Land of the Open and Free? We’ll See…

I have been a fan of the openness of Web 2.0 — we’re listening to music, watching movies and TV shows, replaying Michael Phelps Olympics videos over and over again. All for free and open to anyone willing to put in the time and energy to click a few times. Everything I’ve read tells me it’s the open source decade, when licenses and copyrights will be a thing of the past. But the former journalist in me is skeptical.

This week, I wrote for another site about the Web 2.0 phenomenon of free books and free magazines online. The old-timer in this area is Project Gutenberg, with its 25,000 free books in its online book catalog. Also out there is the catalog of 30,000 books at the Online Books Page maintained by the University of Pennsylvania, Google Books, and Bibliomania, which has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays online, along with message boards about books and authors and lots of reference materials.

Keep in mind that all these forward-thinking sites are prohibited by copyright law from reproducing any books published after 1923, so they all contain classics. But there’s Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and a slew of other recognizable (albeit classic) authors whose works have outlived the copyright laws.

An even more controversial newcomer to the Web 2.0 world is Mygazines, a site that encourages its members to upload their copies of Life, Time, Playboy and many more magazines as PDFs, which are then converted into easily readable “flip book” versions of magazines that anyone can read for free online. This, of course, has sent the publishing world into a tailspin over copyright laws and I’ve read that attorneys are working overtime to shut the place down. But so far, it’s still out there, as you can see from my screenshot. I personally (former journalist that I am) love it.

For those of you who prefer to live within the confines of the law, Zinio offers a long-overdue service. By obviously partnering with the magazine industry, Zinio offers single-issue purchases of magazines online, providing you with immediate access to the issue you wanted to read and saving on paper by letting you read the entire thing online. Awesome. The corner newsstand on your laptop.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Definr — Bookmark It!

I love little Web 2.0 tools that make my writing life easier, and discovered Definr recently. This is definitely one to bookmark if you do a lot of writing and occasionally have to look up that stray word for which you need a definition. I’d heard that Definr takes just a nanosecond to provide you with a definition, so I gave it a road test. As you can see from my screenshot, the word was “sycophant” — don’t we all know one or two? — and Definr gave me the definition in a split second.

Definr has more than 18,000 cached definitions, so you’re bound to find your word. Some of the most popular words that users have wanted definitions for? Blithesome, lithesome, frisson, chaplet, dreck, avuncular, cicatrix, reticent, sanguine.
I know it’s a small tool, but one worthy of bookmarking.

Related articles by Zemanta
Zemanta Pixie

One More Thing I Love — Grammar Girl

If you’re not sure of the difference between “than” and “then,” if you’re always stumped by “its” and “it’s,” you might want to bookmark Grammar Girl – one of my favorite places to visit on the Web. Mignon Fogarty keeps the website upbeat and user-friendly, and crams it with handy grammar podcasts. For example, today I listened to her podcast explaining the difference between “biweekly” and “semiweekly”. Do you know the difference? You can also download the Grammar Girl quiz widget and place it on your blog, as I’ve done here.

BTW – don’t forget to check out my grammar articles on eHow – “How to Correctly Use Its and It’s” (a pet peeve) and “How to Correctly Use Their, They’re and There.”

Related articles by Zemanta
Zemanta Pixie

Help a Reporter — If He Helps You First

OK, so Peter Shankman is a handsome New Yorker with a pretty interesting blog. He writes a lot about keeping in shape, so that’s cool.

But wait — Shankman has a website, helpareporter.com. Not helpareportergethisfactsstraight.com, not helpareporterwriteasentence.com, not helpareporterwithgrammar.com, and not helpareporterfindajob.com. Now there’s an idea.

No, Shankman’s site permits PR folks (and the general public, I guess) to sign up as potential “sources” reporters can query. If you sign up, you get daily emails from Shankman, who does you the big favor of sending reporter queries your way, in case you can provide sources, names, phone numbers, ideas. I guess Shankman’s playing the buff middle man between the Great Fourth Estate and the unwashed masses of PR people. His website also warns us (because God knows we’re so out of control) not to spam reporters with unrelated, baseless attempts to get our “clients” some air time or two inches in the Business section.

Here’s my question — where’s helpaPRperson.com? I dunno, but it seems to me (I “represent” public school districts in New York) that PR people need a lot more help than journalists. I’m always wondering what’s happened to the press and where they’re all hiding. I’m always searching for a warm body with the least bit of interest in education stories. As a former journalist, I know a decent story idea when I see one or pitch one. But there’s never a reporter in sight, at least not in my neck of the woods. What’s a PR person to do? Start a blog? An ENewsletter? Use the Web to manage his own message? Now there’s an idea.

BTW — if you want to helpaPRperson, you know where to find me.

