Windows IE’s Research Tool

My regular readers know how much I like open source software and operating systems.

I’ve just had the privilege of having a look at the Beta version of (Linux) Ubuntu’s latest 7.1 upgrade, for example, thanks to the way my wonderful son keeps on top of these things. And I must tell you – it’s even BETTER than Mac OS X! It’s just awesome as we’ll all have the chance to appreciate it for ourselves when it’s officially released in October. (And of course, it’ll be FREE as usual.)

But I digress… despite all that, I still think Windows Internet Explorer holds a special place among all browsers because there are still a lot of things that are optimized only for Windows IE.

Take the Google Pages, for example, Google’s free and versatile web page design and hosting functionality. I’ve been using Google Pages for over a year now to host and maintain my main site www.writer111.com and I have only a SINGLE complaint: a number of editing functions work only if you are using IE browser on a Windows platform.

Today I’d like to bring to your attention to another great tool that is available with IE – it’s great built-in research tool, hidden under the Research button (two books under a magnifying glass).

You click it and a sidebar opens on the left.

Type in your search word and then click the drop-down menu button in the next field.

Windows allows you to make a quick search from the following sources:

Encarta English dictionary, Encarta Thesaurus in 3 languages, Translation module, Encarta Encyclopedia, Factiva iWorks, HighBeam Research, MSN Search, MSN Money Stock quotes, and Thomson Gale Company Profiles.

If you are a writer or researcher such functionality comes in very handy indeed.

How to Copy and Paste with OpenOffice on a Mac

I love OpenOffice because it’s a very powerful and FREE open source office application. Its lack of enterprise-level mail program (like Outlook) is its only shortcoming. Otherwise it’s (at least) as good as its Microsoft counterparts Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.

However you need to be careful if you have downloaded the Mac version of OpenOffice to your Macbook or any other Mac machine because Macs run OpenOffice through an outer shell program called X11. You first download X11 and then OpenOffice will work.

It works but not thew ay you are used to when it comes to Copying and Pasting text between OpenOffice and a non-OpenOffice application, like Safari or Firefox browser, for example.

Here is a must tip for copying and pasting text between your OpenOffice word processor and your email window. It’s a MUST because if you don’t know this you cannot copy and paste your text.

When you are in OpenOffice COPY by pressing CRTL+C.

But when it comes to PASTING it in your email window, use APPLE BUTTON + V.

No other combination will work since within the X11 shell, you can access your clipboard through the CTRL button only. However, when you are in the mail screen, you are no more in X11 but in Apple environment. Therefore you can reach the clipboard only through an Apple command, which is accomplished by switching to the APPLE BUTTON.

MS Excel -- How to join texts in different cells

Imagine you have the name of your company in cell A1 and the address in F1 but you would like to add the address to the company name and display them in a new cell, D1.

This is how you can do it:

Click and select cell D1.

Click the fx link to the left of the Formula Bar to display the Insert Function dialog box.

Select TEXT for category and then select the CONCATENATE function.

Click OK to display the Function Arguments dialog box for the CONCATENATE function.

In Text1 field insert the cell ID of the text “ABC Company” (which is A1 in this example).

In Text2 field, hit the SPACE BAR to introduce a space between two text fragments.

In Text3 field insert the cell ID of the text “123 Main Street” (which is F1 in this example).

Click OK and The Company name and Address will be now displayed in cell D1.

Obviously in as simple an example as this, you might as well just copy and paste the text from one cell to another too.

But imagine having 20 or 30 different pieces of text dispersed all over a spreadsheet. That’s when the concatenation function really comes in handy.

MS Excel can concatenate up to 30 text items, including the spaces.

Two Giants in Two Days

The world of motion pictures has lost two giants within the last two days -- Ingmar Bergman, and Michelangelo Antonioni.

I must admit that I could never take a shine to Bergman. His films left me cold, drained, without a drop of sunshine.

So why did I love Antonioni that much? His classic trilogy (“L’Avventura” (1960), “La Notte” (1961) and “L’Eclisse” (1962)) was not exactly a display of "fun under the sun" either.

But first of all, Antonioni's courage to leave behind the 2,300 years old 3-Act paradigm and sail towards the unchartered waters of emotions-without-a-plot really fascinated me.

Secondly, the way he brought the sense of modern alienation into focus will probably be without an equal for a long time to come.

His "Blowup" was not bad either but at the level of the Trilogy. "The Passenger" with Jack Nicholson is another latter-day Antonioni classic that should be on every cinema fan's must-see list.

The Italian master will be missed. And perhaps I'll write about him more later on.

For the time being, I'll refer you to this excellent NYT review.

Google's Killer App

By Brandt Dainow

Google Analytics 2.0 changes everything, and according to the CEO of ThinkMetrics, the competition is dead. They just haven't stopped moving yet.

Death by Google

Google has killed the web analytics software industry with the release of the new version of Google Analytics. The new version was released just under two months ago and is simply a quantum leap above any other analytics product on the planet.

In my opinion, Google Analytics does for the web metrics industry what the Google search engine did for online search: it kills everyone else off.

Google Analytics version 2 is not revolutionary. It does not extend web analytics software by providing new forms of analysis. Neither does it extend our understanding of websites by offering new approaches. What Google has done is simply take every feature in every product on the market and put them all into one system, and then make it available for free.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/Newsletter/15823.asp

Screenwriting – The Power of “Character Arcs”

A “character arc,” that is, the changes a character goes through during the 2 hours of a movie, is one of the most tricky aspects of screenwriting.

You miss it, and you have in your hands a flat piece of narrative, a chain of events without a human-emotional core. Such movies do not move us to laughter or tears.

Nail it on the head, and the whole narrative comes alive like the juice hitting a light bulb. We can now identify with those characters and feel the satisfaction of living through their lives vicariously. Our hearts expand. Our souls take wings. Those are the movies we love to watch more than once.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006) is one such jewel in which not one but all SIX characters go through clearly defined sharp character arcs. It is a good example of careful and loving writing by Michael Arndt which won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for him this year. Alan Arkin, as grandpa Hoover, also won a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar with his unforgettable performance in “Sunshine.”

Here are the SIX arcs for SIX characters in “Sunshine”:

(WARNING: Plot points are revealed.)

OLIVE: A seven year old darling of a girl, a perfect picture of innocence, who is not quite sure of herself, whether she can win the contest and make her daddy proud… arcs to… an uninhibited beauty pageant performer on stage “kicking ass” with the dance routine taught her by her grandpa. Shy Olive refuses to be intimidated by her more polished competitors, brings down the house and shows her own dad what “winning” is all about.

RICHARD: A stuck-up and judgmental disciplinarian, a paint-by-numbers motivational speaker with strong Protestant-ethic work values, unsympathetic to the plight of the losers of the world… arcs to… himself becomes the kind of loser that he always despised in the past, gets rid of his self-righteous inhibitions and joins in with his daughter’s “ass kicking” stage performance.

DWAYNE: A catatonic and depressed teenager idolizing Frederick Nietzsche who would no talk to anyone and would communicate only by writing on a note pad… arcs to… a young adult who comes to full terms with his worst fear of not being able to become an air force pilot due to his color blindness, he starts talking with his family, and joins Olive on the stage for a wild “ass kicking” stage performance.

GRANDPA: A cantankerous foul-mouthed old man who had been kicked out of a nursing home for his heroin habit, who is bitterly critical of the world and in particular of his son’s attempts to lead a clean and “ideal” family life… arcs to… his granddaughter Olive’s most precious role model and talent coach, and a man who truly appreciates his son’s courage and the risks he is taking in life to prove himself.

