Writers and Editors

To those of us who have made a living doing traditional reporting, writing, or editing, this whole new world of marketing "content" rather than "writing" sometimes feels like crass commercialism. One of the easiest passive ways of making money online, for example, is affiliate programs, where if I send a potential buyer to your site, and they buy, you give me a commission on the sale. This opens up whole new ethical dilemmas for reviewers: Do I recommend X, which is excellent, or Y, from which I get a cut, or Z, which offers a bigger cut? Egads. Do I send a potential book buyer to the local independent bookstore, which is struggling to survive and deserves every author's support? Or to Amazon.com (from which I get a few cents for providing a link to a book that gets purchased, which has mastered fulfillment, and which has a super database--but is behaving like a greedy gorilla in the marketplace)? Or to the author's website, whether or not the author is offering an affiliate fee, because the author will make more selling the book directly than from collecting royalties? Or just provide the name and let the book buyer google for a provider? For writers, who are not usually good marketing people, the options are mind-boggling. What would James Joyce do? And that's just with books, which may be disappearing anyway, as us old book lovers die off.

Here are some links to resources or explanations. For example, if you want to sell a PDF version of your very useful "100 ways to salvage your burnt dinner," you might check out eSellerate or Clickbank, who can handle sales and send you a check every now and then.

The survey and scheduling tools are particularly useful, and for small groups are usually free. With Doodle, for example, you can ask a group of 60 to indicate which of five dates would best suit them for a meeting (plus other kinds of choices). The free basic version of survey software such as SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang typically allows you to create a survey with a few questions and (say) no more than 100 responses, and view the results for a short time. You could use this to collect course evaluations, among other possibilities. For more questions, more complex sorting of results, and the ability to export results and add your own branding, you pay.

Tell me your experiences with these vendors and ways of making money online, and let me know of anyone or anything useful I've left out. I'm going to take recommendations here not from vendors but from writers and editors who have actually used these tools or resources and find them worth considering.

Clearly this needs organizing to make it more manageable, but I won't tackle that until I finish the book I'm writing now!

-- Pat McNees (email pat at patmcnees dot com)

RESOURCES FOR DOING BLOGS• Blogging Toolbox (Mashable's links to 120+ resources for bloggers)--start here!
• Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger (Meg Hourihan, Web DevCenter
• Blogging Tips (Keven Ann Willey, as reported in AJR)
• Blogging Basics 101
• Blogging tips galore (Lorelle on WordPress, who among other things offers digital inserts to prevent plagiarism)
• Blogs in plain English (Common Craft video explanation)
• Blogsite (enterprise-level blogging platform, allowing multiple blogs on one blogsite, good SEO visibility), not free
• Blog Usability (top 10 Weblog design mistakes, Jakob Nielsen)
• Content Marketing 101 (Copyblogger on How to Build Your Business With Content)
• Copyblogger (useful blog on blogging, here on the importance of a calendar and planning)
• Daily blog tips
• Google Sites (for a group website or a company intranet--new, and the votes not in on this one yet)
• Great Landing Pages (Copyblogger)
• Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing
• LiveJournal (free, good for blogging among friends)
• Nine Lessons for Would-Be Bloggers (Joshua Porter)
• SEO Copywriting: The Five Essential Elements to Focus On (Brian Clark, Copyblogger)
• 10 Common Business Blogging Questions Answered (Hubspot, focused on business-to-business blogging). Those were most common questions from HubSpot'sScience of Blogging webinar, viewable on demand here, with Dan Zarrella.
• 12 Business Blogging Shortcuts for Time-Crunched Marketers (Corey Eridon 1-5-12, Hubspot)
• Using Google alerts to monitor incoming links/a>
• Why You Need to Build Links to Your Website and What a Good One Looks Like (Rebecca Corliss, HubSpot, 1-24-11) and
• Did You Graduate from Link-Building High School Yet? (Pete Caputa, HubSpot 9-30-08)
• Widget websites (John Kremer's links to websites and other services devoted to making and hosting widgets)
• Business2Blogger (must useful info for business blogging)
• Xanga (personal blogging community)
• BlogHer (a social community for women who blog, with a popular conference in July)
• The $105 Fix That Could Protect You From Copyright-Troll Lawsuits (David Kravets, Wired, 10-27-10). "Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a website enjoys effective immunity from civil copyright liability for user content, provided they promptly remove infringing material at the request of a rightsholder. That’s how sites like YouTube are able to exist, and why Wired.com allows users to post comments to our stories without fear that a single user’s cut-and-paste will cost us $150,000 in court. But to dock in that legal safe harbor, a site has to, among other things, register an official contact point for DMCA takedown notices, a process that involves filling out a form and mailing a check" to the U.S. Copyright Office. Advises Kravets: "If you run a U.S. blog or a community site that accepts user content, you can register a DMCA agent by downloading this form (.pdf) and sending $105 and the form to Copyright RRP, Box 71537, Washington, D.C., 20024."

