TypePad Tour of Chicago

This month, we’re touring TypePad in Chicago, where professors at the University of Chicago Law School, a green building advocate, some music lovers, and a mortgage planning specialist are just some of the Windy City’s bloggers.

Lofty legal issues are discussed and debated by the faculty at the University of Chicago Law School on their TypePad blog. Plenty of lively discussion, thinking, and research take place on a wide variety of legal topics, from whether the current Supreme Court session will usher in a paradigm shift, to whether liberals should start being originalists.

Chicago is a city known for its architecture, and green buildings are the subjects of GreenBean, a TypePad blog written by Erik Olsen, Green Projects Administrator for the Chicago Department of Construction and Permits and manager of the Green Permit Program. Olsen posts drawings and photos of environmentally-friendly projects that are unbuilt, in-progress, or complete as a resource for the Chicago design and development community. 

Speaking of  building projects, don’t miss Dan Green's blog, The Mortgage Reports. Green is a Certified Mortgage Planning Specialist, and uses his blog to discuss the state of the economy and how it affects the mortgage and real estate market. Green dispenses advice to real estate buyers, is interviewed by other experts in the field and then posts the podcasts for all to hear.

Chicago has plenty of music, and plenty of people who write about it, starting with music journalist Mark Geelhoed. His TypePad blog, Deceptively Simple, is full of news, reviews and commentary about happenings in the Chicago classical music scene. Geelhoed gives helpful recommendations in his sidebar, like Compact Discs Worth Your Dollars, and introduces Musicians With Blogs in another sidebar. This is a must-read for anyone interested in local classical music.

Brian Dickie shares his enthusiasm for his role with the Chicago Opera in Brian Dickie, Life as General Director of Chicago Opera Theater. This is a blog that brims with Brian’s contagious love for all things opera. It contains beautiful photos and reports of his travels around the world scouting singers and judging opera competitions, and of local opera news and events. It’s a behind-the-scenes glimpse into a world most of us never see.

Now let’s go subterranean to visit Radio Free Chicago, a TypePad blog that is "Chicago's Underground Music and Media Resource". Ten contributors post live reviews, previews, news, interviews, podcasts, downloads and more on this comprehensive compendium, making this a happening site for all music fans.

We barely scratched the surface of TypePad users in Chicago, so we'll return again for another tour.

TypePad Tours London

London is one of the world’s most exciting cities, and in this tour, you’ll learn about it from TypePad bloggers who live, work, and play there. It’s such a cosmopolitan (and enormous) city, no single tour could do it justice, but these bloggers bring it to life in fresh new ways.

Does commuting through London on a bicycle sound like sheer lunacy? Kimbofo assures us in her London Cycling Diary that it can indeed be nuts out there. But don’t feel too badly for her: she gets to ride the length of Hyde Park and her posts regularly get numerous comments, attesting to her engaging writing. Check out her book blog, Reading Matters, too.

The Bookseller Crow has been called one of the best independent bookshops in London, and its blog, The Bedside Crow, demonstrates a passion for its customers, authors, and books. Shop owner Jonathan uses the blog to report on new arrivals, contemplate life in the neighborhood, and to invite customers in for author readings.  If you can't make it into the shop, you can help shoe the kids by buying books online from the shop. 

A love of books and the English language is clearly on display in the Penguin Blog. Run by the editors, copywriters and staff of Penguin Books, the first mainstream book publisher to start a blog, the posts follow a book through the publishing process, update us on industry gossip, and feature some of Penguin’s favorite authors. The post about the blog’s first birthday is an entertaining look back over the many comments, readers and controversy.

Susie Bubble has a passion for fashion, and she blogs about it in Style Bubble, a chronicle of her musings and opinions about fashion the world over. No wonder she was invited by Chanel Paris to learn about their global operations - her enthusiasm for style  is infectious, and her photos and commentary engaging. Her coverage of Paris and the Chanel empire includes her visit the perfumerie, the Ritz where Coco Chanel lived, and Chanel headquarters.

Speaking of fashion, Imran Amed’s blog, The Business of Fashion details the side of design and style many people don't see. Amed offers an in-depth perspective on the business goings-on in the fashion industry, such as during New York Fashion Week; his commentary details the business taking place behind the curtain and beyond the runway.

Finally, we can’t talk about London without mentioning Shiny Media. Shiny started its online publishing business in 2004 with a handful of blogs dedicated to games, music, mobile technology, and gadgets – including one specifically for women. The company now has 40 blogs that focus on anything from women’s shoes to the popular TV series Coronation Street to bridal fashion to books.  It's no wonder they're seeing steep growth rates in page views of their blogs.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this “blog’s eye view” of London – stay tuned for more exciting trips in the months ahead!