SHERYL: A mother who is trying to hold her family together by acting as the sane moderator, a good woman who is busy putting out fires, steering the dysfunctional characters in her family towards common sense solutions, but also a homemaker who feels the full brunt of the family’s financial problems… arcs to… the only family member who refuses to blink at the brink of Olive’s critical talent show stage appearance, a mountain of inner strength who refuses to be intimidated by the prospects of failure even when her son and husband give in and want to pack it up and go back home.

FRANK: A catatonic survivor of a suicide attempt sitting in a wheelchair at a mental hospital before his sister Sheryl takes him to her home to join the rest of the family, a world-class Proust scholar driven to self-loathing and self-destruction for losing his male lover to his chief competitor in the academic world… arcs to… a man literally running ahead of anyone else to the hotel ballroom where Little Miss Sunshine competition is held to make sure Olive would not miss the registration, a lonely pessimist who becomes an unexpected mentor to the equally depressed Dwayne, accepts all his loses in life and joins the rest of the family on the stage to celebrate Olive’s improbable “kick ass” stage performance.

Six well developed non-overlapping characters. Six arcs. Six paths to a better life, or at least, a deeper life where love, solidarity and understanding replace hatred, sarcasm and anger.

What else can we expect from a movie?

If you are a screenwriter you owe it to yourself to watch this very well written Oscar winner and study and learn from it.

Multitasking Tips

For all you work-from-home professionals, here are some multitasking tips from David Meyer, a professor of cognition and perception at the University of Michigan (brought to you by WIRED magazine):

1) Double up on tasks that use different mental channels like writing a report and brainstorming for a company logo.

2) Think carefully about the requirements of each task. If you are trying to close the sales while driving a car and the conversation does not go as planned you might be endangering both your life and the lives of innocent others.

3) Minimize unnecessary distractions by switching off your phone ringer, shutting down your email and closing the door (if you have one).

4) Interrupt tasks at natural breaking points. Finish writing a sentence before answering a phone.

5) Set aside time for not doing anything at all. Take breaks, eat well, exercise and make sure you get enough sleep.

Hollywood Writers Up in Arms Over "Residuals"

In this day and age of free YouTube downloads, webisodes, and mobisodes, "creatives" of Hollywood think they are shortchanged. They want a piece of the "backend." They want "residuals." That is, they want to get paid everytime, for example, you log on to ABC's web site and watch any episode of any show.

Or else? WGA, The all-powerful Writers Guild of America, will go on strike on October 31. So the studios are busy like crazy stocking up on extra scripts and shooting all those back-logged episodes so they'll be ready if and when the writer's strike hits Hollywood like a tsunami.

"Tsunami"? Well, perhaps I went overboard with that description because the last time WGA went on strike in the 1980s over the home video rights, 9,000 WGA members walked out. But then they came back for only 0.3 cents on the dollar! It turned out the writers' pocketbooks bled a lot faster that the "suits" in corporate offices. It's an embarrassing episode that most WGA members would rather forget.

One alternative is for the suits and the creatives share the ad revenues on these sites. But probably that's not going to happen anytime soon since the suits accuse the writers with splitting the profits but not the risks as, for example, when a show that has cost tens of millions of dollars bombs completely.

Gobbledygook of the Day: "Swimming Venues"

Obfuscation, or making what is plain unclear and cover it with a veil of mystery, comes easy to some public speakers.

The other day as I was driving in my car and listening to a program on the various hazards of spending a day at the beach, I heard one of the experts say:

"I have to caution your listeners to be careful when they visit hundreds of thousands of swimming venues this summer..."

SWIMMING VENUES??? That was a new one for me. Why not just say "pools and beaches"?

Clarity and relevance should not be the cost of abstraction and generalization.

Google Analytics - Simply Amazing!

If you haven't tried "Google Analytics" yet you owe it to yourself to check it out right away.

If you have a web site and if you'd like to see who is visiting your site, when, from where (including country and city), how much time they spend on what page, etc. then you need Google Analytics -- which is FREE.

You register with Google and place your custom-generated HTML code inside the HEAD section of all the pages you'd like to track. The rest is taken care of by Google.

All reports can be mailed in 4 different formats both to yourself and to anybody else you like on earth.

You can track the traffic of multiple web sites from one single account.

There are some truly very smart people working out there in Google. They continue to amaze me on a weekly basis.

While Microsoft is trying to protect its hold on the IT sector through all kinds of marketing strategies but weak products, Google is letting their products do the talking.

Copy + Paste is not a simple operation with MacBook

MacBook is a visually stunning gorgeous piece of hardware which makes its software issues all the more so heartbreaking. It's the equivalent of a very beautiful girl belching aloud in public.

I've previously written here about the kind of problems the Mac-native browser Safari has with some Google functionalities that I use on a regular bases (like Google Documents, and Google Pages).

Yesterday I was dismayed to discover yet another MacBook dysfunction, this one much more serious than the Google incompatibility issue.

It is hard to believe but...

If you copy text from your word document, MacBook will NOT allow you to paste it into either your e-mail message or any Google Document file!

The only way you can send that text is to save it as a separate file and then ATTACH it to your e-mail, or just type the whole thing the good-old fashioned way. (I hope, unlike me, you are fast typist.)

I still find that hard to believe... such a glaring shortcoming, and yet, MacBooks are still selling like hotcakes.

I'm praying I'm wrong and that I just missed a very simple setting that will eventually set everything right.

But I tried it both with Safari and Firefox and both don't work. If you copy from a file on your machine, you cannot paste it into your e-mail window.

I have no idea what to make of that but if I cannot fix it one way or the other, I think I am returning my beautiful MacBook back to the store and order myself the new DELL UBUNTU lap top. At least I know most of the things that can go wrong on an UBUNTU system and copy-paste function is not one of them.

POST SCRIPT:

After talking with Mac people, it became apparent that the copy-paste does not woth with OPEN OFFICE but it does with MS Word.

MSN News versus Google News search functions

I find Google's news search functionality to be a lot more accurate and focused than MSN's news search.

Here is an unscientific comparison for a specific key phrase. You be the judge.

TOP 10 MSN News Search results for search key phrase “travel nurse”:

http://search.msn.com/news/results.aspx?q=travel+nurse&form=QBNR&go.x=13&go.y=6

TITLES of the returned articles:

She's always ready to go Retired nurse packs her bags at a moment's ...

For fliers, fares are still ascending

Summer nights: Rimini

You want screenwriting advice? Ask this writer

Couple creating a refuge for children

Free health screenings in Haines City

Make My Day

Letters: 'Our government needs a serious overhaul'

Transplant Rules to Let Children Stay Home

Missing, found, but in denial

TOP 10 Google News Search results for search key phrase “travel nurse”:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=travel+nurse

TITLES of the returned articles:

Pack up your troubles

ATC Healthcare Revenue Increases 25% for the First Quarter of ...

Jury consultant in nurse murder trial tells lawyers how to dress ...

She's always ready to go Retired nurse packs her bags at a ...

Take Care will contract with individual doctors to oversee nurse practitioners who staff

New Study of Nurses Reveal Sources of Injectable Medication Errors

“Surgery Robots” Mean More Education and Training for both Nurses ...

Hanover works to recruit nurses

Thanks for the miracle

Traveling man

Copy That Creates Questions

Good copy should answer questions, not create them.

From an air filter commercial:

"Nine times better than the leading brand..."

Really?

If a product is NINE times better than the "leading brand," how come it trails behind? How come it's not the leading brand?

Either the consumers don't know what they're doing, or the copywriter...

Troubling questions that did not exist before the commercial.

Firefox Works on Mac OS 10 Tiger, well, "sort of"

Firefox browser works better than Mac-native Safari as far as some Google functions are concerned.

