Lauren White is a blog pioneer. She started her web log back in 2000 when Blogger itself was less that a year old and still owned by Pyra Labs. Back then, very few people knew anything about blogging, and this Canadian girl was an early thought leader in the process of discovering what’s cool, and what brings traffic.
Raymi the Minx is a classic blog that details strange happenings in the life of a sexy girl living in the heart of downtown Toronto. Chances are, if you’ve ever spent a day surfing around the net reading blogs, you’ve encountered Raymi’s work. She’s listed on hundreds of blog rolls, ranked in dozens of indexes in many different niches, and has won numerous awards in multiple categories – her blog has inspired the first posts of some of today’s best writers.
Raymi’s work is more personal than most personal blogs. She flashes her smile as frequently as her skinny body (and her boots, and even on rare occasions, her breasts). Such self portraits are of course the highlights of her archives, and accrue many dozen comments. Her curious poses draw reader into even more compelling personal stories. This girl lets us live inside her relationships as she randomly explains her existence. With such comprehensive content it’s hard not to start feeling like you actually know her, and since she allows everyone to learn so much about her, she soon becomes the best friend you’ve never met.
I see my blog as a way to kill boredom for me and for you and if some days there is a bit of genius to it, awesome. Raymi, Sept 2008
Over the past eight years, Raymi has become a Canadian web celebrity. Thousands of readers have watched her grow up on the internet and most have followed her work from the moment they discovered her domain. Here archives are indeed expansive. She would need Inventory Software to keep track of all the products and stories that she’s distributed over the past decade. Digging back to the year 2000, it’s possible to see the young Lauren White before the metamorphosis.
Here’s me (raymi) in Oxford. that siGn between my krotch sez, ‘please keep off grass’ or something and there i am On the grass like the eFFing rebellious bitch i’ve always been.
Like every artist’s first work, Raymi’s early material seems unrefined by comparison. Backin 2000 she often experimented by altering text sizes and fonts to deliberately defy standard formats. Personally I’m thrilled she outgrew the baby talk slang, and a particularly annoying habit of spelling ‘with’ as ‘wif’. Her evolution is still in progress and now an even more prolific pen has turned to writing novels. Here’s a link to buy Marketable Depression on CafePress, which is Raymi’s book about her younger years, when she was depressed, dabbled in drugs, and was crippled by her own poor choice in men.
Another book in the works, as yet untitled, will present sequences from an even larger story. There is no set release date as Raymi finds the idea of compulsory writing very stressful. ‘Writers constantly feel guilt over not writing and all eventually kill themselves, whether by drink or other hands-on means‘, she writes.
Not seeking self annihilation, she spends her days making art and taking beautiful photos to add to the twenty thousand images already stored in her Flickr gallery photo stream.
More than a blogger, Raymi the Minx is a poet, media darling, and a web based sexual itch. She has the unique ability to write provocative content and draw a crowd, and provoke admiration. This painting by her friend Jamie Boud perfectly represents Raymi’s acrylic disposition. Her mildly erotic portraits are usually punctuated with Toronto landmarks to remind us that she’s real, and lives just down the street somewhere… But her reality is better, sexier and more stimulating than ours will ever be.
Sadly, by the time Kristen finally got up to speed and truly personalized her domain, and before she ever made a dime, the initial job offer fell through, and the company that seduced her into the blogosphere was no longer in business. Other companies and media buyers contacted her but unfortunately they wanted to compromise truth, and censor her language. Since her readership had begun to grow, Kristen declined. “There was no way that I was going to endorse products I’d never used, or tone down the sarcasm. I didn’t want my personal blog to sound like anyone else.” She relates. Yet in many ways, Shambled Ramblings has a lot to do with Kristen searching for, and finding different identities.
Kristen is a cool chick that likes to party on occasion. It’s a fact she knows the lyrics to hundreds of obscure early 1980’s heavy metal songs. She likes live music, and plays a mean game of pool. Her posts are personal and range from 
Muskoka Outdoors
Bill embraces blogging because it gives him the ability to recount his stories. Though he humbly insists he’s not a good writer, his writing is fine, and 
Samantha is a 27 year old married mother-of-two that works in the construction industry. During the day she (sometimes) wears a hard hat, coveralls and steel toed boots on downtown Toronto construction sites. But at home, in the evenings, she gently constructs beautiful social nets – she blogs and builds pretty web buttons that bind together a potent roster of rookie moms.
Sam is ahead of the curve in social networking, and her techniques are worth studying - her 
Okay now the real reason why I love Samantha – she puts it on the line. She is genuine and open and writes from the heart. I remember reading the post she wrote back in January under her blog’s 
Micaela just entered teachers college at the University of Windsor.
While Terri Potratz is the founder and editor-in-chief of the site, her 
Terri’s clothing line, 
Michael Cayley is a web entrepreneur that studies culture and communication and prognosticates on the future of social networks. Those of us who read the scraps of wisdom he leaves lying around in his posts hope to profit by actualizing his ideas.
Michael Cayley met Rob Campbell (that’s me) on Sept 4th 2008 at Timothys coffee shop in the Carrot Common on Danforth Avenue in Toronto. We spoke for two hours. After the meeting I walked away with a profound new understanding of social media, and a bold new vision of the charitable future of Canada Blog Friends.
Michael announced the publication of his SCVA work in a quirky piece of writing entitled 
Ted understands that he’s playing a role as 
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