After today, Net Native is history.

I'm taking a three-week break to see my family on the East Coast. And when I come back, I'll be running a new online project for the P-I, something we've come to call -- respectfully and with an endearing smirk -- the Big Blog.

Inspired by the city beats of Seattlest, Metroblogging Seattle, and, most famously, the Slog, the Big Blog will take a more conversational, informal and fun look at the news and culture that makes this city what it is.

Expect several contributors, lots of topics, a few behind-the-scenes peeks into the newsroom and a whole lot of questions. 'Cause we want readers to get involved, beyond just leaving long strings of comments. Eventually, we want this to be a way you help us help you -- pointing us to the stories that aren't being covered, the angles that aren't being considered and the events and trends that aren't being explored.

The Big Blog launches later this summer. And I need your advice.

So if you've been a fan of Net Native, enjoy reading blogs or just think newspapers in general could benefit from a more personal approach online, send me an e-mail. I'll put you on a list of advisees I'll be consulting with as I put the finishing touches on the design of the Big Blog.

I've already run several ideas by our staff, who all seem pretty excited. But if they don't get your approval, they're not worth a whole lot, are they?

By the way, I want to hear all your ideas, but mainly how you think this blog could engage reader participation. How is the P-I doing so far on that front? What could we improve? How can we take advantage of the connectivity of the Internet to form a closer relationship with readers?

Please leave thoughts in the comments.

It's a lot of work just to look at the news in a cool way, but it's true -- I want one.

This is a newspaper box -- you know, the kind you see on every street corner around town -- but majorly pimped out so it shows the news digitally.

Check out the video:

It wasn't the creator's intention, but I can't help seeing something really sad here, that we're already treating accessories to print publications as artifacts of another age, relics with a nostalgic appeal that must be upgraded to be cool. The creator of this box found its skeleton on eBay. And look, here's another one, and another one, and another one, up for bids.

We're still filling these up day after day with real paper, people. They are still relevant!

This coming from a reporter who's about to go online -- go all online -- and kiss her print byline goodbye.

Seriously. Look who's talking.

The prospect is scary in a distant way. I feel only the concern I expect others would feel; it's not really mine.

If you read this column a while back, you already know I'm not a big fan of newspapers. In fact, I can't remember the last time I dropped a couple quarters into one of those newspaper boxes and pulled something out.

I read the "USA Today" that showed up in front of my hotel door each morning down at the NAHJ conference in San Jose. But only because it was free, and just lying there, lonely.

Like these newspaper boxes may be some day.

Yike.

Thanks to Blue for the link.

(See below for update, 1:30 p.m.)

A regular e-mail alert told her exactly how many inches of snow covered ski resorts all over the U.S. But she barely knew what was going on in her state legislature.

Something about that seemed wrong to lifelong political fan Sarah Schacht. So the 27-year-old came up with KnowledgeAsPower.org, hoping to bring the Web's simplicity to the tangled mess of government activity.

It's not easy. But for Schacht, who's worked on political campaigns from here to D.C. ever since her college days at Central Washington University, it's crucial.

"Our democracy doesn't function right now how it was supposed to," she said. "All the offices are there, but we have these invisible barriers to effective participation."

Among them: a dense bureaucracy, a dry public presentation of legislative documents and draft bills full of impenetrable jargon and boring language.

It doesn't engage the public, and it's a shame.

"It's nobody's fault and it's everybody's fault at the same time," Schacht said.

Before the digital age, legislative information could only be so accessible. But now that the Web is simplifying and personalizing access to everything from news to shopping to maps and file sharing, there are no more excuses, Schacht said. Tracking a bill in the Washington Legislature and knowing when you can pipe in should be as easy as following a product an eBay and knowing when to up your bid.

The Washington State Legislature site has its own bill database. And as far as government Web sites go, it's a good site, Schacht said. Washington Votes is another, non-governmental site that paraphrases bills.

But she wants to make the concept more personal.

Knowledge As Power, in development since 2005 and still in test mode out of its office in Seattle, is a good tool for people who are already heavily invested in politics. But it's designed for the amateur: the mother or the young adult or the retiree who cares deeply about an issue but doesn't know how to engage his civic system to make things happen.

The tools are simple enough. Sign on and the site asks for your key issues. Type them in to find a list of corresponding laws. Then you just have to subscribe to them to see when a bill moves or changes hands, and when and where you can go to say your piece.

If following legislation is easy, Schacht hopes, maybe getting involved will be too, and more Americans will try it.

Then again, people have been talking about the Internet's transformative force for civic engagement for years now. But how far has that really come? People can write blogs, create political ads and share their ideas in a revolutionary way, sure.

One could argue the Internet has energized political activism.

