I Haiku You

It is National Poetry Month once more. I was happy to feature hometown (San Diego) poet, Rae Armentrout, last week. She's the most recent winner of a Pulitzer Prize for poetry.  Soon I'll publish FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE an original poem by a dedicated -- and possibly unpublished except for DIY and community sites -- poet. Wait for it ... wait for it ...

In the meantime, here is my annual, perpetual spring haiku:

Faking It The California Way

Shall I sweep or blow
Drifting pear tree petals
Look like SoCal snow

Alrighty then, moving along:  you may have noticed the possibly cryptic previous message about something called "Posterous" (a preposterous name for a website/service, no?)  I'm trying it out hopefully as a method to keep this RSS stream active after Blogger axes FTP uploads at the end of the month. (Just can't let go ...) Please note the correct use of an adverb.

If no silly LOLcat posting appears on May 1 -- or is it May 2 (hard to tell what Blogger.com is really going to do) -- we'll know it isn't working. Maybe.

Isn't this exciting?

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Should Business Tweet?

Should businesses do SM, particularly Twitter?  The efficacy and PR value is difficult to doubt, and I'll give you a hot example in a moment. Remember, the principle here is that writing--any kind--is a business.

Earlier in the week I received an email message (is there any other kind now?) "inviting" me to list my business in a relatively new database used by PR and publicity people.  The very notion elicited a delicate frisson of fear--scared me pantsless. I took to Twitter:

Someone wants to list AWE in a new database for PR reps. Oh, no! My Cision listings bring in quite enough crap, thank you. 4:18 PM Feb 10th

Notice I mentioned a major media services company without an @ sign or a hashtag. In my haste to post, I did not consider repercussions. Within two minutes, the phone rang. As soon as the caller identified herself as a VP with Cision, I knew why she had called. We had a pleasant and productive conversation.

The focus here, however, is on the business' use of social media.  Obviously, Cision closely monitors mentions of its business name. I can think of several ways it receives nearly real-time notices.  It is able to respond quickly to perform damage control (in this instance) and help its customers. At least 10 of the top managers are active on Twitter.

Although I'm not a client, if I were, I'd be impressed with this company and probably delighted with its service. See the elephant dance!

Disclaimer:  If this post is viewed as a product or service endorsement please note than I do not use it, but Cision uses me, very gently and with grace.

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Is the Blog Era Over?

I'm having a very bad month, so far. What with the confusing brouhaha with Amazon, iBooks from Apple, Macmillan and other publishers over the price of e-books, Blogger.com forcing us to quit using FTP to upload posts, a summons for jury duty the same day contest judging is due, taxes looming ... not only can I not get ahead, I can't even catch up with myself.

Shall I quit blogging? The "migration" proposed by Blogger.com is unacceptable. So is installing WordPress and learning how to use yet another complicated program. I'm trying to find an easy one to create my own RSS feed, but even with that, the technical aspects of blogging on your own are daunting.  It would mean creating three or more web pages for every post.

Another thought is to take the blog private and deliver it weekly by email, incorporating my weekly "Inspiration" jotting. Or maybe IT'S A SIGN!!! Time to quit, slow down, smell the flowers and let my mind gel into cliches.

Twitter is so much easier, more fun, more connections, chats.

Is the blog era over for all of us?

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Blogger Threatens FTP Blogs

Blogger is eliminating FTP blogs. That includes A Writer's Edge, unless I can duplicate myself to have time to comprehend what they want us to do. To wit:

...we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:

* We are building a migration tool that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL) that will be available to all users the week of February 22. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.
* We will be providing a dedicated blog and help documentation to provide as much information as possible to help guide users through the migration off of FTP.
* Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released.

If this blog disappears, you'll know why. Oh, please, Lord, don't make me migrate to Word Press ...

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Kindle for PC

When I uploaded my first article to the Kindle Store, I noticed a little box in the far right column stating I could get a preview of the article with Kindle for PC. So I downloaded and installed the program, just to get another view of my material, and it was nice. Since then I've been telling people how they can get this program free and "rent" my material in their own accounts. Except blogs are not available yet. My bad. Sorry, you have to have the real Kindle device to subscribe to the blog, and you can't get it with Kindle for PC.

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E-Book Sales X3=iPad?

From all morning long while monitoring Apple's announcement:

I'd hoped to have leaking news of Apple's announcement for this post, but found none credible. First, I refer you to Richard Curtis' E-Reads news that November 09 E-Book Sales Triple Over 09. This seems a remarkable growth pace, even if e-book sales are only 5% of total book sales.

* FLASH: It's called iPad and sounds like a souped-up media-oriented "smart phone." But does it have telephony capability, too? Sounds like Apple's view is that no one talks to anyone anymore. We'll all text. I want a netbook phone! And what about e-books. Or i-books, if you please?

According to a PublishersMarketPlace story reported by Mike Shatzkin the other day, Apple’s disruption of the ebook market has nothing to do with the tablet (iPad). PMP's Calder said that Apple is forcing the book publishing industry to move to an "agency" model for e-book sales. It is quite complex, and PMP is a subscription service, so no link.  Shatzkin's story is long and worth readiing even though he admits it provokes even more questions. He explains:

The “agency” model is based on the idea that the publisher is selling to the consumer and, therefore, setting the price, and any “agent”, which would usually be a retailer but wouldn’t have to be, that creates that sale would get a “commission” from the publisher for doing so. Since Apple’s normal “take” at the App Store is 30% and discounts from publishers have normally been 50% off the established retail price, publishers can claw back margin even if they don’t get Apple to concede anything from the 30%.

From Twitter, I said, "Oy! #iPad *IS* a phone.  Oh, I am maybe hooked. Just blogging "I want a netbook phone" has been my plea for years. Well, laptop with phone." And now from Engadget streaming report by Joshua Topolsky:

Showing reading book on the iPad. Called iBooks. Displays virtual book shelf, with new iBook store, fully integrated with iBook app. Can discover books, best seller lists. 5 publishers support at start. Penguin, Harper Collins, others. Easy to download books. Flip through books with finger. Can include video, color, black and white photos. Can change font size of the font. Also will be targeting textbooks.

Calder had said that Apple was in discussion with Big Six (Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Macmillan.) I keep wondering what effect, if any, this will have on Amazon's recently-announced 70% commission for Kindle publication sales? (It remains 30% until June.) Or If this agency model propelled Amazon into upping the royalties?

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Yahoo Closing Your BlogLog?

I can't believe it. Well, yes, I can. When Yahoo took over MyBlogLog, the service immediately began having technical failures. I didn't think the sale to Yahoo boded well for us members. In the Twitter #BlogChat last night I learned that Yahoo is probably closing down MyBlogLog, a social networking service for bloggers. Sure enough, the company acknowledged the possibility less than a month ago. The paidContent.org has a brief report.

