Archive for March 2006

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all my Irish friends. I’m proudly wearing the green tee you see here (and the cold front came through Dallas today… go figure).

Picked up a new word related to words from Ted (whose book I’m currently enjoying — review forthcoming). Backronym is a backward acronym and Wikipedia provides a list. Backronym was coined in 1983. Why did it take me so long to hear of it?

To think I complained about living in a neighborhood where all the street names start with “West.” To make matters worse, some streets have two words (for example, West Street) while others like mine have one word (Weststreet, for example). And of course, there’s a street less than a mile from here that has the same name as mine without the “West.” Some people may mistake that street for mine thinking it’s W. Street.

But, it’s better than living on Psycho Path, a private lane in Traverse City, Michigan. See more wild names in the Street Names Contest Winners list. By the way, the name of my neighborhood also starts with “West.” Strangely, my friend lives on the one street here that’s not named West.

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Author Dan Poynter has written over 100 books. Think he knows something about publishing? Not only has he written three digits worth of books, but he also has a publishing company that publishes and distributes many quality articles, resources, and books about publishing.

Writing Nonfiction is an easy, educational, fast, and enjoyable read. Poynter goes through the authoring and publishing process from idea to marketing. The end of chapter one has a numbered list of the 18 steps to do this. [ Read more... ]

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Author Dan Poynter has written over 100 books. Think he knows something about publishing? Not only has he written three digits worth of books, but he also has a publishing company that publishes and distributes many quality articles, resources, and books about publishing.

Writing Nonfiction is an easy, educational, fast, and enjoyable read. Poynter goes through the authoring and publishing process from idea to marketing. The end of chapter one has a numbered list of the 18 steps to do this.

Poynter explains “The New Book Model,” which takes books from page-layout format to printing them on high-speed laser printers. You can read about it on Para Publishing’s site (http://www.self-publishing.com/sites/para/resources/newbook.cfm). While this sounds like something that’s going to age the book quickly, it won’t because the fundamentals of writing a book change little over time. These include selecting a topic, researching, building a binder and getting organized, creating a title and subtitle, and working through the writing process.

Useful quotes like literary agent Michael Larsen who said, “Books sell five times faster when displayed face out,” appear throughout the book. The binder and information about testimonials are worth the book’s price as few people know about these processes. This impressive book packs a lot of valuable advice in its short 150 pages. In sum, the book walks the talk and is a prime example of its lessons.

Title: Writing Nonfiction
Author: Dan Poynter
Publisher: Para Publishing
ISBN: 1568601107
Date: January 2005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Cover Price: USD: $14.95 Amazon: $9.72

I never wanted to start a business. The thought of managing all the administrative stuff like accounting, legal, and other stuff turned me off. I like doing my job and focusing all of my energies there. Surprising as that’s what I am doing today… managing my own business.

It’s a one-person business and I manage taxes, accounting, and everything that comes with having a business. It’s worth it as the benefits outweigh the little annoyances. Taxes aren’t too bad. But Quickbooks drives me insane at times as I can’t get it to balance. Yet, I can balance the checkbook every month. I’m usually comfortable with software, but not QB. It’s a meanie.

Back to business. I remember way back when a company I worked for came up with a mission statement. It printed colorful cards (credit card quality, not business card quality) and mouse pads for everyone in the department. Even with the portable mission statement, it wasn’t memorable. It used a lot of fancy words and sounded more like, “Blah blah blah.”

Let’s distinguish mission and vision statements with help from Wikipedia:

* A vision statement describes in graphic terms where the goal-setters want to see themselves in the future. It may describe how they see events unfolding over 10 or 20 years if everything goes exactly as hoped.

* Mission: purpose, reason for being.

In some cases, a slogan or tagline could count as a mission statement. There’s also positioning statement for more fun. The article defines it as “a one to two sentence statement that conveys what you do for whom, to uniquely solve an urgent need.”

Rarely do I see any of these statements done right. Most of the time, no one understands or remember the statement. Instead, I recommend coming up with a short and snappy tagline. Something that communicates what you do and the benefits. You can apply this concept with the above statements except try to make them memorable. Here are examples:

“Helping children around the world read and learn.” Scholastic

“Compressed knowledge.” getAbstract (provides abtracts of books)

“Tools for healthier lives.” Mayo Clinic

“For people who love to eat.” Epicurious

Mine? -gulp- “Content that inspires and informs.” Since I write and edit, content captures that. “Inspires action” was my attempt at showing the benefit. Businesses who hire writers and editors want the content to do something, not just sit there and be read. Right?

Wikis At Work looks at three companies trying out wiki as part of their work toolbox. Nokia, a start up, and Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) are experimenting with wikis. The storygets interesting as we read about how each company got into wikis and what they’ve done with them.

I use a wiki whenever working with Robin Good and I’m thankful for his using the tool to manage our work. Robin has many guides in his network. I don’t know how he manages it all. This blog, Bionic Ear, and InformIT Web Design are enough for me and the occasional contribution to BlogCritics.

