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Here Comes Everybody

October 22, 2010 by Roy Johnson

how change happens when people come together

Clay Shirky’s basic argument in Here Comes Everybody is that the advent of social media (email, FaceBook, MySpace, bulletin boards, Flickr) has fundamentally changed people’s ability to form and act in groups, because it has reduced the cost of doing so effectively to nothing. This is a similar argument to Chris Anderson’s in The Long Tail and FREE: The Future of a Radical Price – that modern digital technology has created a new set of tools and zero-cost opportunities for people to do things that hitherto were the province of small, rich elites.

Here Comes EverybodyThe classic case, now well known, is that of newspapers. When individual bloggers started breaking news stories, the first thing newspapers did was to pour scorn on them. Then, as the tide of ‘citizen reporters’ grew, the newspapers started their own blogs – written by paid journalists (which is not the same thing of course). Then, when they saw advertising revenues switch from print publications to the online world, they started panicking. And that’s where they’re at now. Almost all national daily newspapers (in the UK anyway) make a loss. They are what blogger Guido Fawkes calls ‘vanity publishing’. The Guardian newspaper for instance has a daily circulation of only 280,000 copies, and operates at a loss of £171 million per year. It is subsidised by profits from Auto Trader.

A propos ‘professional’ journalists complaining that bloggers are not really ‘citizen journalists’ Shirky makes the perceptive observation that a) none of them claims to be, and b) they are something else that’s new, which the mainstream media hasn’t yet recognised.

There is very little difference between a paid journalist who blogs (such as Iain Martin for the Wall Street Journal) and Guido Fawkes (libertarian individual blogger) except that Guido is more likely to take risks in exposing political corruption and scandal fraud, whilst Iain’s column is largely amusing and well-informed comment on the same events after they have been exposed.

The other general point Shirky makes is that all technological revolutions (such as the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century) are followed not by immediate change, but by a period of uncertainty and confusion whilst the new replaces the old. At first the old continues, and the new may go unrecognised. But as soon as the new is ubiquitously adopted, it displaces the old. In the early Renaissance scribes were highly regarded practitioners of book production – but the press made them redundant within fifty years.

The same is happening now. We don’t know clearly yet what form the outcomes of fully developed social media will take, but it’s quite obvious already that they are displacing older media such as fax machines (remember those) printed newspapers, film cameras, and handwritten letters.

Shirky has a very good chapter on Wikipedia in which he explains why it is so successful, even though it is written by unpaid, self-selecting volunteers. The reason is that it has self-correction built into its system, and it appeals to people’s altruism. Anybody can add their two pennorth, and if they get something wrong somebody else will correct it – often within a matter of minutes.

There’s more to it than that of course. He produces the now familiar hockey stick graph to show that some systems (as in the Long Tail argument) are more successful because a lot of small instances can add up to more than one big one.

The most profound effects of social tools lag their invention by years, because it isn’t until they have a critical mass of adopters who take these tools for granted, that their real effects begin to appear.

The other basic philosophic argument at work here is that of difference in degree (more of the same) and difference in kind (something new).’What we are witnessing today is a difference in the degree of sharing so large it becomes a difference in kind. That sharing is coming from relatively simple but profound technological devices such as email, Twitter, MySpace, FaceBook, and other social media.’

Every stage of his argument is backed up with practical examples – from the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests organising self-support groups to thwart the Vatican, to pro-democracy campaigners in Egypt, China, and Belarus using Twitter to organise demonstrations.

He makes the excellent point that the success of open source software comes from the fact that because it is based on voluntary contributions of labour, it can afford to fail. For every Linux success story, there are thousands of OSS projects that don’t get off the ground. Commercial software developers can’t afford that degree of failure: they have to choose workable projects in order to pay their own wages.

His study is a very engaging mixture of technology, sociology, politics, and anthropology. He delivers case after case of successful group-forming, and to his credit he also analyses why many groups fail and a few succeed spectacularly. This is an engaging and vigorous polemic with thought-provoking ideas on almost every page. It ranks alongside the work of Lawrence Lessig, Chris Anderson, and Cory Doctorow as a significant gear-shift in the thinking on new technology, new media, and the social changes that are happening in online life before us right now.

Here Comes Everybody   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Here Comes Everybody   Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2010


Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, London: Penguin Books, 2009, pp.344, ISBN: 0141030623


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Filed Under: e-Commerce, Journalism, Media, Publishing, Technology, Theory Tagged With: Clay Shirky, Communication, Cultural history, e-Commerce, Media, Publishing, Technology, Theory

Hot Text: Web Writing That Works

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

new writing  techniques for web communication

If you’re thinking of putting some of your writing on line, keep this rule of thumb in mind. Write 50% less than you would in print – otherwise people will not read it. This is one of the hundreds of tips and guidelines packed into Jonathan and Lisa Price’s new book, Hot Text. They start with a chapter of advice on writing for an audience, and getting closer to the reader, then they move on to something I found fascinating – the concept of ‘writing objects’. This is the practice of splitting up documents into small re-useable parts. It’s basically a plea for applying XML principles during the authoring process. This will enable you to produce Web documents which can be used for any number of purposes.

Hot Text: Web Writing That WorksThis is intermediate to advanced level stuff – not for beginners – and you will need to be patient. There’s a lot of important technological data before they get round to any advice on writing skills. But when they do, it comes in bucketloads. Another important point they make is that text has a double function on the web. It conveys content, but it also acts as an aid to navigation, because we do not have the physical aids provided by printed books. For this reason they advise writers to use plenty of typographical guidance.