Blogging Effectively
• Blogs for bloggers. Some you may find helpful (for tips, or as models): Chris Brogan (excellent tips on social media marketing), CopyBlogger, FastCompany, ProBlogger, Seth Godin, Chris G. (Chris Garrett), HubSpot (inbound Internet marketing blog).
• The Best of Copyblogger 2010
• The Best of Copyblogger 2009
• 47 Ways Copyblogger Can Help You Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions
• How to Use the “Rule of Three” to Create Engaging Content (Brian Clark, Copyblogger)
• What are 10 Addictive Types of Content? (Jeff Bullas)
• Engaging Content Posts Don’t Stop After You Hit Publish (Blogging Pro
• 5 Really Annoying Blogging Mistakes That Will Make Your Blog Annoying To Visit
• How to Write Engaging Blogs People Want to Read (Beanstalk, Search Engine Optimization Inc.)
• Plucked From Their Web Writing to Promote a Vaseline Brand (Tanzina Vega, NYTimes, 11-8-10). Major firm uses crowdsourcing (three bloggers) to find product spokeswomen.
• Bloggiesta, hosted by Natasha from Maw Books, is a three-day challenge to improve your blog. Reading the entries will remind you of things to do to improve your own blog.

Blogging Professionally
• Blogging Pro Job Board
• Blogging for Dollars (Darren Rowse, ProBlogger, 9-23-04)
• Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger (Meg Hourihan, O'Reilly Web Center, 8-12-02)
• How to Make Money From Your Blog – Direct Methods (Darren Rowse, ProBlogger 2-22-06)
• Guest Blogging on Blogging Pro, in partnership with My Blog Guest (become a guest blogger -- or get your blog entries from the collection of guest-blogger articles)
• Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks (John Tozzi, Bloomberg Businessweek 7-13-07). How a personal obsession can turn into a popular favorite and maybe even a full-time job
• Blog Herald (Blogging News for Bloggers)

BLOGGING PLATFORMS:

Compare platforms (read what others say):
• The 10 Best Blogging Platforms in 2011 (Armando Roggio, Practical Ecommerce, insights for online merchants)
• Blogger vs. WordPress (Basil C. Puglisi, Digital Brand Marketing, gives the pros and cons on both blog services)
• 7 Best Blogging Platforms (Harry Marks, Lifed 11-8-11)
• The 10 Best Blogging Platforms (Jarel Remick, Appstorm.net 10-4-10 -- with links to extras for each, and details on "hosted or self-hosted")

• WordPress (Web-based, free, an open source blogging platform, most popular platform, with huge community of developers; allows no ads)
• WordPress Tips Newsletter (Tom Johnson's blog)
• Blogger(Web-based, free, owned by Google, whose ads you can post)
• Drupal (an open source content management system with blogging features)
• Expression Engine
• Joomla!
• Movable Type (a professional publishing platform, for developers)
• Posterous spaces (Web-based, free, hard to set up, easy to post messages by email) says Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker on 5 best blogging platforms (6-10-10)
• Squarespace (Web based, monthly fee)
• Typepad (for Movable Type fans--the best, says Mashable), not free
• Tumblr (Web-based, free, a cross between a blog and a Twitter feed, good for ecommerce merchants)
• Twitter (mobile-based one-sentence blogging, a topic discussed separately)

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About the Social Graph (Google's explanation of how all those people's names show up on your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn pages, saying, "You might be friends with X, Y, and Z."