The move is part of a greater divestiture of companies Yahoo probably never should have acquired. For example, it is shutting the door to its shopping services soon. Sounds like utter capitulation to Google's superiority.

In the meantime, what to do? I shudder at losing the connection to nearly 500 people who joined the MBL community for A Writer's Edge. First, I am rushing to fulfill hundreds of pending Contact Requests in my account. I had ignored that part of the system to concentrate on building community membership. 

Next I'm going to take advantage of the ability to send a message to all of my community's members. I'll encourage them to sign up to receive these posts via either of the three RSS feeds this blog offers (one of them the FeedBurner that Google now manages) or by email through a FeedBlitz service. 

Then I'll mention my Twitter account that they could join.  And many of them already belong to the BlogCatalog community, too, so I'll encourage that move for the rest of them.  What a boon this will be for that service!

What about you--what's your bailout plan from MyBlogLog?

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BookTour Utility

In the course of setting up my Author Page at Amazon , I discovered the Events function which links to a fabulous free service, BookTour: Where Authors and Audiences Meet. There authors can list their itineraries; readers can find out when a favorite author is appearing in any area, their own area, or discover what authors are appearing near their homes; and the listings will sync with any standard calendar application, too.  Did I say it's all *FREE*? The wonders of the Internet never cease to amaze me!

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E-Reading in Color

See the coming color e-reader, the Mirasol from Qualcomm, demonstrated in this video:



and read about it at SlashGear. They are getting mighty tempting, close to my long-sought idea which will be a netbook/reader with phone built in. Or a phone with Internet and a good screen for reading large amounts of material, like an e-reader. Or ... what's your dream mobile machine?

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Mini-Review of PULL

Years ago but right before the Web was woven, I had a vision. I'd been meditating on solutions to the problems of homeless people here. I knew the resources existed to help them, but help was often inaccessible for those who need it the most. It was and still is uncoordinated. Thinking about what little of the Internet I knew, I saw these discrete services circling the homeless, electronically interconnected so that from one dumb terminal or a fantastic PC, someone could customize a help plan for each person in need, providing the requisite paperwork, vouchers for transportation included.

"Why do charities have to duplicate efforts and waste so much money?" I complained to the only group that would (pre-blogs) allow me to publish my rambling rants, the local Mensans. Without leadership, sadly, any ad hoc collection of geniuses produces more hot air than hot action.

David Siegel has shown how this type of "cloud" computing is being realized to pull in the resources needed by a client-centered plan. In Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business, Siegel explains in very approachable terms how businesses like the book industry are struggling to not only shift paradigms but transform themselves into more efficient and effective business models.

This is exciting/scary stuff! It is a clarion call for the transparency I've advocated for several years. I hate screen names and avatars as identifiers for people. Be who you are wherever you are, I've been saying. Soon it will become inevitable reality. What effect, I wonder, will it have on white collar crime that relies on computers to game any system, when the entire system becomes standardized? Only those intent of committing felonies have anything to fear from, say, RFIDs embedded in all products, pets, people.

Siegel predicts the end of dead-end jobs like cashiering at the local supermarket and predicts that large main libraries (like the one being shoved down San Diegan's throats while the homeless freeze on the sidewalk in front of the old one) will cease to exist in a few decades. At last! I cheer. Someone else who sees that libraries are for information, not physical books, which are all becoming digital anyway. He says:

Small branch libraries are the libraries of the future. They will provide a good place to sit quietly and research online , a place for kids to learn, and meeting spaces for learning-related events. They will have minimal staff and probably won't be open all day. [This is happening already with a fiscal crisis demanding cutbacks.] There may not be very many, schools will do just as well. Our monstrous downtown libraries with their stacks of books and huge staffs won't make it to the middle of the century.

I haven't finished reading the book yet, but the chapter on "Pulling Books" alone is worth the price. It provides a clear depictions of how the industry operates, which any author needs to understand. It will be available in the next couple of weeks in hardcover and for the Kindle. Pre-order at Amazon by clicking on the image at the right.

Any products reviewed on this site may have been gifts of their producers.

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Facebook & Twitter on Google

Privacy issues on the Internet. They're baaaak! Since Google announced the inclusion of real time returns from Twitter and Facebook on the first page of search results, the virtual world has been atwitter with arguments pro and con. Some of these in a #blogchat last night revolved around *if* you want material from parts of a FB account to show up. Another question that went unanswered in the crush was about how much of a Twitter profile Google is privy to.

I have news for these newbies: everything but your Twitter password is readily available to anyone, and obviously passwords can be hacked, too. Hence, Twitter account and website hijackings, and I suspect FB corruptions also exist. How can there be another generation already that needs to learn never put anything online that you don't want seen by everyone in the world?

One incensed participant tweeted back at me: "@GLHancock That's no different than someone breaking in your home and stealing pictures. Are u saying there's no privacy ANYWHERE? #blogchat" No, I'm just sayin' there's no such animal as "privacy online." Maybe I should say "security?" Especially with free programs! Poor grammar aside, I wonder how these kids have been raised? Don't they pay attention to news about this or that supposedly secure database being hacked and resulting identity theft?

Writers who use social media as part of their promotional and marketing plans need to understand there is no separation between a "personal" account and one for your business of writing, whether you're an author with books, a freelancer with services, short story or poetry writer, an essayist or a working journalist. I'd expect writers, more than most people, would understand how identity and writing are inextricably entwined. Internet demands for transparency are doubly intense for writers.

When a search engine scours the Internet for information about you, it does not distinguish among sources for material. No human peeks and says, "Uh, oh. Naughty pictures. I'd better not snatch those. It might hurt this person's reputation." Search engines do not always observe a "no index" command. Drop bits of your identity around the web and they will be assembled to display perhaps a less than flattering, if more accurate, view of you.

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Book of Tweets

Apparently TweetBookz aren't as popular as expected. The price has dropped from the announced $30 hardbound and $20 softcover to $25.50 and $17 according to the site's FAQ. To be fair, the home page says it's a "sale" until January 1, 2010.

I was disappointed to find little customization available, and the quantity is limited to the last 200 messages. I was hoping to be able to concoct "The Best of GLHancock's Tweets" or something like that. Panning through an entire RSS feed for nuggets of wisdom is daunting, to say the least. There must be a better way to search your own material, like with a feed reader and Word or Excel? There must be an app for that!

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The eBook Matrix

Enter the ebook matrix, a multi-dimensional space-time where format meets device, designed and updated by David McClintock, who sees himself as a word economist and sometimes writes in the third person. He overcame that to say in E-book Matrix in Progress | The Wordsupply Writers' Network:

I posted a rough matrix of e-book formats and devices, hoping folks will help me build it.