They also emphasise the need for brevity and chunking. You should use short sentences, short paragraphs, and make the structure of all documents stand clear in a self-explanatory manner.

Once they get under way, every point is illustrated with before and after examples – 200 words of exposition reduced to 50, for instance. They even deal with issues such as reducing punctuation and moving any statistical data into tables or charts.

The centre of the book is packed with good examples of how to produce efficient writing – leading with punch lines; reducing ambiguity; how to write menus; creating the right tone; how to arrange bulleted lists; and where to place links grammatically for best effect.

They use case studies of sites such as AltaVista, Microsoft, and Amazon to discuss the requirements of writing for eCommerce, and they are particularly good at the special requirements of writing Help files and FAQs.

For commercial sites they are relentlessly on the side of the customer – and the suggestions they offer will allow any honest trader to get closer to customers and win their trust. The formula is simple – be honest, put the customer first, and don’t waffle.

They cover a wide range of digital genres – web marketing copy, news releases, email newsletters, webzine articles, personal resumes, Weblogs – and they even provide tips for would-be job seekers.

Ignore the cheesy photos of the authors which punctuate their chapters. This book is packed with good advice on web writing and modern communication skills – and it’s a must-have for any web content developers, documentation authors, online course constructors, and e-Commerce editors.

© Roy Johnson 2002

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US


Jonathan and Lisa Price, Hot Text: Web Writing that Works, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2002, pp.507, ISBN: 0735711518


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Filed Under: Online Learning, Writing Skills Tagged With: Hot Text: Web Writing That Works, Information design, Publishing, Web writing, Writing skills

How to Make Money Scriptwriting

June 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

practical guide to professional screen writing

This is the second edition of a very successful book which covers all aspects of scriptwriting (or script writing) and making a living as a professional author. It’s the work of a leading literary agent who brings insider tips and guidance on what is a tough market in which to make a living. Julian Friedmann takes a practical, no-nonsense approach which encourages would-be authors to become more aware of what he calls the ‘politics’ of writing. This means paying more attention to the market place; being prepared to fit in to the system of television or screen, and being prepared to deliver to audiences what they want.

ScriptwritingHe paints a picture of a very difficult business which makes big demands of the would-be screenwriter. The only way to succeed is be prepared to collaborate; drop your ego; know that viewer-ratings is All; and ‘murder your darlings’ when required.

There are excellent chapters on how to structure and produce a ‘pitch’, a ‘treatment’ and a ‘step outline’ for a proposed script. But even if you’re good at doing all that, there’s still more to learn: how script editing and script reports work; what ratings, audience share, and programme research mean; how to deal with an agent – or without one; how to handle meetings and negotiate with producers; how to understand a basic agreement and protect your own interests as a writer; and how to survive financially whilst you are waiting for that call from Hollywood.

The emphasis is almost entirely on cinema and television. There’s no mention of the theatre, and radio only gets a very brief mention, although there is one chapter on writing for interactive multi-media.

There’s also no advice on the details of writing techniques: he assumes you know how to write, or can find out elsewhere. His guidance is on how to make a success of scriptwriting from a business point of view. There are full explanations of all the people you need to contact; how to make your work look professional; and how to take rejection without losing heart.

He ends with a very useful series of appendices with includes examples of negotiations with producers; sample memos commissioning a deal; legal contracts; Writers’ Guild minimum Terms of Payment; plus all the contact details for writer’s groups, training courses, and professional associations.

Anyone entering this ferociously competitive field of creative writing needs all the help they can get. Friedmann explains why it is such a tough business, and in doing so he reveals the strategies you need to succeed. You will find advice on writing skills elsewhere. This is insider guidance on how the business works.

© Roy Johnson 2003

How to Make Money Scriptwriting   Buy the book at Amazon UK

How to Make Money Scriptwriting   Buy the book at Amazon US


Julian Friedmann, How to Make Money Scriptwriting, Bristol: Intellect, 2nd edn, 2003, pp.219, ISBN: 184150002X


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Filed Under: Creative Writing, How-to guides, Publishing, Writing Skills Tagged With: Broadcasting, Film, Journalism, Publishing, Scriptwriting, Television, Writing skills

How to publish your writing

October 31, 2009 by Roy Johnson

guidance and resources for writers

If you wish to publish your writing, you need to learn about the publishing process, marketing your work, and targetting your audience. The web pages listed here deal with all those topics – and more besides.

publish your writingThe writer’s marketplace
This is a selection of best-selling writer’s guides. These list all the information you need for contacting publishers, agents, and editors. They cover book publishing, magazines, newspapers, and specialist outlets for photographers and illustrators. Most of them provide mini-essays and tutorials featuring advice from professional writers.

publish your writingEditing your writing
Guidance snotes on editing, re-writing, and creating structure – plus basic advice on topics such as sentences, paragraphs, headings, titles, punctuation, and spelling.

publish your writingPublishing on the Internet
A selection of guidance manuals on writing for the Web – showing the special skills for creating readable web pages, plus writers’ groups and specialist outlets for creative online writing.

publish your writingePublishing and eBooks
Guidance manuals on how to create eBooks on a budget, using email as a marketing tool, plus writing in other digital formats. This approach takes the cumbersome and expensive printing costs out of publishing your work.

publish your writingWriting for the Web
Three excellent guidance manuals on crafting what you write so that it can be effective when read on line. Writing for the screen is different than writing for print publication: these books explain the differences.

publish your writingWriting for magazines
Writing for magazines is probably the most profitable form of authorship in terms of payment-per-word. But weekly, monthly, and specialist publications are often neglected as a possibile outlet by aspiring writers. This selection of guidance manuals show what markets are available, and how to break into them.