Analysis: Which URL Shortening Service Should You Use? (file under Problems we didn't know we had) by Danny Sullivan offers a thorough analysis of which URL-shortening services are good and bad, in which ways. Of particular interest to Tweeters.

Basics of various social media explained on excellent teacher training videos from Russell Stannard. Includes tutorials on JING, iTunes, Twitter, Blogger, Survey Monkey, Delicious, Glogster. Great website.

Better User Experience with Storytelling (Part 1, Francisco Inchauste, Smashing Magazine). How user experience professionals and designers are using storytelling to create compelling experiences that build human connections. Read more about the UX Storytellers Project here. Then you will probably want to buy the book: Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design by Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks (foreword by Ginny Redish), about the power of storytelling to improve the user experience. Check it out a bit through Frequently Asked Questions.

Branding. Personal Branding Basics for 2011 A brand is a promise, explains Chris Brogan. Read this, then scroll down and find links to more excellent tips on branding.

Can We Be Facebook Friends? Can doctors and patients be Facebook friends? (entry on Social Media Healthcare

A checklist for website content work (Erin Kissane, A List Apart -- for people who make websites, 3-8-11)

Citrix systems include GoToMeeting (for online meetings) and GoToWebinar (webinars for up to 1000 attendees).

Content Marketing Boot Camp:Everything You Wanted To Know In One Post (Shane Snow, The Content Strategist, 1-19-12)

Content Marketing 101. "In contrast to 'interruption' marketing such as television commercials or direct mail, content marketing involves delivering requested information with independent value that creates trust, credibility, and authority for the business that provides that value. Sonia Simone of Copyblogger, in a five-part tutorial, lays out the basics. Start with How to Build Your Business with Content, then go to Simone's The Three Essentials of Breakthrough Content Marketing, and read on.

Cool Site of the day and Cool site of the day archives. Feeling confident? Submit your site.

Cover It Live. A Web-based live blogging tool, which allows you to broadcast live commentary to your readers. A partner of Demand Media (not a hero in the world of writer's rights). Check Reviews & News along right side.

Crowd Accelerated Innovation. How web video powers global innovation (19-minute video of TED's Chris Anderson on how the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation)

Cracking the Facebook Code: Discovering 10 of Facebook's biggest secrets by Thomas E. Weber (The Daily Beast). Weber cites David Kirkpatrick's book, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World.

Document Cloud, created by journalists from ProPublica and The New York Times as an online repository of source documents. From an interesting story in the newsletter of the Association of Health Care Journalists: "Explore how the Las Vegas Sun used DocumentCloud to present hospital inspection reports, and the violations they contained, to its readers": an interactive graphic created by combining Document Cloud with Flash "to make the reports searchable and more meaningful to the public"

Drupal BarCamp 2010. Listen to sessions in audio, including Josh Ward of Volacci on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Everything Old Is New Again: The Return of the Live Event (about the changing level of students' comfort engaging in face-to-face communication, and readers' desire to be in touch personally with the creators whose products they then buy--by Tim Brookes of the Champlain College Publishing Initiative)

Facebook (major social networking site, tending more toward personal than professional)
• Facebook for the Famous (Matt Haber, Today, Fast Company, on WhoSay (social media for celebrities only)
• A Facebook story: A mother's joy and a family's sorrow. Ian Shapira, Washington Post, has edited and annotated Shana Greatman Swers Facebook page to tell her story from pre-baby date nights to a medical odyssey that turned the ecstasy of childbirth into a struggle for life.
• Facebook Scandal Version 2.0 (Michael S. Malone, ABC News, 2-20-09,on Facebook's growing pains and our rights as Facebook users)

5 Common Twitter Myths That Are Hurting Your Efforts (Lauren Dugan, AllTwitter, the unofficial Twitter resource, 5-23-11) and 5 More Twitter Myths That Will Cripple Your Success (5-24-11). "Tweets are meant to share ideas largely with strangers who don’t care so much about you but more about what you have to say. Facebook status updates are shared with friends (or at least people with whom you have some sort of relationship). The fundamental difference is that with Twitter, your ideas have to sparkle to catch people’s interests; with Facebook, a number of your connections are already interested in you."

