At the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2007, BlastMagazine.com launched. A new, scrappy little online magazine with two goals: To be an independent voice and to combine the monthly quality of a long-form magazine with the hourly timeliness of the web and blogs.

In 2007 we were born. In 2008 we gained direction. In 2009 we got popular. In 2010, Blast will explode.

Another thing that makes Blast unique is the fact that we never hide anything from you. Even when we do a redesign or major change on the site, we do it live, and we collect your feedback to make it better.

So here’s what we’re trying to do next year:

While most news outlets are closing their bureaus and getting rid of foreign news, Blast — an entertainment website — added reporters in Dublin, London, Rome, Brisbane, Sydney, Toronto and New Delhi. We have domestic reporters all over the country.

We’re looking to add some important things to the site in 2010.

Blast has always had a presence in New York. One of our biggest strengths as a publication is our ability to review concerts and interview bands a few days before they arrive in Boston — and a few days before the rest of the publications in Boston.

By the end of the winter, we will be able to announce specific details about expanding our New York operation. We are looking to add a New York Page to BlastMagazine.com, and we are currently looking for a sponsor (perhaps a NY company looking to expand to Boston or a Boston company looking for exposure in NY?) to get that off the ground. We have a domain name registered for New York that will either host a New York Page or (more probably) redirect to a NY page on BlastMagazine.com.

In 2009, Blast brought its unique style to the West Coast, with a fantastic entertainment reporter named Connie Allen at the helm. A bureau in California allows us better access to television and movie stories. She has pulled down exclusive stories for Blast.

On top of that, we have two tech/games reporters out west (including one in Seattle) and two general assignment reporters in Denver.

Even more out in the West Bureau: We have three political analysts writing a regular feature called Power Behind Closed Doors, and it’s really riveting stuff.

In 2010, we will continue to build strength out west, and we will continue to cover the E3 expo in Los Angeles, PAX in Seattle, and Comic-Con International in San Diego, making us the only publication in New England (online or in print) that sends reporters to all three conventions.

We are also recruiting for a reporter in Las Vegas.

We do not plan to make a West Coast site just yet, but we do have a domain name registered just in case.

Blast Miami/Blast South is something brand new, and still in development.

Miami — and the whole South really — has a unique scene. The beaches, the music, the people, even the food all make for interesting reading and viewing.

We’ve already been able to put out fantastic stories like this.

We can confirm that Gabriella von Rosen will be the chief of our Southern Bureau. We are in the process of recruiting freelancers and student interns to staff it right now.

We will launch a South/Miami page as soon as possible. We have secured a domain — again, probably for forwarding purposes.

We are looking for a primary advertising partner to get the page off the ground.

No, we’re not starting a theme park. (But how cool would THAT be?)

Since the start, world news and a truly global reach made Blast a much more serious force in modern media than people might think at first glance. I mean, did you really think a site that covers indie rock, porn and video games would also have coverage FROM the 2007 South Ossetia War? The Mumbai terror attacks? What about news from Rome about historic discoveries? A local Ted Kennedy hook on a news story reported from the UK?

Scary huh? Blast is the only local publication — print or online — that doesn’t rely on a wire service for international news.

We’ve taken that global reach and put it to work in much less serious situations, too. We dramatically expanded our travel section in 2009 to include Paris, Rome, Liege, Barcelona, San Juan, Santa Fe, Lisbon and more.

Admittedly, the first half of the year wasn’t too good for our blogs. We rebranded, refocused, or closed down all four of our sports blogs and had several fashion blogs come and go.

But we rebounded int he second half by focusing on established blogs that had dedicated writers already. We added Mark Baard’s Sci-Tech Heretic and a cars blog called The Diva of Driving, and both have been very successful. Our Terra World News blog expanded with a weekly podcast. Finally, we formed a relationship with YawkeyTalkies.com, a local sports blog, to make them part of our network and provide its owner with advertising.

In 2010 we will add a blog about traveling models and photographers — it’s glamorous and even a little scandalous. That’s an exciting one.

We are seeking a local Boston news blogger — someone who can aggregate and analyze the day’s top stories.

What other crazy crap are we focusing on in 2010?

2010 will be the Year of the Blast. Thanks for reading!