I also want to keep track of which e-book retailers sell which formats – and to help visualize which platforms are most versatile. A format war will surely heat up in the next few years.

See the chart online and help fill in the matrix with offerings to david@wordsupply.com

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Speech Recognition Programs

While I wait to wireless thoughts into my computer, perhaps speech recognition is the way to go. My dear friend Bonnie Boots alerted me to the possibilities detailed in Speech Recognition for Bloggers -- The Ultimate Guide on Vimeo in which Jon Morrow reviews several programs. He's the Associate Editor of Copyblogger and recommends:

VXI Full Duplex USB Sound Pod
Dragon Naturally Speaking (PC)
VXI TalkPro Xpress Headset
Mac Speech Dictate (Mac)

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Zero Cost eBooks

Electronic books seem to have negligible value? According to a writer at Kindle Review, part of ireaderreview.com, the Value Perception of eBooks is going to zero :

eBooks are going to Zero, it’s happening NOW, and it’s INEVITABLE

44 of the Top 50 Kindle Bestsellers are at $0.

The Kindle Store was the best unpolluted channel for ebooks and now it’s dying out.

When people see 44 of the top 50 ebooks free -

* They are reluctant to pay $10 for ebooks.
* They choose free first and read more free than paid books.
* The value perception of ebooks goes downhill.

They think authors who want $5 or more for an ebook are greedy.

I'm not so sure authors are all the problem in Amazon's Kindle Store. Recently I found three of my reviews on sale as digital books for $9.99 (each!). Also, I counted 15 of the top 50 Kindle books with prices. Consider J. A. Konrath's arguments for eBook self-publishing being more remunerative for authors than traditional print publishing. His most notable rant at Newbie's Guide to Publishing runs his own numbers.

Don't forget, you must have a $260-$490 electronic device and a subscription in order to read these zero-cost books. Or my ten-buck book reviews.

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Selling Books on Amazon

I had the strangest Amazon.com experience last week. But first, as they say on TV, a little background. I occasionally offer Amazon books for sale in this blog. I also sell books through the Amazon Seller program--anyone can do it. Some of the books I've listed are first editions with inscriptions and autographs by the authors. These are categorized as "Collectible." Presumably the author's literal scribblings add value to the literary ones.

On November 10, Amazon sent me a notice which included:

Beginning Monday, November 16, 2009, we will remove "Collectible" book offers that have not been listed by sellers approved in the category. Once listings are removed, only collectible offers from approved sellers will be available for purchase in the Amazon.com Books store.

I thought I was already approved because I've sold in that category for a few years. I also have a hazy memory of filling out a form about it. To be safe, however, I jumped through the Amazon hoops again, and Amazon acknowledged my application. All this on the same day.

Three days later, I received a rejection notice which included the phrase "we are only qualifying sellers to list collectible books that we judge to be experienced, professional collectible booksellers." It also mentioned considering feedback and ratings and performance. I fired back a message pointing out that at no time were we ordinary sellers required to be professional collectible booksellers and cited my excellent scores on all their scales. I refrained from mentioning the lousy grammar.

The same afternoon brought an apologetic message that began with the first identification of who sent it:

Greetings from the Amazon.com Collectible Books team.

The denial message you received earlier today regarding your application to list Collectible books was sent in error. We apologize for this error on our part and regret any concern it caused you. We have reviewed your account again and want to confirm that the information below correctly represents the decision of our category management team.

Absolutely nothing about books is easy. From writing to getting rid of them, it's agony.

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What's With a Wave?

So now I have a Wave. It's not that I don't know what to do with it, but ... I don't know what to do with it. Seems like it might be a good device with which to teach a class or hold a discussion because it features simultaneous logins by many people. What would you like to see, do, take part in? I wonder if it would work to hold a live author interview? I have a few (authors) at my fingertips. Google isn't calling this one "beta", but now "preview". We're still trying it out. Maybe I'd better just try a "chat" first to see if that's feasible. What do you think?

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Chat with Me

On Twitter today are two chats I usually participate in. Beginning at noon Pacific time (you right coasters--count forward) the Write Chat takes place under the hashtag #writechat . It lasts about three hours.

Then at six p.m. (PST) comes the ever-rowdy, more marketing-oriented #blogchat for an hour or more, depending on how long participants want to continue.

The best way I've found to participate is through Tweet Chat. Sign in with your Twitter info, then enter the hashtag of the chat you want into the space at the top of the page and click on "Go". Zip! You're in the chatroom, ready to begin.

Introduce yourself and say you're new to the chat. We'll be kind! To catch someone's attention, begin your message like this: @GLHancock. Plunge into a convo or initiate one of your own and maybe someone will respond. Messages are limited to about 120 characters because TweetChat automatically appends the hashtag of that chat room. Look around the boxes, and you'll see helpful icons like character count, ways to control the refresh speed, reply and retweet symbols, and even a way to eliminate annoying bots and spammers from view ("block").

If you want to try to participate in a chat via your Twitter interface or mobile device, search for the one you want by hashtag. You'll need to remember to put that hashtag in each post or your message won't go to the chat, just out in your regular Twitter stream. All your remarks in a chat go into your main stream, too. Take care, it's easy to forget that in the heat of debates. Also, you may need to keep refreshing the view to see new tweets. See you there?

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Twitter on the Couch

Apparently Klout - Twitter Analytics Content for Georganna Hancock (GLHancock) disagrees somewhat on recent top retweets:

RT @GLHancock Don't confuse rewriting with editing. Don't bother to edit until you've finished rewriting. Proofread very last. #writechat WritingSpirit 17129

RT @GLHancock: I suspect the most basic need to blog successfully is the ability to communicate clearly. Writing well=win. #blogchat hacool, JDEbberly, knmu 8303

What's the longest ~ RT @GLHancock: Keep the convo going by replying to comments on your blog posts. (SO TRUE!) #Blogchat CASUDI, JDEbberly 7670

RT @GLHancock: You can start with a blog and build the website around it. That's what I did #Blogchat JDEbberly 6468

RT @GLHancock: I have declared Twitter chats to be typo amnesty zones. #writechat #blogchat

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Writing Is Not Lonely Work

'Lonely. I'm so lonely' -- the wail of lone writers that writerly advisers whale on. Writing is a lonely art, they moan in unison, repeating until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. New writers expect to feel lonely and blocked.

On the other hand, they complain about interruptions, finding time to write, finding a place to write. Some wonder, "Is writing really for me?" If you have to ask ...

