Blogger is capable of more than I remembered

It's almost a year to the day since I've posted anything here. I'm paying a visit today in "how the heck did he DO that?" mode, after spending some time browsing around the "not-just-a-'blog'" sites done with this same Web system -- Blogger.com (a.k.a. yoursite.blogspot.com) -- by an old-time-radio fan and prolific blogger who goes by the handle "Jimbo."

For a couple of years I've been pointing out to students that WordPress can be used for sites that don't really look "bloggish." (http://rstepno.wordpress.com | http://bstepno.wordpress.com | http://stepno.wordpress.com/just-for-326-demo | and http://jheroes.com)

But I'd never tried using Blogger that way -- or noticed anyone doing the kinds of things Jimbo is doing. Here's the list from his "about" page:

• Jimbo's OTR Podcast
• OTR Books
• Silent Radio
• Jimbo's OTR Buffet
• Marxisms
• Imagined Plots of Vic and Sade
• otr photo
• Billboard Magazine OTR Review Index
• OTR People
• Vic and Sade Characters
• Comic Weekly Man
• Golden Age Newspapers
• OTR Advertisements
• Say Hello To...
• OTR Casts
• The Mixed-up World of Uncle Fletcher
• Unfishul Lum and Abner Dictionary
• Peabody's Peabrain
• OTR Audio Interviews
• DUMMY
• Vic and Sade Notebook
• The Crazy World of Vic and Sade

On second thought, "prolific" is a pretty weak word for all of that! I sent him a note via Twitter to find out if he had any magic tricks up his sleeve. Yup, there IS a secret: "Hundreds of hours of work." And that was just for his Billboard Magazine OTR Review Index http://bbotr.blogspot.com -- a terrific mashup of Google's archive of digitized Billboard magazines, searched, "clipped" and indexed for folks interested in particular radio programs.

That site in particular should be a great resource -- and role model/inspiration -- for other kinds of "media history" researchers, like my friend Bill Kovarik, author of Revolutions in Communication and its accompanying website, and his students.