publish your writingWriting for newspapers
Newspapers are the most difficult form of journalism for beginners to break into. And if you manage to get a foot in the door, you will need more than just writing skills. These manuals provide the basics of law, copyright, plagiarism, privacy, and the relationship between the proess and the public.

publish your writingPublish your academic writing
Lecturers in further and higher education are obliged to publish their work if they wish to be promoted. It’s a very competetive environment. These manuals will show you how to convert a piece of academic work into something that can be commercially published. They also show the new possibilities of online publishing – or ‘open access’ as it is starting to be known.

publish your writingBlogging – publish your writing
Blogging is a form of publishing open to everyone – no matter what the level of your writing skills. But if you want readers to come back to your blog pages, it will help if you know some of the protocols of good blog behaviour. These guidance manuals will show you how to set up a blog: it’s easy – takes two minutes. More importantly, they will show you how to craft even a short piece of writing so that visitors will want to come back for more.

publish your writingHow to write book reviews
One way to break into publishing is to review the books you read. You can post the results on Amazon or on book fan sites. It’s good practice at showing engagement with your subject. These guidance notes show you what’s required.

© Roy Johnson 2009


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Filed Under: Creative Writing, How-to guides, Journalism, Publishing Tagged With: Academic writing, Communication skills, Creative writing, Publishing, Writing skills

How to start blogging

September 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a quick guide to creating an online journal

Start blogging

A blog (short for the term ‘web log’) is a form of online diary or journal. It’s rather like having your own personal web site, but somebody else does all the technical work. All you need do is write the contents.

What do people put in their blogs? Answer: just about anything. Most are a sort of public diary where people record the events of their lives – occasionally adding a rambling commentary on the state of the world in general. Others can be a fairly serious record of professional work, with invitations for visitors to comment.

Belle de Jour claimed to be the diary of a London call girl, and was so successful it has now been snapped up by a publisher and turned into a book. The Baghdad Blogger became famous because he sent eyewitness accounts of what was happening during the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.


Start BloggingBiz Stone’s Blogging: Genius Strategies is an enthusiast’s guidance manual. He hit the blogging scene running, and has made himself an expert overnight. He now works for Blogger, which is owned by Google. Biz takes you from the very first steps of creating a blog, through to the advanced possibilities of syndicating what you write and even making money from it. He’s something of an evangelist, but all his advice is perfectly sound. Good for beginners, but he takes you all the way through to more advanced topics such as content syndication and money-making affiliate programs.

blogging   Buy the book at Amazon UK
blogging   Buy the book at Amazon US


Content

What else can go into a blog? Links to other blogs you find interesting, pictures of your pet dog, observations left behind by your visitors, even snapshots posted from your mobile phone. Here come some examples. Go to an index such as Blogdex.net which lists the most popular and the most recent blogs. Try A Message from Albia, which is a very funny satire of English social and political life purporting to come from a mythical European country. BoingBoing.net is a very popular ragbag of entries, which when I just checked included an item on the youngest video blogger. Even newspapers such as The Guardian have their own blogs.

Blogging began as a medium for Web-based personal diaries, and most people still use it for this purpose. But some bloggers have started to develop the medium for what is essentially self-publishing. They might post notes reflecting briefly on a topic or discuss it with other bloggers, but they also upload essays, articles, or opinion pieces which count as serious pieces of journalism, expressing ideas and points of view which might not be available elsewhere.

It’s a fairly simple process to keep a blog going – once you’ve got it set up. The procedures for signing up and creating a blog are fairly similar in each case. Basically, you subscribe to a blogging service; you set up your blog, choosing from a number of ready-made templates; then you start posting what you have to say.

There’s no point spelling out the procedures in detail here, because online tutorials such as the excellent BlogBasics.com already exist. Read through their suggestions, print out the pages if you wish, then go to Blogger and get started immediately. What I’ll give you here are some general tips, additional support resources, and how to make money from your blog.


Essential BloggingCory Doctorow’s Essential Blogging takes you through all the options of free blogging or paying a small fee to get extra features and more control. It covers all the essentials you might need, and it’s presented in publisher O’Reilly’s impeccably high-standard style. Doctorow is a young guy who has made a big impact in the world of online writing, and he’s now an editor-in-chief at Boing-Boing as well as a successful writer of science fiction. Up to date.

blogging   Buy the book at Amazon UK
blogging   Buy the book at Amazon US


Procedure

Plan first — Before you start, think of a name for your blog, and decide what you are going to write about. It can follow a theme or a topic; it might be all about your home town or your favourite sports team; it could be a record of your trip around the world. I’ve just discovered that a lot of journalists have personal blogs where they record the gossip they leave out of their official reports. It doesn’t even have to be true: a blog is the perfect medium for an online soap opera.

Sign up — When you have decided on a name and a theme, you need to sign up for an account. These come in two flavours – free and subscription. Blogger.com is the most popular, because it’s free; but some people prefer MoveableType or DiaryLand because they offer additional features for a small charge. WordPress.com offers both a free and a commercial version.

Blog commerce — How can you make an income from all this? Well, it’s unlikely that you can do so directly. But there are all sorts of small possible spin-offs. Lots of bloggers sign up as affiliates at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com and other commercial sites. You place advertising for Amazon on your blog, any they send you a (modest) residual income for sending customers through to their site to buy books, CDs, and software.

There’s also the possibility of micro-payments. This is a system in which people are prepared to pay a small amount for downloading an article of interest. There’s still some resistance to this idea, but it’s now fairly common in downloading music files – so it might catch on.

