pic: courtesy Internet's Dairy, flickr.com

Mike Elgan from Computerworld is a cool guy, because he has organized the media’s inexplicable interest in Twitter into stages. In his blog post, “The 6 stages of Twitter media coverage hell.” The stages are 1.ignore, 2.dismiss, 3.introduce, 4.hype, 5.criticize, 6.ignore.

My favorite part of his post – “As the media labels, pigeonholes, stereotypes, lionizes, belittles and condescends to the people on Twitter, real people on Twitter remain pretty much everybody and anybody. As the media ignorantly mischaracterizes what happens on Twitter, and what people do with it, Twitter remains a service that people do an unfathomable number of things with.

In all the hype and counter-hype, it will be utterly forgotten that Twitter is nothing more than a service for sending messages that lots of people find useful.

Because people can involve Twitter in a huge number of activities, and can say anything, reporters looking for certain kinds of stories good or bad will always find what they’re looking for.”

He warns us that the we’re moving from stage 4 to 5. Won’t bother me, I’ll continue to Twitter. Hairflip. (Though I actually can’t do that because I have really short hair.)

The first was I took out the list of books read in 2009 from the sidebar and put in a link to a blog post with with list of books. So now I have 2009, 2008 and 2007 books read easily accessible. Also in the post are links to any reviews I may have written about the books.

The other thing I did is take out all the challenges in the sidebar and below the main blog posts. Instead there is one list of the challenges I am doing and links to the blog posts describing them.

These changes are for two reasons. One I didn’t like how long the sidebars were getting, and two, I was having trouble finding the challenge posts when I wrote a review.

Last week, ProPublica named Amanda Michel its first “editor of distributed reporting.”

According to ProPublica’s press release,” In her new position, Michel will initially use crowd sourcing and collaborative journalism methods to report on the impact of the federal stimulus bill. She will also help integrate these newsgathering techniques into ProPublica’s other investigative efforts.”

Before this, Michel was the director of a project called “Off the bus,” on Huffington Post.  This project enlisted 12,000 volunteers or citizen-journalists to cover the 2008 presidential campaign.  Read about how Michel and her team did this- click here.

pic:fuzzcaminski-flickr

Distributed reporting is the latest fad in journalism.

The NYTimes recently announced that it is collaborating with CUNY students its hyperlocal blog “The Local.” The blog is a citizen-blogger project.  The CUNY students will cover news in Brooklyn and will also educate Brooklyn residents about citizen-journalism. 

So, I guess, it’s not a fad, but the next step in journalism. 

“I was at one of those points in my life where I just needed to start getting stuff out. At that point I had been divorced, I had two little kids, I had had this string of lousy jobs, life was horrid and very much not what I thought it was going to be…,” she says, in an interview to shine.yahoo.com.

Listen to the full interview.

But what’s interesting to me is that she had been thinking of being a writer, and she realized that if she wanted to give writing a shot, she must write every day. And how do you ensure you write every day? You blog. And you get people to start reading your blog. And you make sure people like your blog and want to read more.

Says Kamin, “I felt if I put it out there I’d feel more of an obligation to keep up with it. Knowing that my readers were out there made me be regular about it…”

Simple.

That’s what I thought I was going to do. Start blogging, attract readers, become popular, book deal, rich, famous… if only I wasn’t this lazy. 

Bella: How long have you been writing and why did you decide to publish your work?

Matthew Cory: I’ve been writing off and on for as long as I can remember. It was in the summer of 2006 that I started seriously picking it up seriously though. I was speaking with my dad on the phone one day, and he’d found some of my old short stories and poems. He said something along the lines of “These are pretty good; you ought to try and get back into it.” So I wrote a few short stories, fell madly in love with writing, and wrote Like Glass later that year. As far as publishing goes, it just seemed to be the natural progression, the next step to try once I finished writing a story.

Bella: How did you come up with the idea for your book, “Like Glass“?

Matthew Cory: It actually started off as a kind of fantasy/super-natural thriller, believe it or not. I had an idea for a series of short stories, where an “angel of Death” was in training, and each of the different stories was going to be a lesson for her. One of the stories involved a guy dying, and no one really liked him. Eventually, all the super-natural stuff got dropped, the moral lesson forgotten, and it ended up only being the guy’s brother that didn’t like him.

Bella: I know you have written in your blog about your depression, in what ways does this affect your writing, character development, meeting deadlines etc.

Matthew Cory: Thankfully, I set my own deadlines, so it doesn’t affect them too much. That’s not to say it doesn’t affect them at all; I still try and set some kind of goals for myself, and when the depression hits hardcore, it’s difficult to focus enough to work on the project. As for the tone of the writing and the characters, it probably tends to make them a little darker than if I didn’t have to deal with it. I had one reviewer think that Like Glass was rather unbelievable because of how many things go wrong for Rob and the others; my depression probably caused Rob a lot more trouble than he’d go through if a “normal” writer had grabbed his story before I did.