I’d like to do more especially spending more time reading others’ blogs so I can follow all the conversations. After all, online conversations are the easiest for me to follow except for the time thing.

Robin uses SocialText and it was easy to get up and running. But that’s how it is with all the wikis I’ve tried. No one wiki stands out in my mind.

From the sponsor: Losing hair a little faster than you’d like? Find it with a little help from hair transplant surgery.

I hate to have a topic that doesn’t make anyone smile on a Friday, but with barely a month left before Americans have to file their taxes with the IRS or request an extension… figured it’d be good to pass on this information as soon as possible.

TopTenReviews did the research on tax software so you don’t have to. It might help speed things and get it over with. Here’s the report. Scroll down past the chart to see info on things to look for in tax software.

Tax Software Review 2006

Can’t end this post without something fun so we can get our weekend off to a great start. In honor of sxsw Interactive, which is this weekend, here’s KSolo. Get your karaoke kicks here. When I went to sxsw in 2002, we went to a bar with karaoke and a few sxsw’ers went wild especially Ernie. He was awesome and hilarious singing Brittany Spears’ “Oops, I Did It again.”

From the sponsor: Swimsuit season is coming. Be ready with help from laser hair removal in Toronto. Eh, it might be too cold to swim there … at least for us southerners who like it hot when swimming.

Wal-Mart Enlists Bloggers in P.R. Campaign is using the blogosphere to improve its image. I don’t have a problem with companies working with bloggers. The key is to be open about it. Don’t try to fool readers — they’re smart and know when a blogger is full of BS.

Wal-Mart is going to need a lot of help. Is this a good route? Well, it did get bloggers (me included) talking about it, but not necessarily in the way it hoped (the company wants us to report on warm fuzzies to help its rep.).

As a teen, I held a few jobs. Wal-Mart was the only place that didn’t hire me. Why? Who knows? The interviewee knew I was deaf and the questions were basic. Draw your own conclusions.

From the sponsor: Wal-Mart may have everything, but not facial plastic surgery.

I’ve been dealing with the @#$(* computer for so long that I need a break. I’ll post an update as soon as I am up to it. Thanks to all for sharing thoughts, suggestions, and experiences. One thing that’s coming out of this — a netdrive. This is a standalone harddrive that any computer can access. It’ll be where I save all my data.

Paul sent me this and gave me a much needed laugh. I hope it does the same for you.

Click on image to see larger view in a pop up window.

I know this is an urban myth… but I look at it as a funny cartoon.

From the sponsor: Toronto cosmetic surgery has been changing the faces of many Canadians (and probably a few Americans who wanted to keep things secret) for years.

I’ll try not to make this a whinefest, but it’s hard to let this go without saying something as it’s affecting my work. My computer is very ill. Whenever I tried to reboot it, it would hang on the Windows logo screen. There was also a message about the array being damaged.

Paul fixed it and got it up and running again, though it was flakey and still needed work. So I used it late last week without incident. I copied some files over to my laptop, but not as much as I wanted nor the very latest ones.

The computer had dual drives with one being a mirror of the main drive. Of course, this problem screws both of them. Never found an online service that met my needs for backing up my data elsewhere. What I need is a centralized hard drive that I can access from any computer and have all the latest files there that won’t get corrupted because of operating system or hard drive problems.

A new hard drive is coming in, but according to Paul… the data ain’t recoverable. I refuse to give up hope and have posted a message in a forum to see if there’s a way to get it without spending thousands of dollars with a data recovery service. If you know, I’d be grateful for your help.

Update: More info. Have a RAID1 congfiguration in which a HD failed. The HD has been replaced and the array has been rebuilt, but for some reason, Windows will not load. It hangs immediately after the Windows splash screen. When attempting a repair installation, it hangs after selecting the installation you want to repair.

From the sponsor: Hey, it’s almost St. Patty’s Day. What a better time to check out Celtic Tatoos.

Free Books for Bloggers… is an example of how authors are taking advantage of the Internet to promote their books. Bloggers can access a diverse audience that authors and their publishers could never dream to reach on their own. Blogs create buzz (WOM: word of mouth) and many bloggers wrote about this book’s giveaway. Here’s what the email said:

“I’m responsible for the website of the book Living the Artist’s Life by Paul Dorrell, and this weekend Hillstead Publishing have announced that they are giving away 250 copies of the book free to bloggers – with no requirement to review, to link, to blog about, or to promote in any way. It’s a genuine gift to genuine bloggers.

“This is not an eBook, or a scam – it really is free, and it’s a way to foster conversation about the book that the author has experienced in his nationwide book tour. Currently the book is in its 2nd printing and its Sales Rank on Amazon tends to fluctuate weekly between #10,000 and 210,000#. The author is an art gallery owner and a writer.

From the sponsor: Wonder how many actors had cosmetic surgery in Los Angeles before the Academy Awards.
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