How and why scholars cite on Twitter (Jason Priem and Kaitlin Light Costello, ASIS, 2010)

Forget Privacy: What the Internet Knows About You by Jessica Bennett (Newsweek 10-22-10) and The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets by Julia Angwin (first in Wall Street Journal series on the fast-growing business of spying on consumers). Watch your back!

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Free encyclopedias

The latest entry in the world of free encyclopedias is Knol, a Google project designed, some speculate, to compete with Wikipedia (see Wikipedia's interesting entry on the subject) and Scholarpedia (like Wikipedia, but with articles subject to peer review), and Citizendium (like Wikipedia but more transparent as to authorship). Other sites Wikipedia compares to Knol include About.com, Squidoo, and Helium.com. Those interested in the subject of accuracy in online encyclopedias may find the entry of Criticism of Wikipedia of interest. Many of us find it useful for a quick take on a subject we know nothing about, though we wouldn't use it as a sole source of information.

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Freemium, a business model in which you give away a substantial amount of a core product for free in order to generate revenue by selling a select few premium products to a small percentage of the freebie audience. Businesses that have used this mode, as discussed in this free e-book include Skype (only 12% of users pay), Flat World Knowledge--see those and other case studies, including that of Paul Coelho, whose books became bestsellers after he made them available for free online.

FTC Tells Amateur Bloggers to Disclose Freebies or Be Fined (Ryan Singel, Wired, 10-5-09, pointing out some gaps and weaknesses in the rules) and here are the FTC Guidelines on the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising

Funny or Die: Groupon’s Fate Hinges on Words (David Streitfeld, NY Times, 5-28-11). "Groupon borrowed some tools and terms from journalism, softened the traditional heavy hand of advertising, added some banter and attitude and married the result to a discounted deal. It has managed, at least for the moment, to make words pay."

Google Buzz. David Coursey, of PC World, outlines Five Reasons to Love Google Buzz, Five Reasons Not (Yahoo News, 2-11-10).3 Google Buzz Privacy Concerns. Andrew R. Hickey (ChannelWeb, 2-11-10). And Robert McMillan, of PCWorld, reports: Google Buzz Criticized for Disclosing Gmail Contacts (read the comments, too). Ian Paul, of PCWorld provides a guide to protecting yourself: Google Buzz: A Privacy Checklist(2-11-10). (Love the way PCWorld corrects their original article, showing where the erroneous sentence was deleted and the correction made.) Add Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With New Service by Miguel Helft (NY Times, 2-12-10).

The Highest Converting Facebook Page I've Ever Seen. Glen Allsopp, ViperChill, includes How to Set Up a High-Converting Facebook Fan Page (editing added. This kid needs an editor, with sentences like "There is no industry where people make as many generalisations than they do with SEO"), but he hold readers' interest and builds an audience with helpful advice and insights, as in Affiliate SEO: How websites are ranking in the most profitable niches and How to Really Build Backlinks and Dominate Google/a>.

How to Back Up Your Social Media Presence (Brenna Ehrlich, Mashable, 12-10, on how to download and store the photos, videos, statuses, updates you post -- effectively, your diary online: your tweets, your blog, etc.)

How to Create a Great E-Newsletter. In exchange for your e-mail address you get a free 10-lesson e-course on creating an e-newsletter.

