With a week to go before it closes out, the Humble Ebook Bundle has sold nearly 46,000 bundles and made some $577,000 for its authors and for charity.
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Scooped by olsen jay nelson onto Resources and trend analysis for authors, webcopy writers and web developers |
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A few days ago, I tweeted a link to a survey which purported to show that self-publishers had captured 77% of the spots on the Kindle Top 200 Science Fiction Bestseller List. As it turns out, the l... Delete the scoop?
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Alfredo Corell's curator insight,
January 8, 6:47 PM
While not everyone can make infographics from scratch, there are tools available on the Web that will help you create your very own infographics. In this article, they-re listing more than 20 such options to help you get your messages across to your readers, visually.
Some of them really simple. Most of them... visual. Try, gooo 
Devrim Ozdemir, Ph. D.'s curator insight,
January 9, 8:39 AM
While not everyone can make infographics from scratch, there are tools available on the Web that will help you create your very own infographics. In this article, they-re listing more than 20 such options to help you get your messages across to your readers, visually.
Some of them really simple. Most of them... visual. Try, gooo Delete the scoop?
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Zuck's sister is angry about her photo being shared and would like to teach the world about morality. Delete the scoop?
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If you spend time on Facebook, you've seen a great weeping and gnashing of teeth as Pages realize that they're only reaching a tiny sliver of their audience... Delete the scoop?
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I met Terri Long on Twitter early in 2011 and quickly became a fan of this generous, upbeat, talented, hard-working indie author. I’ve watched as she’s achieved a level of success that, frankly, I believe we all aspire to. Her marketing efforts have paid off so well that her debut novel, In Leah’s Wake, often sells at a rate of over 100 books a day. I’m thrilled to host Terri as a guest on my blog today, as she shares a few highlights about the impressive road she’s traveled: Indie publishing is a new frontier. Like all frontiers, it’s both exhilarating and scary. We can go it alone, feeling lonely, making avoidable mistakes. Or we can do it together – helping, promoting and supporting each other. Publishing my novel has been a learning experience. Among the most important lessons is our need to build a community. A community of author friends brings an enhanced network of readers and writers that only a bestselling author can create on his or her own. Delete the scoop?
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Since I started blogging nearly 2 years ago the features that a lot of bloggers included in their blogs have changed dramatically as the social web becomes a vital component of the way we use the web and integrated into the online world. Delete the scoop?
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Blog post at Blog Tips for a Better Blog - We Blog Better : Who else wants to be successful in blogging? Via Ileane Smith Delete the scoop?
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What is Reddit doing to the personalities of those who use it obsessively? Jeremy Wilson dives into the bowels of the site to ask whether our online personas are being shaped by this anything-goes social news forum. Delete the scoop?
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Social media blogs are updated with thousands of posts on a weekly basis, but we wanted to sift through a list and create the 100 best ones from 2012 (A lot of great blog posts! Via Susan Bainbridge Delete the scoop?
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The self-publishing revolution that exploded when the Kindle came to town continues to expand. A number of writers are now making a living publishing their own ebooks. Delete the scoop?
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Professor Word is a useful browser plugin to help you develop your vocabulary. It enables you to click on words in a text on any webpage and get a definition. It also shows related words. Good tool for vocabulary building.
Via Nik Peachey, Limitless Learning Limited, Lynnette Van Dyke, Jim Lerman 
Maria Valdes's comment,
October 15, 2012 7:11 AM
It does work with Mac, I've just checked. It might be a problem of the browser, not the app.
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"From time to time people express amazement at how I can get so much done. I, of course, aware of the many hours I have idled away doing nothing, demur. It feels like nothing special; I don't work harder, really, than most people. Nonetheless, these people do have a point. I am, in fact, a fairly prolific writer.
"Part of it is tenacity. For example, I am writing this item as I wait for the internet to start working again in the Joburg airport departures area. But part of it is a simple strategy for writing you essays and articles quickly and expertly, a strategy that allows you to plan your entire essay as you write it, and thus to allow you to make your first draft your final draft. This article describes that strategy.
