In this Monday’s Link Roundup don’t miss Should you work for free? It looks at what it means to do the work of a professional and the difference between that and the work that goes into a hobby. If you’re concerned about the proliferation of digital gadgets in our lives, then you’ll want to read Cyborg dreams. It examines the dangers inherent in the magic of new technologies.
- Getting Over Your Self-Promotion Phobia. “…here are a few tips to help you nip your fear of self-promotion in the bud. When you overcome the perceived horrors of doing so, you will likely find that your business grows–and that self-promotion isn’t so bad after all. You may even grow to love it!”
- 10½ Favorite Reads from TED Bookstore 2013. “I had the honor of curating a selection of books for the TED Bookstore at TED 2013, themed The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered. Below are this year’s picks, along with the original text that appears on the bookstore cards and the introductory blurb about the selection:”
- Should you work for free? “Work is what you do as a professional, when you make a promise that involves rigor and labor (physical and emotional) and risk. Work is showing up at the appointed time, whether or not you feel like it. Work is creating value on demand, and work (for the artist) means putting all of it (or most of it) on the line. So it’s not work when you indulge your hobby and paint an oil landscape, but it’s work when you agree to paint someone’s house by next week. And it’s not work when you cook dinner for friends, but it’s work when you’re a sous chef on the line on Saturday night.”
- The Ghost in the Gulfstream. “Tapped by the late billionaire entrepreneur Theodore Forstmann to ghostwrite his autobiography, in 2010, the author found himself jetting off to Paris and London on Forstmann’s Gulfstream while the then chairman of IMG told tales of his legendary career as private-equity pioneer, philanthropist, and playboy. It was only when Rich Cohen sat down to actually write the book that the trouble began: an emotional tug-of-war that mirrored a central conflict in Forstmann’s life.”
- Cyborg dreams. “Digital gadgets are the first thing we touch in the morning, and the last thing we stroke at night. Are we slaves to their magic?”
- ‘Licking the Spoon’ by Candace Walsh. “…is a gastro-journey to self-discovery. It begins with a short family history, because Walsh’s family is instrumental in her life and cooking. Then it moves from her birth through her growing up on Long Island, her college years in Buffalo, her early twenties in New York City, her first marriage, divorce, and more. Through it all, Walsh narrates her life alongside the food that inspired and sustained her—from cookies baked at her mother’s side to thrifty split pea soup to “dinners of the defeated” to bacon-wrapped eggs with polenta. It’s a clever concept, and there is much to savor within these pages.”
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Tagged biography, books, Cookbook, cyborg, digital, dreams, family stories, favorite, gadgets, Gulfstream Aerospace, How to, link roundup, list, magic, New York city, personal histories, personal history, phobia, professionalism, Rich Cohen, self-discovery, self-promotion, stories, storytelling, TED, TED Bookstore 2013, Theodore J. Forstmann, Tips, Undiscovered, Writing
If you’re a fan of documentary films, you’ll want to check out The Best Documentaries of 2012 in this week’s Monday’s Link Roundup. And with all the severe weather experienced in many regions of North America, be sure to take a look at Emergency Preparedness, Response & Recovery. You’ll find excellent advice from the Library of Congress on saving precious family collections.
- Speak, Memory by Oliver Sacks. [The New York Review of Books] “We, as human beings, are landed with memory systems that have fallibilities, frailties, and imperfections—but also great flexibility and creativity. Confusion over sources or indifference to them can be a paradoxical strength: if we could tag the sources of all our knowledge, we would be overwhelmed with often irrelevant information.”
- The clues to a great story. [TED talk] “Filmmaker Andrew Stanton (“Toy Story,” “WALL-E”) shares what he knows about storytelling — starting at the end and working back to the beginning.”
- Emergency Preparedness, Response & Recovery. “Mitigating the impact of emergencies and disasters is essential to preserving collections and family heirlooms. Whatever the disaster or emergency may be, water exposure is one of the most common problems and though not necessarily catastrophic, can result in total loss. Sound emergency planning, response, and recovery reduces this risk.”
- Robert B Silvers. “As the New York Review of Books celebrates its 50th anniversary, its editor for all those years explains why a world without long, serious reviews is ‘unthinkable’.”
- How To Stay Sane: The Art of Revising Your Inner Storytelling. “How To Stay Sane (public library; UK), [is] part of The School of Life’s wonderful series reclaiming the traditional self-help genre as intelligent, non-self-helpy, yet immensely helpful guides to modern living. At the heart of Perry’s argument — in line with neurologist Oliver Sacks’s recent meditation on memory and how “narrative truth,” rather than “historical truth,” shapes our impression of the world — is the recognition that stories make us human and learning to reframe our interpretations of reality is key to our experience of life.”
- The Best Documentaries of 2012. [PBS] “From Sundance to the Oscars — and every festival, critics list and industry awards show we can find in between — we’re continually updating our list of lists of the “best” documentaries.”