The most lucrative source of revenue for many blogs and web sites is the Google Adsense scheme. In exchange for letting Google put advertising on your blog or your web pages, they offer you micropayments each time your visitors click through to the advertiser.


The Weblog HandbookRebecca Blood’s The Weblog Handbook is a guide to creating your own blog. It’s a book for anyone who has ever thought about starting but isn’t sure how to post, where to find links, or even where to go to register. She certainly knows what she’s talking about, as you can see at her own blog rebecca’s pocket. She guides you through the whole process of starting and maintaining a blog and answers any questions that might pop up along the way, such as the elements of good blog design and how to find free hosting. She’s gone on to be a very successful professional blogger.

blogging   Buy the book at Amazon UK
blogging   Buy the book at Amazon US


Advertising

The Google Ads scheme has three big advantages. First, the visitors don’t have to buy anything: you get paid simply for their viewing the ad. Second, the whole thing works automatically. Once the code is in your pages, Google start paying money straight into your bank. Third, Google provide all the scripts and coding, and you can even customise the ads so that they blend into the design of your blog.

One of the cleverest features of Google’s scheme is that the ads are matched to the content of the pages on which they appear. So, if your blog is about music or fashion, the ads will be for CDs and iPod downloads, clothing and online stores. Whatever you write about, the ads will be on the same subject. This is good for Google and good for you, because readers are more likely to click through.

Companies such as Blogger have done everything they can to make the process of setting up a blog as easy as possible. It’s possible to set one up from scratch in just a few minutes. And yet everyone I know – including experienced users – has had some sort of minor problem in doing so. And that includes me.

If you get stuck there are FAQs to answer the most basic queries (“My blog has disappeared. Where has it gone?”). I found these very helpful when setting up my blog because they are full of genuine questions from beginners and answers from more experienced bloggers.


Blogging for Dummies Brad Hill’s advice in Blogging for Dummies is aimed at getting you up and running as quickly as possible – though he begins with what blogs are – and what they are not. He explains the different types of blogs, and how and why they are different from web sites. The good thing is that he looks at all the options and draws up comparison charts which show the features, cost, and options offered by the various providers and software programs. This includes popular features such as the ability to display adverts and upload photos.

blogging   Buy the book at Amazon UK
blogging   Buy the book at Amazon US


GLOSSARY

Blog (noun) – a journal or diary that is on the Internet – Andrew Sullivan has the most popular blog on the Internet.

Blogger (noun) – a person who keeps a blog – Bloggers are revolutionizing the way news is shared.

Blog (verb) – to write a blog – I am going to blog before breakfast this morning.

Blogging (verb) – the action of writing a blog – Blogging is my way of sharing my passions with the world.

Post (verb) – to write and despatch an individual entry on a blog – I will be posting on this issue tomorrow.

Post (noun) – an individual entry on a blog – In yesterday’s post you mentioned that …

© Roy Johnson 2004


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How to write a newsletter

November 28, 2010 by Roy Johnson

guidelines for effective communication skills

newsletterA newsletter is designed to keep people up to date with events and activities.

It can be issued as a printed document, an email message, or even a blog posting.

Some online companies issue a newsletter every few days, whereas big organisations might issue only two a year.

Some newsletters are just a humble sheet of A4 printed on both sides: others may be multi-page glossy brochures.

A newsletter is a vehicle for spreading information to members of a group, and can also contain amusement and entertainment.

How to be an editor

Your number one task is to gather interesting and relevant news and information, then make it available to your readers.

The biggest part of that task (unless you are very lucky) is likely to be gathering enough information to fill each issue.

The simplest way to do that is to add each news item as it comes in. This saves you the trouble of relocating it again later. Keep a file (paper or electronic) with a copy of each item for the next issue.

Make a note of any important details attached to the news item – such as times, dates, URLs, prices, contact addresses.

Don’t leave all the information gathering until just before a newsletter issue goes out, otherwise you will put yourself under a lot of pressure

Readership

An in-house newsletter for a large business has the advantage of a stable and known readership. But this presents you with the difficulty of coming up with newsworthy stories from one source.

This type of newsletter also has the double-edged characteristic of being driven by company policy.

A newsletter that is aimed at a wide readership has the disadvantage of a largely unknown audience. But by way of compensation, you can take more risks in selecting the content.

Asking for contributions

Lighten the burden of writing a newsletter by inviting contributions from your readers.

People are often willing to write a short article, particularly if it is drawing attention to an event they wish to publicise

Invite readers to notify you of product launches, forthcoming events, or novelties which might interest your readers.

It is quite common to attract such contributions by offering prizes or free gifts in return.

House style

It’s very useful to establish a house style, then stick to it. Choose colours, images, font types, vocabulary, and layout to create your house style.

Tailor your style to reflect your organisation or line of business. This means that your readers will know what to expect.

It also means that any potential contributors know how to present their work.

Editing tips

Every editor’s nightmare is to publish a newsletter then suddenly realise that it contains a silly mistake – a mis-typed phone number, the wrong date for an event, or a URL that doesn’t work.

For this reason, rigorous editing and proof-reading is required before every publication date. Here are some antidotes that work

  • edit and proof-read your newsletter rigorously before every publication
  • check all factual details, but in addition check your spelling and grammar
  • ask someone else to check the text before you send it off
  • don’t try to edit for several features of the writing at the same time

Read through the text several times with only one of these issues in mind:

  • spelling
  • syntax
  • grammar
  • numbers
  • names
  • dates
  • URLs
How to present the content

If you want people to read a newsletter, it’s got to be interesting – to the readers. Pack your newsletter with items that are fresh and newsworthy.

