Behold, the wizard of blogs

Jardin herself is no slouch. Her glamorous mien belies what her colleagues say is true brilliance. She's a self-taught Internet code writer who can hold her own among the "alpha geeks" and speaks fragments of five indigenous languages, including three ancient Mayan tongues. Jardin's so well-versed in fine art that she once traveled the world as an art guide to wealthy tourists. As a co-editor of one of the Web's most popular blogs, BoingBoing.net, Jardin is the cyberpunk babe who ferrets out odd blips of pop culture to amuse the more than 240,000 weekday visitors to the site. On this night in San Francisco, she's accompanying NBC News Iraq correspondent Kevin Sites, who's among a half-dozen people being honored by Wired magazine for, in his case, maintaining a "war blog" that Jardin launched for him. But it isn't Jardin's work with Sites that draws people to her throughout the night with slightly star-struck expressions and earnest praise. It is the aura of the future that she projects.

Jardin is a very specific sort of rising star, the type born of the 21st century whose celebrity is fluid and self-made -- she's a journalist, a blogger, a TV personality, an artist and an entrepreneur. She is, at once, a member of the media and a media darling, who translates light-speed cultural shifts as they happen and looks great doing it. Jardin is the child of artists who revels in the Internet's infinite reach, but fights ambivalence about its impermanent legacy. She wears Gucci and drives a convertible Mercedes, but sees herself as an outsider.

"I want to see how far I can push it," Jardin says, "before they realize I'm a nerd."

Jardin is a contributing writer for Wired and occasional contributor to Playboy and Popular Science. Her "Xeni Tech" reports air regularly on National Public Radio's weekday show "Day to Day," and her articulate delivery and telegenic look land her frequent "geek guest" appearances on ABC's "World News Tonight" with Peter Jennings, CNN International, Fox News and the Fine Living Network.