But one could also say it's energized political banter.

That's why Schacht left out one of the staples of political sites -- forums. And though she demanded to watch TV news at 6 years old, worked as a page in the state Legislature at 14, and has worked both for Republican and Decmoratic candidates, she's pulled herself out of partisan politics.

Plenty of other sites can host political squabbles. Her site isn't about talk. It's about action.

"If you think you're solving a political issue by shouting down a personal's argument online, I'm sorry, but there are still people suffering from that issue," Schacht said.

Then there's the misdirected activism. Like form letters -- letters printed off the Web that all say the same thing. "How many times do you think they read those?" Schacht asked. Or all the times she's heard from frustrated legislators that their constituents seem to pipe up about an issue only after its moment has passed.

It may be a while before Knowledge As Power picks up the user base it would need to be seen as a viable tool for legislators, if it ever is. But assuming they'll take notice, Schacht's got some ideas she hopes will help cut down on the office staff time spent going through constituent mail.

Among the features in development: a tracker that counts how many users are interested in certain issues, giving lesislators a graphical look at what their constituents care about the most.

Schacht faces a couple of challenges. Chief among them is promotion. As a 501(c)3 organization, Knowledge As Power doesn't have much money to market itself. Schacht is hoping word of mouth gets it going, and that the technology speaks for itself.

Working on Howard Dean's presidential campaign in 2004 showed her a bit about how Internet mobilization can work.

"Working on the Dean campaign taught me a lot of technology and politics is throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks," she said.

She also learned that technological unity is only as good as the real-world unity it inspires. If her site gets more people to city hall, it's doing something right.

Schacht wants her site to be up and running in two states in two years. And she's working on a version for Seattle. By the end of 2008, she wants to see 50,000 Washingtonians using her site.

"This is going to create individuals who feel capable and aren't afraid to make their voices heard," she said. "That's a vastly different world than the one we have now."

And she's not stopping there.

She's heard interest from states from California to Connecticut, and even the European Union.

"I want Knowledge As Power to be a resource at the city, county, state and federal level," she said.

You can't ski on that kind of information, but who knows? If sites like this take off, it might change your world.

UPDATE, 1:30 p.m. The address and title of the state's legislative portal was misidentified and has been corrected.

Yay, Photoshop!

Thanks to our ability to mess with pictures in just about any way imaginable, we can come up with photos like some of the first assembled here, on Scribd.

If I had any relevant talent, I'd so be a photographer.

Time magazine wrote up a piece Monday describing the 25 sites we can't live without. Here are the first ten, with my thoughts.

1. Amazon.com -- To me, this is like Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones. I know it's a big deal, but I only know, like, one of its hits. In other words, I don't use it. This is because of all the things I do do online, buying stuff is still kind of sketchy. It seems too easy -- type in a few numbers, click "submit." I could lose everything this way.

2. BBC.co.uk -- This was my home page for two years of human life. While American TV is known for sensationalism, British tabloid newspapers share that notoriety across the pond, leaving the BBC with a darned good reputation for news gathering.

3. Citysearch.com -- Yup. Pretty handy. Although I'm growing more fond of the more hip, newer Yelp.com.

4. Craigslist.org -- A no-brainer. I'm still hung up on how ugly this site can be and still be so popular. Gotta love those personal ads. When I'm really bored, I'll browse through them, just for a chuckle.

5. Del.icio.us -- If the Web is boring you, that's because you haven't checked out Del.icio.us. It's annoying to type, but so much fun to use. Here's hoping bookmarking sites never die.

6. Digg.com -- Speaking of which, there's Digg. Digg makes newsrooms nervous, because people have found a way to circumvent stodgy editors in office buildings and get their own measure of what news matters. Of course, one has the question the relevance of today's top story -- "MUST SEE: MSNBC ANCHOR WON'T REPORT PARIS STORY!!!" -- but, you know. It's the masses. They get a little crazy sometimes.

7. Ebay.com -- See note about Amazon.com. Although this is a bit harder to ignore. I once considered selling my collection of R.L Stine books here, but thought better of it. They're still sitting in a closet at my parents' house.

8. Facebook.com -- How do I love Facebook? Let me count the ways. There's this post and this column and this post and this post and this post and this post and this post and this post and this column and this column and this post. Finally, most triumphantly, this column. Frankly, I'd like to have all Facebook's babies. I noticed MySpace isn't on this list, and I am glad.

9. FactCheck.org -- Finally, a "truth" news site without a political leaning. This is the stuff that makes our democracy go 'round. I'm all for it.

10. Flickr.com -- You just can't go wrong with a photo site like this. You can tag your buddies. Post to your heart's content. Join groups that inflate your photographic ego. It's good stuff.