Admittedly, creative writing in the sense of poetry, short stories and novels may benefit by peace and quiet and a slower pace. I loved rainy days, the house empty but for me curling up in the corner of the couch with a pen and notebook to let the feelings flow into verse ... it all ran out when I moved to SoCal where it never rains. Well, hardly ever.

Could the lonely writers be giving blessed solitude and opportunity a negative connotation, just because they've read and heard the term so often? If Thoreau did not take himself off to a cabin in the woods, alone, would he have produced Walden Pond? Ah, but that isn't fiction, is it? Perhaps I would not have written two novels if I'd had something more to do than make a home for a family which, at one time, included nine Siamese, a flock of hens and a garden in the summer. It was slightly less hectic than writing five news stories before 10 a.m. in a crowded newsroom with phones ringing, editors yelling and teletype machines clacking and dinging.

Some writers even work in tandem, married to their co-writing partners. One of the first published authors who generously advised me, James J. Kilpatrick, confided that he got started writing a children's book with his [first?] wife. "How lucky he is," I thought, "to have someone to share his passion in more ways than one." Kilpatrick's experience and advice existed in the days when the Internet was an academic idea and a military experiment.

Now attention, companionship, notoriety--whatever you want--is as close as your modem. So is education and help. And distraction. Writing requires even more self-discipline and self-control in the Information Age. I should know, having experienced social media overload several times. Can Twitter give one a heart attack? Maybe not, but you need never feel lonely again!

*waves to Tweeps*

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Google Demotes PageRank

Last Thursday, as I lay sleeping, I guess, Google quietly removed PageRank from its Webmaster Tools. Oh, the gauge is still in the browser toolbar (if you have it installed) but Google employee Susan Moskwa says webmasters are not to pay attention to PageRank:

We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. :-)

It's true, Google has long stated that, "We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it's easy doesn't mean it's useful for you as a site owner."

Uh huh. Would you mind telling that to advertisers? How about removing page ranking altogether?

*still smarts from demotion from 5 to 0 to 2*

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Web 2.0 for Authors

LitMatch is morphing into AuthorAdvance, a new social network. According to the owner, Christopher Hawkins:

AuthorAdvance is a complete social network that lets writers connect, share interests, and find help with their work. Expanded listings allow users to add and edit publishers, markets, contests and resources to help them improve their work and find publication. Enhanced submission tracking helps writers organize their careers and free up more time for writing. Best of all, everything's connected, making it easier than ever to find the information you want and meet people with similar interests and goals.

I was supposed to be getting a scoop on the big reveal and preview access, but that hasn't come through yet, so I can't give my impressions. If indeed it helps free up time to write, it will eliminate one of the greatest complaints working writers have: too little time to write for dealing with the "business" that surrounds a writing career.

I'm a little concerned, however, with the description of AuthorAdvance as a "complete social network" because the existing distractions of Tweety, MyFace and SpaceBook [sic], plus blogs, forums, websites and more already eat up writers' time. I should know!

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Can You See Me Now?

Most browsers should display my ubiquitous puss (icon, avatar) in the address window and tab now. Maybe it shows up other places listing the blog and/or feed, too. That is, if I followed the instructions correctly from Favicon generator and free .ico image host: Favicon for your blog ~ Blogger Book (via Kit Courteney Writes out of MyBlogLog).

This blog used to sport a favicon, then it fell out in a Blogger.com template upgrade or update or some such. I was too lazy busy to find the process again. Anyway, you can dude up your blog, or any web page, with such a trinket. Is this branding? My face in every place?

My attempts to design a logo always end on the drawing board. A three-letter name does not lend itself well to a square image. I like the "AWE" in text as a short-hand method to refer to this site, but as art it "SUX". Maybe some of you more creative peoples would like to submit proposals? I'm open to something using the site colors(#FFF3DB and #996600 I think).

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Ad Network Apocalypse?

What if they gave an apocalypse and no one came? Riffing on an old anti-war slogan, Advertising Age asks What Happened to the Ad-Network Apocalypse? If you're unfamiliar with what ad networks are, they're companies that partner with advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ads on sites they don't own themselves, similar to Google AdSense.

Warren Lee thinks only 15-20 of the 300-400 ad networks really matter, but the decimation predicted last year has not occurred. Some factors he cites include a growing but fragmented audience for increasing numbers of sites and the economical aspect of online advertising.

I thought this was interesting for bloggers who are always looking for ways to "monetize" their blogs (websites, web pages). That means make some moolah to help defray site costs, at least. And most bloggers start out with Google's AdSense, only to discover they aren't allowed to use any other ad system on a page that displays Google's. Until now.

A couple of weeks ago, Google notified AdSense clients that you will

soon be able to allow multiple ad networks to show on your pages, which means that advertisers from external Google-certified networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers for your ad space.

There are a few restrictions, and the email didn't list the "certified networks", but ads from these networks will compete with Google ads to show on sites, and the ad generating the highest revenue for publishers will be displayed, Google says. Since pictures (with audio) speak louder, here's a video on the subject:

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Power Graphics for Writers

Flow charts meet social media at Applicant. Being a sucker for models, I appreciate some of this site's offerings, like the LinkedIn: The Ultimate Tool for Job Hunters and A Visual Guide to Twitter, a road map to using the Web 2.0 service for business.

Another fascinating graphic I found is a Amazon Acquisitions and Investments at CreativeBits.org showing a twisted path you could puzzle over forever. I'll bet you had no notion that Amazon owns, absorbed or controls so many other companies, did you?

Now, if we could mash up these three powerful information sources, we could probably chart our ways to fame and fortune by using Twitter to promote our services and our materials that are on Amazon for employment opportunities through LinkedIn. Something to think about.

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F + W Violating Copyrights?

Is F+W Publications violating copyrights of contributors to the Writer's Digest forum?

When I checked out a Twitter notice about BingTweets.com, I found a new way F+W Publishing displays contributions to the Writer's Digest forum. The search returned an image, "Printer friendly copy of thread," not the interactive forum page itself.

See: http://forum.writersdigest.com/forums/printer-friendly.asp?tid=1676&mid=, an image of a conversation about freelance contracts. The posts are not editable by the contributors. Even if we deleted our comments within the forum, this file would still be available (as in search engine caches which are occasionally purged or updated).

Discovery process: Twitter.com --> "Bing Tweets n. a nifty way to track Twitter trends and Bing updates," --> "Georganna Simmons" (pretty cool results at http://bit.ly/scs2d) --> WD static page. The returns are also cached.

The WD Forum explicitly states on its home page:

Writer's Digest also reserves the right to reproduce material from the Forum in Writer's Digest magazine, in the Writer's Digest e-mail newsletter and on WritersDigest.com for promotional purposes.

