What would I do without Twitter? It’s my own little news show. Here are the links I’ve collected this week. I think I got a bit carried away:
#1: Something is up at Amazon (again). Are they forcing publishers to put up searchable copies of their books before the book is for sale?
#2: Interesting statement on the Google Book Settlement, excerpted and highlighted for easy reading. Covers the reasons the settlement has “bad idea” written all over it.
#3: An article on Craigslist and its odd founder from Wired examining why, against all odds and a staunch refusal to innovate, Craigslist continues to dominate online classifieds. The article is much more interesting than I make it sound. Really.
#4: Star Trek fan? John Scalzi ranks Star Trek film directors.
#5: Use Gmail? Here’s a handy Lifehacker article with a number of ways to access Gmail when it goes down.
#6: James Patterson signs 17-book over 5 years deal. Sigh. This is why I often stop reading authors: too many books pumped out over too little time leaving them cookie-cutterish, boring, and predictable. Apparently he comes up with an outline and contracts out the writing of the first draft (which is the most time-consuming and painful part of the writing process for many), so he’s not really “writing” 17 books.
#7: An article on why students aren’t ready for digital textbooks (or as I read it: why digital textbooks aren’t ready for students).
2 Comments
That’s exactly why I stopped reading Patterson!
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I haven’t ever read Patterson, but I have stopped reading Robin Cook and Michael Crichton. I don’t know if they ran out of ideas or are too pressured to pump out new books, but the quality has plummeted.