I'm kind of hoping no one person really feels he or she can't live without 25 different sites, some of which require whopping time investments, but if you're out there, person, more power to you.

Agree? Disagree? Can't believe I only know, like, one of Janis Joplin's hits? Leave thoughts.

Looking for a snack this morning, I noticed a theme one the sites where I usually go looking for these daily distractions. Namely ...

Everyone is going nuts over the iPhone.

Rather than pick one good link, I thought -- what the heck? -- I'll just put it all out there. Remember -- I found these on bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Slashdot and Clipmarks, so lots of people have been looking at them.

Knock yourself out.

Reviews:

At Last, the iPhone from Steven Levy at msnbc.com

... when I showed the iPhone to people during that trip and in the days afterward--especially people under 25 -- the most common reaction was, "I have to have this," sometimes followed by a quick, if alarmingly reckless, consideration of what might need to be pawned in order to make the purchase. And there it is: one of the most hyped consumer products ever comes pretty close to justifying the bombast.

The iPhone is a breakthrough handheld computer from Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret at All Things Digital

Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer.

And from the almighty David Pogue of the New York Times, The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype

... even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years. It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles.

And here's Pogue's video on the glorious gadget.

Leaving your current plan / how much the iPhone will cost you:

Wired takes pretty good care of this angle, with tips on how to end your existing cell phone contract and a table that calculates the total cost of iPhone ownership. The cheapest option, the 4 gig iPhone with the $60 monthly plan, adds up to $1974.76 over two years.

And, most importantly, the hype:

iPhone Notebook from the San Francisco Chronicle: Paid stand-ins are willing to wait
Check this out:

Jon May, an 18-year-old college student from Benicia looking for some extra cash, said he is planning to camp outside Walnut Creek's Apple store Thursday and Friday. He and his friends are even making "iWait" T-shirts. May is charging $250.

Then there's this, from Boing Boing.

You may know this original viral video of a kid opening up a Nintendo64 on Christmas and going, well, nuts.

GeekSugar decided the iPhone warranted an update.

For more wi-fi hot spots Mónica has visited, see the map below.

Laptop loungers maintained their pictorial privacy Monday afternoon at Uptown Espresso. So Uptown's very own lamp figurines agreed to step in.

Everyone loves an outdoor patio and a sunny day.

People were busy at the Uptown Espresso in Belltown Monday. On a mission. School, work, looking for work.

And they were shy. No pictures, please. Well.

Luckily, the Uptown's dark wood tables feature antique-style sculpted lamps, and they didn't mind subbing in for these preoccupied private patrons.

R. Steven Page is 350 pages into the first book in his epic fantasy trilogy, his second novel. But that's not what was on his laptop screen. The 47-year-old New Orleans native was looking for work as a fisherman on Craigslist.

"I just work it. I'm not trying to make a career out of it," he said.

He's doing that in the far tougher publishing field. His first novel is making the rounds. He's also got a couple of screenplays under his fisherman's belt. Hard is the life of a writer, though he gets some reprieve with regular visits to Preditors And Editors and Hollywood Lit Sales.

Luckily, Internet publishing doesn't require a contract. He's bought a domain name (but won't share that, either) and is planning to start a blog -- hopefully with some profit potential -- soon.

What's a writer with his eyes on print publishing think of the chaotic, wide-open world of online writing?

"There are a lot of pros, but let me start with the cons," he said. "For one, there's phenomena like Wikipedia." A publicly run encyclopedia. But can the public be trusted as much as an elite group of encyclopedia editors? Page says no.

But an author can only criticize the information overload so much. He's had to look up everything from J.R.R. Tolkien's history to Norse mythology as he's researched his fantasy novel and creating the world it's set in.

I asked if he Googled his characters' names to make sure they didn't exist. He nodded.

"One thing you learn doing that," he said, "is that there's nothing new under the sun."

Looking up from the fishermen listings, Page tells me that though he's been in Seattle 10 years, he's almost ready to find another shore.

"When I got here, I could always smell the sea," he said. "When I can't smell the sea anymore, that's when I know it's time to go."

Christine Coleman was also on Craigslist, also looking at another coast. The East Coast. The 26-year-old Colorado native is starting work on a nursing degree at Northeastern University in Boston in the fall, and she needs an apartment.

"Do you have any advice?" she asked me, a recent emigrant from the Atlantic. I had a little. But it seemed like she had a pretty good idea of what to look for.

Coleman is "not really a fan" of the Facebook and MySpace stuff and couldn't think of any sites she liked to check out for fun. She was all business, a copy of "How To Go To College Almost for Free" sitting by her laptop. Her favorite scholarship search site: WiredScholar.com. I wished her luck.

