For first time visitors to my Monday’s Link Roundup, welcome. This is an eclectic list that features articles I find engaging, whimsical, and educational. And I hope of interest to other personal historians, biographers, videographers, family historians, and memoir writers. Enjoy!
- What Is the Business of Literature? “As technology disrupts the business model of traditional publishers, the industry must imagine new ways of capturing the value of a book.”
- 7 Ways to Summon the Courage to Say “No”. “What do you do when a freelancing project just isn’t right for you? Do you turn it down, or do you take it anyway? Most freelancers already understand that they should say “no” to some clients. But often we freelancers just keep on saying “yes” when we know that we shouldn’t.”
- Why You Should Fire Yourself. “What would you do if you discovered that the secret to your success online lay in firing yourself? Would you do it? That’s the question Alex, a freelance copywriter, had to face.”
- Hey, at Least You Can Be Virtually Immortal. “NO one will confuse typical retirees today with the Emperor Augustus, who constructed a huge mausoleum to celebrate his life for eternity. And yet they belong to the first generation of elders within easy grasp of something once so rare and valuable that relatively few historic figures could enjoy it until now: virtual immortality.”
- The Best Ways to Be Sure You’re Legally Using Online Photos. “Using images in our online work is crucial. It’s a visual medium and how better to tell your story or draw in your audience than with a compelling photo? But while some may be flattered you’re using a photo they took or image they created, most are not. Besides all the SEO and search-engine ranking reasons, using someone else’s work without their permission is not only wrong but also may be illegal.”
- Getting Media Coverage: 5 Things You Need To Know. “Any publicity is good publicity, the saying goes, which makes free publicity even better. A mention in a magazine or buzz on a blog can put your company on the map and help boost sales, in most cases, without costing you a dime. But how do you get on journalists’ radar screens?”
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Tagged benefits, Blog, books, Business, copyright, digital, firing, freelancer, How to, illegal, immortal, journalist, legality, link roundup, literature, Marketing, media coverage, No, online, photo use, publicity, publishers, saying no, small business, Tips
Did you know that genealogy ranks second only to porn as the most searched topic online ? I didn’t! In this Monday’s Link Roundup you can read more about this and other fascinating topics. A favorite of mine is Negative Space in Logo Designs. You’ll find some dazzling designs here that will make you want to create your own unique logo. And just for a lark, be sure to check out 25 (more) words that are fun to say.
- Why We Procrastinate, and How to Stop It. [Video} “We all procrastinate from time to time, but beating it isn’t as easy as recognizing that we do it. This video from the folks at ASAP Science does a great job of explaining the mental processes behind why we procrastinate (you may be procrastinating right now by reading about procrastination) and how you can use them to your advantage to get things done.”
- Telling Stories About the Stories We Tell. “On July 25, Philip Gourevitch gave the keynote address to the Human Rights Lecture Series at Stanford University…We met over drinks before his lecture to discuss the challenges of writing about the history that we are in the midst of making, the burdens of memory and the appeal of forgetting, the dangers of narrative simplification, the limits of humanitarianism, and the messiness of politics.”
- The War of the Words: How to Update a Dictionary. “David Skinner’s The Story of Ain’t is not the history of that word, but an exploration of the scandal over the publication of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language. Like the crowdsourced Collins, Webster’s Third was premised on a new direction; one that struck many as giving in to new forces “blowing in the wind.” Its editor, Philip Gove, operated under a seemingly reasonable impression: that a dictionary for post-World War II America could dispense with lists of English kings, quotations from Tennyson, and the breezy disparagement of colloquial speech.”
- QR Codes Make Memories Come Alive. “The cool thing about QR codes on headstones is that you can scan the code and immediately learn more about the person than simply their date of birth and death. You can see a video of the person while they were alive, maybe dispensing words of wisdom. You can see photos, read or hear stories, and list the family tree. Just about anything you can put on a website can be incorporated into a site associated with a unique QR code. This is storytelling from beyond the grave.”
- Negative Space In Logo Design. “Great logos do more than just say the name of the company—they capture the personality, tone of voice and style of the brand…But some of the best logos of all are remarkable because of the hidden details they contain through the clever use of negative space…We’ve brought together a collection of beautifully designed, ingeniously crafted logos that all use negative space to help fill out the image and add an extra level of depth, style and cleverness.”
- Ancestry.com’s Genealogical Juggernaut. “Today, genealogy ranks second only to porn as the most searched topic online. According to a January 2012 report by market research firm Global Industry Analysts, an estimated 84 million people around the world spend anywhere from $1,000 to $18,000 a year in search of their ancestors. Visitors to online genealogy sites are mostly white women, 55 and older, who browse the Internet from home—or, says Pate, “your Aunt Betsy, who’s got a real rabid appetite for digging into family roots.” It’s a demographic projected to grow 36 percent by 2020, three times as fast as any other group.”