Once an item is posted, it is considered published and public information. Use caution when deciding to post personal information.

To that writers must agree, before being allowed to post, but the contributed content is editable--at that point. Something about copyright is nags at me, ownership of one's writing. More digital fuzziness. Undoubtedly attorney Ivan Hoffman has an article on his website covering the situation. Published does not mean "Public information" or that anyone can reprint an entire piece of writing just because it is published online. That would seem to override copyright law if true. Mr. Hoffman? Did we agree to commit our words to be used as linkbait forever?

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Fan, Friend or Follow?

According to Friend or Follow, in my Twitter account:

I am following 8 accounts that aren't following me (only 3 are people)
I have 168 "fans" (those following me that I'm not following)
I have 18 "friends" (mutual followings) of the 28 I follow

Previously I wrote about "unfriending" in social nets, and I found a solution for LinkedIn. Now I'm facing a Twitterquette dilemma. Although the 189 followers I have are "organic" (I have never asked), I'm beginning to suspect that some of them are automated, based on key words. I know some of them pop up right after I participate in, or during, chats; but I like to think those are deliberate actions of people who observed my proffered wisdom.

The dilemma there is feeling guilty because I don't "follow back." I follow only who/what I want. I don't want the need to use yet another third-party application to sort out tweets I want to read from those I would receive only to be polite. If there is an obligation to follow back, I missed the memo. And no one has complained. No one complains about being followed, either. Is this a Web 2.0 faux pas, a poor business practice? Common sense?

I'm contemplating having a different Twitter account for the feed that appears in my signature and on my LinkedIn profile page. Less informal, more businesslike. All Follow. No reading. Make sense? Do you have multiple Twitter streams for different purposes.

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We are not Worthy!

Would you be impressed if you saw this? Just in case the animation does not display: the sun symbol alternates with the text, "San Diego Website Excellence Award."

What if I told you it was not merited, and moreover it is part of a scheme to boost PageRank in the Google system? I discovered this "award" and image through a Twitter "follow". We are not amused. We are not following you! We do not want to be associated with underhanded web practices such as "triangle linking."

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Comic-Con IMAX Adventure

I had the best of Comic-Con yesterday, thanks to IMAX. It was the best because I didn't have to go downtown to the convention center to see a preview of new IMAX technology in an IMAX multiplex theater. Digital 3-D IMAX films rawk! The new projection and audio technology combined with custom-designed theater geometry make for what IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond and tech EVP Brian Bonnick called a new immersion experience for theater-goers. Unavailable for home theaters, of course.

As I tweeted, Harry Potter did seem close enough to touch, and I ducked the cow-catcher on the Polar Express when it halted just inches from my nose. Whew! I skipped the Terminator battle (not a total nerd) but bawled through the birth scene in the latest Star Trek. And I think Greg Foster implied--JUST IMPLIED!--that more Star Trek movies may be in the offing. Can you tell I'm a trekkie yet?

Unlike most of the rest of the select group, I did not spend the presentation thumbing a cell phone or madly keyboarding a laptop. I watched, listened, felt and noticed my reactions. I removed and replaced the 3-D glasses, looked through one eye, then the other to appreciate fully that immersion. When viewing a portion of "Under the Sea", I melted. I love skin diving in tropical waters. If it weren't for the chill of the theater, I would have felt I was back off the Great Barrier Reef again. Oh, I did take notes with an antique pen on a pad of paper.

I can't imagine a better way for writers to receive most of the auditory and visual stimulations of the real experience without the expense and fuss of travel.

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Zemanta Betters Blogs?

Any of you bloggers using Zemanta? According to Blogger Buzz:

Here's how it works: while you write your blog post in Blogger, Zemanta opens up a sidebar next to the Blogger post editor. After you've written a few sentences, Zemanta analyzes the words in your post and suggests images and video that are relevant to your post; with one click, it inserts them into your post.

It is a downloadable plugin, extension or bookmarklet for most browsers and the top blogging softwares either as clientsides or serversides. It can also jazz up your email messages. All with no registration, the site's info page for bloggers says. The section on reblogging interested me:

Your readers love your content - but do they link to your posts? Make it easy for them to quote you with a single click of the ReBlog button. You'll get full attribution and a backlink.

Zemanta recommended tags are SEO optimized, helping you boost your search engine ranking while easily organizing your content.

This helps you get more links, more readers, and boosts your Technorati rank.

And where would we be without the mandatory video:

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Wired World Links

I think I'm getting tired of being wired! Last week Google alerted me to certain new listings with geofollow.com, webshotspro.com and SaysHer.com (how did they know I am female?) Because the GeoFollow came about right after I'd signed up at WeFollow (yet another useless Twitter app), I suspect some kind of linkage there.

Everybody and his dog is taking advantage of the Twitter API to mash up a little service he can monetize with advertising streams. Past visions of the Web becoming one big mart are being realized, though not on a pay per view scheme.

Sign up for someone's newsletter and right away you're being badgered to join a different website or service--or is it separate? Dig a little and you'll probably find it run by the same person/people. Put your words out on the 'net, and you'll find them minced up and part of someone else's soup, next to adverts that might embarrass.

I kept my commitment to join WebFace or BookSpace or whatever. I really did, and as I explored its features, advertising began to appear on my pages. Unexpected and disappointing. Then the site found and duplicated dozens of this blog's posts. Unnecessary. I could find no way to integrate Twitter (which I wanted). I couldn't remove the blog or the account information, and now can't delete the account. When I try to access it, I get a message that the account is "scheduled for deletion" sometime next month. In the meantime, people are "finding" it and pestering me to become their "friend." By pestering, I mean I can't access account settings to stop receiving its email and can't contact the would-be "friends" through the site, either. Sheesh!

Maybe I don't mind so much the autodiscoveries after all. Although I feel slightly violated when I first find a listing, those sites are usually simple and offer an easy deletion method. Most of the time I decide they are innocuous enough. I suspect this last social media experiment gone awry may linger in the cybersphere forever.

Lost in FaceSpace!

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Writers,Technology, Web 2.0

Etiquette in this new wired world hit a nerve. Look at all the comments, wouldja, on yesterday's blog post. All that's out of my system, however. This one is about live contacts, in which people practice courtesy. We're moving on to an update on my social/networking life. At the beginning of the month, I listed everything on my social calendar. The month is half over, and most of the events have taken place:

Read The Reader in a few hours
Went to book club to discuss it
Attended both live events last night

Joining Facebook is still facing me, and the writer's guild meets Monday. In the midst of this madness, I'm working almost full time, editing a client's book and producing two newsletters, a news release, daily blog posts and Twittering. Oh, and monkeying around with the front page of A Writer's Edge, hoping to curry favor with Technorati. Then there were the boring appointments with doctors and the dentist--but you know how those things go.