For example, one can reach all Blogger controls when posting onto a blog from inside Firefox.

However, Google Page Creator still does not work. The Fox cannot catch Fire on that one item, unfortunately.

If you are planning to edit your Google Page Creator web site you need to use IE browser on a Windows machine.

Is this Google's problem? The problem of Mozilla/Firefox or Apple/OS X team? Or all of them?

It seems like someone does not like us to use Google Page Creator on any platform other than IE/Windows.

That's unfortunate because I really love the simplicity and versatility of Google Pages and have my official site built with it (www.writer111.com). It really works for me except I need to switch to my IE/Windows machine every time I need to edit it.

I'm lucky and I have access to a Windows machine as well. But what about those who are operating only on Linux or Mac systems?

The Gobbledygook Word of The Year: “Specificity”

Perhaps it’s still too early for the nominations but I hereby nominate the following monstrosity for the Gobbledygook Word of The Year:

“Specificity”, and even worse, “Specificities”, in its plural form.

Try saying it three times in a row and you’ll instantly forget what time it is or where you are.

Examples from world press:

“Angola: SADC Secretary Acknowledges Country's Specificities” (Angola Press Agency)

"This White Paper … enhances the visibility of sport in EU policy-making, raises awareness of the needs and specificities of the sport sector, and identifies appropriate further action at EU level." (Ján Figel, European Commissioner in charge of Education, Training, Culture & Youth, including Sport)

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) Action Plans, which were signed in November 2006, take into account the specificities of the South Caucasus countries.” (Ambassador Per Eklund, Head of Delegation of the European Commission to Georgia and Armenia)

“Specificity” has two main definitions. Its medical definition means something.

But its non-medical definition is a true abomination. It describes anything but a state of being “specific.” It’s just a vacuous place holder for an idea not quite formed in an ill-informed mind.

MEDICAL definition: “The ability of a test to detect that a condition is not present when it is, in fact, not present. The proportion of people free of a disease who have a negative test.”

NON-MEDICAL definition: “The quality of being specific rather than general; "add a desirable note of specificity to the discussion"; "the specificity of the symptoms of the disease.””

To refer to a group of items that are not clearly defined as “specificities” is as ridiculous an act as calling a group of dead people “existentiaries”.

There should be an article in the penal code against using such words of obfuscation that pollute public communication channels and thus undermine common good, peace and harmony.

What you definitely do NOT need to WRITE a good screenplay?

You definitely, absolutely, positively do NOT need any of the following to START and FINISH writing a good screenplay:

An encyclopedic knowledge of every movie ever written.
Watching ten movies a week.
An intimate knowledgeable of the “lingo” used in Hollywood shoptalk.
Subscriptions to all Hollywood related magazine and newsletters.
Spending thousands of dollars on famous screenwriting workshops.
A Hollywood agent, manager and/or publicist.
An intimate knowledgeable of the way Los Angeles and Hollywood works.
An English, Film Studies or Screenwriting degree from a well-known college.
A college degree of any kind, including a Master’s or a P-h-D.
An intimate knowledgeable of Shakespeare.
Any drug habit.
Smoking cigarettes and/or drinking alcohol.
To be a Christian, Moslem, Jew, Hindu, Scientologist, Atheist or to belong (or not to belong) to any other religion or belief system.
An intimate knowledgeable of the underworld and the seedy side of life.
An intimate knowledgeable of police and court procedurals.
An intimate knowledgeable of doctors and hospitals.
Lots of cash in the bank.
To be homeless and at the edge of absolute poverty.
Lots of free idle time.
An “Oscar material” subject matter.
An idea that has never been written before.
A film that A-List Hollywood actors would die to star in.
To be under 25 or 30.
To be over 40 or 50.
To be any given specific age.
To be a male or female.
To be straight, gay, or of any other sexual orientation.
To be white, black, Hispanic, Indian, Oriental or belong to any of the thousands of ethnic/racial groups.
To have a child or not to have a child.
To come from a large or a small family.
To have been born in the United States or abroad.
A top-notch professional screen writing software.
A Mac brand or any other brand computer.
A blog and/or web site visited by thousands of people a day.
A house in any neighborhood of any city on earth.
The latest cell phone or Blackberry with all the bells and whistles.
A great looking sports car or any given brand of vehicle.
Visiting Europe for your vacations or any other country or spot on earth for any occasion.

Safari - A Handsome Browser with Google Limitations

Mac's SAFARI browser is a great, sleek browsing machine until you want it to accomplish some specific Google-related chores that you could do easily with Firefox and IE.

One great disappointment, for example, is the way Safari cannot display most of the Google Blogger posting controls. You cannot bold or italic your text, cannot spellcheck, etc.

Also, if you are using Google's great online web builder and free hosting service "Google Pages," Safari does not work AT ALL. Period. Google is aware of the pesky issue and a message page recommends the user to download Firefox. Thanks, really.

But I have to note that, if you are using Firefox on a Linux distribution like Ubuntu, the editing function of Google Pages still does not work. You still need IE on a Windows machine to edit your Google Pages. Consumer beware!

What excuse Apple has to let Safari lag so many steps behind in functionality compared to Firefox and IE? For a company that markets itself as "on the cutting edge," it is unbecoming to rely on a browser that is not totally Google-compatible.

Great looks are great but we need full Google compatibility as well.

10th Year - Happy Blogging!

I did not realize this is the 10th anniversary of the invention of blog.

Wall Street Journal observed the moment with a great piece: Happy Blogiversary.

"The spell check on Microsoft Word has yet to awaken to the concept of the blog. Type in "blogging," for instance, and you will promptly earn a disapproving underscore in red, with the suggestion that "bogging," "clogging," "flogging" or "slogging" (unappetizing alternatives all) might, in truth, be the word you seek."

Here are some famous folks and the blogs they read:

Harold Evans
Editor at large, the Week
Former editor, the Times of London
Favorite blogs: AndrewSullivan.com (political pundit for the Atlantic Monthly); MichaelTotten.com (Mideast affairs blogger); HeadButler.com (news and culture roundup)

Mia Farrow
The Editor in Chief: Me
Actress
Favorite blogs: BoingBoing.net (Tracks nooks and crannies of the Web); GPSMagazine.com (Everything about global positioning systems)

Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner
'Milblogging' the War
Spokesman for Multi-National Force, in Iraq
Favorite blogs: "Around here, folks like to read Small Wars Journal (http://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php), Blackfive (http://www.blackfive.net/) and The Mudville Gazette (http://www.mudvillegazette.com/)."

Newt Gingrich
Former House speaker
Favorite blogs: RedState.com (Republican news and notes); Corner.NationalReview.com (conservative magazine's politics blog); PowerlineBlog.com (covers law and right-leaning politics)

Jim Buckmaster
CEO, Craigslist
Favorite blogs: Slashdot.org (one of the first tech blogs); Metafilter.com (community blog anyone can edit); Valleywag.com (tech gossip site); TechDirt.com (popular tech news site)

Avoid Stuffy English

Commercial prose is so open to dragging in the deadwood to the center of your living room and just forgetting it there...

One such oddity I've heard this morning on the radio was the phrase "near impossibility."

People (in America) don't talk like that. They say something is "almost impossible" -- not "it is a near impossibility."

Even worse -- have you ever heard anybody saying "honey, don't forget to take your umbrella against a precipitation activity" (which might very well be a "near possibility"!).

Listen to any weather report and you can perhaps hear them issue an alert against "precipitation activity."

Sometimes even the traffic reporters get in the mood and start talking about an "accident activity on the right shoulder on I-95"... ugh!

