To begin with, the celebrating statement of the day is EliteBlogger = Birday gurl Miss Cellania.
I was on my hunt for my next EliteBlogger after interviewing Alex from Neatorama and Shaun from Deputy Dog. And then fortunately both the bloggers recommended Miss Cellania, who is popularly known across blogosphere for her contribution across diverse nature of blogs i.e. Neatorama, YesButNoButYes and Mental Floss. Cutting the long story short, I spent couple of hours getting a fair idea of her deliverables and got to know that she is the Blogebrity of the humorous and offbeat stuff.

The very day I sent her an invite to be my EliteBlogger with a prompt response from her saying: Sure, I will be glad to answer your questions.

And here we have her with us penning down interesting responses to the long-list of questions sent across. Go with the flow:

Cellania, Kindly introduce yourself to my readers and take us through your usual day at work.
I get the kids off to school in the morning, then surf the web and post items at Neatorama and YesButNoButYes until about 1 or 2PM. Then I do some housework and take a nap. In the evening, I take the kids to their activities, check on my mother-in-law, grab some dinner, help with homework, and try to get the kids in bed by ten. Then I write for mental_floss and my own blog until maybe 3AM.

When did you sense an inclination towards blogging?
I started sending a newsletter of jokes in 2004 to reconnect with old friends and entertain new online friends. When I discovered blogging, it seemed like a much easier way to do the same thing.

Whilst having an email-interview with Alex, he introduced me to Neatorama as the neat side of web. What remains your criterion of post selection that you play here?
The main criteria for Neatorama is that an item be interesting; the kind of thing that will make you say, “Hey, that’s neat!” Other than that, it must be appealing to a wide audience, fairly safe for family viewing, and something we haven’t posted before.

Is there any niche that you maintain while posting “Morning Cup of Links” at Mental Floss or are they random picks that fit well one’s breakfast table?

I try to get a variety every day. Optimally, I’d love to have a science breakthrough, a link or two on history, geography, or language, some news that makes you think, and several funny links. And a kitten doing something cute. But I will sacrifice variety for quality, depending on what’s good that day.

How is your experience to write for a site targeted at men (YesButNoButYes)? Is it difficult or interesting?

Both difficult AND interesting! I walk a fine line trying to be ladylike and give the guys what they want. There have been many times I’ll pass on a great story or link because I think it’s over the line for me, and later find one of the guys used it and had a very successful post. But that’s OK.

How do you maintain stability at writing front as you deliver articles across diverse areas i.e. humor, movies, men, gadgets, and other random stuff?
For my own site, I just collect anything that amuses me. Working for mental_floss has caused me to expand my horizons, so to speak, since I never wrote about gadgets at all until they asked me to do a weekly “gadget report”. And I’m always looking outside my comfort zone to find subjects for my mental_floss features. It keeps me on my toes, but I’d hardly call it maintaining stability.

Japan seems to breed robots in huge numbers. Can you imagine a day when robots are efficient enough to substitute humans for all major tasks? Would you depute one to blog for you?
If I could afford it, sure! In fact, I would hire a human to do it for me now, if I had the money. I’d also hire someone, or a robot, to clean my house if I could.

How would you define an ideal blog? I mean, what special features it must have to make an impact and deliver?
There are no universal ideals, because there is no way to please the entire online audience. There are niches for link blogs, political blogs, personal blogs, specialty blogs, art blogs, etc etc. They all have different standards to appeal to a different audience. Within each genre, they should have 1. Quality content, 2. Whatever it take to make accessing that content easy for the reader, like a pleasing layout, simple navigation, and proper grammar and spelling. Even those things vary, because you don’t need proper grammar on a blog that posts graphics only, and a pleasing layout varies depending on the type of blog and the audience.

Do you think there is any scope left for evolving bloggers to try their luck?
There is room for many more bloggers! You hear about how many millions of blogs there are, but they come in all languages covering many different subjects. And many bloggers don’t need luck, because they aren’t setting goals for their blogs -they just want to write for whoever is interested. Blogging is easy to try out, and easy to quit if you aren’t getting what you want out of it.

