My god. Have we really been at this for four years already?

It seems like just yesterday I was watching the countdown clock on our original domain name, theblastarea.com as we prepared to edit and put out our first magazine issue on 1/1/2007.

A lot has changed in that time. Not only has the magazine undergone four complete redesigns and an epic expansion, but the world around us has changed.

When Blast launched, “Twilight” was a popular new book, but nothing like the religion is has become today. in November 2006, as we prepared the issue, Harry Potter reigned supreme, and the first trailer for “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” was released.

The world was not yet in a period of economic recession. Housing prices were high, and it was easy to buy a home. Bush was president and Obama was a rookie senator from Illinois.

Iraq was the main war.

I gathered my friends to edit and produce articles and web-pages to go with them and we launched our 20-somethings magazine with no real idea what we were doing.

I’m still not a natural businessman, but I made one good decision: I shelled out my last $500 at the time to buy the domain name blastmagazine.com.

Broke and debt-ridden, the first year was great in terms of content and awful in terms of popularity, readership and money. BlastMagazine.com was de-indexed by Google when we bought it, because it was being used as a placeholder/advertising page with no real content. It took six months to gain and real popularity, and we weren’t on Google news for another year.

We had 25,000 pageviews in December 2007. Today we gain nearly that number per day.

We have several excellent blogs and a hold on the video game industry. We cover hard news, breaking news, soft news, feature news, music news, and porn news.

In 2010, I put the focus on geography. We expanded from Boston to New York, Miami, San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver and Dallas.

In 2011, Blast will focus on function. In the coming year, Blast Magazine will launch a recipes page, a job listing service, a classifieds page, an events calendar, and we will finally launch our online journalism stylebook, which we have been playing with since we launched the site.

Blast Recipes will feature dishes from Blast contributors and chefs, celebrities and restaurant owners from around our coverage zones and beyond. It is about 80 percent done, and you can see its development progress at recipes.blastmagazine.com.

Get a Job will be our own miniature version of Monster.com, but instead of millions of impossible to search listings, it will have screened job listings from employers who are specifically looking for college students, recent graduates, grad students, and Gen X-Y-Z applicants. I just have to design the logo. Check out getajob.blastmagazine.com to see how it’s going to look.

Bvents: The Blast Calendar will feature events, shows, and happenings from every Blast coverage area. We have a rough structure at events.blastmagazine.com for now, but we expect to launch this in the spring and it may look totally different.

The B-List will be our answer to Craigslist. Things have really gotten out of control with online classifieds. We hope to bring some sanity back into it. Expect that in the late winter.

The Blast Online Journalism Stylebook is online at style.blastmagazine.com, but we have a lot of design work left to do. We’re looking for a grammar nerd to help be the editor, so let me know if you’re interested.

And that’s how we’ll go.

It’s been a hell of a ride so far. Thank you for reading and continuing to make it such an amazing journey!

-john

My dear, dear French fries,

We need to talk.

The years have gone by so fast for us. From my first McDonald’s fry 24 years ago to the wide crinkle cut deliciousness at Glenwood in Connecticut and Town Spa in Stoughton.

It’s always been good. That was never the problem.

Something changed between us. It became all about you. I was changing, and you were staying the same.

We’re going in different places. It’s obvious, and I think we both know that.

Oh, I guess it started in high school when I would order two Wendy’s Biggie Fries with my Crispy Chicken Nuggets. It’s my fault I suppose. I was stuck at a desk sitting on my ass and you were always just there. So convenient. And … God … so good.

But it wasn’t good. When we were together — in the moment — I didn’t really care, but afterward I felt dirty. Unfulfilled.

So that’s where we’re at. We need some time apart, and that’s all there is to it.

I never stopped caring. I just wish there was another way.

Love,
John

There you have it, folks. French fries got dumped. I am pledging to go one year without eating a single French fry.

It’s going to be a year-long feature for Blast, and I’ll be posting 50 side-dish and food ideas and recipes that aren’t fries or as unhealthy as fries.

Stay tuned

Let me first apologize.