How to Measure Social Media Marketing; 3 Steps (Paul Chaney, Practical Ecommerce --Insights for Online Merchants, 7-12-11)

How to Make Money with Free (Nathan Hangen on Content Marketing, on Copyblogger)

How to Use Twitter. Useful tips by Nathan Bransford

Instant Flipbook (convert PDF files to flash page flipbook in minutes)

JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments, the first PubMed-indexed video methods journal in biology)

Lula's Logic (Seth Godin on vegan ice cream store in East Village as example of why saying less may make marketing sense)

MindMeister (online mind mapping software, for collaborative mindmapping)

Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scobie and Shel Israel

**The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

On Writing for Twitter and Facebook -- a Poynter series by Roy Peter Clark:
• Ways to make room for good writing on social networks
• Why ‘no dumping’ is a good motto for writing on social networks
• How journalists are using Facebook, Twitter to write mini serial narratives
• The case of high heels: How open-ended questions on Facebook can spark story leads
• How to use social networks to brand yourself as a writer

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett, in which you learn that the income may be indirect, not direct

Qwitter (once a day tells you who has stopped following you on Twitter!)

Readability. Install this tool on your website browser and it removes the clutter around what you're reading, it says here.

SEO Is Dead, And The New King Is ‘SMO’ (Ben Elowitz, paidContent, 11-29-10). "Search was critical when answers to questions were scarce," writes Elowitz. Now, it appears, "the audience values content, not keywords. And Facebook sides with the audience. And so it’s time to christen a new era of social-media optimization, or 'SMO.' The era of SMO liberates publishers from the exercise of tricks, hacks and keywords. Instead, the big opportunity is now once again creating and refining the most appealing content possible."

The 6 Types of Blog Commentors: Do You Know Them? (Naomi Dunford, Itty Biz, marketing for businesses without marketing departments)

6 social media platforms at a glance Kent Lewis (iMedia connection)outlines differences in demographics, mindset, ideal fit for Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn,Blogs, Twitter, and YouTube. Who you'll reach, and how.

Skype, software that enables free phone calls via the Internet. And if you have a Webcam on your computer you can see each other (which could be good or bad, but is great for keeping up with the grandchildren). Check out the Skype handset , a phone you plug into a USB port so you needn't use the computer's mic and speakers for Skype phone calls (sold here on IPEVO (an online store for tools for the connected world)

Slideshare (like YouTube for PowerPoint presentations: share your presentations with the world; add audio to create a Webinar)

Smashing Magazine has excellent material on website design (including 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines, tutorials, navigation, typography and free fonts)

Smashing Magazine has excellent material on website design (including 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines, tutorials, navigation, typography and free fonts.

Snagit (screen capture software -- voted favorite in one group of instructional design pros)

Social bookmarking in plain English (Common Craft)

Social Fish: Making It . Elizabeth Chang on group that helps organizations use social networks created by vendors or take advantage of existing social networks to keep in touch with members (Washington Post, 6-28-09)

Social media technology in plain English (great short video explanations from Common Craft)

Social Media and Web 2.0 in Government (WebContent.gov)

Social Media Skills for Journalists (great links in this syllabus for Sree Srinivasan's course,Columbia Graduate School of Journalism)

Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses (Michael A. Stelzner, Social Media Success Summit 2009). Download free PDF file.

Social Network Websites (John Kremer's links, Book Marketing and Book Promotion)

Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are being joined by many other, more specialized sites -- see Wikipedia's list of, and links to, Social networking websites.

SparkList (email marketing software and list-hosting solutions)

Spectacularly creative ads, issue 13 (Dark Roasted Blends)

Spelling mistakes 'cost millions' in lost online sales (Sean Coughlan, BBC News 7-13-11). Revenue per visitor to the tightsplease.co.uk website was twice as high after an error was corrected. "When a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts, a misspelt word could be a killer issue..." "You get about six seconds to capture the attention on a website."

Squidoo links to blogs about social media and Top 100 Squidoo Lenses on Business and Work

Sreetips.com (Sree Sreenivasan, the go-to guy for new media and an excellent tech teacher, on Web 101, wikis, blogs, etc.). Some content free, some $$. See also Sree's new tips. New at social media? Start with Sree's Social Media Guide--a work in progress.(Remember it this way: http:/​/​bit.ly/​sreesoc). Here's a sample: "I promise that my sessions, like my tweets, will most likely be: helpful * useful * informative * relevant * practical * actionable * timely * generous * brief * entertaining * fun * occasionally funny." (Check to see if your Tweets have some of those attributes.) And he quotes: "Facebook is for people you went to college with; Twitter is for people you wish you went to college with."