Read aloud what you write and ask yourself if normal people talk like that. If they do, you've got great prose. Congratulations. If not, burn what you've written and don't tell anyone about it. We'll all be better for it.

Shuttle's Name Misspelled On NASA Launch Pad Sign

(What an incredible story!)

local6.com

Shuttle's Name Misspelled On NASA Launch Pad Sign
Someone Called Kennedy Space Center NASA To Fix Typo

POSTED: 7:38 am EDT July 13, 2007
UPDATED: 9:25 am EDT July 13, 2007

The first NASA sign at launch pad 39A encouraging the next launch of space shuttle Endeavour at Kennedy Space Center was misspelled and noticed by someone looking at the craft.

When the shuttle rolled out from the Vehicle Assembly Building Wednesday, a giant "Go Endeavour" sign was put on a fence in front of the craft.

However, one item was missing from the sign: the "u" in Endeavour.

Someone spotted the mistake and called KSC to fix it, WKMG-TV reported.

NASA scrambled someone out to pad 39A with a new sign that has orbiter Endeavour's name spelled correctly.

A photo with the correct spelling was also posted on the Kennedy Space Center's Web site.

The orbiter is named after HM Bark Endeavour, the ship commanded by 18th century explorer James Cook; the name also honored Endeavour, the Command Module of Apollo 15. This is why the name is spelled in the British English manner, according to Answers.com.

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

Importance of Keeping Your Work Close to Your Vest

It happens all the time...

A writer working on his or her first script, first novel, thinks it would a "great" idea to "share" it with a spouse, lover, child, friend, parent, co-worker or neighbor...

And the result is an unintended punch to the gut. The work stops right there. Enthusiasm and joy is replaced by doubts, second thoughts and eventually depression.

Why? Do our loved ones mean to harm us? Of course not.

Do they have an "ulterior motive" or a "sinister agenda"? Absolutely not.

But this is their problem -- they are NOT writers.

So they have no idea about the sensitive "mental and spiritual soup" in which our ideas and most precious creations ferment, multiply, and take shape as stories, scripts, articles and novels. It is a mysterious process, part "science" but mostly magic. That soup can be soured very easily by criticism while we are still adding crucial ingredients to it.

A lot of people think to give a "feedback" is to point out to the things that are missing. We all have that impulse to come across as "thoughtful" and usually the way we try to come across as thoughtful is to point out at what's "missing" or "wrong" with a project.

Even a casual and well-meaning comment like "I think that's been done before" is usually enough to dampen the spirits of a writer and mortgage her determination to press onward.

That's why I strongly recommend all my writer brothers and sisters not to show their hands too early, and not to ask their loved ones to read their stuff until it is 100% DONE. Only then they can read it if they please and enrich our work with their thoughful insights and learned suggestions.

But until then you have to protect your work just like a mother hen protects her chickens or a banker protects his vault.

Value of a Web Site ~ "Page Views" or "Time Spent"?

Nielsen rating company has shifted from the traditional “number of page views” to “time spent viewing a page” to measure a web site’s commercial worth.

This is a decision that will have a serious impact on all advertising companies that determine their web advertisement rates on the basis of such "objective" metrics.

The new Ajax technology seems to be the main culprit why Nielsen felt the need to adopt this new criterion. Ajax allows refreshing the web content without refreshing the page view. You must have noticed the way a new mail appears in your email window without re-loading the page, as we all used to do in the past.

Another reason why the traditional “page view” is considered losing its relevance is the streaming video sites like YouTube where visitors spend a lot of time on a single page watching one video clip after another.

On the basis of this new measuring stick, Nielsen has announced AOL as the winner of May’s “most popular” web site, with a total viewing time of 25 billion minutes, followed by Yahoo at 20 billion minutes. But by page view alone, AOL would have ranked sixth.

Google, although ranks 3rd by page views, dropped to fifth in terms of time spent since people leave Google screen quickly after a search is completed.

But I believe this new criterion has a serious flaw in this day and age of tabbed browsers.

What if you visit a site on one tab, then open another tab and go to another site, then do it for a third or fourth time? I find myself doing precisely that all the time.

What happens to the site left open for 20 hours on a forgotten tab? Does that mean that I have spent 20 hours on that site? Of course not.

How come Nielsen missed such a simple point is beyond me. I’m sure major advertisers are already grappling with this real issue.

Ambiguous Envelope Teaser

Envelope teasers are very crucial in direct mail since the prospective customer has about 3 or 5 seconds to decide whether to open your envelope or chuck it into the trash bin.

Here is a weak and rather annoying envelope teaser that would've directly gone to the trash basket if I weren't a professional copywriter who likes to meditate on these things and tries to learn something new everyday about this fascinating business of direct mail:

"Is This Little-Known Energy Company America's Next Major Uranium Producer?"

My first reaction is:

"You are asking ME? How the heck would I know? YOU are supposed to be the expert and yet you don't know whether THIS [whatever it is] little-known company is the next big thing on the horizon or not?"

As I read the envelope teaser I'm wondering if THIS is a way for me to make money OR provide free information to someone who doesn't quite has the skinny on this "little known company" yet...

Who knows, perhaps this "little known company" is little known for a very good reason indeed!

This teaser has already lost me with its indecisiveness.

Then comes the next line:

"Time-Sensitive Report. Open Immediately."

No. Sorry. I won't. Because who ever wrote the copy is not sure of this company at all. If the publisher is not sure of his/her facts, how can I trust him/her to lead me?

Why didn't this teaser really teased the heck out of me and did its job with no holds barred by saying something like:

"Little known company... about to explode (guaranteed!) as America's next major uranium producer. Limited-time opportunity to get in on the action before the little known company is not so anymore..."

Now, THAT would have perked my attention because of the firmness of the voice and the strength of the promise.

If you want me to open that envelope DO NOT ASK ME PUZZLES and DO NOT MAKE ME THINK.

If you are trying to write a teaser don't be halfhearted or shy about it. Make sure you are really TEASING instead of posing intellectual puzzles with no answers.

No Copy is Better Than Lazy Copy

I have received this auto insurance offer by mail from a very well known wholesale merchandise company that reads:

"Save up to 20%..."

"As a XXXXX Member, you are now eligible for Money-Saving Auto Insurance RATES OF UP TO 20% OFF..."

My heart sank. Because XXXXX is a good company and they usually know what they are doing.

So how come they approved this lazy piece of copy that will not work for most of their prospective customers?

20% off OF WHAT for God's sake?

What is the base line here? What is our frame of reference?

How can the XXXXX officials know they are saving me "up to" 20% if they have no idea what my CURRENT rate is?

How do they know that their rate is not actually 20% MORE than what I have now?

What they are REALLY saying is "call us now and we will talk about it."

No sir, I will not call you now or later because your copy does not make sense and it also insults my intelligence. And if I were you I would hire a new copywriter right away.

If, however, they did quote a real person with real savings, then, who knows, I might've given them a shot.

A much better copy that read something like...

"THEY SAVED...

Our Member No. 123456 John Smith has saved 19.7% from his car insurance. And so did Jane Doe -- she couldn't believe it when we proved to her that she could save 18.5% over her existing rate.

How about YOU?

Wouldn't you like to find it out with a single toll-free phone call?"

Then I might very well have given them a call. But not like this.

When consumers are treated like idiots they recoil. The only ones who won't will probably be the ones in desperate credit or financial problem. But are those the kind of customers that big corporations are trying to attract? I don't think so.

Good customers deserve good copy.

That's why I think "no copy" is much better than lazy and unintelligent copy.

Why?

Because when you do not send out any tired old mail pieces like this, you at least do not create question marks about the quality of the decisions made within your company. Your profits might remain level but your reputation and brand image would be intact.

