Birthday blog

Just to be clear, it’s not my birthday, but I’ve just passed the blog milestone of 104 blogs – so I am now into year 3 of blogging – woo woo!! Blog 1 was published on the 19th July 2006.

In the two years I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve tried to stay focused on mainframes and the accompanying software, but sometimes I’ve included stuff about PCs (we all use them), and occasionally I’ve written about useful gadgets I’ve reviewed.

Perhaps one criterion for measuring how successful a blog is, is by counting the number of people who read the blog. A second method would be to see how often a blog gets mentioned by other (unrelated) bloggers. Here are some of the places that have picked up on this blog over the past year.

"Sometimes small isn’t beautiful" from the 21st July was quoted by Mark Fontecchio in Mainframe Propellor Head (http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/mainframe-blog/more-on-the-ibm-swallowing-of-psi/). "Saving money on mainframes" from the 9th June 2008 was discussed by both Mark Fontecchio in Server Specs (http://serverspecs.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/05/20/mainframe-specialty-processors-do-they-really-save-money/) and Marc Wambeke in Mainframe Watch Belgium (http://mainframe-watch-belgium.blogspot.com/2008/05/saving-money-with-ziip.html). "IBM launches its zX machine" from the 3rd March 2008 was quoted by Greg Meckbach in the Enterprise Infrastructure eNewsletter (http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/Daily-News/eac638c9-a68d-42f7-8605-be83e7b4d03b.html) and in Computerworld Canada (http://www.computerworldcanada-digital.com/computerworldcanada/20080321/?pg=10). "The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2008" blog on the 18 February announcing the arrival of the 2008 edition of the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook (www.arcati.com/newyearbook08) was picked up by Mark Fontecchio in his article in ServerSpecs (http://serverspecs.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/02/20/the-2008-mainframe-yearbook-is-out/). "IBM future – Elseworlds" on the 4th February was heavily quoted from in Mark Fontecchio blog "And starring as the Hulk... IBM" (http://serverspecs.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/12/31/and-starring-as-the-hulkibm/).

It's good to know that people are reading the blog and referring to it in their own blogs and on their Web sites. Looking to the future, in the next year, I plan to continue highlighting trends and interesting new products in the mainframe environment, while occasionally discussing other computing developments that catch my attention.

If anyone reading this blog is looking for a technical writer, please e-mail me at Trevor@itech-ed.com.

And finally, a big thank you to everyone who has read my blog during the past two years.