StumbleUpon (personalized recommendations on the Web)

SurveyMonkey (a free and simple way to create surveys)

TeacherTube (Web-based tool for video sharing)TeacherTube (Web-based tool for video sharing)

TechCrunch (group-edited blog about Web 2.0 start-up products & companies, with many posts written by Michael Arrington)

TED Talks: Ideas Worth Spreading. Excellent speakers on fascinating topics, free to the world, on video, often or usually with transcripts.

Twitter in Plain English (a short introduction to the microblogging service Twitter) and Twitter Search in Plain English, new opportunities for business feedback, tracking real time news and discovering trends (excellent video-explanations by Commoncraft)

Managing Your Twitter Following (Kludgymom, Video Tutorial on Business2Blogger, 5-17-11)

Thumbs up for Roger Ebert’s new revenue model on Twitter (Bill Mitchell, Poynter, 2-17-11) and Ebert fishes some lessons from his (revenue) streams (Bill Mitchell, Poynter, 2-18-11)

The Ultimate Glossary: 101 Social Media Marketing Terms Explained (Kipp Bodnar, Hubspot, 6-23-10)

Ways to make room for good writing on social networks by Roy Peter Clark (Poynter Online, 11-22-10). Part 1 of a series. Part 2: Why ‘no dumping’ is a good motto for writing on social networks (i.e., craft your message), 12=9-10.

Web-Based Creativity: Can Working in Virtual Communities Be More Effective Than Face-to-Face Cooperation? (Science News, Science Daily, 10-5-2010)

Webmonkey tutorials (HTML, JavaScript, design and more), cheat sheets (HTML, CSS and special characters), color charts, and snippets of code (templates and cut-and-paste snippets and scripts you may not know how (or may not want to bother) to program.

Websites: Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign (Cameron Moll, A List Apart--for people who make websites)

The Yahoo! Style Guide: The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content for the Digital World, in both print and digital (for Kindle) editions. A guide to providing online content, with sections on making site accessible to all and search-engine optimized. Click here for supporting website, with entries on such online concerns as eye-tracking (where readers look first) and user-interface basics.

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RESOURCES FOR DOING BLOGS
• Blogging Toolbox (Mashable's links to 120+ resources for bloggers)--start here!
• Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger (Meg Hourihan, Web DevCenter
• Blogging Tips (Keven Ann Willey, as reported in AJR)
• Blogging Basics 101
• Blogging tips galore (Lorelle on WordPress, who among other things offers digital inserts to prevent plagiarism)
• Blogs in plain English (Common Craft video explanation)
• Blogsite (enterprise-level blogging platform, allowing multiple blogs on one blogsite, good SEO visibility), not free
• Blog Usability (top 10 Weblog design mistakes, Jakob Nielsen)
• Content Marketing 101 (Copyblogger on How to Build Your Business With Content)
• Copyblogger (useful blog on blogging, here on the importance of a calendar and planning)
• Daily blog tips
• Google Sites (for a group website or a company intranet--new, and the votes not in on this one yet)
• Great Landing Pages (Copyblogger)
• LiveJournal (free, good for blogging among friends)
• Nine Lessons for Would-Be Bloggers (Joshua Porter)
• SEO Copywriting: The Five Essential Elements to Focus On (Brian Clark, Copyblogger)
• 10 Common Business Blogging Questions Answered (Hubspot, focused on business-to-business blogging). Those were most common questions from HubSpot'sScience of Blogging webinar, viewable on demand here, with Dan Zarrella.
• Using Google alerts to monitor incoming links/a>
• WordPress Tips Newsletter (Tom Johnson's blog)
• Widget websites (John Kremer's links to websites and other services devoted to making and hosting widgets)
• Business2Blogger (must useful info for business blogging)
• The $105 Fix That Could Protect You From Copyright-Troll Lawsuits (David Kravets, Wired, 10-27-10). "Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a website enjoys effective immunity from civil copyright liability for user content, provided they promptly remove infringing material at the request of a rightsholder. That’s how sites like YouTube are able to exist, and why Wired.com allows users to post comments to our stories without fear that a single user’s cut-and-paste will cost us $150,000 in court. But to dock in that legal safe harbor, a site has to, among other things, register an official contact point for DMCA takedown notices, a process that involves filling out a form and mailing a check" to the U.S. Copyright Office. Advises Kravets: "If you run a U.S. blog or a community site that accepts user content, you can register a DMCA agent by downloading this form (.pdf) and sending $105 and the form to Copyright RRP, Box 71537, Washington, D.C., 20024."
BLOGGING PLATFORMS:
• WordPress (Web-based, free, an open source blogging platform, most popular platform, with huge community of developers; allows no ads)
• Blogger(Web-based, free, owned by Google, whose ads you can post. Some problems reported)
• Movable Type (a professional publishing platform, for developers)
• Posterous (Web-based, free, hard to set up, easy to post messages by email) says Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker on 5 best blogging platforms (6-10-10)
• Squarespace (Web based, monthly fee)
• Typepad (for Movable Type fans--the best, says Mashable), not free
• Tumblr (Web-based, free, a cross between a blog and a Twitter feed)
• Twitter (mobile-based one-sentence blogging, a topic discussed separately)
• Xanga (personal blogging community)