Grab your readers’ attention in the first sentence of any item.

You can make any collection of news more attractive by adding smaller items of entertainment.

Take a tip from newspapers. Almost all of them have crosswords, cartoons, pictures, recipes, and horoscopes scattered amongst their main items.

Add a selection of not-directly-related news items. Remember that –

  • scientists also practice the arts
  • housewives follow current affairs
  • politicians enjoy sports

Here are some tips on regular stand-by extras that can help give your newsletter variety:

  • a quiz
  • an advice column
  • seasonal recipes
  • personal profiles
  • questions and answers
  • how-to articles
  • top 10 lists
  • votes and polls
Legal issues

Even if your newsletter is a small-scale affair, you should take care not to leave yourself open to legal prosecution. Be careful not to libel or defame people – which means making sure that everything you say is true.

Tread carefully with your content: you might be amazed at how easily some people take offence..

On a large-scale circulation newsletter keep in mind that there may be subscribers with views and beliefs quite unlike your own.

Unless you wish to be daring or radical, treat sensitive issues such as religion, politics, and ethical beliefs with care.

[I once printed some of George W. Bush’s famous ungrammatical statements during his illegal invasion of Iraq. Even though they were all things he had actually said, I was heavily criticised by patriotic Americans. I refused to retract the quotations, but lost a lot of subscribers. So decide which is more important – your circulation figures or your political commitment.]

Advertising

If you reach a big enough audience, you may be able to attract paid advertising.

Knowing how much to charge is the biggest problem – especially if you are starting from scratch.

Try to find out how much newsletters like yours charge for both small insertions or paid features (advertorials).

Don’t be greedy. A smaller but regular income will be more useful than a larger but one-off payment.

Make a clear distinction between any advertising and your own content. Readers will be annoyed if they feel they have been duped into reading what turns out to be an advert.

Evading spam filters

If your newsletter is an email message or an HTML attachment, spam filters on the reader’s server will block messages containing certain words.

They are obviously on the lookout for obscene words. But that’s not all. They are checking for the tell-tale signs of get-rich-quick offers, ponzi schemes, and the Nigerian letter scam.

These are some of the hallmarks of spam message that you can easily avoid:

  • titles in all capital letters
  • over-use of exclamation marks
  • satisfaction guaranteed
  • lose weight – cash bonus

Even the simplest and most innocent-looking words can become spam alerts if viewed in a certain way. The easiest was round this problem is to insert characters in such a way that the words are still legible – f.r.e.e   k.n.i.c.k.e.r.s   to cover your   b.o.t.t.o.m.

What to avoid

I receive two dreadful newsletters every quarter – one from my local council, and the other from a university. They both display just about every feature of a useless newsletter publication.

  • all articles heavily self-conratulatory
  • small issues blown out of proportion
  • celebrity profiles – of nonentities
  • financial news with no critical analysis
  • no invitation for reader feedback
  • all negative news omitted

Both of these organisations (at the time of writing) are suffering enormous cuts in government funding, and making huge numbers of staff redundant. These is no mention of this in either publication.

The net result of their phoney optimism and lack of honesty is to debase the value of any serious news they report. Few people read these newsletters. They go straight into the bin.

Email newsletters

Format the newsletter so that it can easily be read on screen. Use narrow columns and plenty of white space between each item of news.

Use shorter sentences than you would for printed materials. Long sentences are particularly difficult to read on screen

Use clear headings for each topic. This gives readers a chance to scan the newsletter for topics which interest them.

Avoid the use of continuous capitals for emphasis. This decreases the chance of being trapped by spam filters.

Always make it quite clear how readers can unsubscribe. Nobody wants to feel trapped. Keep in mind this good joke from Dick Vosburgh: “I haven’t been so happy since the day that Reader’s Digest lost my address”.

Offer a list of topics to be covered in the next isue. This gives reader’s an incentive to keep reading.

Template

Title

——– MANTEX NEWSLETTER ——–

Create a title for your newsletter – then stick to it.

Issue number

Number 165 – December 2010 – ISSN 1470-1863

The ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) is an identification number for serial publications and other continuing resources in the electronic and print world.

The number is issued by the national library of any country, and is free of charge.

Sub-title

Arts, Culture, and Technology as seen from
the digital hub of Media city Manchester UK

This is a brief explanation of the topics covered by the newsletter, and a hint at its general approach.

Advertising

** 13,000+ subscribers will see your AD **

This is an internal announcement, letting potential adveritisers see where their advert would appear.

News item One

0— ‘Here Comes Everybody’

Here Comes Everybody

This is without doubt my outstanding reading experience
of the last few weeks. Clay Shirky is what some people
are now calling a ‘futurologist’.

He analyses the latest developments in computer technology
and uncovers new shifts in social and economic forces.

His prime target is the newspaper industry, which used to
have what seemed like a monopoly on the distribution of
information about current events.

That has now been completely undermined by something as
apparently innocuous as personal blogs.

He also shows *why* Wikipedia has become the greatest
encyclopedia the world has ever seen – even though nobody
gets paid for writing it.

His study is a very engaging mixture of technology, sociology,
politics, and anthropology. Full review here –

This is the lead article – the news item to which you attach most importance, and which you think might be most interesting to your readers.

Make the clickable links as clear as possible. They can be shortened if necessary using services such as TinyURL.com and Bit.ly

Entertainment item one

0— Pub Quiz Question #1

What part of the body suffers from glaucoma?

