I  just wrote my first review for ComputerShopper.com: Amazon Kindle (Third Generation, 2010 Version).  Take a look!

See my blog for a write-up of the write-up.

In this post, I find content pricing and packaging inspiration in an unusual product: cubes of NYC trash.

I was asked to comment on the iPad launch, for PragPub magazine, just a day after Steve Jobs’ announcement: Visit the PragPub website.

One snip: “This is an Age-of-Aquarius moment for publishing. … Authors will have more freedom (and some expectations) to realize those multimedia dreams of the 90s.”

In a post on MediaBistro’s PRNewser (Nov. 30, 2009), Joe Ciarallo cites a study by Sysomos that asserts that only 23% of Facebook pages have more than 1,000 fans.

On Facebook, brands and bands and other organizations can create a page account that draws fans rather than friends. Fans of a page subscribe to its news items and can post on the page.

The Wordsupply page has just joined the 95% of sites that have more than 10 fans. (Become a Wordsupply fan on Facebook—update your status and help us break 100! :o)

But even for B2C brands—which may seem more likely to draw numerous fans—it’s tough to lure Facebookers away from the comfort of their Home page news streams.

The pages with the most fans feature celebrities and universal ideas like “Flipping the Pillow Over to Get to the Cold Side,” which boasts 2.9 million fans.

But rather than be discouraged by these stats, we are intrigued. Millions of people are using Facebook, fanning pages, joining groups, reading news, and spreading the word. Whether you work as an individual or organization, offering a service or a product, you must create a page and offer your stream.

You can create a page yourself—and claim your brand name: Just go to Facebook and follow the instructions to create a page.

(And if you need help, Wordsupply is ready to start the news stream and keep it flowing!)

Professor Michael Wesch created the following video – it’s “Web 2.0 in five minutes” – using “CamStudio for the screen captures and Sony Vegas for the panning/cropping/zooming animations.”

Beyond the content itself—remarkably current for a March 2007 release—we should study this use of media.  It represents an emerging (if not “new”) way for businesses and thinkers to present information.

The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)

This post is about a different kind of contract—it’s the contract you make with yourself as a writer.

Thanks to National Novel Writing Month—NaNoWriMo—November has become an annual fest of unfettered word-cranking.

Participants are encouraged to write at least 50,000 words from scratch.  Your inner wordsmith gets the keys to a gassed-up muscle car and an endless row of green lights.  Your internal editor gets locked in the trunk or ditched at the rest stop.

What’s new this year is that a computer-book publisher I’m starting to edit and acquire for, Pragmatic Bookshelf, is encouraging would-be high-tech authors to write in November. The result is editor/author Daniel Steinberg’s PragProWriMo.

No participating authors are under any obligation to submit their results to Pragmatic, and I’m not directly involved—I’m just cheering this on.  (Personally, I may do NaNoWriMo to finally finish my coming-of-age novel!)

Here are the PragProWriMo mechanics:

If you are on Twitter, just tweet when you have finished your writing for the day. Use the tag #pragprowrimo and let us know what you wrote and how it went.

If you’re not on Twitter go ahead and post your progress in the comments to this blog. Somewhere you need to declare what you’ve done. It will keep you writing.

The only rule is to keep writing. Other than that, have fun and check back in with us to let us know how it’s going.

Deadlines work, and I hope this helps!  Leave a comment to let us know if you’re trying NaNoWriMo or PragProWriMo!

From my perspective, Gary Vaynerchuk—the boy from Belarus who grew his family’s liquor store in New Jersey into a multimillion-dollar business, and who is now teaching others to use customer service (especially via social media) to grow their businesses—has set a new standard for all authors supporting their books.

I’m piecing together a write-up of his efforts—and maybe a college course—but check out GaryVaynerchuk.com and his Twitter account to see how he spent several months engaging his audience and building anticipation for the October 2009 release of his book, Crush It!, which as Gary announced should hit #2 this Sunday in The New York Times.