Both your personal blogs Miss Cellania and Miss C Recommends seem to be populated with videos. Considering your inclination towards digital technology, can we expect you to enter into the domain of podcasting in coming months?
I don’t have the time or patience to do audio podcasting. I don’t even have the time or patience to listen to podcasts! As far as video goes, I tried that at Neatorama. Since I live in a small town far away from anything interesting, it’s really hard to find good subjects to shoot.

Pen down your five favorite posts written till date.

The LOLcat of Death.
Does My Butt Look Big in This?
The Weirdest Insects in the World.
My Dream Job.
8 Historical Crossdressers: Women in a Man’s World.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten something that should go here.

Whom would you count as the top-five male and female bloggers that has enabled blogosphere stand next to mainstream journalism?
I really don’t feel qualified to answer that. There are way too many good news bloggers that I don’t read. I tend to concentrate on the humorous and offbeat stuff, so a lot of good journalism passes me by.

Tell us you favorite blogs across following areas:

1. Gadget:
Coolest Gadgets
Gizmodo
Geek Like Me

2. Political:
Simply Left Behind
Shakesville
Crooks and Liars

3. Movie:
Big Picture, Big Sound
Transbuddha

4. Entertainment:
Neatorama
YesButNoButYes
Bits and Pieces
Phil’s Phun
The Presurfer

6. Others:
Metafilter
Nothing to do with Arbroath
Mental Floss
Science Blogs
Damn Interesting
Cynical-C
Omegamom
Clueless in Carolina
Wulfweard the White
I could go on all day. I love a lot of blogs!

Quick bites:
1. Hours you invest surfing net: 6-8 hours a day. A bit less on weekends.
2. Biggest blogging mistake you did: I spent three years doing one post a day, when I should have done several smaller posts.
3. One hidden truth: It never pays to take yourself too seriously.
4. If asked to post only on one blog (not the current ones), which one would that be?
Hmm, that’s a hard one. Damn Interesting.
5. Advice you would have given yourself five years ago? Start writing! It’s what you’ve always wanted to do!
6. If not a bloggger then.A DJ. I was a radio announcer for 24 years.
7. Life without Internet: Lonely.
8. First gadget you kept your fingers upon: A clock! I got attached to one when I was a toddler. My mom says “clock” was my first word.

How would you like to be known as:

1. Blogger
2. Writer
3. Entrepreneur

Blogger is fine. I don’t write as much as I link. And entrepreneur is a big word for someone who doesn’t make any more money than I do.

If asked for giving three tips to a greenhorn blogger, what would that be?

1. Write about things you enjoy, or you’ll get burned out fast.
2. Don’t worry about pleasing everyone, because you can’t.
3. Make friends. They’re the best thing to come out of the internet.

What are the five things you wish to accomplish while you’re alive?

1. Raise my daughters to be strong, confident, independent women.
2. Travel the world.
3. See my grandchildren.
4. Build a retirement fund.
5. Go on a date.

Where do you see the future of blogosphere? Is there anything that you wish blogosphere to accomplish?
I love how the internet is getting so much information to people in the blink of an eye. I only wish that this kind of communication were available to everyone. I see a big dichotomy between computer users and non-computer users, which I am afraid, will only become worse. What I would like the blogosphere to accomplish is to bring people together, with communication between people of different regions and countries, so we may understand how similar we really are.

Whom would you recommend as my next EliteBlogger and Why?

Hoss at Old Horsetail Snake would be a hoot to interview. Jon Swift would also be funny. Or Jean-Luc Picard. They all have wonderfully amusing online personas.

Give us your views on EliteChoice.
This series of blogger interviews is fascinating. I’ve learned a lot about people I thought I knew!