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• What the heck is RSS (Copyblogger explains RSS, feed readers, bookmarks, chicklets, etc.)
• An explanation of RSS/​feeds/​online newsletters (Yen Cheong, on The Book Publicity Blog)
• Feed 101 and Feedburner Help Group
• RSS, explained (Wikipedia)
• What is RSS (ProBlogger's explanation: It's like a subscription that is delivered to your RSS reader everytime a website you've subscribed to updates.)
• RSS in Plain Language (Common Craft)
• RSS, Twitter, email subscribers, please read (Seth Godin)
• Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader (Marshall Kirkpatrick)
The Ultimate RSS Toolbox – 120+ RSS Resources (Mashable)
Readers include: Bloglines, Google Reader , Newsgator, Google Feedburner (now Google-owned),My Yahoo, SharpReader, FeedReader, AmphetaDesk, RSS Bandit

RESOURCES FOR DOING PODCASTING • Podcasting Toolbox (Mashable's links to 70+ podcasting tools and resources) • Introduction to Podcasting (Learn Out Loud). What is podcasting? How do I listen to a podcast? • Apple's answers to FAQs on podcasting • How to Create Your Own Podcast - A Step-by-Step Tutorial (Corey Deitz, About.com) • Wikipedia's useful entry and links on podcasting • podCast411 (tutorials on podcasts and podcasting and links to more tutorials) • Audacity (the free cross-platform, open-source software for recording and editing audio) • GarageBand (Mac software used to create music or podcasts) • Libsyn (liberated syndication) -- one stop hosting solution for everything you need to start podcasting, get your podcast in iTunes, become an App. "Cheap, simple, reliable," says one writer (TL). "Begin building your audience immediately." • Podcasting Legal Guide (Creative Commons) • The B&H Equipment Guide to Telephone Interviews (Sam Mallery) • The B&H Handheld Digital Audio Recorders Buyer's Guide (Sam Mallery)

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RESOURCES FOR DOING EZINES

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ONLINE GAMES TO ENGAGE THE BRAIN

Brain Teasers. A series of games (birdwatching, memory match, monster garden, speed match, spatial speed match, color match, lost in migration and chalkboard)designed by lumosity to improve cognitive function by improving memory and attention.

Do you know your states? (an addictive geography game from Jim's pages, which contains a miscellany of goodies)

Hue Shift, a brain teaser from Kongregate, a Flash game site.

JetPunk. Great timed quizzes in many categories. See how you fare on these, among others:
• Countries of the World
• Computer nerd acronyms quiz
• Name the Elements
• Name the Planets
• States in the U.S.A.
• NFL Football Teams
• Fast typing to 100
Great quizzes -- save link for rainy days!

Selective attention test (on YouTube) and follow-up, The Monkey Business Illusion by Daniel Simons.

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