Happy Birthday, Out of the Box

A year ago, I wrote my first Out of the Box post on Sony’s HDRadio-free, XM-Sirius-free, and stereo-free table radio — a simple device befitting a simple medium. Now I’m close to my 150th post here. That works out to about one post every two and a half days in the blog’s first year (although it didn’t really go public until about January). I’m a bit surprised by that since I didn’t think there was that much I wanted to comment on publicly outside of my two columns.

In fact, my affinity for the column format is so deeply rooted from my college newspaper daysthat I wasn’t even sure I would like writing shorter posts. Even though I’m also approaching my 150th Switched On column for Engadget, I’ve written only one “typical” post. Yet, writing OOTB, as it’s known here around OOTB HQ (see?) has indeed been a lot of fun and has even proven useful for developing a few longer pieces that became columns.

Because it had an intentionally under-the-radar start, Out of the Box was never treated the chorus of welcomes to the blogosphere that sometimes greet new bloggers, so if any of you loyal readers with traffic wouldn’t mind passing along the kinds of presents measured by Google Analytics, the birthday blog would be most appreciative.

I’ve tried to stay on-topic in terms of consumer technology, not chiming in on every juicy bit of comment-bait out there in the blogosphere, yet I really admire how some bloggers, such as Jeremy and Scoble, have mastered the art of seamlessly and often humorously blending original content, archival references, blogosphere retort and personal updates. One habit that would certainly help would be becoming a more diligent and efficient feed reader.

Special thanks go to Eileen for helping me with hosting and technical configuration. So, what will the second year bring? A redesign? (I hope at some point.) Funnier tag line? Burnt feeds? Futile ads? Guest bloggers? Podcasts? A companion blog? Pimping out with every blotchke covered by TechCrunch? Acquisiiton by Federated Media? Late presidential bid on a national free Wi-Fi platform? My being mistaken for some other Ross? Who can say?

You can. After all, comments are on.