From MacWorld.com, "Online storage service Dropbox accidentally turned off password authentication for its 25 million users for four hours on Monday" They assert that less then 1% of their users were active at the time. Dropbox is a great utility for storing and sharing files remotely. You have a local copy of the file, and it is pushed to the cloud. Any other devices connected to that account, gets the file from the cloud automatically. Even with the privacy issue that was accressed, I use the service all the time. However, if you are storing sensitive files, it is always a good idea to ensure they are encrypted, no matter where they are stored.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Survey Results--Part 3
Today I want to show the last two pie charts, because they are so pretty to look at ... Umm, wait. Because they are a great way to show results. We'll save the textual results for part 4, where for instance, you will see what the most and least favorite features are.
Now, let's have some more pie!
For the most part, it seems pretty easy to load up the reader. Seems the companies have done their job.
This one surprised me. When iBooks first came out, highlighting was a feature that was missing. However it was available on the Kindle reader for iPad. It took one or two updates to get that feature into iBooks. It's a feature I just can't do with out. But I guess it depends on the type of book you are reading. For a fiction novel, it doesn't make so much sense, but for a technical book, it makes all the sense in the world. 47% like the annotations, but 61% use it for recreational reading. So perhaps people like to highlight their favorite passages from their fiction books as I like to highlight important parts of a technical book.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Survey Winners and Results--Part 1
Results are in! Congratulations to the winners, you have been notified via email.
And now onto the Survey Results. We'll be releasing them in installments over the next few days.
Introductions
It would seem that most of you are between 31 and 40:
Even split between brainiacs and the average Joe:
ebooks
People still like to buy dead trees. They really are pretty aren't they? Nothing like showing off your fav books. The folks at Apple know this, as the presentation of your ebook collection is a book shelf. Perfect.
Most people are building their collection as they go. Makes sense. But I sure do love filling up my cyber shelves :)
Not many have replaced their books with ebooks. I wonder if it would have made a difference if you were able to upgrade the print to ebook? Most of my technical books were O'Reilly, and they have an excellent replacement plan. If you have the print, you can get the ebook for a huge discount.
Stay tuned for more results on Monday!
And now onto the Survey Results. We'll be releasing them in installments over the next few days.
Introductions
It would seem that most of you are between 31 and 40:
Even split between brainiacs and the average Joe:
ebooks
People still like to buy dead trees. They really are pretty aren't they? Nothing like showing off your fav books. The folks at Apple know this, as the presentation of your ebook collection is a book shelf. Perfect.
Most people are building their collection as they go. Makes sense. But I sure do love filling up my cyber shelves :)
Not many have replaced their books with ebooks. I wonder if it would have made a difference if you were able to upgrade the print to ebook? Most of my technical books were O'Reilly, and they have an excellent replacement plan. If you have the print, you can get the ebook for a huge discount.
Stay tuned for more results on Monday!
For Immediate Release!
Portland Writing Group Indie-Publishes eBook Anthology
Contact Info:
Greater Portland Scribists
scribists@gmail.com
http://scribists.blogspot.com
facebook.com/GreaterPortlandScribists
Portland, ME June 17, 2011 It’s all about the technology. Literature has finally entered the Indie Revolution thanks to ebooks, and the Greater Portland Scribists aren’t hesitating to join. GPS has produced Scribings to get their bearings on the technologies that are bringing ebooks to the world. As new authors, they are experimenting with this low-cost, high-yield mode of publication to reach out directly to their audience. Find Scribings on Smashwords.com, and many other ebookstores, beginning June 17th 2011. Look for cards with discount codes circulating the Portland area!
Scribings is a fabulous compilation of speculative tales by four Maine authors. The collection consists of eleven pieces of short fiction, including one piece of flash fiction from each author. These stories exhibit a range of styles and genres from fantasy to science fiction and beyond. Watch young gods learn their place, see what the afterlife is like, meet Dappil, taste the sweetness of revenge, feel the fires of judgment and more.
Over the last year GPS has been blogging about the development of ebook popularity and how epublishing is affecting the publishing industry. Also on their blog are reviews of writing software, book reviews and occasionally a free story.
