It’s been awhile since we last had a Sexy Media Monday. LONG overdue, I’d say!

When Athena sent me her latest article—an entry in Open Salon about 16th birthday vibrators for one’s daughters that I think is positively awesome—I thought to myself, meh, do I want to sign up for Open Salon just to leave a comment? Another network? For real?

I did sign up; you know, what the hell… and when I scrolled down to leave my comment, I noticed something fascinating.

Open Salon blogs allow registered readers to tip bloggers.

There’s an amazing little widget right at the bottom of the post that lets you tip the author a buck, or however much, and although I assume I’d have to sign up for an additional function in order to make it work—attach my credit card, or some such thing—I had to pause a minute and think about the whole idea. My determination of viability is really based on one thing, most of the time: Do I feel the urge to actually do it?

And I really did.

In fact, if I’d had any money in my bank account at that particular moment, I would have tipped the woman ten bucks. (You should read her stuff. It’s fabulous.) I wonder if tips show up on the post? Surely there are pros and cons. But what a concept! I’m sure someone’s done it before now, but I’ve never seen it implemented, especially in a way that made me actually want to participate.

In the same way that I typically show my gratitude for a great experience at a restaurant, I can also show my gratitude for a great experience reading a wonderful article… and this makes perfect sense to me.

Wow. I love it.

And oh! Geeze! I almost forgot…

Not too long ago, I got my grubby paws on Athena Bradford’s ebook, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Vibrators. I’m a fan of intelligent, informative sex literature (ask anybody) and I freaking loved this book. I was so pleased by the hour or so I spent reading it that I wrote her an off-the-cuff review to vent my excitement. I’ve been looking for an excuse to post it somewhere ever since I emailed it to her, and I figure, hey, here’s my chance, right?

So, Athena Bradford has obviously found the ultimate way to make a living: Reviewing vibrators. (Crap, why didn’t I think of that?) What’s more, she’s a genius at it. She’s very honest and straightforward (even if you happen disagree with her on one or two items) and she lets you make your own decisions about the information at hand. She’s also FUNNY —the book made me laugh out loud constantly, which made the hour I spent reading all 40-or-so pages of it (and browsing links!) absolutely enjoyable.

The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Vibrators is witty and super informative, with adorably cheesy puns and lots of understanding and encouragement. This is exactly what many women are looking for (and this review is my way of chipping in and helping them find it). Not everyone wants to discuss their sex lives at length the way I tend to do, and if you’re not used to the off-putting barrage of sex and porn advertisements that can await anyone searching for sex information on the internet, looking for what you need can be downright scary. Athena has put together a fabulous primer for women who like their private lives to stay private. She links you straight to the good stuff (and she picks GREAT good stuff).

She reviews lots of items, from the pocketbook-friendly to the top-of-the-line (and we both have been impressed by a few top-of-the-line models that are definitely worth the additional expense). Her categories are sensible and the information she provides is quite helpful. Plus, there are pictures of the toys in question (so you know what you’re going to look at when you click).

My final word: This is a DAMN good book. I’m pretty well-versed when it comes to toys, but I’ll probably make my next few purchases based on this guide. You can slog through the internets to find vibe information, and probably find a few good vibrator guides while you’re at it—but this one is brilliant and funny, right here in front of you, and more than worth its $17 price tag. If you’re at all apprehensive about finding solid, easy-to-parse information about sex stuff you don’t really want to discuss at length or deal with ads to find, this is going to make your day.

Did you read all that? I have a Twitter / LOLcats version, too:

PLS SEND @AthenaBradford MONEY TO CONTINUE VIBE RESERTCH. http://intelligentwomansvibrators.com/ kthnxbye!

See? Easy.

Anyway, if you decide to go experiment with Open Salon, make sure to tip Athena a few bucks for me. I’ll owe you coffee. ;}

There is one thing that consistently drives me nuts about reading TypePad blogs: I can’t easily follow the conversation. There’s only one way to follow comments on most TypePad blogs (if you know something I’ve missed, please let me know), and that’s to add a single post’s comment feed to my RSS reader.

This is all right for a single post, but oh my, it gets tedious if I’m interested in more than one. It keeps me from being heavily involved in blogs I might otherwise be following obsessively—because I’m not just interested in the posts. I’m interested in the conversation.

When I leave a comment, I want to know if anyone’s responded to it. I want to know if other comments reference it. I want to know what other people think, independent of my opinion. If it’s not easy to follow up on these things, I won’t bother. I’m not going to bookmark that post and check back every few days. That’s too much trouble. And you know what? After awhile, clicking through to add per-post RSS feeds gets old.

Eventually, I notice that it affects my interest in commenting.

I actually notice myself feeling discouraged from leaving comments when I know I can’t track responses effortlessly, especially if the comment itself is a very, very tiny part of my day.

I’ve deconstructed this process for myself, and I recognize it when it happens. But your users might not. How many of them are like me? How many of them become measurably more invested in a site when they can participate in the discussion?

How much more involved would they be in the things you say… if you made it easy for them?

I read something recently about it being relatively pointless to fill a statement with extra question marks or exclamation points. It said you only need one instance of any given punctuation mark, and more is not better. I think in the case of the Usual Error, I tend to push this boundary the hardest. ;}

I don’t know why I didn’t see this when they posted it, but for some strange reason I didn’t. And something like two weeks later I say to myself, I wonder if they’ve posted anything? And so I mosey on over to the new Usual Error Blog, and I see this:

Welcome to the Usual Error blog! We wanted to dedicate our first post to Megan, our biggest fan, and the one who inspired us to create this blog in the first place. How did she do such a crazy thing? By blogging like mad about her experiences at Usual Error workshops!

Link!!

And then… they listed all my Usual Error posts. Dude!!

One exclamation point just isn’t enough.

You guys make me all gushy.