"Begin by writing - in your head, at least - your second paragraph (that would be the one you just read, above). Your second paragraph will tell people what your essay says. Some people write abstracts or executive summaries in order to accomplish this task. But you don't need to do this. You are stating your entire essay or article in one paragraph. If you were writing a news article, you would call this paragraph the 'lede'. A person could read just the one paragraph and know what you had to say.
"... there are four types of discursive writing. Each of these types has a distinct and easy structure, and once you know what sort of writing you are doing, the rest of the article almost writes itself. The four types of structure are: argument, explanation, definition, and description. So, as you think about writing your first paragraph, ask yourself, what sort of article are you writing. In this article, for example, I am writing a descriptive article." Via Jim Lerman Delete the scoop?
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Some very bright folks pointed out that the data used for the survey on the 26th was actually pulled from Amazon’s Popularity index, rather than their Bestseller index. What’s the diffe... Delete the scoop?
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The digital pioneer and visionary behind virtual reality has turned against the very culture he helped create Via Xaos 
Xaos's curator insight,
December 30, 2012 3:07 AM
Well, that’s what my new book’s about. It’s called The Fate of Power and the Future of Dignity, and it doesn’t focus as much on free music files as it does on the world of finance—but what it suggests is that a file-sharing service and a hedge fund are essentially the same things. In both cases, there’s this idea that whoever has the biggest computer can analyze everyone else to their advantage and concentrate wealth and power. [Meanwhile], it’s shrinking the overall economy. I think it’s the mistake of our age.” The mistake of our age? That’s a bold statement (as someone put it in Pulp Fiction). “I think it’s the reason why the rise of networking has coincided with the loss of the middle class, instead of an expansion in general wealth, which is what should happen. But if you say we’re creating the information economy, except that we’re making information free, then what we’re saying is we’re destroying the economy.” Delete the scoop?
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I find marketing tips everywhere. Especially from reading fellow bloggers. Check out this round up of awesome marketing tips I found while sick. Via Ileane Smith 
Ileane Smith's curator insight,
December 3, 2012 1:27 PM
Google is Necessary to your blogging…Got it? Ms. Ileane Smith knows this. Duh right? I mean Basic Blog Tips is one of the big guns. So when she reminds us to get Googling the right way. I listen up. Google Analytics and webmaster tools are vital. You need them. You need to use them. And here’s why Ileane says to listen to what Google has to say. Excellent marketing tip if I do say so MYSelf. Delete the scoop?
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I gave this talk at TechWeek L.A. (where else on such a topic?) last week as I felt the new social media evolutions, particularly the rise of the interest graph, are making things move quickly on that subject.
Why do we remember famous people in history? How? How about today's celebrities? And how are the Internet and the Social Web changing that now?
A look at the fame creation process tells us it is indissociable from the media creation process, which has been deeply impacted by new information technology. The Andy Warhol prediction is probably no longer valid and we need to rethink fame in the context of a distributed Internet network which more and more becomes topic-centric and no longer people-centric. Via gdecugis 
Marco Fabiani's comment,
December 11, 2012 2:26 PM
I have to find out how to use the curation for myself
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Robin Good: If you are about to decide which company/service to use to publish the paperback edition of your ebook you may have landed on at least one of the two companies in this sector: CreateSpace and Lightning Source.
"If you’re looking for a low cost, high royalty option, the two major competitors are Createspace and Lightning Source. While both are reputable companies that produce library-quality books, there are major benefits, drawbacks and differences to each that every author should be aware of before making an educated choice."
This article provides a good and informative overview of the key differences, pros and cons of these two services depending on the specific needs you may have.
Useful. Informative. 8/10
Full article: http://www.molly-greene.com/the-great-debate-createspace-or-lightening-source-for-self-published-print-books/
Via Robin Good Delete the scoop?
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A TWEET IS NOT ENOUGH... Delete the scoop?
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Ken's Key Takeaway: Twitter now has a newer list upgrade. It is the answer to Facebook Groups. They have always had lists, but we can now have people in lists who we DO NOT subscribe to. We can also remove ourselves from other people's lists if we do not want to be on them. It should be interesting: Ken Via Ken Morrison Delete the scoop?
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Milo Yiannopoulos considers a drastic response to the burgeoning epidemic of libel and hatred on the internet. Delete the scoop?