Your turn! I am ready to answer a question for you.
Where are you?
I am currently in Las Vegas

Here, we convey all our wishes to Miss Cellania and look forward to have a birthday cake from her next year on a preplanned schedule. Thanks Celliania for fetching time from your busy routine to enthrall my audience.

Respecting running Saturday and falling Sunday, I decide to make you stroll into a neat side of the web that is maintained by a full time small business owner and a successful blogger. Alex Santoso, founder and editor, Neatorama started his blog in August 2005 as a hobby with little knowledge that it would soon take a shape of a successful business set up. Against earlier petty number of posts, Alex together with his team manages to post average 20 stories per day and shares that the blog is snowballed with over 14,500 posts within three years. The canvas of Neatorama captures random and diverse nature of posts with a common thread: They’re things that interest blog authors and considering their weighted readership, it is obvious that their interest matches readers’ taste.

Had he not being a blogger, you would have known him as a renowned Scientist as he holds a doctorate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from University of California at San Francisco. Okay, he is a Scientist, Entrepreneur, Blogger but at personal front he is also a husband (to a very understanding wife Tiffany) and a dad.

So, ride over to see what the creative mind behind this Neat Space has to say:

Introduce yourself to my readers and take us to the flow of your day at work.
Hi everyone, my name is Alex Santoso and I edit Neatorama, a blog about science, art, pop culture, odd news and other neat things on the web. I don’t have a set “flow” to my day at work – I work full time in my own small business and I post stuff on Neatorama for fun. I mostly add stuff to Neatorama when I have a free time at the office, and late at night when the kids have gone to bed.

What does Neatorama mean and what led to its creation?
Neatorama is actually a slang meaning “something neat.” I started it as a hobby (still is!) because I liked weird and funny stuff on the web, and I thought that a daily feature of interesting things would make a good blog. It started as a few posts a day, and snowballed to over 14,500 posts in about a little under three years.

Alex, I am wondering Neatorama doesn’t have any tagline or punchline. How would you describe it in one line?
Neatorama is the neat side of the web!

When did you sense an inclination towards blogging? Are you satisfied with the functionality of the blogging eco-system or think there is a need for revamp?
Actually, I’m a horrible writer, and an even worst typist (Neatorama is full of typos – they’re like little tests to see if the blog visitors are really reading the posts).
The great stuff about blogging is that it’s a highly individualistic endeavor – your blog has a different “flavor” than mine because our writing styles and focus are different. It’s also very easy to start your own blog (so many people do!). Both of these factors lead to a huge diversity of blogs, which I think is the blogging ecosystem’s greatest strength and at the same time, its greatest weakness. This low barrier of entry leads to a lot of blogs getting started only to be abandoned a few weeks or months later as people’s interests change.

Unlike other niche blogs, the featured categories at Neatorama cover all. Why did you choose to have a non-niche blog? How many posts do you play in a day and how many hands do you have to feed Neatorama on daily basis? That’s a great question: Neatorama does cover a lot of things, but they all have a common thread: they’re things the blog authors find interesting. Being “niche-less” has its advantages – it doesn’t get boring writing for the blog. I try to get in at least 5 posts for Neatorama – and often as many as a dozen or so. Other authors for the blog contribute significantly: I think the average number of posts is around 20 a day.

Tell us about your must-read or favorites blogs?
I have bookmarked close to a hundred blogs or so that I visit frequently – I categorize them under “Art” or “Science” or “Odd News,” and whenever I want a post on a particular subject, I can visit these blogs with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Provide us with your five favorite posts you have written to date.
Five is too little! I have many more favorite posts than that – actually you can see our favorites listed in Neatorama’s archive section.

You’re stranded on a desert island: What gadget do you bring?
GPS and a satellite radio, duh!

How would you like to be known as:
Gadget Guru:
Blogger:
Technophile:
Product Reviewer:
Entrepreneur
Scientist
Others

I’d like to be called an entrepreneur and a blogger.

