Entrecard User Script updated

For those of you who were using my entrecard script, if you upgraded to firefox 3.5 you probably noticed that the Move Back link was missing. I've fixed the problem and now works just fine with firefox 3.5 I didn't add a new link, I just updated the old one so my original post links to the latest script.

The updated script is here.

What should I do with lost Blog Fiction

As most of you probably know, I have a forum dedicated only to listing all of the blog fiction available on the internet. I've had it up for a couple years now. Over the last few years some of the Blog Fiction listed has been taken down. That means I have a lot of broken links and etc...

I was getting ready to just outright delete these entries, but something stopped me. Right now I have probably the largest collection of Blog Fiction both past and present. I asked myself, Would I and the internet be losing something if I deleted the last piece of evidence of some of this early blog fiction?

So I wanted to ask you all. Is it worth preserving these links and brief descriptions? Should I move them all to a broken link section? Or maybe I should sync up all the broken links into one topic. Or, maybe I'm being silly, and just need to delete them. I'd love to hear your opinions. The Forums\ is getting pretty clogged up, so I'm setting a deadline for myself. In one week the broken links will be dealt with one way or another.

Writing your first Post: Get on with it!

When writing a book, the first page of a book is the most important because it is going to be the most read page when it's sitting on the shelf at the bookstore. It better be good, or the other pages aren't getting read. The same thing goes for Blog Fiction. If the first post isn't interesting, you may not hold your audience.

So how do you write an interesting first post? Well, first of all, don't write one that reads like an online dating profile. e.g.

My name is Mary Nextdoor. I am 33 years old and live in Manhattan. I'm 5' 6'', blonde(natural), brown eyes, and have curves. I love my pets, hate my parents, and only go to church on Christmas eve.

Luckily, most people haven't written anything quite that boring, but I do see a tendency to always want to introduce themselves. Here's some real examples.

The Professional Pet's first paragraph

Lets start with the basics, my name is Fluffy and I live with a family in England. Yes, I'm a pet and I'm still pretty much a baby as you can see from my picture. Most people comment on my name because, well, I'm quite clearly the least fluffy thing you are ever likely to see. Lets be honest, a mouldy carrot has more fluff than me! Why am I called Fluffy then? My owner thought it would be funny... I didn't agree. I wiped the smile off his face when I left a little present on his bed though, hehe.

Wilf's World's First Paragraph

My name is Wilf and I am eight, very nearly nine years old. I would really like to be called 'Buzz' like, Buzz Aldrin but my parents wouldn't talk to me when I tried to change my name. I mean whoever heard of an astronaut called 'Wilfred'? I live with my parents who are extremely old and like to visit garden centres and stare at things. My favourite place (apart from The Science Museum of course!) is my bedroom or inventroom, as I like to call it. I have a computer in my inventroom and its name is Dexter. I named it after my best friend, Dexter. I am sad to say that Dexter is a bit slow and so is the computer-ha! Anyway, I want to tell you about my world because I can. The first bit of my story has to do with Christmas. Mum says this is always a difficult time. Too right. I'll start you off tomorrow as I have to go to bed now.

Great Swan Alley first post

I was born on Great Swan Alley in the April of 1725. Or rather I should say, I was left in a doorway on Great Swan Alley in the April of 1725. I do not know where I was born, or of what parentage, but I am on a quest to discover.

In all 3 examples, the character introduce themselves. Granted they all find little ways to make sure it's not boring, but the goal shouldn't be "not boring", it should be "so interesting a reader just HAS to read the next post".

When reading a Blog Fiction, I like the ones that form the first post, just "Get On With it!" There is no introduction, the writer just jumps into a story where the fictional blogger already has a problem. I love blogfic that starts that way, and I'm willing to bet your readers will too. I'm not sure what the formula is for writing a great beginning post. So the best I can do is post some examples that work.

Here's from the first post of The Voice of the Living

We’ve been running all night, and the sun is about to rise. I hope and pray that we are not the only ones who’ve made it out alive, but from what we saw back there, I find it unlikely. With me are Dr. Graham York and Pte. Hannah Johnson, and right now we consider ourselves the only survivors after the outbreak of infection in the state of New York.
Due to the aggressiveness of the virus, there’s a good chance it has spread even further by now. That would explain why no help was sent for us.
Right now, our main priority is getting in touch with any other survivors out there. I will continue documenting everything, so that if we do not survive, our story will.