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0— Language Skills

http://mantex.blogspot.com/2010/10/language-skills.html

This is an amusing YouTube video of a young kid
speaking English in 24 different accents.

Warning! It’s not safe for work (NSFW) or for
showing your maiden aunt.

What’s even more remarkable is the fact that
he nails so many UK dialects – which as all
good linguists know is not the same thing as
regional accent.

http://mantex.blogspot.com/2010/10/language-skills.html

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© Roy Johnson 2010


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How to write a web page

November 23, 2010 by Roy Johnson

creating effective text for on-screen reading

Web PageIn order the communicate effectively on the Internet, you need to know how to write a web page that is successful.

Web pages are available for the whole world to see – but you will no doubt have an audience in mind.

Your audience is the people you hope to be addressing. They might be – fellow hobbyists, opinion makers, customers for products, or fan club members.

So – you have your own target audience, but anybody else can read your pages. There is therefor another audience about which you can know nothing (in advance).

If you want to reach as many people as possible, keep this invisible audience in mind. Write in a clear and simple manner. Avoid jargon and complicated expressions.

Layout

A web page is not the same thing as printed document. It might look similar, but it does different things. Your writing needs to be grammatically correct and free from mistakes. But it will not be read in the same way as a book or even a magazine.

People scan a web page before they read it. They glance at the overall content first. They read headings and sub-headings, glance at pictures, and even look for links.

Reading text on a screen is much harder than reading it on a printed page. This means that your writing needs to be different in style.

Your objectives

The function of a web page will depend upon your objectives. The page could be designed to offer a number of things:

  • news
  • information
  • entertainment
  • instruction
  • advice

This will have an effect on the way you deliver the content. But no matter what the function, there are certain golden rules that will help to make any web page effective.

Style

All your writing should be split up into small chunks. Huge blocks of writing on a screen are very difficult to read. The short paragraph is an important part of writing for the Web. This allows readers to grasp what you have to say more quickly.

Have a look at online newspapers. They use short and even one-sentence paragraphs.

Employ as many devices as possible to break up dense blocks of writing. Use headings, sub-headings, bold, and italics. Add graphics where appropriate and use bulleted lists.

Short sentences are easier to read than long ones. This is true on paper, but even more so when writing for the screen. Put a limit of twenty words per sentence on your writing – and watch its effectiveness improve!

The most effective way to communicate with general readers is to write directly in a simple, friendly manner.

Don’t forget that only a small part of a long web page will appear in the monitor screen at any one time. In such cases it’s important that you offer readers clear signals to find their way around.

Vocabulary

The language you use will be conditioned by your subject and the audience you are trying to reach (as well as the extent of your own vocabulary).

If you have a specialist subject and audience (agricultural biology, jet engine design) you will naturally be using the specialist language of your subject (jargon). But if you wish to reach a wide and general public, it’s better to keep you language plain and simple.

There’s no point in using a term such as aerated beverages when fizzy drinks will be understood just as well.

Conventions

It’s not necessary to know HTML coding to write a web page. Most software will do this for you. But a little knowledge will help you control the appearance of the page.

Use the text editing menus that appear in Microsoft Word and the page creation panels of most blogging software (Blogger, WordPress). These will give you the option to put text in bold, italics, and even colour.

A screen of text with different fonts, colours, and emphasis splattered all over the page looks bad. The golden rule here is this – Less is more. Restraint will help you achieve a more impressive appearance.

  • Headings in bold and a larger font size
  • Sub-headings in bold
  • Italics for emphasis and foreign words
  • No use of underlining at all

Underlining makes text hard to read, and the underlining can be confused with a hyperlink.

Examples

You are looking at an example of a web page right now. This type of page is called a ‘How to’ in the language of Web commerce. That is, it offers simple guidance notes on a single topic. Here are three more very different types of page.

Historical document
The first is from the nineteenth century. None of the above guidance notes apply, because readers want the document in a form that is as similar as possible to the original.

Red button Henry James on ‘The Art of Fiction’

Essay
The second is to a short illustrated essay on an artistic movement. This is the sort of article that might normal occupy a few pages in a magazine or a weekend newspaper supplement. It has graphics, links to related subject, and it also contains advertising.

Red button The Omega Workshops

Newspaper
The third is the online version of a daily newspaper. Notice how this page is made up of very short extracts, with links to the full articles, which are located on separate pages. The front page is packed with links, graphics, and advertising. It is also composed ‘dynamically’ – which means that it is updated every few minutes with new content.

Red button The Guardian

© Roy Johnson 2010


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Intellectual Property and Open Source

July 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a practical guide to protecting code

The Open Source movement makes software available free for people to use or even to pass on to others. This flies in the face of normal commercial practice, where people jealously guard their intellectual property rights. Traditional laws support these rights – so when new open source projects come into being, often as a result of work done collectively, it can be difficult to disentangle issues of ownership and control. This is equally true for the written word as well as for digital code.

Intellectual Property and Open SourceVan Lindberg’s new book is an amazingly thorough guide to the whole business. He explains the legal niceties without resorting to too much jargon, and supplies practical support materials in the form of sample licences and agreements. The first part of the book has eight chapters giving an introduction to intellectual property law, then the second part is six chapters offering an intellectual property handbook for developers, particularly those working in the field of open sources.

He warns that it’s a book of general principles, not specific advice, for the very good reason that cases of copyright, patents, and intellectual property rights are very case specific. Nevertheless, he does discuss lots of instructive individual cases, and I imagine that anybody with a need to know in this complex field of legislation will find what he has to say both instructive and chastening.