Bella: If you knew when you started the writing and publishing of a book how much work is involved, do you think you would have still done it?

Matthew Cory: I’d like to say I would have, but I think I know myself a little too well for that. I probably wouldn’t have, or at least I wouldn’t have tried to get published. Now that I’ve kinda buried myself up to the neck in it because of that previous naivete though, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Most of it’s pretty simple, just a matter of doing it — editing, cover design, etc. — and I’ve wised up on that and recruited a couple of people who were nice enough to help out on those fronts.

Bella: Do you have a favorite author? If you do, who is it and has this author influenced your writing style?

Matthew Cory: Oh, Stephen King, hands down. I love his conversational style, like you’re sitting there hanging out and just talking with someone over a beer or something. I’ve tried to emulate that to some degree in my works; I’m not brave enough to say I’ve succeeded though

Bella: I have to tell you, Stephen King kind of scares me, I saw an interview with him, the interviewer asked if he ever had any kind of therapy, he said, “No, I write about what scares and bothers me and let other people have the nightmares, and I sleep at night.” or words to that effect, it made me wonder, since depression is sometimes treated with a combination of talk therapy and medication, does your writing have any kind of a therapeutic effect on your depression?

Matthew Cory: In some ways, it definitely helps. I mean, when I wrote Shattered, I’d just come out of a really bad spot (in fact, more of Shattered than I’d care to admit comes from personal research and experience). It helped to kinda draw that chapter of my own life to a close to some degree. It got me to really focus on what had been driving me crazy for a while and get it out of my system. Now that I’ve written about it, it’s almost like I need to focus my energy on something else in life in order to have a “book #3″. Book #3 can’t be about addiction, or alcoholism, or suicide. I’m actually wanting it to be a bit of a “happy” book, and it’s going to take a bit more concentration to pull that together. That should be therapeutic, whether the actual writing is or not.

Bella: What is your favorite type of book and/or what are your favorite books?

Matthew Cory: Mostly I read sci-fi, supernatural kinda stuff — like King, Orson Scott Card, Stephanie Meyer (not just Twilight either — The Host is a killer novel). Right now I’m re-reading Idlewild by Nick Sagan for about the third time. That’s one of my bad habits — I don’t read a lot of new stuff, but I’ll re-read books I love twenty times.

Thanks for the interview Bella; it was a lot of fun

Bella: Thanks for your time in answering my questions, I was pretty nervous about this.

For more information on Matthew Cory, and to read some excerpts from his books, click on this link to go to his website.

Then I started thinking, I used to read a lot of Agatha Christie, I loved Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. I think for some of my library books, for my support your local library, I will have to get some that I haven’t read. I don’t believe I have ever read Murder on the Orient express. I will have to do that this year.

Since its not my thing, I am just directing people there and have no details.

So if you were following me previously, please click on the ‘follow this blog’ to the right of this post so you can follow me again. I could try to explain why I decided to make this change, but it a rather long and complicated line of reason, and one person I tried to explain it to got hopelessly confused. So we will just say I was bored and wanted something to do. LOL!

Happy reading and I will continue to read and post reviews here. 2009 will be here soon, that means I will be starting my challenges and a new list of books read. It looks to be a good year, reading wise at least.

Thanks for your patience while I try to figure this out. I already did it with my personal and design blog the only one left is this one, this is the most complicated blog I do because of the reviews and challenges.

Yes! I have two widgets on my blog, one is the books I’m reading, the other is books I plan to read. Except they are not from LibraryThing. I used to have it but I didn’t like the way it looked. So since I don’t have it, I don’t use the other features. I still haven’t figured everything out about library thing.

]]> http://businessbloggingforbucks.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/blogging-for-bucks/ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:31:43 +0000 bloggingbucks http://businessbloggingforbucks.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/blogging-for-bucks/

What is a blog? 

A blog, named from the term Web Blog , is a web page that is updated frequently with personal comments, insights, web links, photos, videos, podcasts, and much more.

Why blog?
Blogs are very inexpensive, quick, and easy to set up when compared to the cost of website design, programming, and hosting fees.

How are blogs used? Blogs are used for many purposes such as:       
• Selling products and services
• Building customer relationship
• Building communities
• Information on
  –Products
  –Services
  –New product reviews
• Customer updates
• Personal exploits
  –Diaries
  –Family communities
  –Interests
  –Hobbies
  –The list of blog uses is only limited to your imagination!