5 Principles of "Freakonomics"

I'm reading a book so provocative and amazing that it is challenging many of the "self evident" truths that I've held for quite some time now.

For example, did you ever consider that the late-90s precipitous drop in crime rates in large American cities, including NYC, could very well be a delayed effect of Roe vs. Wade decision? WOW!

Steven Levitt (Univ of Chicago and MIT) is obviously not your typical economist since he asks questions like "what are the similarities between the way sumo wrestlers and school teachers act?"

Here are the 5 tenets on which "Freakonomics" rests:

1) Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life.

2) The conventional wisdom is often wrong.

3) Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes.

4) "Experts" -- from criminologists to real-estate agents -- use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.

5) Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.

When we write and design information, isn't that what we all are trying to achieve -- to make a complicated world less so?

Even in sales, you won't sell anything unless you can reduce a list of complicated features into a few solid benefits, correct?

I recommend this book to all my readers who would like to understand not how the modern world SHOULD work, but how it really DOES.

If you like a "tuneup from the neckup" (as Zig Ziglar used to say) you'll enjoy this gem of a book.

The Official Freakonomics Blog

New York Times Magazine Freakonomics Column

Missing Fourth Element in Basic Screenwriting Paradigm

You must have read the following "Basic Screenwriting Paradigm" a few times too many:

1) Get the cat on a tree.
2) Get the cat in trouble.
3) Get the cat down the tree.

This is of course very true. That's your basic bare-bones Aristotelean "3-Act Structure." It has not changed for the last 2,300 years or so.

However, it is not complete.

You also need a Fourth Element: the emotional reaction of your protagonist to the Step #3.

Without that fourth element, a "dramatic" movie rapidly devolves into a video tutorial of how to rescue a cat from a tree.

Don't get me wrong: video tutorials are great. They are fantastic tools of information design. But they are not dramatic stories for which the movie audience spends hard-earned cash.

As a creator, you have to be very clear on whether your are a documentary or a dramatic writer.

So here is the corrected basic paradigm:

1) Get the cat on a tree.
2) Get the cat in trouble.
3) Get the cat down the tree.
4) Get the hero react to the cat's rescue.

Or, for even a deeper dramatic twist:

1) Get the cat on a tree.
2) Get the cat in trouble.
3) Show the cat either getting down or not getting down the tree.
4) Get the hero react to the previous step.

Happy 4th and an E-Card Utility for All Occasions

Happy 4th of July to all my American readers!



Here is an article by Peggy Noonan, one of my most favorite writers, that expresses the sentiments of the day very well:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110010269

In case you're wondering where I got the image from, here is my source (thanks to my client and reader Steve G.) :

Click here for iCards

It is a great utility to send quick, tasteful, and free postcards through e-mail.

Enjoy!

Great Companies Respond Quickly

I always believed that speed is an essential part of many successful projects in life. Sylvester Stallone wrote his classic “Rocky” in four days. Jack Kerouac wrote his unforgettable “On the Road” in three weeks. Friedrich August Kekulé discovered the benzene ring in a dream, over a single night.

Yes, “haste” also leads to “waste” but the kind of “speed” I’m talking about is not haphazard, disoriented, Brownian motion. It is a disciplined, focused, sincere movement forward towards a target with no reservations, no inertia. It’s an arrow flying at mach 2.

Recently two companies impressed me by the speed with which they’ve responded to two postings on this very blog. Given the fact that this is still a relatively new blog with not even 100 postings on it yet, I was delighted with the response. I found myself meditating about the serious care with which these successful companies monitored their brand image.

The companies are FeedBlitz (the RSS and Blog-to-E-Mail company) and Jajah (Internet phone company). They both quickly responded to either a complaint (Jajah) or a piece of inadvertently missing information (FeedBlitz).

Their responses was an inspiration for me in my own line of work to treat my own clients with the same speed and transparency that they all so richly deserve. Jajah and FeedBlitz light the way to our corporate future in this age of instant communications and 60-second news cycle. Kudos to them both!

Joel Siegel (1943-2007)

We have lost film critic Joel Siegel to colon cancer. May he rest in peace.

I have never met Joel Siegel but in a sense I knew him better than a lot of people that I've met in person.

How come? Because we shared a passion for arts and the movies. Because I also loved movies for their own sake, for their own beauty and exhilaration, since I was a little kid.

Just like Joel, I also always enjoyed talking about movies, thinking about movies, and meditating on the art of script writing and movie making on a daily basis. It is not a career choice. Not the result of a cost-benefit analysis. It is love, strictly.

In that sense, I knew Joel Siegel and knew him quiet well. I exactly knew where he was coming from.

I used to watch Joel occasionally on ABC News' "Good Morning America" show where he was the entertainment editor. But I also frequently came across his writings on the Internet and enjoyed his vast knowledge and true passion for the moving images.

Hollywood has lost a kind, good-hearted friend. But Joel lived well. He did what he enjoyed doing most. We should all be just as lucky.

Bad "Information Design" Leads to Medication Errors

Why are there so many medication errors in the nation's hospitals?

The American Nurses Association (ANA) researched that question and came up with interesting answers.

It turns out such "information design" related mistakes like mislabeled medication or poor hand writing contribute to such errors more than we thought.

The survey of 1,039 nurses across America revealed the following factors responsible for injection-related medication errors:

1) Too rushed or busy environment (78 percent).
2) Poor or illegible handwriting (68 percent).
3) Missed or mistaken physician's orders (62 percent).
4) Similar drug names or medication appearance (56 percent).
5) Working with too many medications (60 percent).

Items 2, 3 and 4 can certainly be avoided by a more careful and user-friendly "information design" program.

As I always say: good information design is not a luxury but a vital necessity. Not only poor information design leads to inefficient and unhappy lives, but sometimes people lose their lives altogether because of it.

For more on this study, please click here.

Plot Points - SERAPHIM FALLS (2006) , APOCALYPTO (2006), SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

SERAPHIM FALLS (2006)

Starring: Liam Neeson (Carver), Pierce Brosnan (Gideon)
Directed by: David Von Ancken
Writer: David Von Ancken & Abby Everett Jaques

PROTAGONIST GIDEON’S DILEMMA: He is trying to leave his old life behind by Carver won’t let him..

PROTAGONIST'S DESIRE: To forget about the past and get on with a new life.

PROTAGONIST'S OBSTACLE: Carver on his tail with a posse of five.

ESTABLISHING SHOT: Snowy mountain peaks. “Ruby Mountains 1868.”

INCITING INCIDENT: He is shot at the shoulder by a sniper.

PLOT POINT 1: Gideon takes out the bullet in his shoulder. We know he will survive.

MID POINT (REVERSAL) EVENT: N/A

PLOT POINT 2: Through a flashback, we learn why Carver is mad at Gideon, who used to be a Union officer during the Civil War.

3rd ACT RESOLUTION: Final confrontation at the desert. The two exhausted men decide to bury the hatchet and go their own separate ways.

-----------------------------------------------------------

APOCALYPTO (2006)

Starring: Rudy Youngblood (Jaguar Paw), Dalia Hernández (Seven), Jonathan Brewer(Blunted), Morris Birdyellowhead (Flint Sky), Carlos Emilio Báez (Turtles Run)
Directed by: Mel Gibson
Writer: Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia

PROTAGONIST JAGUAR PAW’S DILEMMA: He is afraid of death but he has to face and overcome his fear to save his wife and son from enemy hands.

PROTAGONIST'S DESIRE: To live the good life with his family.

PROTAGONIST'S OBSTACLE: Slave traders capture him to sell to the Mayan temple..