Next was 28-year-old Katie Merry. The bookmarks on her Mac all had to do with biochemistry -- her major at the University of Washington (check out BioMedCentral for the good stuff) -- or e-mail. There was one link to Mahjong 2 at FreeArcade.com. "But I haven't used that in months," she said.

The upstate New York native (and Yankees fan. My latent Red Sox fandom surfaced for a moment, but subsided before I could do anything stupid) follows soccer online, particularly the English leagues. I asked which of all the issues surrounding the integration of the Internet into our society, she found most interesting. Her answer -- the pace of that integration.

"You don't notice an issue until it's no longer an issue anymore," she said. "It's hard to go back."

Thirty-year-old Matt Vivion carries his laptop around for when he wants to take a break from walking around the city -- something he likes to do as often as possible. He checks the news, his e-mail, but again -- nothing too distracting. Including blogs. He doesn't get what the big deal is with those anyway.

"When you think about what a blog is, it's a journal, on the Internet. There's nothing new about that. 'Blog' is just a fun word to say," he said. "I think we have to be careful with technology. Just ask yourself, what is it? What does it do?"

Thirty-three-year-old Manik Ahuja has one issue he thinks people shouldn't be worried about -- security. "Everybody's too worried about identity theft," he said. "There are plenty of other issues."

He cited Wikipedia. Many people do. And the unofficial authority of blogs. The policy graduate student at UW uses the Net to keep in touch with family and friends. Again, no wasting time online for this guy. As for the popular stuff -- who needs it?

"I don't use MySpace because everybody uses it," he said.

As an academic, he laments the loss of personal research. Everything is shared, he said. It takes away from the hunt for information. While many people are satisfied with Wikipedia, he uses Lexis Nexis and ProQuest to pull up professional journal articles.

I left the Uptown feeling just a bit crummy about spending so much time on Facebook, Cute Overload, PostSecret, ICanHasCheezburger, Slog, Ze Frank, The Onion, Popurls, oh -- you get the point. I could write a book. I could look for scholarships and go back to school. And I'll confess -- I typically believe what I read on Wikipedia.

So sue me. Free country. People can use the Internet however they'd like -- well, with some obvious exceptions.

If there's anything I've learned from months of bothering people at wi-fi coffee shops, it's that our online behaviors vary from person to person as much as everything else.

I've run into reckless Net nuts and hopeless Luddites. Studious researchers and hard core gamers. Facebook freaks and MySpace maniacs -- of all ages. You just can't characterize what we do online and why.

But you can learn a lot about a person from where they browse -- what they're obsessed with and what they can't stand. Where they spend their time and what they discover.

It's been an unpredictable series, but I hope you enjoyed it. I know I'll miss having an excuse to just find out -- what the heck are these people doing on laptops all day? And I can't guarantee that I won't ask you one of these days, at one of these places.

Hope you enjoyed it.

This video from MetaCafe shows, supposedly, how to always win at tic-tac-toe, assuming, I guess, that you get to go first.

No one's challenged me to a game since I was 10, so I'm not sure when I'll be able to try this out. Still, for game nuts, this is one to watch.

Tic Tac Toe -1 - Funny video clips are a click away

"Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays."

One of the dozens of quotes I can rattle off from the one -- the only -- "Office Space."

Do I have a case of the Mondays? Eh -- no. I mean, it's busy, but still doable (I'm aware that's not a word).

But when Peter Gibbons and pals wanted to escape their choked up cubicles, they went to Chotchkie's. And I'm going to escape to ... wait. Back up. There are no choked up cubicles here. Actually, I've got a huge desk and a gorgeous view of the Sound through the huge windows to my left.

So sue me if I want to compare my situation to something in one of the greatest comedies ever made.

Anyway.

I'm "escaping" to the Uptown Espresso in Belltown (on 4th and Wall), where I'll write my column, plan the Big Blog and do all those other sorts of things that take up eight hours of my day. Oh yeah -- and I'll research the Weekend Wi-Fi while I'm at it. The very last one.

I'll be there at 4:30 p.m. If you've got a break, come say hi. I should be there a while.

It's an odd title for a snack post, I know. But I just wasn't sure how else to summarize what I found on this site, recommended to me by a friend who checks it on a regular basis, "just for a laugh."

It's called I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? but has nothing to do with food. The title refers to the outrageous and grammatically incorrect captions that make this blog of mostly cat photos absolutely hilarious.

When I checked at about 10:15 a.m., the top photo was of a guinea pig, which is great, because I just got a guinea pig, and I don't really like cats -- though I do enjoy laughing at photos that parody their feline ways.

We've got four more days of snacks -- so if there's something you want to see posted up here for all to see -- make sure you let me know.