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Tagged 2012, Andrew Stanton, Arts, BBC, best, book reviewing, Business, collections, documentaries, Emergency management, family heirlooms, How to, Library of Congress, link roundup, literature, memory, New York Review of Books, Oliver Sacks, Preservation, Robert B. Silvers, Self-Help, Speak Memory, storytelling, TED, Tips, United States
My favorite item in this Monday’s Link Roundup is 500,000 Strangers’ Secrets: PostSecret Founder Frank Warren at TED. It’s funny, sad, and poignant. Not to be missed. And if you’re infatuated with periods, commas, and the like, you won’t want to miss Semicolons: A Love Story.
- 10 Marketing Secrets You Already Know. “Many people think of marketing as a mystery, something that is hard to figure out and even harder to implement. Everyone wants to know what to do when and how to do it for maximum results. Well, I have good news for you. Most of the so-called marketing secrets, you already know. Perhaps because they’re so obvious, you don’t realize how important they are. If you remember and practice these secrets, you’ll have about 90% of what you need for marketing success.”
- E M Ginger on Digitizing the Art of the Book. “At this weekend’s meeting of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA), guest speaker E M Ginger of 42-line.com gave a remarkable presentation about the work she has been involved with over the past 20 years digitizing fine and rare books.”
- Preventing goof-ups: 10 proofreading tips. “I was born an editor, not a proofreader. And I’m convinced that good proofreaders are thrust into this world with a special and delicate piece of DNA that the rest of us are missing. It’s kind of like the math gene or the team sports gene, both of which I lack. As a result, when time and budget permit, I always hire a professional proofreader. When I can’t, I use the following tricks to help me (and my readers) survive.”
- Virginia Woman, Discovers Lost Family Photos At Antique Shop (Video). “Cathy Tyree was on the hunt for an old couch when she stumbled across something incredible at an antique shop in Richmond, Va. Tyree had been in the store for only 15 minutes when she discovered a lost picture of her deceased father among the glassware, furniture and old books.”
- Semicolons: A Love Story. “When I was a teenager, newly fixated on becoming a writer, I came across a piece of advice from Kurt Vonnegut that affected me like an ice cube down the back of my shirt. “Do not use semicolons,” he said. “They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”
- 500,000 Strangers’ Secrets: PostSecret Founder Frank Warren at TED. “Since January 1, 2005, strangers have been writing, drawing, collaging, doodling, and otherwise revealing their most tightly guarded secrets on anonymous postcards and mailing them to Frank Warren’s PostSecret project. Last month, Warren took the TED stage to share the remarkable story of this collective exercise in compassion and crack open the shell of the human condition.”
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Tagged antique store, digitizing books, family photos, Frank Warren, grammar, How to, Kurt Vonnegut, library posters, lost, Marketing, postcards, PostSecret, proofreading, rare books, secrets, Semicolon, semicolons, TED, Tips, video, vintage
This Monday’s Link Roundup has some great free stuff. Be sure to check out Free Genealogy Software and Grab Our 20-Part Online Marketing Course. If you just want to gaze at some mouth watering photos, you won’t want to miss the World’s Most Beautiful Libraries.
- Free Genealogy Software. “Several of the free genealogy programs are very powerful and none of them are “limited trial offers.” However, upgrading to the “Plus Editions” of a couple of programs will add even more features.”
- Kindle Books Now Available at over 11,000 Local Libraries. “Kindle and Kindle app customers can now borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 local libraries in the United States. When a customer borrows a Kindle library book, they’ll have all of the unique features they love about Kindle books, including Whispersync, which automatically synchronizes their margin notes, highlights and bookmarks, real page numbers, Facebook and Twitter integration, and more.”
- Grab Our 20-Part Online Marketing Course (It’s Free!) “Want to discover the smartest ways to mix social media, content marketing, and SEO for lead generation and developing new business? We’ve got you covered with Internet Marketing for Smart People. And there’s absolutely no charge.”
- Culturomics. “The library of the future will contain a unified text comprised of all books and magazines and newspapers (and blogs) completely hyperlinked and co-located. This aggregation has already begun to happen as Google, Amazon and others digitize the books of our libraries and keep them machine readable. What if you could read all the books at once and deduce the patterns among their billions of words?”
- TED. Words About Words. “Language is the stuff of thought — the more we know about it, the better we will understand ourselves. These speakers are trying to crack the mystery.”
- National Association of Memoir Writers Announces Guest Speakers. “The National Association of Memoir Writers is showcasing talented authors and teachers who are experts in Creative Nonfiction and memoir for the first ever Teleconference on Truth or Lie—On the Cusp of Memoir and Fiction, for the bi-annual National Association of Memoir Writers Day-Long Memoir Writing Teleconference, scheduled for October 21, 2011.”
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Tagged free resources, future, genealogy, How to, Kindle books, libraries, link roundup, National Association of Memoir Writers, online marketing course, software, TED, Tips, words
