[Note to new visitors: You may be interested in this post about Twitter: "The Public Editor Joins the Cocktail Party."]

Updated March 13, 2011. Hello, and thanks for visiting my personal blog, which is mostly about coffee, with a little bit about social media and technology.

It is likely that you arrived at this welcome page by clicking the link on my Twitter profile. This post is my primitive method for tracking traffic from Twitter.

My name is Patrick LaForge. I have been an editor at The New York Times since 1997, after a dozen years as a reporter and editor at newspapers in upstate New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania. I started using Twitter in early 2007, when Sewell Chan and I created the City Room blog for The Times. In May 2009, I left City Room and the metro desk to become the editor in charge of the copy desks.

How I Use Twitter

I generally post updates about Web content I am reading, watching or thinking about, not what I had for lunch. I follow hundreds of people who use Twitter the same way -- a collection of active linkers, journalists, bloggers, New Yorkers, Times staffers and readers.

You can see what Twitter looks like to me by viewing my Twitterstream list of the 800 or so accounts I follow and read every day. I find it hard to follow more people than that and read every tweet. If you are interested in a high-signal list that is mostly links and retweets, try my list "Linkers", the people I rely on to recommend the latest, best content on Twitter and the Web.

I do not automatically return follows, but if you engage with me and provide interesting content, the odds are I will add you to my twitterstream.

And if you are not among the people I follow directly, but you seem nice enough (and not a spammer or commercial bot), I may add you to the few thousand accounts on The Mighty List, when I get a chance. (For some reason, Twitter allows me to go above the 500-account cap on these lists, and I'm not sure why -- perhaps it's a glitch, or perhaps it's because I was a lists beta-tester or have a verified account.)

If you are relatively new to Twitter, you might be interested in this post, "Basic Twitter Links for Journalists."

About The Times and Twitter

If you have a question about The Times, I will try to answer it, but you may be better off putting the question to the paper's social media editor, Jennifer Preston, her new deputy, Liz Heron, or the public relations team, @NYTimesComm. You can find more Times staffers on Twitter by looking at the staff list at @nytimes on Twitter.

You may have heard that The Times has "banned" the word tweet in its pages. That is not true. We do discourage its overuse and encourage less colloquial language in serious contexts. If you want to read an accurate account, see this post on After Deadline, the style and grammar blog kept by our standards editor, Phil Corbett, or read my comments on Steve Buttry's blog. There's more here, too.

Other Places I Share Links

Only some of the links I share on Twitter come from The Times. If you want to see other links that I am reading, see my Google Reader profile. Sometimes I bookmark articles that are specifically about the future of journalism and media on my Delicious page. And lately I have been fooling around with a Tumblr page. My other Web homes, with varying levels of activity, are listed at the left.

If we are acquaintances or friends, find me on Facebook. Sorry, I don't accept friend requests from people I don't know.

How Do You Use Twitter?

Send me an email, or leave a comment here on the blog. I read them all.

For more of my thoughts on Twitter, blogging and social media, see these other posts. (I don't blog much these days. If I do, it is usually about coffee.)

Or, you can just head back to Twitter. You're probably missing something...

I subscribe to the feeds of hundreds of blogs through Google Reader (see shared links to some of them at left), but the list of blogs I actually enjoy reading is short. I'm always looking for additions to that list, and here are some strong contenders, in alphabetical order:

Cognitive Daily The "daily" part seems to be a misnomer, but the topics are always fun and interesting. How many tabs do you have open on your browser? Caffeine, memory and the brain. Is it sexist to think men are angrier than women? Another blog from the same site is The Frontal Cortex, also in the same vein and infrequently updated; the author was featured in last Sunday's NYT Magazine.

Consumerist This is was one of the best blogs in the Gawker Media empire (sold to Consumer Reports on 12/30). And it's only gotten better since the start of the Great Depression II, despite some staff cuts. Frugal tips from America's cheapest family. Customer call center horror stories. Crowd-sourcing rumors like the Wal-Mart iPhone. Abuses by the credit-card industry. How to write complaint letters to consumer-abusing corporations.

The Daily Beast Tina Brown's ripoff of The Huffington Post is better-written, better-designed, better edited and more provocative than the original. Brown attracts big-name talent, and there's a coherent editing philosophy (unlike the endless stream of often-predictable blah-blah at HuffPo -- 250+ items on Friday alone! More than 60 already today! I need an assistant to read it). The Beast is attractive and well-organized with some cute ideas. Too bad it launched on the eve of the Great Depression II. Just don't try to turn it into a magazine. I've canceled most of mine.

Dlisted and Last Night's Party My friend Louis, who is in the financial industry, recommended these. They seem to be for people who think Gawker and TMZ are too high-brow.

David Byrne Journal The personal observations of the former Talking Heads frontman. Updated at an erratic pace, and hard to pin down. Sometimes he posts about riding his bike around New York (I see him all the time). Sometimes he writes about about music and touring. Sometimes about art. Then there's this post about the newspaper business. David Byrne is the only cool celebrity. His secret? He remains a genuine human being.

Fail Blog The Web cliché comes alive. Bad math. Fail! More bad math. Fail! Video of an exploding VCR. Fail! Trying to look cool with naked guy behind you. Fail! Bad parking job. Fail! Etc.

kung fu grippe The personal Web log of Merlin Mann a k a @hotdogsladies on Twitter, frequent MacBreak Weekly podcast guest, and the mad genius behind the You Look Nice Today podcast. The title is a G.I. Joe reference, I'm pretty sure. Quotes and videos mostly. He is also behind the brilliant 5ives list blog, which has not been updated since August, but is funny as hell. And, of course, 43 Folders, get organized, blah blah blah.

Mashable Incredible amounts of practical information about apps, tech, social media, the Web, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, the iPhone, and the like. Sometimes too promotional but always enjoyable. Many many lists: 5 Reasons to Install Google Desktop Today, Twitter Lawsuits: 4 Reasons Your Tweets Might Be Trouble, The Year in Tweets: The 10 Most Memorable Twitter Moments of 2008, Career Toolbox: 100 Places to Find Jobs, and the 24 Most Underrated Web Sites of 2008.

The Official Google Blog. Because you have to know what they're thinking about over there.

Pinakothek A blog about pictures by the writer Luc Sante a k a The All Seeing Eye Jr. Updated irregularly, but each post is a polished gem, like "The Poetry of Ellery Queen" and "Debraining." Then there is this wonderful paragraph.

Portfolio's Mixed Media I don't read Portfolio the magazine. Is it still published? But I like its media blog. It's smart. It's sassy. It's a good guide to reports of the media meltdown, real and rumored. And possibly doomed. (Just a rumor!) Enjoy it while you can.

ScienceDaily Science is fun. And sometimes a little weird. Pain hurts more if the person hurting you means it. First U.S. patient gets face transplant. Whispering bats are shrieking 100 times louder than previously thought. Thanks, science!

Scobleizer Oh, Robert Scoble. So egocentric, so insane. Look at Scoble! Look at Scoble! But I do love his blog. And his multiple Twitter accounts. And his Friendfeed. Powerful critiques of blog comments. Deep thoughts about Twitter. And Friendfeed. And Facebook. And so forth. Fall into the Scoble vortex.

This Recording I'm not entirely sure what it is, or what it is trying to do, but I came across this while writing this post about N+1, and I like it. And in the end, that is all I ask from a blog. Recent posts: an appreciation of John Lindsay, working as a medical test subject, an essay on tattoos by somebody who does not care for them much (me neither -- nothing personal!), and something by Emily Gould.

Have a suggestion for a blog to follow? Add it in the comments. Thanks.