He explains the law on copyright, patents, and inventions by comparing it to computer programming, which it turns out to resemble remarkably closely. One new ruling (or code) is bolted on to that which already exists, and the whole statute grows by a process of accretion.

As a layman, it’s interesting to learn that you cannot patent an idea – no matter how original an invention it might be. You can only patent the proof that it can actually be realised and turned into something useful. And even the term ‘useful’ is coded – as his example of a patent dust cover for dogs illustrates. It can be used – even though the idea itself is quite barmy.

On Open Sources he explains that software is free as in ‘free speech’, not ‘free beer’ – but this distinction will mean little to everyday users who are happy to download a program that works well without having to pay for it.

The picture becomes clearer when he explains the success of various Open Source projects – FireFox, Linux, Apache – many of which have formed the basis for successful business ventures. The software itself is free to use and distribute, but companies have legitimately made money from offering services in support of its use.

He’s very good at explaining the complexities of rights developed whilst you are in somebody else’s employment. In brief, you’ve very little chance of succeeding, and he even includes some tragic cases of people who have lost lawsuits on works patented before and after they have been in somebody else’s employ. If there’s a barely-hidden message here, it’s ‘stay away from legal contests’.

As a rule, employees should assume that any intellectual output they produce whilst employed will be considered proprietary information and subject to the company’s proprietary information agreement (PIA). It doesn’t matter if the invention is in a completely different area of technology, or completely unconnected with your work; it still may be covered.

Even if you wish to make your work available free to the public, there are a number of different licenses to choose from, offering a sliding scale of ownership and control – such as public domain, open source, and reciprocal. The general advice he gives is not to attempt writing your own.

One thing is for certain. It’s potentially a very complex area both technically and legally. The law works on a basis of precedence, and you can bet that if a legal tangle emerges, it will be judged on similar occurrences in the past, even though your technology might be brand new.

All sorts of additional complications arise because of the special nature of software development. Does the author of a ‘patch] (a small-scale solution to a problem) have copyright over it when it is added to a big project? Can you combine two open source programs and claim copyright over the result? What about reverse engineering?

I would have welcomed a glossary and a webliography, but it’s to O’Reilly’s credit that they publish books like this – because although it might have a fairly limited readership, it raises lots of important issues and simultaneously makes available the information for dealing with them.

© Roy Johnson 2008

Intellectual Property and Open Source   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Intellectual Property and Open Source   Buy the book at Amazon US


Van Lindberg, Intellectual Property and Open Source, Sebastopol (CA): O’Reilly, 2008, pp, 371, ISBN: 0596517963


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John Lehmann biography

February 5, 2013 by Roy Johnson

poet, editor, publisher, biographer, memorist

John Lehmann (full name Rudolph John Frederick Lehmann) was born in Buckinghamshire in 1907 into a wealthy family. His father was Rudolph Chambers Lehmann, an English writer and Liberal Party politician. His elder sisters were the novelist Rosamond Lehmann and the actress Beatrix Lehmann.

John Lehmann biography

John Lehmann was educated at the prestigious public school Eaton, and went on to study modern languages at Trinity College Cambridge, where he began writing poetry and forming gay relationships. Whilst at university he became a close friend of Julian Bell (Vanessa Bell’s son) which provided him with an introduction to the Bloomsbury Group.

His first collection of poetry A Garden Revisited (1931) was published by Leonard Woolf at the Hogarth Press, with which he formed a close attachment. He brought his contacts with the new young generation of poets to the press. The result was the groundbreaking collection New Signatures (1932) which included work by William Empson, Julian Bell and Lehmann himself from Cambridge, plus W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day Lewis from Oxford.

He worked as an assistant-cum-manager at the Press (described in his amusing memoir Thrown to the Woolfs) until differences of opinion with Leonard over the policy of publishing young writers caused a temporary rift between them.

John Lehmann left Britain and worked as a journalist, travelled to the U.S.S.R. (as it was called at that time) and wrote poetry in Vienna from 1932 to 1936. He then returned to Britain to launch the journal New Writing. This published the work of his contemporaries Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, V.S. Pritchett, and Stephen Spender.

The magazine featured new writing from Europe and beyond mixed with photographic essays and examples of modern art, and it also included recent poetry. Its editorial line explicitly supported internationalism (especially the republicans in the Spanish Civil War) and it was politically ‘committed’ to the left at a time when the English establishment was dithering in the face of fascism.

It lasted for fourteen years, first under the aegis of the Bodley Head, then Lawrence and Wishart, before eventually being taken on by Leonard Woolf at the Hogarth Press. A cheaper version was launched as Penguin New Writing in 1939.

In 1938 Lehmann returned to favour with the Hogarth Press and joined it again as a full working partner, buying out Virginia Woolf’s fifty percent share in the company. He was an editor and general manager at a time when in addition to works by Virginia Woolf such as Between the Acts, A Haunted House, and The Death of the Moth, he oversaw the publication of works by Henry Green, George Orwell, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

However, the partnership foundered again 1945. Lehmann wanted to introduce modern business practices, raising share capital, and employing publicists and agents. But Leonard had always run the press as a streamlined independent enterprise, with a minimum of overheads – a policy which had been enormously successful and had brought in considerable profits.

So Lehmann understandably left and in 1946 set up his own publishing company, John Lehmann Limited with his sister Rosamond. He published books by young poets Thom Gunn and Laurie Lee, as well as the celebrated cookery writer, Elizabeth David. He also edited the paperback series Penguin New Writing between 1946 and 1950. After the collapse of his own company in 1952 he took over at the London Magazine and edited until handing over to fellow poet and critic Alan Ross in 1961.

