I recently added a new site to my blogroll.

Ugh. The words "blog," "blogroll," and "blogosphere" are some of the stupidest words to enter the English language... and here I am, a blogger, using them on a daily basis now.

Anyhow, in the world of blogs, links are currency. This isn't new information -- everybody that owns a blog knows validity is defined by the traffic to their blog, and comments are a good way to figure out exactly what kind of traffic is coming around.

If you haven't encountered Technorati yet (found in my navigation column) and you own a blog, you should check it out -- it has a handy feature that allows you to quickly scan which blogs are linked to your blog. Very handy indeed. It's either great for the ego, or it's very bad for the ego, depending on what side of the sphere you happen to reside.

I recently discovered Life's Journey, a left-leaning political blog that regularly gets 10 to 20 comments per post, which is fairly significant for a noncommercial blog. Technorati shows that Life's Journey has 59 links from other blogs (which humbles me and my 6 valid links). I commented a few times on that blog, and apparently left enough of an impact to get the author to add newprotest to her blogroll. And as it's polite to do so, I've returned the favor, bumping her link-count to 60. You can now see "Life's Journey" added to my blogroll.


HINT: Leave good comments on blogs.