For about a year now, we’ve been using IX Web Hosting as an inexpensive solution to our very simple web hosting needs — three domains powered by WordPress. After all, we don’t have any key sponsors, and I fund Blast with my own money when it isn’t making its own cash.

It’s been a disaster. We are no longer using IX Web Hosting.

One of the last straws came when one of their technical support agents reminded me how little we were paying for their services.

Yes, you do get what you pay for.

This week, we upgraded to a private server and a different SQL server. We will be on a virtual private SQL server in a few days, and there will be virtually no downtime while our new hosting provider plugs everything in.

IX Web Hosting subjected us to a SQL server was was down due to abuse nearly every day and that — as you all know — was extremely slow and often unresponsive, even when it wasn’t being abused.

Then we found out that some of the RSS feeds on BlastMagazineBlogs.com had been hacked — spam code and links inserted.

The unreliability, poor service, poor servers and poor security of IX Web Hosting forced me to decide to allocate much more money for a new server. Whatever. We’re producing a great product here, and I want it to succeed. This is a move we should have made on January 1, 2007, when we launched.

Though, if you want to sponsor us, that might make me feel better.

It was a long month packed with news, drama and Britney going to the hospital.

In an homage to Letterman’s return to the air, here are the top 10 things you should come away with in January:

10. Your dog will soon take over the world.

9. Don’t stay on the top floor of a casino.

8. Sony may or may not release a white PS3 and they may or may not put Skype into PSP right away.

7. People are jaded as fuck. The first thing readers asked me when Heath Ledger died was whether or not he would still be The Joker.

6. Geek chic is still sexy.

5. Special orders do upset cops.

4. The rich go to Cedars Sinai Medical Center to have their babies. The poor take their chances elsewhere.

3. Don’t trust everything you read on MySpace.

2. Britney Spears won’t outlive any of us.

And the number 1 piece of knowledge you should come away with in January is:

Miley Cyrus is underage. And she will be for a while.

I saw the stats, and I still didn’t believe it. We wrote a 189-word brief about Kyla Ebbert — a Southwest Airlines passenger who was almost kicked off for wearing a skimpy (it wasn’t even that skimpy really…) outfit.

Then the counter started ticking like dollars on a gas pump.

By the end of the day on November 15, more people visited our little story than any other article in the 12 months of Blast Magazine. And every day that number grows.

In many ways it’s a testament to the Internet user, but in another respect, the growth in traffic we received from this 24-year-old vixen was largely due to us getting the article out early and Google rewarding us for our efforts.

I didn’t believe the latter myself until we rushed to get the Mitchell Report online. We put the report out to our readers as soon as it was released to the media, and lo and behold we’re #2 on Google.

So we’re excited about out recent efforts to make search engine optimization an priority, given that the previous owner of Blastmagazine.com abused it like a dog that wouldn’t fight. For the first few months, we weren’t even listed on Google!

The big story this month is that Blast is now one year old! We’ve come a long way, through three major redesigns, but we’ve maintained our major design points, quality photography and written work and, of course, our monthly magazine cover.

As we go into 2008, we’ve already started expanding our coverage to include daily gaming news, ongoing movie reviews, entertainment news and political commentary. We’re looking to add more original video content and keep up our long-form reporting in 2008.

We have some big news this issue. We put out the first major American review of SunAge, an upcoming strategy computer game. We also reported on the controversial dismissal of a Gamespot editor.

In Culture, you have to read newcomer Jocelyn Carleton’s piece on what national restaurant chains are doing to attract local regulars.

We also sat down with fashion designer Paula Hian and talked about her new dress that’s sweeping the couture world.

Speaking of interviews, Bessie King put Dr. Jonathan Katz on her couch this month to talk about his new Comedy Central DVD.

Last but not least, our cover story this month is an excellent, intimate interview with Sara Quin of the sisterly music duo, Tegan and Sara. Don’t miss this one!

That’s December. Happy Birthday to us!

I want to tell you a little more about our editors.

The newest addition to the Blast crew, Bessie King is with us in Boston as the Entertainment Editor. That’s the reason why you’re seeing a ton more content and some quality news reporting, like our instant coverage of Marie Osmond’s fall during Dancing With the Stars. She’s an ace reporter who has also done work with the Quincy Patriot Ledger.

