Last week I heard two speakers at two widely different venues extol the virtues of blogs. One of the speakers suggested journalists “often” visit blogs for story ideas. On behalf of journalists everywhere, I was appalled. While some blogs have come into the mainstream as semi-legitimate investigators of truth, most are stream-of-consciousness badly written drivel. I don’t think journalists with any talent or imagination need to visit them to get story ideas—even small town columnists past deadline who might not have a very good idea of what to write this week. Ahem.

Several years ago, a reader sent me a letter saying my last column was so filled with errors and “wrong” thinking—I believe it was one of my missives many would have found to be of the bleeding heart liberal variety, but I don’t remember the subject—that it was akin to a blog. At the time, I was unfamiliar with the word, as the major blog explosion had not yet happened.

Now of course, blogs are a major topic of conversation for many reasons. Teenagers of both sexes are revealing far too much information about themselves, making them vulnerable to predators. Others are just droning on and on about the dreariness of their lives.

Some folks are suggesting that public relations professionals can create blogs for purely commercial reasons. There are search engines that actually search through blogs for keywords and public relations people could extol the virtues of their clients by creating blogs. The person who suggested this was a professional possessing ethics, and said professional bloggers should identify themselves as such, so the reader understands the writers have an agenda. I would venture to say where commerce is concerned, ethics may not top the list of concerns, but then I’m a cynic.

The other speaker I heard last week has created something where ethics and honesty would have to be paramount if he is to succeed. He is a frequent flyer and like many of us, if the most boring person in the universe gets on a plane, train or bus you happen to be on, they invariably will sit by you and proceed to bore you senseless. Good breeding and laws keep you from shoving something down their throats to shut them up. Most can’t take a hint when you open the book, the laptop or pull down the shades, put on your sunglasses and recline the seat. On they drone…

So he had the idea of people being able to choose a seatmate in advance of air travel and even finding people in large metropolitan areas to share cabs to the airport. The idea is so simple you have to wonder why you didn’t think of it. You are flying on this day to this place and you want to try to have a good flight with an interesting seatmate. You plug in your travel data at an Internet site and see who else might be signed up and going your way. If a compatible match is made, Voila! you can ask to be seated next to this person. It is a sort of a matchmaking and travel service, as probably most who use it will be single, as is the creator. Funny, you wouldn’t think a very nice looking successful single man from New York City would have trouble meeting women, but he travels a lot and I guess he has had some very bad trips without the benefit of chemicals and I digress.

Of course a certain amount of faith is involved here. One has to assume the photo and data people submit is real, and after visiting the site, I don’t see how the veracity of information can be assured, and disclaimers abound, but still it might be fun to try it, especially for long trips. However, the imagination to think of the idea and then having the knowledge to implement it is outstanding. The creator, Peter Shankman has also managed to receive tons of free publicity about his site. This mention is just some more, but he has gotten interest from the big guns: Time, The New York Times, Newsweek, (insert your favorite national newspaper or magazine here) and virtually all the in flight literature put out by the airlines.

So if you want to try something fun or you have a long trip coming up, check out AirTroductions.com. I couldn’t find out how much it costs to become a member and I had some trouble trying to sign up in hopes of getting that info, but your mileage may vary.

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