The peak of this whirl was last night (I hope! Anymore and I'll explode.) Spending real life time with still print-oriented editors and then bloggers who can't talk without thumbing their mobile devices was an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Editors were amazed when I described using Web 2.0 for the editing business. One didn't understand how I could tweet without a cell phone. I was astounded at how un-techy most are, even the technical editors. But I made a new friend to help me with a troublesome MS Word document.

Zip down the street to a cafe/bar awash with San Diego bloggers. My Twitter starter, Steve, and I had a nice chat, and I learned he's also an Internet marketer. Ran into a fellow I was in a critique group with several years ago, and we caught up. Met more girl geeks, including one who freelances for the local rag and one who immediately followed me on Twitter. She writes about women entrepreneurs and has two businesses. Need to follow up on that name! Reconnected with another writer from a different writing group to learn of potential markets with a growing local online publication.

Writers and technology. Heaven.

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Being Yourself Everywhere

About 15 years of Web design is under our belts. Although I'm the same girl geek, I cringe when I see my first crude attempt. I created it from an MS Word document and a third-party program from England. It was basically a three-row table: header with title, center body and footer with a copyright notice. In color. The page also had a background color and the text was centered. Eventually graphics appeared. I upgraded the version the image above links to around 2001.

Back then, three pages linked together with the same menu (a basic navigation strategy that beginners still often miss). The best pages have a continuity of design that helps the users know they are still in the same site. This might mean the same colors and graphical style for all navigation buttons or bars on the various pages, as well as the same page design, a practice I heartily endorse.

This is one advantage of using templates provided by "free" hosting services. You can't screw them up much, but you must also put up with their limitations. Some don't allow any HTML tweaking, so text butts right up against photos, and you can't get the title and subtitle to line up right. When you want what you want the way that you want, it's time to turn to a professional designer.

Yes, everyone needs a "presence on the web", but it must project the quality you want to be known for. Sloppy copy? Misaligned text? Fuzzy photos? Is that who you are? Some turn to a Web 2.0 or social media services as a surrogate site. They are an improvement over the free hosting, but still limit your ability to make the most of Web pages devoted to your writing career. Use them to your advantage in conjunction with your main website.

One word of warning: don't be a different person in each of the web sites or services you participate. Be who you are at all times, in all places. It's called authenticity and transparency when applied to the Internet. As I wrote in a LinkedIn discussion, "Everywhere I go, there I am. Everywhere you go, there I am, too, if I'm doing it right."

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Web 2.0 Experiment

My latest social networking experiment is quite easy to follow. MrTweet is a service for making and receiving Twitter recommendations: Georganna Hancock (GLHancock)'s Profile on Mr. Tweet. I've sent one MrTweet-generated request to followers (now 156 All Organic!):

Hi folks! Mind dropping me a recommendation at http://mrtweet.com/recommend?rec&user=GLHancock ? Much appreciated! #MrTweet

The only question I have is this: Why does Mr. Tweet's "5 Reasons to do so" page only list three reasons? Really only one:

1. Why do so? Because your recommendations has a real impact

Perhaps Mr. Tweet needs a content editor? At least a proofreader!

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Writer Resource Roundup

If you're a freelancer in Canada or one who works for Canadian clients, you may be confused about what to charge or what pay to expect. The writers.ca • find a professional writer in canada site can help you out. It offers useful information for all freelancers, including sections on professional practices and copyrights.

Have a book for sale on Amazon.com? Are you participating in whatever they call their authors' blogs--a good marketing move. Another, more hidden, bonus is the Amazon Vine™ Program, which "enables a select group of Amazon customers to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make educated purchase decisions. Customers are invited to become Amazon Vine™ Voices based on the trust they have earned in the Amazon community for writing accurate and insightful reviews."

Who doesn't need more pictures to choose from? Shareapic - The pic sharing site that gives back! is a newer resource. I intend to join because of the front page tease (ignoring all the exclamation points):

We pay $0.22 per 1000 pic views.. that's more than some major ad networks pay their publishers!
- We allow you to add your Bidvertiser © code to your image and gallery pages.
- We pay out within 30 days!
- One click posting to Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, Orkut, and more!

Now, it's back to the cat race.

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AWE Tweet Chats Coming?

I may miss the #editorchat on Twitter tonight. [Is that faint cheering in the background?] I'm running off to the fair. After days in deep "edit brain" mode, my body needs a little fun, junk food, seeing plants, touching animals, and time spent with a close friend.

One reason why I joined the chats for editors and attend via TweetChat.com, was to try out the activity with a thought of holding one for writers. Of course, the hundreds of you who tag along in MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, RSS Readers, via email (blog and Inspiration) will need to have Twitter accounts--but not necessarily to Follow me or to reveal your identities. I also signed up with another service that provides private chat rooms and, of course, there's always the much less secure chat services provided by MSN, Yahoo, Google and Orkut.

Anita Campbell summed up the advantages and features nicely in a post on the Online Media Network The Cool New Way to Network on Twitter:

The benefits of tweetchats are many. They bring together people with similar interests. You can crowd-source ideas. You can carry on a group discussion in context – and using the right tool – “see” the full conversation uninterrupted by unrelated tweets.

What do you think? Would you like to have A Writer's Edge Chats? What form appeals most: general gabfests, directed conversations, specific topics, a mixture? Or about which subjects would you like to have a chat with me, other writers and maybe editors, agents, publishers?

Leave suggestions in comments, or send cards and letters (email).

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Social-Digital Books Coming

Clive Thompson on the Future of Reading in a Digital World: "The technology is here. Book nerds are now working on XML-like markup languages that would allow for really terrific linking and mashups. Imagine a world where there's a URL for every chapter and paragraph in a book—every sentence, even."

I don't know whether to cheer or jeer.

This sounds like my introduction to mark up languages in general when I found an example of hypertext on a university site via a dumb terminal in the computer lab where I worked at SDSU. That was around 1991, pretty much pre-WWW. I was hyper over hypertext, although I didn't quite understand what it was and certainly didn't envision the what the web became.

Now I can't live without it. Even my emails are in html (hypertext markup language) and contain hot links.

Hyperbooks? I suppose ...

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CliffsNotes® Wired!

CramCasts covering the following works of literature:

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

News Release

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What Good is Twitter?

And other social media? Before I grudgingly dragged myself over to sign up with Twitter, I kept reading about how useful it is. But no one offered any details. Everyone said things like "you'll find out how to use it for yourself." Big help, huh?

As with LinkedIn, I'm sorry I waited so long to jump into these turbulent waters. For an early adopter of technology, I'm surely slow with the social aspects.