Reading this really makes me want to continue reading it. It makes me want to find out several things. "Where did they make it out of?" "What kind of virus was this?" "Were these 3 involved in making it?" "Are there other survivors?" I want to keep reading because I want those questions answered.

From the first post of Alone on Earth

I awoke this morning to a slight humming noise. I thought it was coming from the communications center. But, I turned it down low in case of any incoming calls or email. I went outside and just as it started, it stopped. Ralph was whining the entire time. The humming lasted only about 2 or 3 minutes. A few years ago I would have said it was coming from power lines. Except there are no power lines any longer. I need to take Ralph in to town for a checkup. He’s been acting funny for the past few days.

This is another great example of a story just starting. It too makes me want to keep reading. I want to know "what was that humming that woke up the blogger?", "Who or what is Ralph and why has he been acting funny?", and "where is he that there are no power lines?" In both cases the stories above did eventually introduce the characters, but they did so either a little at a time, or well enough after the first post that the reader should already be hooked.

One more piece of advice on your first post. I've noticed that several blog fiction writers try to be clever by making their first post be a "test" post. That is, they right a post that just has the word "test" or "test post" in it. I do get that they're trying to emulate real bloggers that might have done this. Unfortunately, this is being done so much that it can no longer be considered clever. (see I woke Up in Pittsburgh, Modern Vampire, Ten-Sided) Just... GET ON WITH IT!!!

Forum Problems Fixed

I know I haven't been around a lot.

fortunately, the problems with registering in the forums has been fixed. So at least you can post in the forums. I do watch the forums for new postings as well as comments.

Thanks for visiting

Faster EntreCard Drops

Earlier this year I wrote about Entrecard and how to make the most of it. One of the key parts of EntreCard is "dropping".

Dropping
The final way to earn credits is the most intensive, but is also the primary earning for a blog with little traffic. You can go to other sites that have EntreCard and "drop" on them. Not only will that site earn a credit, you will too. As a bonus, many sites will often do "dropbacks" meaning they will drop on your site if you drop on theirs. If you find people that do that each drop doubles in value. My suggestion for doing drops is to bookmark a few blogs everyday that have the following characteristic:
1. Have an EntreCard
2. Are of a related subject
3. Have the EntreCard widget towards the top of their site.
Then put all of those bookmarks in the same folder(I use the firefox "Delicious" add-on and give all the sites the same tag). Everyday, go to that folder and choose the "open all sites in this folder" option. Then, go to the bathroom or make breakfast. By the time they are done loading you can click-close-click-close each and every site. Once they are all loaded you should be able to do about 50 or more drops in 5 minutes. Also, monitor your "dropbacks" and see who returns your drops. Delete the sites that do not and replace them with sites that do.

As Dropping is the most time intensive part of EntreCard I'm always on the lookout for ways to do it more quickly. I've come up with a way to find people's EntreCard's faster and completely eliminated requirement 3 from your drop list.

Here is what you'll need.

1. The Firefox Web Browser
2. The GreaseMonkey Add-On
3. Click on this link to install the EntreCard User Script

Once it's all installed what will happen is that whenever you visit a website that has the entrecard widget it will move it to the top left of the webpage. For Example, here is my blog before installing the user script:


Now, here is what it looks like after installing the script


You may wonder what happens if you don't want the website's entrecard in the top left corner. Looking again at the picture and you will notice that not only that the card is moved, but there is now a black box below it. After dropping your card(even before if you really want to), you can click the words in the box, "Move Back", and it will move the Widget back to where it was originally placed.

I wrote the script with the thought that I could now put any website in my drop list regardless of where they placed their widget; however, I have found it useful during my normal browsing too. It's a good way to be notified that someone has an EntreCard on their site. And with the "Move Back" button you can easily move the widget back to where it should be.

Hope you guys find it as useful as me.

New Layout

How do you guys like the new layout?

It's a pretty radical change, but I think it was needed. Over the last couple years I had hacked up the layout little by little until it was no longer coherent. So let me know what you think. If it is panned across the board I'll consider restoring the old layout.

