Christian Burns and his wife, Jenni, are continuing to talk with me. They have an incredible story. Last July their house burned. Their kids were inside, Jenni heard the fire “popping sounds” and got the kids out OK. But, then Christian blogged it and people sent stuff and funds (they were uninsured) in.

You can read the story here on their blog. It’s a great example of a blogger’s readers rallying around to help out. They posted pictures of the fire here on Flickr.

Christian Burns is here talking to me and he showed me his Google Reader widget. Look at the right side of his blog. He’s using Google Reader and sharing items with his readers, just like I do, but he uses the WordPress.com’s widget to share the most recent shared items.

I’ve heard about the Ignite Seattle videos a few times here at Northern Voice. Two that rose above the rest are Hillel Cooperman’s “How to make every meal a memorable experience” (he’s a software entrepeneur, used to work at Microsoft on the “Max” project — now killed, sorry — and is a food blogger); Ryan Stewart’s “Rich Internet Application Lowdown“. I like the trend of videotaping smaller events and putting them up on sites like Blip.TV.