During the past two years, this blog has undergone two major design updates. Today, I’m happy to introduce the third major iteration, which I have dubbed Fathom.

Feel free to share your thoughts and feedback in the comments section below.

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With another year nearing its end, I thought it would be nice to look back at some of the best tech writing in 2011. Each story listed below covers a wide breadth of topics, from the internal mechanisms inside Apple, the growing Internet access divide, to the open web.

So, get your Instapaper queue ready! You have some reading to catch up on.

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As you may have noticed, there hasn’t been a new blog post on LonePlacebo.com in ages. Allow me to explain.

I’m a college student, and with that comes many responsibilities. I recently completed my final exams which was one of the main reasons why there wasn’t a new blog post this month. Also, I’ve been working on something else. Namely, a new blog.

In the beginning, I envisioned LonePlacebo to be a blog about technology. Soon, I began writing more about other interests including Twitter, Facebook and web design. However, I can only imagine what that meant to readers. There was no clear focus, and the topics often veered in multiple directions.

At some point in the past couple of months, I knew something needed to change. I was working on a redesign of this blog for several months then and with the upcoming Christmas break I saw an opportunity to make a relaunch of this site.

However, something didn’t feel right and thoughts of whether I should quit blogging began to creep in. I knew that in order to sustain any bit of motivation I needed some sort of compensation for my efforts.

That’s why I’ve decided to move on with a new project: A blog about social media.

First, the name: HackSocialMedia.com

Hack Social Media will be a blog about social media tips and tricks to help businesses and individuals utilize tools like Twitter and Facebook to meet their marketing and personal goals. Readers who visit the blog will find creative ways to approach some of the daily social media problems they face. The blog will differ from sites like Social Media Examiner and gravitate more towards Mashable with a touch of LifeHacker.

Currently, there is no scheduled launch date but I anticipate it happening before the end of this month, barring any unexpected circumstances.

What about the future of LonePlacebo?

At the moment, things will be rather quiet here for an indefinite period. I’m not the type of person who likes to juggle several projects simultaneously and thus, my focus will be directly on the success of Hack Social Media.

It hurts for me to set aside LonePlacebo after all the hard work I put into it but the experience has helped me tremendously. See you guys around.

Update: I’m baaack!

LonePlacebo.com wants you. Why exactly? It’s quite simply, my friend. I want you because a) you are damn handsome b) you are the second coming of Shakespeare and c) you make Stephen King shudder in his footsteps.

That’s right. I want YOU to write for me. Your talent cannot be ignored. You truly are a one of a kind. So, young Anakin or Ash Ketchum or Frodo, think you are up for the challenge? Step right up then and listen to what I have to say.
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Citizens of the World,

These first six months has been a thrilling ride. I cannot express to you, my readers, how much I’ve enjoyed blogging about social media, technology, and design. LonePlacebo.com has become my outlet and creative playground. This blog gave me a voice and a place where I could be heard. When people asked about my interests and hobbies 2-3 years ago, I could only stumble on my own words. Things quickly changed, however, when LonePlacebo was born on Weebly.com over a year ago.
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The weekend is upon us. Let us relax in the glory of the week that transpired; Apple’s unveiling of the iPad and the subsequent negative reaction followed hours later by President Obama’s longest-speech in his career (Huh? You didn’t watch it?). With my creative juices running dry and the impending doom I call a Calculus midterm, I grab my trusty guidebook on what to do when writer’s block strikes and flip over to a dog-eared page:

Plan B: Write an uber-easy list post about something incredibly random, yet easy to write out. (P.S. The audience always loves these types of posts! Remember to not repeat this step more than three times)

Here now are seven guest posts I have written thus far. Six can be found at Touch My Apps and the other at Daily Blog Tips.

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It was the night before Christmas. What started as a casual attempt to fix an annoying problem culminated into something truly awful. Having noticed the occurrence of several of these error messages, “Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 1853353 bytes) in ….,” I decided to act brave by attempting to fix the problem, hoping that if all went well I would sleep that night feeling like some friggin’ computer god. Unfortunately, shit happened and I did not sleep very well that night.

Wait? Something went wrong here?

If a blog is published and no one is around to visit it, does the blog exist?

Man! That took a long and hard(That’s what she said!) amount of thinking!

LonePlacebo is a frequent mover these days. First, it was born in a house named Weebly and later transfered over to WordPress. While the latest change in scenery is less pronounced than before, I feel that this may be the last time I ever have to write another post titled, “LonePlacebo Has Moved!”

To my scarce population of loyal readers: I send my greatest appreciation to you all and promise that your devotion has not been in vain.

To the new visitors of LonePlacebo: I look forward to bringing you countless LOLz moments into your unspectacular life and hope that you would reciprocate in kind fashion.

From now until December 15, 2010, I will work and dedicate my full effort into providing valuable content to my readers. Topics discussed will focus primarily on technology, social media, current news, and my personal life. Though not set in stone, I will have to remind myself constantly to adhere to these four central subjects.

I, as founder, editor-in-chief, CEO, and chairman of LonePlacebo, hereby declare my full commitment into establishing a successful blog by all means necessary and proper.

Sincerely,