Reading spam comments has become increasingly discouraging over the years (or decreasingly encouraging, depending on your view on the glass half-full/glass half-empty concept). I mean… What ever happened to creativity? Let me illustrate with a handful of samples from today’s catch:

I liked it. So much useful material. I read with great interest.
found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later
Are you a professional journalist? You write very well.
This post increased my knowledge… very interesting..thank you..
I …

My absence from the social media scene during summer, mainly based on a number of all-too time-consuming assignments, has lead me to realise that I simply do not miss it, save for blogging, as you will understand. And I think I know why, as I suspect I really tired of the social media more than a decade ago. “Hang on,” you say? “Social media didn’t exist at the time”?
Dear reader, I beg to differ.
The sudden enthusiasm for web 2.0 and, in particular, the scores of social media outlets emerging over the …

I am yet not departed. Actually, I’m not even sick, except perhaps, mentally. But I do struggle. With unimaginable loads of work, preventing me from blogging, twittering, facebooking – or leading a life of my own at all, truth be told.
For the better of a fortnight I’ve been my clients’ exclusive property 24/7, and am likely to remain so for most of summer, amid our family’s move from the Oslo region to the west coast.
I’m terribly sorry for late responses on comments, tweets, private emails and what have you, but …

Some of us have mourned the apparent demise of CitJ site iNorden.org, a service we all hoped would once become the Scandinavian response to the Korean success OhmyNews, which, evidently, never came to pass. After about a year’s existence, iNorden flopped big time last autumn, at which time I decided to retire myself as editor, leaving it all to co-editor Øyvind Strømmen, who clearly didn’t have much time to spend on the project either.
The remaining staff, if that’s an appropriate term, was unable to uphold the regularity we came to …

I’ve never had the pleasure of counting myself among the Alexa elite (as a matter of fact, this blog holds a humble 8763rd place – among sites Norwegians visit). Never paid much attention to search engine optimisation, commenting wildly on other bloggers’ posts for requital traffic, unless I should, for other reasons, but I do appreciate frequent visitors and love the input you provide, unless you’re up to no good, that is.
In short, my insignificances are indeed highly insignificant, in the big picture that is the blogosphere, but I cherish …

About a week after New Year’s Eve, amid Israeli warfare in Gaza, I wrote a post on Palestinian blogger Sameh Akram Habeeb, whose life was in immediate peril as he remained at home to report on the Israeli advances.
Palestinian blogger Sameh Akram Habeeb (photo from Gaza today)
Needless to say, we were all severely shocked by the atrocities the Palestinians were forced to endure, even though most fled their homes to take shelter. Unlike Sameh Akram Habeeb, who provided us with the latest developments – a true and passionate journalist at …

Are we having fun yet, now that we have our Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Blogger, WordPress, Spotify, Skype and Google accounts, to mention but a few?
Certainly, some may find it all rewarding, in some peculiar way, but you have to admit that some of the above mentioned services are downright intrusive. At least I feel that to be the case with Facebook – and yet I’ve kept my once accidentally opened account. A couple of years ago I needed access to a Facebook group while researching a story I …

My apologies for highly infrequent updates of late. It’s all to do with my all-too busy schedule, alternatingly translating loads of Swedish articles into my native tongue (I appreciate that my surname gives cause for much confusion in that respect) and writing articles on women in science, IT and engineering – all due by weekend Friday noon. Needless to say it takes most of the nights and all of my daytime hours, rendering yours truly quite incapable of offering his usual insignificances. Luckily, however, that’s just what they are, which …

I think my heart missed a beat earlier today, honest to God, as I entered my old labour of love project, iNorden, which is currently undergoing substantial alterations, at least in the visual department. The changes are long overdue, although I must admit to a certain doubt as to where it is headed. As I no longer have a hand in it, I’ll just have to accept my part as passive bystander, which quite honestly hurts just a little, as I muffle a desperate “That’s my baby you’re tampering with, …

The Norwegian version of my blog (a separate blog onto itself, really) has been put on hiatus until further notice, due to the simple fact that these are very busy days, and they won’t be any less so by provoking the extremely combustible Norwegian blogosphere, leaving time for little else than fending off disagreeing readers’ views.
Rest assured, though, that, however dormant, the blog is very likely to resurface once I’ve put these near suffocating deadlines behind me, albeit with unopinionated and meaningless lah-dee-dah, perhaps, lest I piss someone royally off.
Meanwhile …

Well, it’s definitely not a bird and it sure ain’t no plane – even though there’s a distinct possibility that I just might be Superman. I do understand the question, though, so I’ll just clarify, once and for all: Insignificances most definitely is a blog – without a shadow of doubt, of course. The magazine layout is merely a way of having fun, as I’m equally – if not more – interested in presentation as in content. Now that we’ve cleared that misunderstanding out of the way: Welcome to Insignificances, …