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Tagged Ancestry.com, David Skinner, dictionary, genealogical, genealogy, headstones, How to, Life stories, link roundup, Logo, logo design, memories, Monday, negative space, online, Philip Gourevitch, Procrastination, pronunciation, QR code, storytelling, Tips, update, Webster's, words
This Monday’s Link Roundup has a couple of useful articles that’ll improve your website. After reading Are You Making These 7 Mistakes with Your About Page?, I realized that I’ve got some work to do on my About Page. And How to Write is a pithy 10-point list that all bloggers need to take to heart. If you’re a personal historian and unfamiliar with Cowbird, you owe it to yourself to read Cowbird Debuts New Saga on Valentine’s Day. It’s another innovative way of collecting stories.
- My Memoir Helped Me Reconnect With My Family. “The writing of Man Shoes was a legacy exercise for my sons that turned into a therapeutic exercise for myself. The healing and understanding that has come about through the writing of Man Shoes is miraculous. At fifty years of age, I am now a much stronger, more secure, happier, and more productive individual than I have ever been. Hopefully Man Shoes continues to inspire others in the coming months and years–just as it did me as I wrote it.”
- Graphic Atlas. “…a new online resource that brings sophisticated print identification and characteristic exploration tools to archivists, curators, historians, collectors, conservators, educators, and general public.”
- Cowbird Debuts New Saga on Valentine’s Day. “Email and text messaging have left many of us accustomed to instant gratification when it comes to communication, though impulsive tweets and status updates often lead to regret. Our methods of communication have evolved so rapidly, many of us can now tweet about anything (or nothing) within a few seconds. In the era of 140-character updates, when the lingo has become so foreign that you may need a translator to follow Twitter conversations, have our messages lost their depth? Jonathan Harris thinks so – and says his new project, Cowbird, houses personal, searchable storytelling – and may someday be the one-stop shop for an inclusive public library of human experience.”
- How to Write. “On September 7th of 1982, advertising legend David Ogilvy sent an internal memo to all employees of his advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather. The memo was entitled “How to Write,” and consisted of the following list of advice.”
- A Way with Words. “Public radio’s lively language show.” [Thanks top Wendy Ledger of VoType for alerting me to this item.]
- Best of the Blogs: Old School and New Skills. “Don’t have time to keep up with design and photography blogs? Keep calm and read on. In this blog round-up you’ll find the most popular fonts of 2011, an amazing type book from 1912, a Herb Lubalin video from the 1980s, and a Photoshop cooking demonstration from 2007. Plus, there are plenty of Photoshop how-tos, digital photography tips, and design ideas.”
- Are You Making These 7 Mistakes with Your About Page? “…lots of website owners have an easier time proposing marriage than they do writing a solid About Page. If that’s you, you’re probably overcomplicating things. A good About Page is simple, straightforward, and it communicates just a few key things.”
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Tagged About Page, Blog, Cowbird, David Ogilvy, family stories, grammar, graphic design, How to, ideas, language, link roundup, memoir, mistakes, online, photography, Resources, Tips, website, Writing
It’s the beginning of another week and that means some fascinating new stories in Monday’s Link Roundup to get you started. My favorite is Dear Photograph. The picture that accompanies this article is particularly poignant. And don’t miss Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of the Self-Interview. It illuminates a little known side of the Russian – American writer.
- Whither Digital Video Preservation? “Finding appropriate digital preservation file formats for audiovisual materials is not an easy task. While much of the recorded sound preservation realm has agreed upon the viability of the Broadcast Wave file format for sound materials, the video realm is still kind of the Wild West in that there is no broad consensus regarding what kinds of file formats or codecs are appropriate for preservation.”
- Who’s on the Family Tree? Now It’s Complicated. “Genealogists have long defined familial relations along bloodlines or marriage. But as the composition of families changes, so too has the notion of who gets a branch on the family tree. Some families now organize their family tree into two separate histories: genetic and emotional. Some schools, where charting family history has traditionally been a classroom project, are now skipping the exercise altogether.”
- DailyLit. “DailyLit sends you bite-sized chunks of public domain books (including many classics) daily, on weekdays, or three times a week via email or RSS — for free. Each serving takes less than five minutes to read, and if you want, they’ll send you the next installment right away if you click a link.”
- Dear Photograph: A website with a window into the past. “In the past month, a summery, slightly sad website has made the trip from non-existence to international exposure. It’s called Dear Photograph, and its premise is simple: Take a picture of an old photo being carefully held up in front of the place it was originally taken, so it appears to be a window into the past.”
- Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of the Self-Interview. “Nabokov—to my knowledge—never conducted an interview without having received and answered the questions in advance. Even when he appeared with Lionel Trilling on a “live” taped interview on a 1958 program called “Close Up” to discuss the controversy surrounding Lolita for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Nabokov reads his responses—on television—from his index cards.”
- Immigrants to Canada Online. “Library and Archives Canada (LAC) holds the Canadian immigration records for the years 1865 to 1935. The lists are online, providing 23,482 references to immigration records held at Library and Archives Canada. Those passenger lists are the sole surviving official records of the arrival of the majority of people accepted as immigrants in Canada.”
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Posted in Monday's Link Roundup, Uncategorized
Tagged Canada, DailyLIt, digital video preservation, e-books, family tree, genealogy, How to, immigrants, memoir, old photos, online, self-interview, social media, Tips, Vladimir Nabokov, Writing