ESTABLISHING SHOT: A tapir hunt by the local Indians in a South American jungle. Jaguar Paw is the chief’s son.

INCITING INCIDENT: Jaguar Paw and friends meet another tribe in the jungle who are migrating away. Something happened to them and they are scared..

PLOT POINT 1: Jaguar Paw’s village is ambushed by slave traders and all are taken captive.

MID POINT (REVERSAL) EVENT: Jaguar Paw is saved from the religious execution at the temple by the solar eclipse.

PLOT POINT 2: Jaguar Paw defies the odds and runs away from his captors, launching a long chase.

3rd ACT RESOLUTION: Jaguar Paw and family survive the slave traders only to be introduced to a new reality down at the beach – Spanish galleons.

-----------------------------------------------------------

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

Starring: Tom Hanks (Captain John H. Miller), Tom Sizemore (Sergeant Mike Horvath), Edward Burns (Pvt. Richard Reiben), Barry Pepper (Pvt. Daniel Jackson), Adam Goldberg (Pvt. Stanley Mellish), Vin Diesel (Private Adrian Caparzo), Giovanni Ribisi (T-4 Medic Irwin Wade), Jeremy Davies (Cpl. Timothy P. Upham), Matt Damon (Private James Francis Ryan), Ted Danson (Captain Fred Hamill), Paul Giamatti (Sergeant Hill), Dennis Farina (Lieutenant Colonel Anderson)
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Writer: Robert Rodat

PROTAGONIST JOHN MILLER’S DILEMMA: He is a high school English teacher but he has to serve his country at D-Day..

PROTAGONIST'S DESIRE: To find Private Ryan and go back home to his wife.

PROTAGONIST'S OBSTACLE: They don’t know where Ryan is. They have to find him somewhere in France while fighting the Germans.

ESTABLISHING SHOT: A much older James Ryan visits the military cemetery at Normandy, France to flashback to the D-Day.

INCITING INCIDENT: Army Chief Staff Gen. George C. Marshall decides that, since all his three brothers are killed in action, Private Ryan must be found and safely delivered back to his mother in Iowa.

PLOT POINT 1: After gaining a foothold at Omaha Beach, Capt. John Miller is issued his orders to find and take Private Ryan safely back home.

MID POINT (REVERSAL) EVENT: Private Ryan refuses to leave his squad and go back home.

PLOT POINT 2: Germans attack the strategic bridge that Ryan’s squad, together with Miller’s squad defend.

3rd ACT RESOLUTION: Miller, while dying, whispers to Ryan’s ear and asks Ryan to “earn it” so that the death of all those who perished to save Ryan won’t be in vain. Back to our own day, his wife assures Ryan that he is a good man and he indeed lived a good life and “earned it.”

5 Tips for Email Marketing Success

Here are the 5 tips that e-mail marketing guru David Atlas suggests for your success:

1) Use CertifiedEmail provided by Yahoo and AOL.

"ROIs in the 300 percent range and up are common because consumers trust the email."

2) Use a dedicated IP

"Having a dedicated IP lets you establish a sending reputation."

3) Use the same "From" Address

4) Tell Your Customers What to Expect.

"State your mailing policies up front. Let consumers know you are using CertifiedEmail, if you plan to. Run an education campaign telling them "here's how to confirm a legitimate email: Look for the blue ribbon envelope icon.""

5) Survey Your Customers.

And here is a sixth one from me:

6) Never ever allow a spelling error in your e-mail, especially in your SUBJECT line. That pretty much destroys all your credibility as a marketer before the user can even read the body of your message.

Headlines - One Hit, One Miss

Best headlines provide a link between the verb and the subject of the sentence. Try to come up with verbs that also define the subject in some important way.

In Object Oriented Programming (OOP) jargon, the "method" should be an "attribute" of the "object" itself.

For example, here is a great headline from Wall Street Journal (June 25, 2007):

"Gazprom Pipeline Plan May Fuel Worry."

"Fuel" is what flows from a pipeline and it also has a double meaning of "exacerbating."

But here is a miss from the same issue:

"Milk-Price Rise Expected to Steepen in July."

"Steepen" is not a verb intrinsically related to milk. But milk, when overheated, boils over in a froth.

So what about:

"Milk-Price Rise Expected to Froth Over in July"?

That would have been perfect in my judgment.

UBUNTU's "Virtual Desktops" End Multi-Window Clutter

Remember how you have a single desktop on a Windows machine and that everything runs there?

Do you also remember how annoying it can get when you have 2, 3 or 4 programs open at the same time, with many windows overlapping and hiding one another? Navigation can become quite a problem when you are multitasking on Windows.

Not so with UBUNTU Linux, thanks to the Workspaces you can create and individually name.

Each Workspace is a Virtual Desktop that displays only those application windows and/or documents that you place there.

You can have up to 36 such virtual desktops, arranged in up to 16 rows. You can click and switch to anyone of them without the clutter of a typical Windows desktop.

To configure your workspaces:

1) Right-click on a workspace square displayed on the bottom-right of your UBUNTU desktop.

2) Select Preferences to display the Workspace Switcher Preferences screen:



3) Select the number of workspaces you need and the number of rows to display them.

4) If you need to name them individually, double click on each desktop placeholder displayed in the list and type in a title. Click the "show workspace names" checkbox to display these titles inside the workspace button instead of a miniature representation of the desktop.

5) Click Close.

Now you can, for example, save all your writings on a workspace named "Writing" and keep all your images on another workspace named "Images."

When you click one, you will see only those items that were assigned to that workspace (virtual desktop) and nothing else. This way you will avoid clutter for good.

Two Useful Tips:

1) When you press CTRL and roll the middle wheel of your mouse, you automatically scroll from one Workspace to another.

2) When you have your Internet browser open in UBUNTU, right click and select "Move to Another Workspace" option. Then select the workspace in which you want your browser to display. This way all your web pages will display only in that special workspace and leave the other workspaces uncluttered.

Consumer Alert - JAJAH Charges Even When the Call is NOT Connected!

I love JAJAH (www.jajah.com) Internet phone service. You do not need to download anything and when you call, your physical phone rings which you pick up and start to talk.

JAJAH is very cheap, has great voice quality and also has many other useful features.

Top two I like:

1) You can have your one one-click-call phone book so that you do not need to enter the frequently-called numbers from scratch every time.

2) You can also save the shortcut of any call on your desk top, or send it to your cell phone so that you can initiate the call by just clicking the icon! Smart.

However, lately I have discovered a nasty feature:

You call someone. The phone rings and nobody picks it up. Or, your call cannot be connected for one reason or another.

Well, JAJAH still charges your account for it! The amount is not that much. Just nine cents. But still -- WHY?

I have written to JAJAH about this obvious software malfunction and haven't heard from them yet.

If you are using JAJAH, I'd also recommend you to do the same and get in touch with the company. If they hear from enough number of people perhaps they would correct it.

And if you are not yet a JAJAH member but consider becoming one, do so while being aware of this serious billing issue.

Tomboy -- UBUNTU's Great Note Pad

UBUNTU (the great-looking and totally free Linux operating system for your computer http://www.ubuntu.com/) comes with a very useful built-in notebook utility called TOMBOY. It is under Applications > Accessories.

TOMBOY is simple enough to use it over and over again for all kinds of quick notes and brainstorming. But it is also smart enough to LINK all your notes to one another, keep a good list of them, allow you to search through them, and even format them in enough ways to do the job.

For example, I have just created a series of notes about the E-books I'm planning to write within the next 6 months. So I have created a note for the general list (lower bottom in the screenshot) as well as separate notes for each e-book (see the one for Article Marketing on top-right).