Related articles by Zemanta
Zemanta Pixie

A Few Great Websites Picked Up at NSPRA…

NSPRA’s first real day of workshops and seminars provided us with an exhausting mountain of information and tips, and without recounting everything I learned at this late hour, I will instead provide you with some of the great links that were thrown out by presenters today. I’ll have to do more in-depth summaries when I have a bit more time and I’m not out partying with the NY delegation. (Great time, by the way.)
First, check out Wendy Puriefoy’s websites at the Public Education network, including the PEN website, PEN’s Give Kids Good Schools website, and the Civic Index website she discussed in this morning’s keynote. Great reading all around and evidence that PEN is doing good work throughout the country.
I attended Tim Carroll’s skill session, “Byte Into Technology to Energize Your PR Efforts,” a fun workshop that looked at all the ways PR folks can use technology to communicate with constituents. Tim’s session examined podcasting, blogs, e-newsletters, web streaming and the dreaded database management issues we’re all tackling these days. So many things are possible. I trolled through some of his web resources, and discovered this blog done by the Mansfield Independent School District. The most recent posts were from a Mansfield delegation of educators visiting China.
By all means, check out the presentation done by Brian Woodland, APR, of the Peel District School Board in Canada. His presentation, titled “The Top 5 in 5: The Key Trends that Will Occupy You and Your District in the Next Five Years,” and most others taking place here, can be found on the NSPRA website. Mr. Woodland’s special session was informative, entertaining, and downright hilarious.

Related articles by Zemanta
Zemanta Pixie

What is Social Media?

I found an interesting eBook, “What is Social Media,” that’s worth reading when you have time for 40 pages. The good news is that you can come here anytime you want to catch up on your summer reading. It’s a well-organized and easy-to-read guide to the basics — blogs, Youtube, Digg, Delicious, and more. Once you read it, you’ll understand all those crazy terms that have been leaving you behind in the dust!

Zemanta Pixie

Multitasking and Overloading

The Associated Press has unveiled a 71-page study that looks at how young people consume news these days, and its seems that they suffer from “news fatigue,” overloaded with facts and frequent information updates, but often have trouble finding more in-depth news.

The study, released today at the World Editors Forum in Sweden, also reported that young readers yearn for quality and in-depth reporting, but have difficulty immediately getting such content. The report also says that the process they use to get their news involves multitasking and reading e-mails.

In the report, the AP recommends that news outlets “develop easier ways for readers to discover in-depth content and to avoid repetitious updates of breaking news.” The purpose of the study was to obtain a deeper understanding of the news consumption of younger audiences.

The young people who participated in the study also said they’re unable to give their full attention to the news because they are often simultaneously engaged in other activities, such as reading e-mail. That seems to be a dramatic shift from previous studies, which showed that people sat down to watch the evening news or read the morning newspaper.

“Our observations and analysis identified that consumers’ news diets are out of balance due to the over-consumption of facts and headlines,” said Robbie Blinkoff, co-founder and head anthropologist at the Baltimore, Md.-based Context-Based Research Group, which conducted the study for the AP.

Young people were studied in six major metropolitan areas: Houston, Silicon Valley, Philadelphia and Kansas City in the United States; Brighton, Britain; and Hyderabad, India.Have some news

Image by heidi.vilppola via Flickr

Related articles

Zemanta Pixie

Using Google Docs

We have been using Google Docs in my office recently, particularly because my staff and I all write a gazillion profiles of individuals retiring from our organization, in preparation for our annual Retirement Reception. It’s a great tool because it keeps me up-to-date on everyone’s progress, and permits me to easily go in at any time to edit or write profiles. My secretary, the hard-working and intelligent Doreen, also can keep track.
Creating and storing your documents (this includes docs that work and look just like MS Word, Powerpoint and Excel files) on Google Docs means they’re stored online. That also means they can’t be deleted from your hard drive and that you can open them from any computer. No more flash drives, CDs for storage, or losing all your documents when you get a computer virus or when your computer goes kaput. Everything in Google Docs is secure and password-protected, but you also can invite “collaborators” (people who can edit and open your documents) or “viewers” (those who can only read them).
Here’s what Melinda Miller of Willard, Mo., an elementary school principal and author of The Principal Blog, says about her use of Google Docs:

* I started downloading everything that came as an attachment into google docs first and then save it also in whatever file I needed to. Other principals in my district and I send official documents back and forth for editing but they haven’t bought into google docs yet.
* PTO Notes – I type up monthly PTO notes for my PTO meetings regardless of whether I can be there or not. Instead of posting these in the teachers lounge or making a copy for each teacher, I “publish” the notes and then send a link to the teachers to read. I could still post one copy in the work room but I forget.
* End of the year checklist – Instead of giving all the teachers a copy of the end of the year checklist to lose, I just downloaded it to google docs, “published” it, and then sent them a link. I really just want them to have a copy to refer to and then I will give them a final copy but this is better than copying a lot of times. They can just refer to it until closer to the end of the year.
* End of year info – The end of the year comes at us so fast that I thought I would also type up some “helpful info” and send it as a document as well. This one is a work in progress and I told them that I would be adding to it and not to make a bunch of copies but to just save the link and refer back to it. (I don’t think they have even explored delicious yet.)

Try using Google Docs. Go to docs.google.com and open a free account and just start. It’s worth it and I can almost guarantee that it will save your sanity. Once you’ve mastered using it, sign up your colleagues. It’s an efficient way to share and communicate. If you’re still a bit reluctant, take the Google Docs tour first.