Quick bites:
Hours you invest digging net: At least 3 hours
Biggest blogging mistake you did: Not starting sooner!
One hidden truth: Be yourself when you blog – even if you decide to blog anonymously, let your inner self shine through.
If asked to post only on one blog (not Neatorama), which one would that be? Why, the most important blog in the world, of course: Nothing to do with Arbroath
Advice you would have given yourself five years ago? I’d have myself to start something: a blog, a wiki, a website, whatever – just start something!
If not a blogger, then A Scientist. I have a PhD in biochemistry and I actually like science a lot – I think I’d be happy doing basic research.
Life without Internet: I remember life without Internet – it was slower and more enjoyable
Count of professions you have been into: Three: student, small business owner, and blogger!
First gadget you kept your fingers upon: Nothing I remember – I’m actually a techno-luddite – I don’t have many gadgets and the ones I have are given to me as gifts (I don’t buy gadgets)
One thing you hate about Neatorama: It’s SO time consuming!

Is Neatorama endurance enough to make monetary innings or you are contributing to any other blog?
One thing I find out the hard way about is that server and bandwidth cost skyrocket with traffic. When I started Neatorama, it was on a shared server and only cost me a few dollars a month, then as traffic grew, we got kicked off the server and had to upgrade to VPN. When the blog outgrew that, it had to move to a dedicated server … then to a multi-server environment. Thankfully, we now have sufficient ad income to cover these costs.

If asked for giving three tips to a greenhorn blogger, what would that be?
1. Persistence
2. Persistence
3. Persistence
“Stick-to-it-iveness” is the number one, two, and three ingredient for blogging success. It took Neatorama about 2 years to become a popular blog – I posted at least 5 items a day, even when there was no one visiting.

Besides content generation, networking comes as a part and parcel of a blogging. What is Neatorama or Alex doing at that front to maintain the frequent visits of its savvy readers?
This is something I’m particularly poor at. Interaction with readers (who comment on the blog) is one of the neatest things about blogging. I don’t comment nearly as often as I should have – If I were to blog full time, I’d devote more time to commenting.
Is it good to have an individual identity of a blog or run it as a part of a blogging network?
Both are good – I think if you want to start blogging, then you want to start as an individual blogger. That way you can develop your own style and focus – later, you can expand the blog by inviting authors or join other blogs as an “established blogger.”

Whom do you admire the most and take inspiration from at blogosphere?
A lot of bloggers inspired me: Boing Boing, for example, for creating the path and popularizing blogs; Gizmodo, for their inventiveness and reach; mentalfloss for coming up with such brainy yet entertaining articles; and Miss Cellania for her cheerful approach to blogging!

Do you think blogs are or can be as popular as Nytimes, Time, NewsWeek are?
Actually no: I think blogs can complement, but not replace traditional news media. Blogs are great in picking up stories that mainstream media ignore, but there’s a big difference between blogging and journalism.

Where do you see the Blogosphere in the future?
Expanding, yet contracting at the same time. Let me explain: more and more people will blog, but most will abandon their blogs due to lack of time or lost interest … At the same time, a select few blogs will dominate the blogosphere (for example, Gizmodo and Engadget dominate the gadget blogosphere – it’s very difficult to break into that niche. Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and other big political blogs dominate the political blogosphere and it’s hard for a new comer to make it big there).

Give us your views on EliteChoice.
It’s neat what you’re doing, Zola – I enjoyed answering the questions!

Whom would you recommend as my next EliteBlogger and Why?
Miss Cellania. She’s a great blogger and a perfect example of someone who managed to gain friends, influence (and fame!) through blogging.

You can ask me one question.
Thanks Zola: what gave you the idea of interviewing bloggers?
My wits! Also, i am a social animal and this initiative is to create a platform wherein all the bloggers can share their experiences and views about the growing implementation of blogging. I believe the first-hand information coming right from the concerned bloggers’ about their stay in blogosphere can offer a guided and safe journey for evolving bloggers’.

Cheers to Alex for this lovely read and devoting time for EliteChoice readers. Wish you luck Alex.