Currently these notes include only a rough outline of the things I'd like to cover eventually. For example, if I need to go interview someone or read a book on a certain topic, I can create separate notes for them as well and LINK them to which ever spot I want.

UBUNTU made Tomboy links so easy. You just SELECT the text you want and then press Ctrl+L -- bingo! You have a NEW note not only titled as such but also automatically linked to your selected text in the ORIGINAL note.

What's more, when you change the TITLE of your note, the TEXT in the ORIGINAL note which is linked to this one also changes to preserve the paths. This way you do not need to worry about those pesky broken links when you change the titles of your notes. Good thinking!

UBUNTU... an amazing and very user-friendly free solution for all creatives around the world.

USPS: "Is The Correct English On Their Sign?"

I stopped by at the U.S. Post Office this morning and saw this big sign on the wall:

"Metered Mail Customers: IS THE CORRECT DATE ON YOUR METERED MAIL?"

This sentence would've been grammatically correct only if someone was asking if the "correct date" actually read "ON YOUR METERED MAIL".

An analogous sentence would be "Is the apple green?", or "Is the world round?"

I guess someone was trying to say:

1) "Metered Mail Customers: DO YOU HAVE THE CORRECT DATE ON YOUR METERED MAIL?"

or

2) "Metered Mail Customers: IS THE DATE ON YOUR METERED MAIL CORRECT?"

or

3) "Metered Mail Customers: DOES YOUR METERED MAIL HAVE THE CORRECT DATE?"

How did they find the only sentence combination that was not correct and display it prominently where everyone can see it?

I guess you need a governmental committee to achieve a feat like that.

Misplaced Modifier – Even WSJ Falls For It

“Misplaced modifier” is a frequently committed logical error that even the most prominent publications fall for occasionally. Here is an example:

“Ports are especially vulnerable to pesky animals like rabbits and deer because they offer large, fenced-in areas of dirt and grass.” (Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2007)

The sentence is malformed because it suggests that “pesky animals… offer large, fenced-in areas of dirt and grass” -- which of course is not true.

That unintended implication is created because the modifier clause “because they offer large, fenced-in areas of dirt and grass” is placed right after “pesky animals like rabbits and deer” instead of the “ports,” the true subject that needs the modification.

Solution?

Move the modifier clause right next to the subject of the sentence:

“Since they offer large, fenced-in areas of dirt and grass, ports are especially vulnerable to pesky animals like rabbits and deer.”

Or

“Ports that offer large, fenced-in areas of dirt and grass are especially vulnerable to pesky animals like rabbits and deer.”

Both would work. Case closed. Confusion prevented.

Google Page Creator - “Small Design Stuff” Leads to Frustration

Google has a not-so-bad web site design and hosting service called Google Page Creator. And it's FREE!

I've been using this free service since April 2006 for my own web site www.writer111.com

That is of course not its original URL but I have directed my own domain name to point at http://writer111.googlepages.com/ which is the real URL.

For web sites that do not need frequent updating this service is just great.

But it has one small design flaw that I'm surprised Google's really smart engineers and design team still have not discovered it.

When you are in Gmail, there is no easy way to get back to your Google Page Creator.

Almost every Google service imaginable is one easy click away from Gmail EXCEPT the “Pages” and I have no idea why.

For example, when you are looking at your Gmail main page, you see both a number of links up on the top of your page and also additional links on your drop down list under “more”.

But NONE of those links include “Pages”.

So how do you get to your web site design module if you are in Gmail?

First, you navigate BACK to www.google.com (by clicking the WEB link on top) while you are still signed in to your Gmail account, which then takes you to your main standard Google page.

There, you will notice the all-important MY ACCOUNT link on upper right.

When you click on MY ACCOUNT, that's where you will see the PAGE CREATOR link listed and NOWHERE ELSE.

Click that and voila! you'll be in your web site design module.

Why Google cannot include the PAGE CREATOR link either in the Gmail page top links or inside the “more” drop-down list is a mystery. But the first time you try to go from Gmail to “Page Creator” you will discover what a navigational feat it is. And the more you take that annoying detour, the more you realize how such very simple design flaws end up creating a totally frustrating user experience.

Small things... take care of the “small stuff” and the “larger stuff” will automatically take care of itself.

Know Thyself, and while you are at it...

"If you know yourself and your enemy, you will not fear battle.

"If you know yourself but not your enemy, you will lose a battle for every one that you win.

"If you do not know yourself and do not know your enemy, you will never see victory."

~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Watch Out for That Pen Name

Pen names are a long-honored tradition in Western literature. Sydney Porter wrote under the pen name “O. Henry.” Samuel Langhorne Clemens became famous as “Mark Twain.”

But you have to watch out these days if you are writing under a pseudonym. Especially if Hollywood is interested in your work.

Exhibit A -- A writer named "JT Leroy" catapults to stardom in 2000 with his explosive autobiography “Sarah,” the story of a kid growing up as the son of a West Virginia hooker turning tricks in truck stops.

It gets better – Soon JT Leroy is writing for the New York Times and Vanity Fair and calling the likes of Winona Ryder an Madonna his “friends.”

And better – In 2003, Antidote International Films Inc. (which produced movies like “Laurel Canyon” and “Thirteen”) options “Sarah” for $15,000 with the intention of turning it into a movie. The option is renewed next year for the same amount.

Then, the sky caves in – New York Times discloses that “JT Leroy” is nothing more than a pen name for Laura Albert, a mother and a little-known young novelist from Brooklyn Heights.

Result – Antidote wants all its money back since they made a contract with “JT Leroy” but Leroy does not exist.

Big mess. The case is still in court.

UPDATE (6/23/07)

Jury: novel bought by company fraudulent

By AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press WriterSat Jun 23, 4:57 AM ET

To writer Laura Albert, her alter ego was a psychological necessity, but to jurors, the fictitious male prostitute JT LeRoy was a fraud. A Manhattan jury decided Friday that Albert had defrauded a production company that bought the movie rights to an autobiographical novel marketed as being based on LeRoy's life.

The federal jury, after a short deliberation, awarded $116,500 to Antidote International Films Inc.

The Art of Great Headlines

Writing great headlines is a true art. Some people I suspect are born with the knack of whipping up drop-dead perfect headlines at the drop of a hat. But then, to some extent, writing good headlines can be taught and learned as well.

Here is one time-tested venerable principle: make sure that your verb is somehow organically related to the core character, the main characteristics of the subject of the sentence, but it should be used in a DIFFERENT context.

Take for example this great headline by the New York Times (June 13, 2007):

"Casinos Go All In To Draw Asians" ... Perfect!

"Going all in" is a poker term and represents a situation in which a player risks everything. The writer could have said "Casinos Pull All Stops To Draw Asians"... or "Casinos Risk It All To Draw Asians" but it would not be the same. It would not have the same punch and the same juice.

Here the action phrase "going all in" is perfectly related to the "casinos." It is also used not in its traditional context of poker but in a new context of marketing. That unexpected cognitive shift injects power to the expression while still closely keeping our attention riveted to the gambling framework.

Contrast this power headline with a very weak one used by the Wall Street Journal again (by sheer coincidence?) to open a gambling story in its June 13, 2007 issue:

"What Happens in Vegas, Goes to China" (hello?)

We of course know where this headline is coming from -- it's a cutesy word play on the Vegas marketing slogan "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas."

But to be aware of this "trick" is not enough to understand what the story is really about. What does it mean something "Going to China"? What is it that goes to China? It is not immediately clear.

For example, this lazy echo of a well-known slogan justifies us to wonder if "extramarital affairs" started in Vegas end up "in China" somehow? It misdirects our attention.