There Is No eBook Standards "War"

Last week, PC World had an article last week suggesting a Format War for ebooks is brewing - One similar to the HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray format war. The latest catalyst was Google's entrance into ebooks. I think this is a little (actually VERY) over hyped situation. There is almost no similarity between the next gen DVD and eBooks.

HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray was years in the making. That battle cost the involved businesses millions in R&D, manufacturing, and marketing. Worse still, consumers who picked the wrong side were left with hundreds, even thousands of dollars in outmoted equipment and disc.

The first difference with eBooks is that there are more than 2 options. Sony has their own style(lrf\lrx) and Amazon has their own style (AZW), also there's ePub which is an openly developed standard. Also, there's formats transferred from PCs (such as PDF, text, html, etc...). Oh, and there's also Mobipocket and a dozen other formats that you probably haven't ever heard of. So that's the first difference is that there are more than 2 formats in competition.

For Blu-Ray(Sony) and HD-DVD(Toshiba) there was a financial incentive for the businesses to want their format to succeed. They wanted to collect on license fees. They collect a fee for every machine, or software program written that could read their format. They even charge a per disk fee for every disk that is manufactured and sold. The companies had every reason to want their format to beat out the other one.

There isn't that incentive for ebooks... mostly. The state of most eBook formats fall into 1 of 3 general categories:

1. Completely Open and Free(with or without DRM)
2. Open without DRM, Closed or license for DRM
3. Proprietary

No license for the first category. There is some incentive to win a "standards" war for the second and third category. However, not nearly as much as disks. License fees are only collected for programs that consume or create the eBooks. There isn't a per file cost as there are with DVDs. In addition, many of the programs to read the formats are given away for free by the companies.

The third and most important difference is that, with the eBook "war", is that it's near impossible for the consumers to lose. The Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD, the loss for consumers was easy to see. If a consumer bought the "losing" equipment they are now out hundreds - even thousands - of dollars in outmoted equipment and movies that they will soon not be able to play on anything. The hardware of Blu-Ray used different hardware and lasers than HD-DVD.

Ebooks are software! If you have an ebook writer that can't read a certain format the manufacturer can always release new "firmware" so that it can read a new format. Better still you can always convert from one format to another (hopefully legally). A practice that wasn't really an option with physical disks. This really is the most important difference. Consumers don't have to worry that they might be buying a 300$ brick.

So if you agree with my dismantling of a "format war", how do we look at all the different ebook formats out there? A better model to understand what is going on is to look at the previous format competition for digital music format and word processor document formats.

Both digital music and word processor document formats that have already been fought and settled, have a lot more in common with ebooks. All three had more than 2 options, difficult to leverage license fees from the winner, and all 3 are software based.

Not only are these better models, but they give us 2 different results of the results of the ebook format competition.

One scenario result would follow the results of the digital music formats. In digital music, mp3 won. MP3 is a open and free standard that anyone can use without having to pay any company the rights to create, or use mp3s. There are still proprietary digital music formats, of course. But in every case-be it Windows Audio, iTunes, or a CD ripper- if your program can't convert to or from mp3s it is just plain primitive.

The other scenario is the word proccesor documents. A long long time ago, there were lots and lots of word processor programs. Each company would try to outdo each other by supporting their own proprietary document format as well as their competitors. There was no effort to make a standard across all applications. Eventually, Microsoft's doc(.doc) format won and became a de facto standard. Partially from being an able document format and also the proliferation of Microsoft Office. Just like MP3s and music, no word processor dares to enter the market unless it can read and write .doc documents (see openoffice and google documents). Fortunately, they didn't charge other companies for reading their files. Unfortunately, this result left one company with complete control over current and future formats. They also had the upper hand because other companies must reverse engineer the spec as Microsoft didn't open the specification until more than 15 years after it's creation.

• What will happen to ebooks? Will an open format or a proprietary format become the standard? I don't know. What I do know is the following:
• A standard will eventually emerge
• The "losers" will be able to easily convert over to the "winner"
• For a proprietary format to win it would have to be from massive proliferation of content and devices that use the format exclusively. From where I'm sitting, Amazon and it's Kindle device, are the only ones in a position to win that war.
• Finally, and most importantly, none of this should be a factor in delaying your purchase of an ebook reader.

The next 18 months should be enough time to prove me right, or prove me a fool.

Privacy Policy

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Privacy Policy for blog.blogfiction.org

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