2009 and discussed in the time in a post here.  They have subsequently added four more subblogs:

NeatoBambino - baby, toddler, and child-related posts
NeatoGeek - self-explanatory
Art Blog - presents the work of independent artists, and
Spotlight - uses large-format photos to highlight selected topics.

The next step in the evolution of Neatorama has just been put into effect; it involves the linking of a group of compatible external blogs.  I'm pleased to report that TYWKIWDBI has been chosen to be part of that family.  Note the quality of the other blogs that have been invited to take part:

VideoSift - selected videos, with (unlike YouTube) intelligent commentary.
Geeks Are Sexy - multiauthor blog providing tech news and related whimsy.
Miss Cellania - multi-award-winning humor site.
Nerd Approved - gadgets and toys for nerds.
Random Good Stuff -  hi-tech and low-tech items for geeks and nongeeks.
Presurfer - Gerald Vlemmings' blog will be ten years old next month; a classic, and one of the role-models upon which TYWKIWDBI was based.

The interface for linking is clean and simple.  About midway down the right sidebar of TYWKIWDBI (below the categories, above the blogroll - which I note needs updating...) is a set of thumbnail images with brief titles.  A click on any of those will take you to the NeatoHub, with the item you selected at the top of a list of posts; you can then click through to the full post at the hosting blog, or select another item from the menu.

Over the years I've been blogging I've been asked to join a number of link-sharing projects.  I've always declined, in part because as a noncommercial blog the "traffic" here is largely irrelevant to me (except that more readers provides a broader and deeper base of expertise in the comments).  My other reason was that most link-sharing schemes involved marginal-quality material, whereas for this one the blogs are top-notch, and the authors will be selecting their better material to link at the Hub.  I also find the interface to be nonintrusive.

Please feel free to browse the Hub, and if you have any comments for its improvement, just append them here, and I'll pass the suggestions along to the admins.

Addendum Aug 16:  Many more sites have been added to the Hub, including the following -

Arkinspace
Cubiclebot
Cultcase
Darkroastedblend
Dudecraft
Fashionalbygeek
Forcesofgeek
Geekosystem
Greatwhitesnark
Inventorspot
Japanprobe
Kuriositas
Modernmechanix
NeatoGeek
Neatorama
Poppedculture
Roadtickle
Technabob
Thatsnerdalicious
Uniquedaily
Walyou
Weirdworm

I don't have time right now to post those sites as clickable links.  If you want to explore, either use the samples in my right sidebar, or go to the Hub itself.