Dan Peleschuk is the stalwart culture editor. The Boston Globe correspondent and top-flight writer is as comfortable putting together features as he is doing hard news reporting.

Elizabeth Raftery is second in command on the editorial side. Lexis Nexis should have a section devoted to the amount of work she’s put out in her career so far at the Globe and the Bloomsburg Press Enterprise.

So that’s the family.

Blast Magazine November is a wholly different animal for us. We’re touching some deep issues in this issue — drugs, pornography, Brittney Spears’ new album, etc. We’re running a scientific study on whether or not the government should step in and regulate the adult film business. We’re running a review of a Brady Bunch porn spoof. We’re running a long-form feature story on the Salvia herbal drug craze.

We also have two new retro technology features. I put together and edited a bunch of 10-year-old tech and game reviews. Not exactly cover stories, but there’s some serious gaming history in these articles. Shareware used to be all the rage. Freeware was a novel idea. This was, of course, before the open source revolution. You’ll also see that there used to be a little outfit called GT Interactive Software. They distributed Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and then decided to make a bunch of games from Duke’s “Build” engine, which sucked, even back then. They don’t exist anymore.

Second, I’m putting something together called “The Old Shoebox.” I think all of us tech-nerds have one. An old sneaker box with magazine CD’s, old operating systems, multiple game distributions, early CDR’s of Knoppix and a burned copy of Microsoft Office 2000 — before they started limiting how many times you could use the CD key.

I’m dusting off these half-scratched discs, taking the legal stuff and giving you a bunch of freebies. Next week you can download AIM 4.X and Aim + here. I’m not sure that you can do that anywhere else. There are also some excellent full games in the abandonware category that you can have. Duke Nukem 1 is first on the list.

So that’s November so far. If you’re a prospective advertiser, please be advised that the girl on the cover this month is not a porn star.

Everyone else — hey, check it out, porn star on the cover!

We’re changing things around again.

A project that was originally codenamed “January Redesign” is already in the Beta status and we’re seeing how it fits.

We’re unveiling distinct new pages for each for each of our sections, a new home page and a redesigned individual article page as well as over 100 tweaks and fixes.

Blast is letting the design leak so its staff, editors and readers can point out all the flaws I’m certain are going to pop up as is with any new programming. It’s a great new design based on some amazing programming by Brian Gardner.

As you read this there is a genocide occurring on our Earth. Not in a book or a film or a museum, but in real time.

In the Darfur region of Sudan, a country on the east coast of Africa, 10,000 people a month, fifteen an hour, are being killed by their government. Three million people are displaced and living in camps under conditions that even the most empathetic among us can barely imagine.

They are being persecuted because they are black and, more importantly, because they live on top of one of the world’s largest remaining oil reserves, which by the way is being bought and controlled by China, the host of our world’s 2008 Olympics. These desperate people have been handed a death sentence by Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese Government dictator whose name can be uttered in the same breath as Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot without thinking twice.

The UN has just resolved to help the people of Darfur by sending in a peacekeeping force. While this seems like it should be cause for celebration, this same plan has failed many times before due to resistance from the corrupt Sudanese government and our lack of effective international diplomacy.

It’s time for all good people to rise up. If America shines a light into this darkness millions of lives can be saved. Please take 10 minutes to write a hand written letter to your congressman, senator, or president. Let them know that you completely support their efforts on behalf of our great nation to end this genocide and that you expect their support of the UN deployment in Darfur. Let them know that your vote will reflect their attention to this issue.

The people of Darfur are praying to God right now that someone who looks a lot like you and me will come save them. These are our children and our future and I for one cannot stand by and watch as they are slaughtered. There is a building on fire …..and children inside …..What will you do?

Letters really can save lives. We are their hope. Start Writing.

William Kenneth “Big Kenny” Alphin is a member of the hit country music duo Big & Rich.

I hope you’re enjoying July’s issue of Blast Magazine so far.

A lot has gone into development and content lately, and I want to share some content developments with you.

The big news is that we are taking the Creative Commons road. We’re licensing all of our content under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License, meaning other people, bloggers and more startup news and online journalism organizations can start to use our content, as long as they don’t sell or directly make money off of it and as long as they link back/give credit to the original author and Blast Magazine.