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Excerpted from article: "For decades, visions of the future have played with the magical possibilities of computers: they'll know where you are, what you want, and can access all the world's information with a simple voice prompt. That vision hasn't come to pass, yet, but features like Apple's Siri and Google Now offer a keyhole peek into a near future reality where your phone is more "Personal Assistant" than "Bar bet settler." The difference is that the former actually understands what you need while the latter is a blunt search instrument.
Google Now is one more baby step in that direction. Introduced this past June with Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean," it's designed to ambiently give you information you might need before you ask for it. To pull off that ambitious goal, Google takes advantage of multiple parts of the company: comprehensive search results, robust speech recognition, and most of all Google's surprisingly deep understanding of who you are and what you want to know.
With Android 4.2 Google has updated the feature with new information cards in new categories, but Google Now isn't important for what it does, well, "now," but the building blocks are there for a radically different kind of platform in the future.
1) A deeper understanding: You may not be familiar with Google Now, primarily because it's only available on the sliver of Android devices. It's essentially an app that combines two important functions: voice search and "cards" that bubble up relevant information on a contextual basis. One favorite example is a voice search for something that pulls from all those multiple sources and turns it into a comprehensible and useful result.
The first category involved Gmail integration. With your permission, Google will keep an eye on your inbox and recognize flight confirmations, hotel reservations, restaurant bookings, event tickets, and package tracking emails. The new features are part of Google’s growing efforts to provide relevant results based on the knowledge it’s accumulated about you. As search gets better, so do people’s expectations for what it provides.
2) Neural networks: Speech recognition is a very difficult problem to solve, as anybody who has dealt with voice search knows all too well. Recently, Google has changed its approach to making it work in a fundamental way, replacing a system that was the result of years of effort with a new framework for understanding the spoken word. Google has shifted to using a neural network that's much more effective at understanding speech.
A neural network is a computer system that behaves a bit like the actual neurons in your brain do. Essentially, the computer is designed with layers of software-based "neurons" that do the same thing actual neurons do: take input in and "fire" off to other neurons based on the data they receive. The approach "led to about between 20 to 25 percent reduction in the error rate in our system,".
3) Knowledge Graph: In a very real way, Google is trying to get its computers to actually understand what it is you're asking them. Part of that comes from a relatively new initiative called the "Knowledge Graph," the company's effort to compile a database of "entities" in the world. n truth, Google only knows those details because it is so adept at crawling the web — but the additional layer of abstraction created by putting that information into the structured Knowledge Graph means that Google can do more with search results. Having something to talk about and talking to somebody are two different things, and with regard to the latter Google is again taking a Google-esque approach.
4) In a single app, the company has combined its latest technologies: voice search that understands speech like a human brain, knowledge of real-world entities, a (somewhat creepy) understanding of who and where you are, and most of all its expertise at ranking information. Google has taken all of that and turned it into an interesting and sometimes useful feature, but if you look closely you can see that it's more than just a feature, it's a beta test for the future..."
Read full, long and interesting article here: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569684/google-now-android-4-2-knowledge-graph-neural-networks
Via Giuseppe Mauriello 
Francisco Restivo's curator insight,
January 5, 11:44 AM
Vamos ter um novo passatempo... enganar estas aplicações que se propõem adivinhar o que queremos fazer a seguir... Delete the scoop?
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.On the left, geeks and nerds and people who love stuff because the new is new and edgy and changes things. All the way to the right, the laggards, the ones who want to be the last to change. And in the middle, the masses, the ones who wait for the new idea to be proven, cheap and widely adopted. Most people are in the middle, and a few are on either edge. (Note that in every area of interest, different people put themselves into different segments. You might be a shoe geek but a movie laggard). Delete the scoop?
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Latest Numbers: E-Books up, Paperbacks DownDigital Book WorldChildren's e-book sales are up 252% in the first half of 2012 versus the same period last year – a surge thought to be fueled by the stupendous success of The Hunger Games – according to... Via Shevi Arnold Delete the scoop?
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Myth: Landing pages are simple. Reality: There's much more to a successful landing page, study this infographic to learn a few of the reasons why. Via Manish Dhane Delete the scoop?
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