I consider Twitter as the world's biggest chatroom. If you're in business, you need to have a Twitter account--and to use it and monitor messages to it. It's the 911 for instant communication, research, connections for any kind of writer.

Here's how Twitter has saved my bacon a few times:

One place my book reviews appear is on the Blogcritics.org. New software on the site was giving me a fit. The Help was no help. Editors were unavailable. I was ready to scream. Then I thought: Twitter? Although still unfamiliar with all it's workings, I searched on the website's name and found an account for it, direct mailed it and lo, the Big Man himself intervened. In a few minutes. (A day later an editor responded.)

Another day I was about to publish a post recommending a new service at another website. All I had was the base URL to the site. Thought I'd better check out the special part myself. After many minutes (waiting to upload the post to my blog, mind you) I could find nothing, no link, no mention, no part of a site map that correlated. And the plug was plugged in! A "Top Priority" email to the PR person brought no response (ever!). Once again I consulted Twitter, found an account for the correct company and shot off a question. While I worked on a couple of other posts, someone at the company noticed they were about to lose out on possibly valuable free advertising unless they responded to a Twitter chirp. They did, and the post went up touting a new source of reading material for tech-type readers.

In both cases, I was pleased with speedy dependable research results. They enabled me to multitask, keep on working on a particular critical piece, and do my "job" in a timely fashion. And this is just one little example of what Twitter does for me.

When communicating with a friend, client, colleague, source, supplier, or representative, the messaging often flows back and forth between and among Twitter and email. Throw in the third party applications I've accumulated thusfar and I can carry on multiple conversations simultaneously with TweetGrid or monitor just one input stream; or work in my blogging program and get TweetFox instant messages in the lower right corner of the screen, and once a week go to a big meeting of editors in a TweetChat room.

All this has only to do with business communication. I'm beginning to think I could write a book about the handy uses for Twitter and other social media for issues other than socializing.

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James Ellroy's Los Angeles

Playboy Walkabout - James Ellroy's Los Angeles --Warning: Adult Material XXX:

James Ellroy is the critically acclaimed author of My Dark Places, American Tabloid, The Black Dahlia and L.A. Confidential. In The Hilliker Curse—Ellroy's four-part memoir running in the April, June, September and November 2009 issues of Playboy—the modern dean of noir delves into his tangled sexual and romantic history. In the first installment of Playboy's new writers series Walkabout, Ellroy invites our readers to visit the places in Los Angeles that haunt him and to meet the ghosts that possess him still.

*****

In Los Angeles, you can take tours of the haunts of dead writers and their characters, but Ellroy is a living legend and conducts his own tour. A unique opportunity.

Books on Amazon by James Ellroy

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Housekeeping @ A Writer's Edge

If you've noticed problems with the RSS delivery of this blog in the last week, it was a combo of me changing the template and rearranging posts, as well as some Blogger problem that is supposedly now fixed, FeedBlitz announced. Online viewers, notice the difference? O.K., but the page should be easier to read, less cluttered, and provide for slightly longer posts.

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Ten Buck Books

Dime store novels are now ten buck books. The engrossing, inexpensive paperbacks were ubiquitous at Woolworths and neighborhood corner stores; all disappeared at the end of the last century/millennium.

Amazon Kindle customers have roared that they draw the line at paying more than $9.99 to download a book into their electronic readers.

The Book of the Month® (now owned by Bookspan) has a new program offering bestsellers at $9.95. I presume these are hardbacks.

According to a release sent last week, eMusic has expanded its MP3 audiobooks catalog, including some recent bestsellers via Recorded Books (the world's largest independent publisher and distributor of unabridged audio books), HighBridge Audio, and others. Customers can sign up for monthly subscriptions priced at $9.99 for one book or $19.99 for two books - and get one bonus book as part of an introductory offer.

Now, if only the supermarkets would have those "10 for $10" loss leader sales on ten buck books!

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Google Wave Tweets

Read these from the bottom up. My tweets as I watched the whole YouTube video. Blew. Me. Away.

1. Google Wave blog at
   Google Wave Developer Blog
   has only just begun. All this probably makes little sense to my writing Tweeps. Trust me, it's BIG!2 minutes ago from Power Twitter
   RT
2. tweeted too soon. "Tweetie" or "Tweety" creates the TWAVES.8 minutes ago from Power Twitter
   RT
3. goes, aaaaawwww! "TWAVE", a Google WAVE of Twitter. How tweet! Oh, there is also "Polly" the form-building pollster in WAVE.10 minutes ago from Power Twitter
   RT
4. wonders why developers insist on giving useful server-side robots/extensions silly names like "bloggy", "linky" and "spelly"? Gack!21 minutes ago from Power Twitter
   RT
5. predicts a flood of heavenly new apps, based on Google's
   
   API *did that work?*about 1 hour ago from Power Twitter
   RT
6. finds out more about Google WAVE at
   Google Wave Preview
   Have I died? Is this heaven? Live collaborative editing? #editorchatabout 1 hour ago from Power Twitter
   RT
7. OMG! Check this video out -- Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009
   about 1 hour ago from Power Twitter

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Digital Writing Technology

I receive many newsletters about writing and scan them for gems to pass along to readers of A Writer's Edge. Think of it as a concentrated knowledge pill that takes you to the edge of the writing universe. (Trying out branding phrases.)

A couple recent items on digital productions caught my eye:

From Marg McAllister's May 21 Writing4Success Club Tip Sheet No 154 - Writing and Selling Your Own E-Course. Ms. McAllister, who writes and practices in Australia, suggests:

Lots of people with a hobby or special interest have thought about starting up a newsletter or a blog, and this is an excellent way to attract a following. However, if you really know what you're talking about, then you could turn your knowledge into a nice little business - by writing an e-course on it. Or ever a series of e-courses.

She elaborates on the four steps necessary for a successful e-course:

1. WRITE the course
2. put your course ONLINE
3. PROMOTE your course
4. DELIVER your course

The entire article is available at online. No reason why your e-course couldn't be an e-book, too.

From the LNJDawson May 27 The Big Picture newsletter:

Scribd has been getting a lot of press lately after opening its e-bookstore. Authors can upload their titles and reap an 80% royalty (as opposed to Amazon's Kindle store, which forks over merely 30%). What I find most interesting about Scribd's model, however, is how it sells books by the chapter. This is a manifestation of what we've been predicting in the StartwithXML project.

A little over a year ago, Smashwords went live. An e-bookstore that also offers authors an 80% royalty, Smashwords distributes to multiple platforms, offering many formats: ePub, .mobi, PDF, LRF, RTF and plain text. So Smashwords books can be read on the iPhone, Kindle, desktop, and Sony Reader.