There will be some spoilers in the podcast. Click at your own risk.

Now that the movie has been shown to fans, we can finally sit down and talk about it.

I saw “Boondock Saints II” last week. I liked it.

I didn’t like it in the way that I’m a news editor and occasional film critic. I didn’t love it in the way that I’m an artist and I can appreciate a classic piece of film.

Let’s face it, there’s two kinds of people in the world: The ones that love “The Boondock Saints” and the ones who hate “The Boondock Saints.”

And I love “The Boondock Saints.”

Shit, I put it on the cover. But I’m not a damn fanboy. I’m not a fanboy about anything. In fact, the more I like something, the harder I tend to be on the people in charge. You can ask the people at Sony when PlayStation 3 first came out, and you can ask Boondock writer/director Troy Duffy, because I changed the pace on Monday and asked him some pointed questions.

What you’re going to hear in the podcast on the top of this article is my session on one of a series of roundtable interviews that Duffy and actors Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, and Billy Connolly put on at The Black Rose bar in downtown Boston. We had a good time and we laughed throughout most of the 20-minute session, but I was on a mission to bring home some data for this piece of our month-long coverage on the sequel, “All Saints Day.” But, besides that, the podcast is mostly hilariousness and gay jokes.

“It was just like riding a bicycle,” Duffy said about his return to directing.

“He sucked equally on this one as he did in the first one,” Flanery added after a pause, laughing.

But return it is. Duffy made Boondock in 1999 and hasn’t made a film since. He was a young director coming out to Hollywood, and he made some mistakes — and I’m probably being nice here. But he still managed to make a good movie amidst it all.

“They talk about Troy as a new director, but from day one it looks as if he was doing it his whole life,” Connolly said.

Just as people either love or hate Boondock, they either love or hate Duffy. (The Documentary “Overnight” really hurt him too)

The people in the original movie seem to be loyalists. Nearly everybody — including someone you don’t expect (it’s in the podcast) — is back for the sequel.

“Everything just happened,” Connolly said. “Everybody seemed to be there for the love of the piece, not just to be in a movie or earn some money.”

It showed. When you listen to the podcast and check out our other interviews, you’ll hear how good of a time they all had making both movies.

Boondock is an organic cult success, and the cast and crew know it.

“Half of Boondock was one guy sitting another guy down going ‘you’re watching this movie,’” Duffy said.

Will there be a third movie?

“Lets just ride this one into the shore and see what happens,” Duffy said. “I got some ideas.”

It’s also up to the studio and the fans. If the sequel makes money in theaters, I say bet on a trilogy.

At the end, I asked Duffy what we could expect from him going forward.

“During that 10-year period, I have written a bunch of scripts,” he said, “and I intend to knock them down like dominoes one by one. They’re in ascending budgets, all different stories. One is a period piece, a buddy comedy, a black comedy, one is about serial killers, one is called “The Peregrines” which would take me an hour to describe what the’s about, one is about a historical figure, which will take a lot of money to do that last one.”

The four guys also toured Boston College and Emerson College before premiering the movie for fans on Monday night. Here’s a vid from their day:

“Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day” is in theaters October 30.

I realize this is the biggest message I’ve ever sent out to the staff, so I’ll break it down for you:

1. Expanding food coverage
1.5 MEETING!
2. Redesigned section pages
3. LOCAL
4. News coverage
5. Editors changing jobs
6. Our new intern

First of all, I’m happy to announce that we’re going to be expanding our food and drink coverage, adding regular content from John Forrester, who started at the Globe on the same day as me “way back in the day.” He’s the past editor-in-chief of the Suffolk Journal, and we’re lucky to have him.

He gave us a few stories last year, ( http://blastmagazine.com/the-magazine/culturefashion/2007/03/irish-eats-shepherds-pie/ ) and I’ve been badgering him ever since.

You’ll be hearing from him soon, because John has set up a Blast meet-up on November 12 in Boston. More on that soon.

Second big announcement: I have completely redesigned the Culture page. http://blastmagazine.com/culture/

I’ll be coding variations of our Food and Entertainment pages over the next few weeks. It takes a full day to do each page, so bear with me.