Greater Portland Scribists is a group of speculative fiction writers from the greater Portland, Maine area. They coined the term “scribists” to pay homage to the scribes of yore, monks who spent hours bent over manuscript pages, writing for as long as they had light to do so. GPS members are Jamie Alan Belanger; Cynthia Ravinski, MA; Lee Patterson and Richard Veysey.
Contact Info:
Greater Portland Scribists
scribists@gmail.com
http://scribists.blogspot.com
facebook.com/GreaterPortlandScribists
Monday, June 13, 2011
Begining of the Week Update
It's June 13th, so that means 5 days until:
- Scribings, Vol 1 launches (see our cover? istn't it georgous?)
- Results for "From the Pulps to Pixles: an ereader Survey" are posted
- The winner of the survey is notified
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Click here to take our survey.
One winner will receive a $20 gift card to the ebook store of their choice and a free copy of our ebook. Five other free ebooks will be given away.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Book Release Update
Just thought I'd pop in here and announce that we have a registered ISBN number!
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Click here to take our survey.
One winner will receive a $20 gift card to the ebook store of their choice and a free copy of our ebook. Five other free ebooks will be given away.
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Click here to take our survey.
One winner will receive a $20 gift card to the ebook store of their choice and a free copy of our ebook. Five other free ebooks will be given away.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
The Arc of Story
I used to be a panster. But I'm not anymore. I needed more structure to be productive enough to get all the work done that I want to get done. Yes, I’m an organizing freak, a slave to my left brain. But, I tried outlining and that didn't work. I wrote exactly what I should, and my work SUCKED.... So I do not outline.
In my struggles with trying to trick myself into getting organized without outlining, I found something that did work. An old enemy had come back to offer help: the story arc.
When I took my first creative writing class, for the first time in my life I started talking to a lot of the other people about writing. I didn’t know the jargon, outside of grammar and maybe plot. So when someone started talking about having trouble with a story because they couldn’t figure out the arc, I had no idea what he was talking about and thought he was being a writing snob and using a fancy word for the plot. Workshop after workshop I heard this word, “I really like the arc of your story,” etc…. And I was feeling left out. What was this ubiquitous arc?
Jump ahead a few years. “Cynthia, you need to have the synopsis for your novel done next month. Cynthia you need to finish your novel and … yes, it needs to have an ending or it won’t pass…”
This was my situation: I refused to work off an outline, so I never wrote one. I had my synopsis but the ending I put down had nothing to do with my story anymore. But I needed something to point me in the right direction. I looked at the beginning, I looked at the middle...yes, there was a “shape there” I could feel it. But I needed to extend the shape. Then it clicked. It all fell into place. So simple. Why hadn’t I seen this before?
The arc is, in a word, progress. It keeps the story from getting boring, from going in a straight line. You can think of it like a learning curve. At first you know nothing, but the more you learn the easier and faster you pick up this new thing until you know so much you can’t learn as much because there is less to know. You might say, “This resembles the shape of a story, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement.” Bingo. That’s exactly what it is.
The thing is, I had seen this before. The arc I’d just come to terms with was easily recognizable in poetry. When I’d studied poetry with Wes McNair, he said a poem always has a turn. In class, we read some poems and found all the turns in them. I was hooked. My favorite poems are short lined with lots of enjambment. The turns in poems were always easy to find, for me (but not in a story, shrug). It always had something to do with the feel of shifting.
Here’s an example from Sandra Kasturi’s The Animal Bridegroom. Try to find the turn.*
The Burning Woman
I vastly expanded the shape of poetry that I loved so much to fit my novel. I finished it and moved onto revisions. By the time I got to the end, cutting passages, moving them around, heightening the action to give it meaning, I had a properly structured story, more importantly, I felt like I had control of it.
Now, when I go to write a story, I need to have the arc in mind or I meander around and go nowhere, or I go everywhere except where I should. To keep organized, I use arcs to keep not only my plot on track, but also my characters.
Writing is a craft. Like any craft its practitioners will improve and get better results with practice and the use of tools. This one magical tool has helped me resolve one of my biggest weaknesses.
So, do you outline, write by the seat of your pants or, like me, something in the middle?
*The turn occurs on line 13. See how it’s just after the middle of the poem? And then it moves on to the real kicker at the end—just like a story.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click here to take our survey.