These are more places to sell your book as an eBook, unless your contract prohibits such activities. Also, a little birdie told me that now you can publish through Lulu and maybe have your product listed on Amazon by Lulu!

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Kindle 2 Lighted Folio

Isn't this Periscope Lighted Folio for the Kindle 2 just the cutest outfit?


Technical Details:

* Built-in Twin Super Bright LED Retractable Reading Light
* Deluxe Leatherette Cover with Secure Magnetic Strap
* 4 elastic straps allow access to all controls and jacks while safely holding your Kindle 2 inside
* Left side cover can be folded behind the Kindle and locked in place with magnetic snap to facilitate one-handed use
* Note Pad and Pen Holder
* Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 1.2 x 7.2 inches ; 13 ounces
* Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
* ASIN: B00279VK9W
* Item model number: 90856

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Making Rounds, Social Overload

"Making the rounds" holds various connotations, depending on whether you're a doctor, drunk, boxer, reporter, or intrepid onliner. I made up that last one because I can't think what to call that burgeoning aspect of my life. Virtual life has become real life for many of us.

When I worked for a large health care organization, I qualified to attend "Grand Rounds." I had visions of trailing along with interns through hospital wards. Instead, I sat through a presentation about the growing threat of tuberculosis. First and last Grand Rounds.

As a news reporter, making the rounds meant that early in the morning I visited city hall, the police station, the county offices, and the high sheriff to pick up news releases, copy information from any public documents filed or business conducted since the previous morning, and collect tips from informants. Fortunately funeral homes phoned in obituaries, and medical information was private, so those stops were omitted. Then I went to work.

Now I hit my email, blog, Twitter, and accounts at MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog. Each usually involves further actions that glue me to my desk chair, sometimes for hours. Twitter, especially, has tipped making rounds into Web 2.0verload. Am I too, too polite for acknowledging each person who signs up to "follow"? I must look at their information anyway to see if it is someone I want to follow (no, that's is not automatic with me--another social media faux pas?)

Likewise, I try to acknowledge every type of contact that someone makes with my accounts at MBL and BC. Sometimes I trip over myself, posting in haste only to find I have already acknowledged a contact because it appears in the list of visitors to the blog AND I receive an email from the services or find new faces in my accounts as members joining my groups. With one of these hitting 400 members, is it any wonder that I forget now and then? How do the "biggies" manage thousands of followers and daily contacts?

We have a new disease, Social Overload, to add to Blogger's Brain. BB occurs when you post so much that your mind is always in posting mode, moderating all sensory input into a media message. Where's that wireless brain-to-Twitter link? Oh, right! They haven't developed one for blogs either! C'mon technology, I'm way ahead of you this time.

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Twitter Crossover Fiction

Some time ago I wrote about the popularity of Japanese novels scraped from chat rooms and read on cell phones. Now it's come to Twitter (which people access on cell phones, too). Barry Yourgrau's piece on Salon explains:

Keitai shosetsu, the so-called cellphone novel, has been touted (in the pages of the New Yorker, among other places) and reviled (by Japanese literati) as the first narrative mode of the txt msg age -- the herald of a written-word future bent by wireless telecom's powers.

Enthralled by the medium, Yourgrau has experimented with a variety of short fiction. Now he thinks Twitter is ripe for such a crossover, partly due to the fact that it is not a teenage phenomenon:

Social interactivity is again a key; doubtless many (most?) users are drawn merely by the possible thrill of Tweeting with undisguised celebs. But beyond this there's emerging energy in the creative potential of Twitter's 140-character micro-format. (Quillpill, one of the new U.S. "cellphone novel" Web sites, also uses a 140-character per post limit.)

Hey, I'd like to see a synopsis of my daily soap, Days of our Lives, in the lower right corner of my Foxfire screen. Hear me, NBC!

There is the "Twiller" movement (Twitter thrillers) and "Twitter Wit" and "wine blogger Gary Vaynerchuk, whose now 300,000-plus Twitter following got him a million-dollar deal. But the Twitter-to-book route is still in infancy." Yourgrau offers three original keitai shosetsu from "I-Mode Stories", but greater value, I think, is the information available in the responses to the article.

Ladies and gentlemen, load your loglines!

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NYT, IHT, PW Zap Links, Lives

Now this is just plain scary: NYT-IHT and PW link zaps, today's post by David Rothman at TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home. Careers are deleted as The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, The International Herald Tribune are erasing or changing links and even pulling articles by former writers.

Sooo....maybe my little hissy fit about the NYT broken link to my post wasn't so paranoid after all. They are out to get me--an it's my own family members! It chills me to recall what I wrote, all unknowing, just last month:

My paranoid side suggests they deliberately mangled the link because I criticized Times' policy.

It also plays havoc with Wikipedia links, Rothman points out [that's a bad thing?] See Thomas Crampton's piece on this. Rothman asks:

Is the above a preview of the damage that Google and Amazon could do someday to e-books when interbook linking becomes common but profit motives and corporate politics win out?

More chills and shivers.

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Amazon's Kindle DX Unleashed

Have you seen/read about Kindle DX: Amazon's 9.7? Here's some details:

Thickness: Just over 1/3 of an inch

Holds up to 3,500 books, mags, docs

Display: 9.7" diagonal e-ink screen

Auto-Rotating: portrait to landscape

Built-In PDF Reader

Text-to-speech feature

3G Wireless: no monthly fees or contracts

Long Battery Life: Read for days without recharging

Available selections: Over 275,000 books

More Than Books: U.S. and international newspapers including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, magazines including The New Yorker and Time, plus popular blogs, all auto-delivered on built-in 3G wireless.

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Visionary Blogging--Tweet!

If you're serious about blogging for yourself or a business, dip into Visionary Blogging by Easton Ellsworth. Of course the first post that caught my eye was 50 Ways to Mix Your Blog and Twitter--something I should have read before I started tweeting all possible newbie mistakes.

Sure Twitter, like blogging, can be just for fun, social activities, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. Men like to play games with/on computers. Women like to connect, communicate. Surprise--men like to communicate, too, when they discover that aspect of techiness.

I'm seeing comments about how stupid or useless or time-sucking Twitter is. Others complain about stupid tweets--just as I say about blogging, if that is your reaction you are following the wrong people or blogs. For those of us who want to use new social media for business or education purposes, we can't offer incoherent messages. I look forward to learning all I can from people like Ellsworth and applying it to my offerings.

If you're on Twitter and want to see someone who is a Queen of terse, sane, useful tweets, go @AnnCurry. She is prolific, but I don't want to miss even one of hers! Seeing mine on this blog page will have to wait for the anniversary design update, coming June 1. In the meantime, you can subscribe to my Twitter Feed.

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