There are different types of Business Blogging for bucks that are associated with this terminology. For example, many businesses are using blogs successfully as marketing tools to increase their customer base, brand identity, and overall return on their investment. There is, however another type of blogging in which individuals are using their personal blogs to earn money.

If you are thinking that your business should have a blog, then you only need to act on your thought. YES, your business should have a blog! Blogs are about the most powerful marketing tools on the web. Blogs are a wonderful business tool. Just look at the possibilities…

• Establish credibility
• Put a face to your business
• Reach more customers and help new customers find you
• Increase Sales
• Share company news with virtually no advertising costs
• Demonstrate you expertise in your industry and educate your readers
• Boost your search engine rankings (remember, blogs are very search engine friendly)
• Anyone can start a blog! And, VebLogs is here to make sure that your Business Blog will be successful, easy, and fast!
• You don’t have to be a writer to be a blogger. You can use audio or video for your blogs.
• The immediate feedback to your customers means a great deal. If you are dedicated to your customer’s needs, you will be very successful.
• Blogs are much more personal than business websites because they are updated regularly and customers can remain informed about your business.
• Blogs help customers feel more connected to you and in turn your business gains customer trustability.
• Blogs will help you expand your reach by pinging search engines and using RSS feeds (and you don’t even have know what that means), you can syndicate your content online, boost your reach and influence, and allow customers to control their communications with your company.
• Many times, your blog will be the selling point for a customer and can sway prospective customers to choose you over the competition.
• Increase your search engine rankings like never before. You can’t do this with a website. Search engines just love updated content, and blogs are updated with each entry.

These are just some of the advantages for businesses to get into the act of blogging. As you can see, blogs have now become an important marketing tool. VebLogs will help your business enter into the blogging scene and provide assistance and training for your Business Blog .

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It’s time you get your specialty blog, or your niche blog!
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Imdb (thoughtfully combining my unique and equal loves for both movies and databasing) has cemented my excitement about the upcoming Sweeny Todd by conveniently reminding me of the top 4 or 5 reasons anyone should go see any movie.

Above, a screen capture to make you believe again in the power of the cinema.

You will probably have to click on the picture to see the larger image, but it’s a small price to pay for the wealth of information you will receive about this catch of a man who for some reason lives in a house on a golf course and listens to the Eagles. I have taken the liberty of drawing attention to the suspicious items in his post. Try not to get LOST in his eyes.*

*Zing!

NEW YORK – Ludacris will make a cartoon cameo in the 400th episode of “The Simpsons” as a tube of toothpaste that raps, of all things.

OF ALL THINGS, a rapping tube of toothpaste!  He might have been anything!  A wheelbarrow that raps, or a rapping porpoise or, if the writers were feeling particularly esoteric, the classic 1939 film “The Women,” staring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Rosalind Russel that….you guessed it….raps!

I can actually envision this so-called ‘writer’ chuckling to themselves as they pounded furiously away at their keyboard, creating the weakest opening sentence the world has ever seen.  This is way worse than the story about Law & Order: SVU that began:  “Fred Savage is a rapist!  Or at least he is playing one this Wednesday night on NBC!”

Readers, why is this even news?  I can only guess it’s a human interest story because corporate America has finally caught on to how the public can’t get enough of talking personal care items.

I am assuming that the writers of the Simpsons anticipated my disgust and confusion and produced an image to perfectly accompany this blog.

Those ‘yahoos’ then choose to let my internet browser know that Matt Dillon was asking “What are the most effective yet simple ways people can save energy?”  Surely there is no one more qualified than the star of such hits as “You, Me, & Dupree” “Deuces Wild” and “One Night at McCool’s” to reveal to me the mysteries of climate change.  Was Leonardo DiCaprio busy?  Zing!

This is also quite serious.

Satirical.

Nothing is sacred to this guy!

First, see how he ZINGS contemporary white male culture. Try not to bust a gut when he correctly recognizes merely months after the candidates first showed interest in a presidential run that they are all older white males!!! Then, when you think that he couldn’t possibly deliver a more delicious send-up of American culture, thrill when he finally gives it and good to what most satirists wouldn’t even touch, the United States Postal Service!  If this guy does airplane food, I don’t even know what I’d do! Laugh, that’s for sure!

If you can handle it, there’s more!

Evidence.

Spoiler: she is inexplicably turned on by fake hockey games with her girlfriends.

Second spoiler: most of these simulated activites work extremely well with ‘real’ women.

Unfortunately, Penthouse has not yet created a function button that controls the jealousy that you will inevitably experience when you discover that Elektra, as you call her, is cheating on you with Rich, the IT guy 3 cubicles over.

Editor’s Note: Now, I’ve never actually seen a woman, but I have it on very good authority that they all are some basic form of this:

Now With Controversial “Red Bell Pepper” Review