It’s appropriate to have the very first blog showcase blog being Boing Boing – it is both one of the oldest blogs (it was started in 2000) and one of the most popular (it’s #5 on Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs).

It’s a group blog run by, among others, Mark Frauenfelder and Cory Doctorow. The blog features an eclectic collection of “wonderful things”.

From the wacky like these Smiley stickers and man-eating shark cupcakes…

To beautiful and quirky art like this Princess Leia piece:

Plus technology, design, music science fiction and a lot of politics – Cory Doctorow in particular is vocal supporter of fair use and privacy rights. It’s basically a blog for cool, arty geeks.

For a long time, they stopped allowing comments. But comments returned in a relatively recent big blog redesign along with a Gadgets blog and a BoingBoing TV channel. I especially liked the way they handled their blog navigation – normally blogs have “Next” or “next posts” or “newer” and then “Previous” or “older” or “previous posts” which I can find all a little confusing – but because they have enough daily posts to fill up a page, their archives give you the day you’re on and the date forward and back like so:

Mark Frauenfelder even has a book out called Rule the Web: How to Do Anything and Everything on the Internet—Better, Faster, Easier

Here’s an episode of Boing Boing TV with one of the bloggers, Xeni Jardin, flying in a zero gravity plane. Seriously geeky, but also very cool!