This is the best move for Blast right now as we continue our small steps onto the moon of the Internet press. Not many news sources have done this, with one noteable exception from the good people at Gatehouse who decided to go with Creative Commons at the end of last year. There’s a press release below. Take a gander!

Also of considerable noteworthiness, we have joined the Online News Association this month. They were founded in 1999 and push standards of journalism excellence online, which is what we strive for. Thus, it’s a natural fit.

In June, we started syndicating EarthTalk, a weekly environmental column. In this week’s column, our friends at E Magazine look at Eco-Friendly homes and “green moving solutions.”

Finally, don’t miss this month’s cover gallery. Our culture editor set up, picked the outfits for and shot this wonderful beachy gallery.

That’s the straight poop for now. Thanks for reading!

–

For Immediate Release:

Contact: John Leroy
Publicity Director
413-263-2378

July 9, 2007

Blast Magazine Forms Partnership with Creative Commons

Online Magazine Makes its Content Available for Open Use

After seven issues in publication, Blast Magazine has teamed up with Creative Commons to make its original content available to a wider audience. This partnership makes Blast one of the few news sources to make their content available for open use.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides a “some rights reserved” copyright to, or allows multimedia news content to be accessed, distributed or shared online with ease, while allowing the original author to retain ownership of works. Blast Magazine will license content under an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Its content will be available for use as long as it is not sold and proper attribution and linking are present.

“We’re very excited at the chance to work closely with Creative Commons and put our quality news and multimedia content out there to be read and used by many more people," says John Guilfoil, Editor and owner of Blast Magazine.

Since its inception, the "Hybrid Edition Content Delivery," has been read by more than 30,000 people per month, with consistent growth apparent. The publication has a staff of over 30 journalists, including writers, photographers and graphic designers from all over the country. They are a mixture of young professionals and talented students.

Editor-In-Chief, John Guilfoil is a recent graduate of Northeastern University and also a 10-year veteran of Internet journalism. He founded The Review Center (http://www.reviewcenter.com) in 1999 and has written numerous articles and product reviews.

Blast Magazine is available online at http://www.blastmagazine.com with a new kind of media experience. New issues of the publication are available online on the 1^st of each month, with posts being added each day.

###

Summertime.

Blast Magazine clearly doesn’t fear change, and I hope you don’t either. What we’re trying to do is be able to put out flashy covers and section pages and use our excellent graphic design and photography abilities while still providing you with fresh content that comes out more than once a month.

So here’s what we’re gonna do

• Author/reader profiles. You are now able to create you own Blast profile and add a pic/avatar and link to your own website or blog.
• Four sections–lots of categories. We’re tagging all our articles so you can look for whatever you want.
• Quickies! Short, brief articles that get right to the point.
• Search implemented. In addition to tagging our categories, you can also search for whatever fits your fancy.
• Enterprise articles. We are rather unique online because we often run excellent long-form articles about important and complex topics. We also find that these articles are our most read pieces. So now we’re going to highlight them and create “front pages” for each one to visualize everything like you were turning the pages of a magazine.
• New photo galleries. We’re going to implement new photo galleries with larger images.
• Image previews on all pages. We’ll insert photo previews of each story next to the headline and excerpt so you can see what you’re about to read
• Covers will still be there in their own tab
• The header image. We want you to be able to navigate the magazine and see a lot–but we want to remind you about this month’s stories
• Advertising. We’ve done extensive research and you have been very clear with us: our advertising sucks. So we changed it and filtered out anything offensive, spamy and downright dumb.

So there ya go. Don’t say we never gave you anything.

-John

Well, it’s May.

This month we flew out to Hollywood to sit down with Dominic Comperatore, a perennial television actor who has made his emergence onto the big screen in a big way. Kelly Bodami talked with him and we’re happy to present his story.

What the hell happened with this Don Imus shit? We had Kelly look into that too, because I still don’t get it.

I also saw first-hand, a really good progressive rock band called Mile Marker Zero. They were the main opener for Spock’s Beard in Hartford April 26. Check these guys out, seriously.

