Another cool tool: This new Technorati “favelet” (a new word for me — referring to a bookmarked/favorites link that launches, well, something. They can also be called “bookmarklets”) gives you a means to highlight text on any page and launch a Technorati search of who may be blogging the topic (or, as “they” say, its “cosmos”).

(via: Joi Ito via David Sifry.)

Yes, Virginia: When Virginia Postrel, one of my favorite authors and bloggers, writes an article breaking-down an entire category of magazines in a new, insightful way for the Wall Street Journal that is a “free link,” well, that’s what I’d call a rexblog hat trick. Even if the article carries the sub-head, “In praise of shopping magazines.”

Quote:

For all their blatant materialism, however, Lucky and its kin actually represent cultural progress. Their unabashed presentation of goods as material pleasures keeps materialism in its place. They don’t encourage readers to equate fashion with virtue or style with superiority. They’re sharing fun, not rationing status.

As she has now persuaded me that shopping magazines are something other than a sign of the coming apocalypse, I am now ready also to be convinced by Virginia that, yes, there is a Santa Claus.

How magazines get started (continued): I’ve read (and linked to) lots of articles about how individuals have started magazines, but this one about Allison Shaw and her magazine, Hyperactive Music Magazine, has to be one of the most inspiring.

(Explanation: How magazines get started.)