In the late 1960s and 1970s he was a frequent visitor on the American lecture circuit. He subsequently wrote biographies of Rupert Brooke, Edith Sitwell, and Virginia Woolf, as well as three volumes of autobiography. He also wrote about his gay relationships in the persona of a fictional character Jack Marlowe. The late confessional novel In the Purely Pagan Sense (1976) offers an account of his promiscuous life in Berlin, Vienna, and London.

© Roy Johnson 2013


The Bloomsbury GroupThe Bloomsbury Group is a short but charming book, published by the National Portrait Gallery. It explores the impact of Bloomsbury personalities on each other, plus how they shaped the development of British modernism in the early part of the twentieth century. But most of all it’s a delightful collection of portrait paintings and photographs, with biographical notes. It has an introductory essay which outlines the development of Bloomsbury, followed by a series of portraits and the biographical sketches of the major figures.

Ralph Partridge Buy the book at Amazon UK
Ralph Partridge Buy the book at Amazon US


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Mediactive

December 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

new journalism, new publishing, new media

Mediactive is the latest stage in an argument that has been developing for some time now. In 2004 Dan Gillmor launched the notion of the ‘citizen journalist’ in his polemic We the Media. He argued that news is too important to be left entirely in the hands of professional journalists, and that bloggers (who were at that time a new phenomenon) had a corrective influence that should be encouraged. Since anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can start blogging within five minutes, it was in the power of ordinary people to create an additional and maybe an alternative voice to the established press and the broadcast media. They can also do this at virtually no cost, because the open source movement makes powerful software available to us free of charge. Since that time the sales of print newspapers have been plummeting, and bloggers have risen in importance and influence, to the extent that all major newspapers now have their own staff bloggers, having once ridiculed their very existence.

Mediactive Mediactive is Gillmor’s update to these arguments, in which he urges us all to become more active, sceptical, and open consumers of information – but also active participants in its creation. And he even provides the tools to do the job. In the past you needed to own printing presses, publishing companies, and distribution networks to make even the smallest item of information available to a wider audience. But now all that has changed. Because as he argues very persuasively (referencing Clay Shirky) – the barriers to entry are virtually zero. “You don’t need anybody’s permission, and you don’t need much money either”. In other words, individual entrepreneurs now have an entirely new opportunity to make information available to the public.

His book is in three parts: first, the arguments for becoming active in the creation of media (print, blogs, video, podcasts); second, the tools for engagement and how to use them; and third, the large socio-legal issues and conflicts in online advocacy and the realms of media literacy in education.

This is an interesting book in its own right as a physical object. Mediactive exists primarily as an on-going project, a web-based set of resources, of which this printed book is only one manifestation, which might well be called Version 1.0. Other manifestations already exist as web pages, and you can download the whole thing as a PDF file free of charge at Mediactive.com. In time, as new materials, updated evidence, modifications, and corrections are made, the version number will change – just as in the case of software at the moment.

Dan Gillmor is one of those people who believe that making books available as free downloads increases the sales of a print version. It has to be said that in this form of print on demand (POD) format these books are not very attractive. They have small page margins, the first lines of paragraphs are indented, typography is crude, and perhaps worst of all, underlining is used to show where hyperlinks exist in the online version.

It has no index, footnotes, or bibliography. All of these are available in the master copy which exists on line. It’s rather like a book that has been produced by an enthusiastic amateur using a desktop publishing kit. It’s also written in bite-sized chunks for reading on screen. What works in one medium doesn’t necessarily translate well without problems for another

However this is the Brave New World of publishing and distributing ideas, and I think we might expect a few rough edges in these emerging forms, just as I’m equally confident that production standards will rise as the form matures. If you don’t believe me, have a look at any document you produced twenty years ago.

Basically he wants us all to become more vigilant and active participants in using the new media tools at our disposal. His strongest argument in support of citizen media against traditional journalism and especially broadcast media is also its smallest and simplest elements – the hyperlink and the comment. If television news reports an event, we have no way of clicking through to check the source of the information or any alternatives there might be, and we have no way of offering corrective feedback or criticism.

Having urged participation, he then goes through the best known of the new media tools – blogs, YouTube, Flickr, and even content management systems (CMS), though like me, he drew the line at Drupal as a techie step too far.

All this creates an entirely new opportunity to the individual entrepreneur in any field of interest. That’s because the barriers to entry are virtually zero. “You don’t need anybody’s permission, and you don’t need much money either.”

He poses interesting questions and raises thought-provoking questions. For instance, the apparently simple query: “What is journalism?” If somebody documents arguments over a planning application to build a new factory in their neighbourhood on a blog – is that journalism? And if not, why not? His answer would be yes – because even though you are not paid for writing the article or employed by a newspaper, the article is performing the function of journalism by making information publicly available.

He also poses an interesting notion that is reflected in the very nature of the book itself. “When is a work complete?” Why shouldn’t a digital work live on and accrue to itself all the modifications, corrections, additions, and links to further information that become available over time? There is no reason why a book should not be like a Wikipedia entry – subject to constant updating and revision.

Of course this idea leads in turn to the question “What is a book?” – to which this production is an interesting answer. Of course we are accustomed to a book being a relatively static or fixed entity, existing in maybe at the most two or three editions. But there is no reason why we should not refer in future footnotes and references to Book Title, Version 3.1.5

Mediactive   Buy the book at Amazon UK

Mediactive   Buy the book at Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2011


Dan Gillmor, Mediactive, Lulu.com, 2010, pp.183, ISBN: 0557789427


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