For an example of Gary’s promotional efforts, consider his “experience” bundles, offered through his site: http://crushitbook.com/crush-it-the-experience/. If you buy 35, you get a personalized video; if you buy 150, you get an hour on Skype; and so on. This sets an expectation for bulk sales—which I think motivates single-copy sales—and demonstrates the way premium/ancillary offerings will help authors sell books in a world in which content is expected to be (nearly) free. [Authors: What experiences or ancillary offerings can you share?]

In line with his belief in contact and word-of-mouth promotions, Gary hosted a launch party last night at The Bell House in Brooklyn—very cool bar and performance space—exposed brick and rafters, cement floor, set in a warehouse. Gary went through the crowd, thanking everyone.

On stage, Gary said he sees himself benefiting from the “thank-you economy,” in which the people who have received his free videos and advice are purchasing his book out of gratitude. He said that his success comes from actually caring about his audience—by giving, he is getting. [Authors: How can you give to, care for, and support your audience?]

He showed a video preview of the “vook” edition of his book. The vook combines text, animation, music, voiceovers, and still photos. Then, with help from the crowd and verification from the yellow-blazered judges from the Universal Record Database—Gary set the universal record for most glasses clinked in one minute! Closing out the night, Clabo performed the “Crush It!” rap for charity—each $.99 download will feed six in Haiti. See below.

Let me round out this post—a sort of long thank-you to Gary, actually—by embedding two other videos: His powerful presentation at MediaBistro’s Circus in August 2009, and his adventurous Wine Library tasting of the best pairings for breakfast cereal.

See the full-sized version here: http://tv.winelibrary.com/2009/09/08/what-wine-pairs-with-cereal-episode-734/

Entrepreneur and inventor Jay Walker gave the following talk in February 2009 at TED (see below or here).

According to Walker, two billion people are learning English, worldwide, and China is poised to become the largest English-speaking nation—this year. In China, children start to learn English in the third grade.

Whether or not we follow Walker’s portrayal of ESL training as a sort of mania—shouting one’s language lessons en masse may just be fun—we can agree with Walker’s assertion that the standardization of English as the language of business should make it easier to solve the world’s big problems. English may seem like the standard now, but Walker’s saying that’s just the beginning.

For businesses in countries that are predominantly English-speaking, this could simplify overseas marketing, sales, and service. Conversely, as the Tom Friedmans of the world point out, international businesses will find it easier to invade those English-speaking countries.

Is your company marketing in English in countries that are adopting English? Does the propagation of English expand your international opportunities?

In “Marketing Small Businesses with Twitter” [NYT, 7/23/09], Claire Cain Miller profiles some small businesses that are using Twitter’s free platform to communicate with customers and peers. See the New York Times site: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/business/smallbusiness/23twitter.html.

When we strip away the hype around Twitter (hype that is already normalizing a bit), we can see Twitter as a platform that is

1. simple: Twitter is constrained in a good way. The focus is on message, not format—the character limit brings focus.
2. open: Through search, hashtags, @ replies, and visible follow lists, Twitter is built for discovery. The network effects are almost strong enough to let you sit back and succeed.

Twitter deserves a place in most companies’ communication portfolio. It’s a limited user set, and there are dangers in diluting a brand’s voice, but the benefits are strong.

Are you using Twitter for business? Have customers found you through Twitter?

We had the pleasure of editing the first edition of NetLingo, Erin Jansen’s dictionary of approximately 2,500 terms related to computing and the Internet.

Today, NetLingo.com was cited in The Wall Street Journal, in an article by Stephanie Raposo on translating the abbreviations used in texting. You can read the article, “Quick! Tell Us What KUTGW Means,” online (for the next seven days) by clicking here.

Although you may not come across these acronyms and homophones at work—as you attack people or are attacked in an intergenerational one-upgeekship—texting is still growing, and not just among teens.

On the WSJ.com page, several comments dispute or diminish the presence or importance of texting abbreviations. I use them rarely but consider them useful tools for communication, like any other sort of jargon. Interestingly, the article ranks second among today’s most e-mailed articles (and ninth, oddly enough).

Bravo, Erin! Keep up the good work—I mean, KUTGW!