The world of writing and reporting lost two very influential members last month with the deaths of Kurt Vonnegut and David Halberstam. We brought out two of our own best writers to attempt to pay tribute.

In our main article in "Culture" this month, we take a good hard look at Marijuana use among 20-somethings and college students. By all indications, smoking pot just isn’t as much of a taboo as it used to be. And forget about the "gateway drug" mentality. Nobody’s buying that line anymore.

Last but not least, Josh Wolf is finally free! After spending more than 200 days locked up for the cause of journalism, he’s out. But we definitely haven’t heard the last of him, or his story.

Blast has been under the knife lately, and the facelift is coming along nicely.

The navigation is more conducive to all screen resolutions, and our dynamic archives system kicked off in mid-March, powered by WordPress.

We designed the hell out of Blast as our editorial and creative staff continually try to provide that perfect magazine experience online.

And, of course, you need premium written and visual content to make that possible.

First, the visual.

Welcome to the travel and swimwear issue! This month, Blast partnered with UjENA Swimwear and some beautiful young ladies to showcase this season’s trends. Our fashionista, Elle Bowman, explains exactly what those trends are. Apparently, clubkinis are all the rage right now.

In the written world, Nathan Hurst makes his Blast debut, by sharing an excellent travel article that will help you see Europe on a pauper’s (or college student’s) salary.

Also new to the magazine, Samantha Porter hits the ground running as she tells the tale of Josh Wolf, the next generation of journalism’s first martyr. Sadly, this true story is the world we live in right now.

Congratulations are due to Martin Scorsese. He finally got his Oscar, and we’ve looked into his latest and greatest achievements.

Blast’s staff blogs are well underway right now. PRrag, the one that started it all, has made the move to Blast. Mark Scalia’s Made Hand poker blog is off to a great start, and Trevor Timm’s PSA, Politics, Sports, Anything blog has made the move from Blogger to Blast.

You’re also finally going to see my review of comedian Ian Coburn’s book “God is a Woman,” which is absurdly funny and all too true.

That’s what we’ve got going on in April so far, enjoy!

Massachusetts may finally have a chance passing a journalism shield law.

California and 29 other states already have one, but that hasn’t helped Josh Wolf, a video-blogging convergence journalist who videoed an anti-G8 demonstration in 2005 and has been jailed under federal regulations for refusing to turn over footage to the police. It is clear that state shield laws have had no effect on the Federal Government, which has used every excuse it can to jail, threaten or intimidate journalists—journalists who perform a vital and Constitutionally protected task in American society.

Thomas Jefferson said he would prefer to have newspapers without a government to a government without newspapers. Though the word newspapers has evolved over the years to radio, television and the Internet, the message should be no less clear, the founding fathers viewed journalism as a vital check on the government.

It is your job, as the reader, to stand by the media and not buy into the fear.

–

Meghan Gargan has been working to unveil the Internet lately. In our March feature, Affair of the mouse, we get a serious lesson in the seldom-discussed topic of affairs and the disappearing casual sex taboo. The Internet is challenging our inhibitions, and people are all too happy to let them fall.

I’m proud of this piece and the work that went into it.

So, be honest, you know you’ve sported a "kiss me I’m Irish" t-shirt on St. Patrick’s Day despite your Polish ancestry. Blast goes green and orange this month with our cover models, Maureen and Keriann who can wear the shirt and mean it.

But don’t get all leprechauns and shamrocks on me, because Kelly Bodami and The Bitter Irishman, Dan Price explain what’s what in Irish culture.

We also dropped everything and hit Vegas this month to see what Sony’s got up its sleeve lately. Check out "Tech" for more on that.

That’s Blast for now. Stay tuned.

Everybody hates Valentine’s Day.

But here at Blast, we use it as an excuse to talk about sex and relationships.

What’s the deal with make-up sex anyway?

This month, we decided to look at romance issues that are often discussed but seldom analyzed. In this month’s feature photo gallery/article, our cover couple, Cat Armato and Sean Naegeli, get angry, make up, laugh, cry and otherwise get emotional as we try to figure out a few aspects of the modern relationship.