Please give me feedback on this! It will be vital as I do the rest of the sections.

Third big announcement: Blast is going local. Ok, maybe not totally local. But we’ve decided to base ourselves in the Northeast U.S., where we (mostly) live. That’s mainly Boston, New York, and then Philly for our sports guys. This will not change anything in a negative way — we won’t be removing anything, but we’ll be adding something very important that ties into the fourth announcement.

Fourth announcement, Blast is covering news. You’ve seen the amazing stylings of Sachin Seth and his Terra Blog http://blastmagazine.com/terra/ as our first foray into world news coverage. It’s been an amazing success and is drawing a ton of traffic. We’ll be creating a News Page on the site and incorporating a redesigned Boston/Local page that we’ll be promoting much more (JP, take notes). We’ll also incorporate the Terra Blog, and taking World News, People, and Enterprise out of Culture, and putting them into the news section. We’ll also add our Business section, which never really took off. We’re also adding a national and legal/crime news sub-section.

We’re not just going to cover news for the sake of covering news. We’re taking specific topics like cyber crime, privacy law cases, and topics that appeal to our Generation Y audience. For example: http://blastmagazine.com/the-magazine/technology/2008/10/fbi-major-cyber-attacks-in-the-rise/

And we’ll have a few new contributors to announce next month and at the meeting that are looking forward to tackling this section.

This is a big deal for Blast, because we always wanted to have a NEWS component that was separate from the magazine, and now we have it.

Going forward, it’s very important to push the concept of three totally different components to BLAST. There’s “The Issue” and “The Magazine” — our monthly content and regularly updated push content in our sections. There’s “The Blogs” — controlled directly by the writers. And “The News” which straddles the line between both.

The next announcement is that we’re realigning our editors. — Just bear in mind that this doesn’t mean that anyone is limited to only working within their sections. We all write everything, and we all help each other out.

Bessie King, who added culture and fashion to her repertoire when Dan Peleschuk went to Ukraine, will become the Culture Editor on November 1. She will oversee Culture, Fashion, Beauty, Politics, Automotive, Art, Love, Sex, Book Reviews and Travel in this diverse, vital section of the magazine. She will also be the editor in charge of our new “Literary” section ( http://blastmagazine.com/the-literary ) which takes original and public domain literature and features it for our readers.

Terri Schwartz will be elevated to Entertainment Editor on November 1. Terri proved herself after covering E3 and Comic-Con for Blast in California. She’s already built up a network of connections and recruited new writers, who you’ve seen this month. She will oversee Music, Movies, Celebrities (including an upcoming Celeb Gossip blog, shhhh, it’s still a secret) and that “Twilight” page that gets SO MANY freaking hits and comments, it’s not even funny. In her capacity, she is doing a ton of work with opinion pieces and reviews, so she will be contributing to the Technology section as well by helping out managing some of the video game reviews.

Joe Sinicki remains Technology Editor. This section is one of our main draws, and we’re hesitant to make any changes. I will say that we’ve flirted with the idea of making Technology more of a science and hard tech section and pulling video games and video game reviews into their own section. That’s not happening right now though.

Liz Raftery is still second in command. She’s the ace in the hole; one of the best writers and reporters I’ve ever worked with. Even the editors have to go through her when they want to put something on the cover. She’s also responsible for Enterprise, The Blast Interview, and we’re working her into News.

Micah and Perry are still sports. Though I’m sure they’d rather be in charge of world news.

That leaves me. In addition to the design and coding, I managing the staff and oversee Tech and Sports. I also manage the blogs, Food, Retro, Shoebox, and I will take point on News until someone takes it off my hands.

The rough, loose reporting structure has Terri and Bessie reporting to Liz for copy editing and guidance and Joe and Micah/Perry reporting to me.

That is just meant to give you a general overview of how a story goes from reporting to live on the site. Two sets of eyes need to see any non-blog post before we post it.

Last but not least, Blast took on an intern this semester. Liz McClendon is a student at Virginia Tech. She’s especially interested in Twilight and Literature, so she’ll be adding to The Literary and will be a big part of our News coverage going forward.

We’ve had a great few months, and the things we’re putting into place are going to take Blast to the next level.

And it’s all because of you.

John