One winner will receive a $20 gift card to the ebook store of their choice and a free copy of our ebook. Five other free ebooks will be given away.
In my struggles with trying to trick myself into getting organized without outlining, I found something that did work. An old enemy had come back to offer help: the story arc.
When I took my first creative writing class, for the first time in my life I started talking to a lot of the other people about writing. I didn’t know the jargon, outside of grammar and maybe plot. So when someone started talking about having trouble with a story because they couldn’t figure out the arc, I had no idea what he was talking about and thought he was being a writing snob and using a fancy word for the plot. Workshop after workshop I heard this word, “I really like the arc of your story,” etc…. And I was feeling left out. What was this ubiquitous arc?
Jump ahead a few years. “Cynthia, you need to have the synopsis for your novel done next month. Cynthia you need to finish your novel and … yes, it needs to have an ending or it won’t pass…”
This was my situation: I refused to work off an outline, so I never wrote one. I had my synopsis but the ending I put down had nothing to do with my story anymore. But I needed something to point me in the right direction. I looked at the beginning, I looked at the middle...yes, there was a “shape there” I could feel it. But I needed to extend the shape. Then it clicked. It all fell into place. So simple. Why hadn’t I seen this before?
The arc is, in a word, progress. It keeps the story from getting boring, from going in a straight line. You can think of it like a learning curve. At first you know nothing, but the more you learn the easier and faster you pick up this new thing until you know so much you can’t learn as much because there is less to know. You might say, “This resembles the shape of a story, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement.” Bingo. That’s exactly what it is.
The thing is, I had seen this before. The arc I’d just come to terms with was easily recognizable in poetry. When I’d studied poetry with Wes McNair, he said a poem always has a turn. In class, we read some poems and found all the turns in them. I was hooked. My favorite poems are short lined with lots of enjambment. The turns in poems were always easy to find, for me (but not in a story, shrug). It always had something to do with the feel of shifting.
Here’s an example from Sandra Kasturi’s The Animal Bridegroom. Try to find the turn.*
The Burning Woman
Listen!
You can hear her pale voice
from within the conflagration.
It always speaks truth.
It always lies.
She crackles like marrow-bone
when she walks.
Her eyes and mouth open
and burn like magnesium.
She is a contrary Gorgon;
everything she looks at
is forced into frenzied life.
If you are very lucky
and can run after her
until she catches you,
you can put her in a canning jar
to hold in the air:
a blaze of fireflies
to light the darkness.
I vastly expanded the shape of poetry that I loved so much to fit my novel. I finished it and moved onto revisions. By the time I got to the end, cutting passages, moving them around, heightening the action to give it meaning, I had a properly structured story, more importantly, I felt like I had control of it.
Now, when I go to write a story, I need to have the arc in mind or I meander around and go nowhere, or I go everywhere except where I should. To keep organized, I use arcs to keep not only my plot on track, but also my characters.
Writing is a craft. Like any craft its practitioners will improve and get better results with practice and the use of tools. This one magical tool has helped me resolve one of my biggest weaknesses.
So, do you outline, write by the seat of your pants or, like me, something in the middle?
*The turn occurs on line 13. See how it’s just after the middle of the poem? And then it moves on to the real kicker at the end—just like a story.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click here to take our survey.
One winner will receive a $20 gift card to the ebook store of their choice and a free copy of our ebook. Five other free ebooks will be given away.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
10 Days left to take our eReader Survey
Own an eBook Reader? Click below to take our survey.
Click here to take our survey.
One winner will receive a $20 gift card to the ebook store of their choice and a free copy of our ebook. We'll give away five other free ebooks.
Click here to take our survey.
One winner will receive a $20 gift card to the ebook store of their choice and a free copy of our ebook. We'll give away five other free ebooks.
Digital Piracy Survey Finds Interesting Results
Digital piracy. It's an illicit activity undertaken by college students in their dorm rooms or by teenagers in their parents' basements, right? Wrong, according to a recent survey by the British law firm Wiggin. Or wrong when it comes to e-book digital piracy at least.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click here to take our survey.
One winner will receive a $20 gift card to the ebook store of their choice and a free copy of our ebook. Five other free ebooks will be given away.
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