Tara Lira makes her Blast debut this month, as she screens a how-to massage DVD and provides a few sensual pointers of her own.

We also threw in a mouthwatering gallery of chocolate and desserts, just to make our coverage of V-day well-rounded.

On the absolute flipside of all things red, we also have a huge technology lineup for you in February. Coming later in the month, our Tech Editor, Tom Cody, looks at the growing popularity of old video games in this month’s Retro feature.

We’ll also throw in reviews of Destroy All Humans 2, Sopranos: Road to Respect, Totally Spies 2 and Arthur and the Invisibles. A few gadgets and tidbits round out the section.

Dan Peleschuk talked to celebrity tattoo artist, Mario Barth, recently. He shows you the world of tattoo culture in a great feature.

Before Paris Hilton, there was Edie Sedgwick. Rounding out the magazine this month, Karen Lynch tells the story of a "celebutante" who lived fast and is an accidental fashion, culture and film icon.

January was a big month for our little magazine, as we launched the first Internet presence that is designed to look and feel like a real, cover-to-cover, magazine. The team looks forward to February with great anticipation. We’re unleashing video content, both original and pre-made. I’m particularly proud of the 10-minute behind-the-scenes piece we produced, showing you how we set up and executed the photo shoot for this month’s issue.

The goal is to give you an inside look at the anatomy of Blast Magazine, and more of this will be coming soon as we evolve and sculpt the magazine into the desired product. (Translation: as we beat the ever living shit out of this thing until it obeys out of fear.)

Enjoy Blast, issue deux.

Happy New Year indeed.

Welcome to Blast Magazine, a hard-fought piece of journalism.

In the late 1990s, the Internet was in what could be called a golden age. For starters, it was much smaller. MySpace wasn’t around and Google was a fledgling search engine. AOL dial-up was how Americans actually got online.

During that time, I owned a tech and gaming portal called The Review Center. When the dot-com bubble burst, two sides of journalism remained, the print publications that maintained an online presence, and smaller Internet-only portals, which were often cutely referred to as “e-zines.”

Blast is not an “e-zine.” It is a magazine that accepts technology and the Internet as an enabling force, not something to be tolerated or worse, feared. It is designed and its articles are processed to look and feel like any other magazine you would see on a newsstand. The only difference is that you click instead of risking paper cut when you want to turn the page.

The Internet has divided the world of mass media for the past 10 years. Blast is a step towards the future, where print publications and electronic content sources are one in the same.

The only factors that truly astonish me are the limits that remain in Internet development. When we sat down to actually craft a magazine, there was so much to consider. We could design the magazine exactly as we wanted if we did it in Flash, but that would mean Google, in its infinite knowledge, wouldn’t be able to search us. We can’t use the same fonts you see on our logo in our articles and headlines because you probably don’t have the fonts on your computer. Finally, we can’t design an 8.5″ by 11″ page because your screen resolution could be too low or too high.

But what we did do was craft a magazine experience on the Internet that gets as close to the newsstand as you can get without buying a pack of gum and a lottery ticket.

Blast will release a new issue each month, but you will also find regularly updated staff blogs and new articles and hot product reviews appearing every day. This is a method we have developed called “Hybrid Edition Content Delivery.” This makes Blast a living, breathing magazine.

One day cyberspace will come out of the Iron age and have an awakening, by which I mean what I can design on a piece of paper (or cyber-paper or whatever the future holds) will appear the same regardless of the method with which you view it.

We are hoping to hurry that along a bit.

I am very proud to present Blast Magazine to you. It is continuously designed by a team lead by Andrew Kahn, with a code diligently written from scratch by Andrew Whelan.

This month we are proud to present Jim Crotty, a professional photographer being featured in the Smithsonian Institute for his work photographing new life in the wild. In an article by Liz Raftery, we see that magazines aren’t the only things being born lately.

Meghan Gargan gives you straight-talk about sex, health and relationships in La Cocquette, which is French for “The Flirt.” Our flirt, and her staff blog will take on all issues.

Chris DeMatteo introduces an ongoing feature called “Retro” where we look at things that remind us of years past, with an article about “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.

That’s just a small taste of Blast, so you’ll have to turn the page if you want to know more.