Forgive the self-indulgence. Normal service will be resumed asap. Freshblog isn't really 3... I mean, Freshblog will be 1 in April, really, on the anniversary of the publication of my first del.icio.us for categories hack. This birthday post is sneaking out today because I've been blogging for three years...

What a difference a year makes. Freshblog turned two with minimal fanfare and no attention. The site turns 3 ranked just the wrong side of 3000 (out of 30 million) on T'rati, with 400 + subscribers, two additional contributors, and 100,000+ total page views....

Now, I realise this is an hour in the life of the Instapundit, and that my blogstats are not so much to brag about. Let's just say that I'm enjoying this a lot more now that there's a community of readers and contributors here, and now that the content is original, & useful to readers. It's great to open Gmail and find some comments, and the occasional "hey, did you see this & will you write about it...." Blogging is a little easier when the content (even some of the content) comes to you, instead of requiring you to go to it.

Some thank you's in the form of birthday link-love, because the content, energy and ideas have come from out there:

• Anyone who's left a comment, link, trackback or e-mailed to give me a heads-up. Thanks! Keep the good stuff coming.
  
• Greg Hill, Author of Freshtags & Freshblog Contributor, for letting me be the P.R. man for some damn fine hacks.
• Fritz from Cycle.icio.us. Freshblog contributor and the man who can put Technorati mini in the sidebar of your blog.
  
• Johan Sundstrom, Scripter extraordinaire, who's greasemonkey script for categories survived the 0.6.4 upgrade and corners the market for integrated tagging.
  
• Singpolyma, whose collection of blogger hacks and custom version of Freshtags keeps the frontier of blogger customisation rolling back daily.
• Ted Ernst, who along with Marnie Webb provided the original tools and information that got me in this mess.... enabling the first "Del.icio.us for Categories" post on April 20th, '05.
  
• Ken Dyck, creator of the Xblogthis bookmarklet that I modified to generate del.icio.us tags
  
• Julie Meloni, author of must-have blogger companion volume Blogging in a Snap, which you should go to Amazon and purchase immediately. Best $16 you'll spend this year.
  
• Pete Hopkins, who saw fit to link Freshblog on Blogger Buzz. Much appreciated!!
• Top-Flight Blog Hackers Improbulus, Jasper and Phydeaux3, all of whom provide info and tools that are advanced, sophisticated, and well worth a feed subscription.
  
• All 400 Freshblog subscribers (and the friends that you're going to tell to sign up too?...) Your interest, energy and willingness to share your great ideas & efforts are appreciated. I'm happy to do what I can to get your hacks out there, so keep 'em coming.
  

There's more to say about content and community, (and, yes, Microspheres...) but that's another post. For now, I'm curious to see what the year brings, in terms of continued growth here and in terms of new services at (& for) Blogger. There's a Freshblog project in the works that ought to make hacks and other blogger-modding info even easier to come by. Here's to another year of top-flight collective hackery, and to bending blogger gently to make it do what we want it to!!