Then we read the accompanying subheader: "$2.2 Billion Casino Resort Is Part of New Push in Cotai To Lure Gamblers, Travelers"

O-kay... now we see what the header was talking about.

But if a header needs a subheader to be understood, then it is failing in its primary function of immediately communicating the core summary of the news story. Otherwise why open a story with a header at all?

More on this topic later on, with more practical tips for writing great headlines...

Screenwriting – Write Your Movie Backwards

Did you know that Dave Chase, the genius behind The Sopranos series, has visualized that shocking very last scene [screen going black for 10 seconds] a full three years ago? He carried that ending with him for three years. He must have realized the power of configuring his ending well in advance to settle the issue three years in advance.

Many successful movies would not add up to anything without their strong endings. Every scene is shaded and nuanced by the ending in one way or the other. As an art form with its own limitations, screenplays really are anchored by their last scenes.

Imagine, for example, the “Sixth Sense.” And think about its unexpected ending. Could any of the earlier scenes make any sense if the ending was different? Of course not.

Here is the “Ugur Akinci Method” (ahem!) of writing a screenplay without too much pain (“some pain” is unavoidable of course):

Here is the "Ugur Akinci Method" (ahem!) for writing a screenplay without too much pain ("some pain" is unavoidable of course):

1. First decide on what your ENDING will be.

2. Think your way backwards, all the way to the beginning of your script. Try to see the whole movie playing from beginning to the end in that little movie screen on the inside of your forehead.

3. Chop your story into 18 to 25 sequences.

4. Divide each sequence into 3 to 5 scenes.

5. Sit down and write the whole thing as quickly as possible from start to finish, without stopping for any reflection or self-criticism. The minute you stop and start "thinking" about it you will freeze forever and never get done.

6. Once you finish your 100 to 120 pages, you can re-write, edit and polish to your heart's content. Writing is rewriting. But "writing" -- and not the "rewriting" -- comes first.

Importance of Designing Simple Things Well

Good design is invisible. It works beautifully, seamlessly, does the job without a whimper.

Bad design, on the other hand, is everywhere! It sticks out like a pair of brown shoes under a black tux. It is in-your-face obvious.

The PT Cruiser that I have rented for the week made me realize once again how our daily lives get complicated for no other reason than bad design.

First, the window power buttons. Everyone who gets into a PT Cruiser searches for the window buttons in vain. Why? Because the designers of PT decided it would be a really “cute” idea to place all four window controls on the center of the dashboard!

So when you approach a gate toll and when you need to roll down your window in a hurry, don't panic. Just think about all the time and energy that went into an “innovation” that neither works nor is needed, and have some compassion.

Second, if you need to pop open your trunk lid from inside for easy loading and unloading of your grocery bags, forget about it. There is no pop-up button like you would have in 90% of all cars these days, that little and very useful button somewhere in the lower left side of the steering wheel.

You need to get down and insert your key into the trunk lock and open it manually every time you need to open your trunk. How's THAT for convenience?

And thirdly, watch out for the key itself because the PT designers placed the PANIC button right on the key, exactly where you would be grabbing it to unlock your doors and your trunk.

The result? On various occasions throughout the day you activate your car alarm without intending to. And if that is happening inside the tight space of an underground garage, the effect is all the more embarrassing and ear-splitting of course.

As American car manufacturers are wondering why Japanese and South Korean car makers are taking over the American market they should really pay attention to all these small things that either don't work or work with unpleasant results.

It's time they realize that “cute” is not always “friendly.”

Perhaps by taking such “design risks and challenges” they are trying to take a road less traveled and discover some new “aesthetic ground.”

Yet they should also remember what Jerry Seinfeld said about the matter: “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”

FREE Copy for Non-Profits in Need

Good morning folks! This morning I woke up with a great inspiration.

If you are a 501(c)3 tax-exempt non-profit organization in need of non-commercial copy for a good charitable cause, yet you are in no position to pay the $75 to $200 hourly fees that most professional copy writers like myself regularly charge, then don't despair.

I've decided to donate each month a certain portion of my time to one such qualified organization on a first-come first-served basis. This would be my own small way of giving back to the world what I received so generously from it -- this precious gift of language and creative expression.

There is no gimmick, no fine-print, no nothing to this offer. It is exactly what it reads like.

If you are one such organization please write to me at writer111[REMOVE this first to prevent spam]@gmail.com and explain your situation and your need. If I think you qualify for my free copywriting offer, I would be happy and honored to be in your service, time permitting.

My thanks in advance for helping us make this world a better place to live, one correctly-chosen word and one well-turned phrase at a time.

A Manual for $20,000

Sometimes it's not easy to price a technical writer's work. How much is a user's manual "worth", really?

It probably is not worth much if it is one of those thick door-stoppers gathering dust at the top shelf of a never-used library.

However, it might also be worth billions if it shows a technician at a nuclear plant how to stop a core meltdown in progress.

Here is a rather well-priced manual that I've read quoted in the Wall Street Journal (June 7, 2007).

Natasha Pearl runs a New York lifestyle-management service. Among her services is finding top-quality kitchen personnel for her wealthy clients.

Ms. Pearl reportedly charges $10,000 "to find a chef" "and up to $20,000 to draw up a housekeeping procedural manual for a mansion."

As Sinatra says in one of his immortal songs, "nice job if you can get it..."

Good Copy Illuminates and Delivers (the Truth)

Good copy has two important functions.

1) It brings up "the world" alive. And once our attention is engaged,

2) It also delivers the unvarnished truth.

Delivering the truth without aesthetics, without illumination, would be like that proverbial tree falling down in the forest and nobody noticing it. Does a tree really fall if there are no witnesses? We don't know.

Sheer aesthetic fireworks, on the other hand, without any truth, is disservice to the world. It is betrayal of our short existence here on this earth. It's the lowliest of the black-arts.

There should have been an Eleventh Commandment: "Thou Shalt Not Mesmerize For the Sake of Self-Aggrandizement." Eventually all good writers come to learn appreciate the "Eleventh Commandment."

Here is an author that I discovered today; a writer who has a full grasp of both of these important prose rules and boy, can she write!

She is Manohla Dargis of the New York Times and she is writing "only" movie reviews. But they are complete. Perfect. Because what she writes is both beautiful and true.

Here is the beauty part:

"Played by a tamped-down, amused and amusing Al Pacino, Willy Bank is a pint-size Trump in oversize eyeglasses and a burnt-orange tan that makes him look like an Hermès handbag..."

With a description that visual and strong, you can immediately see this character right before your very own eyes. That's power copy.

But that's not all. Dargis continues:

"But that’s how everything rolls in Mr. Soderbergh’s Vegas: smoothly and sleekly and low to the ground, without obvious effort and, most important, without ugliness... When Danny Ocean and his Boy Friday, Rusty Ryan (Mr. Pitt), stroll across a casino floor, you never see the cigarette burns on the carpeting or the middle-aged men quietly weeping after the night and their savings are long gone."

Wow! That's Sociology of Vegas 101 in a few sentences.

Writing well does not need to sacrifice from the truth. Or, inversely, writing the truth need not be an exercise in eating broken glass. Manohla Dargis is one of the many excellent writers out there today proving the point.

Two Inspiring Success Stories

Did You Know That...?

John Paul DeJoria, Co-Founder and CEO of "John Paul Mitchell Systems" which sells $800 million worth of hair products a year, was not always rich. "I was homeless twice in my life, mainly because I was too proud to ask anybody for help. In my early twenties I was divorced from my first wife. I had my son; I had no place to live. I went out and collected Coke bottles at night. I'd cash them in at the drugstore. You'd only get two or three cents in those days. We lived off a very skimpy diet in those days, rice, potatoes, cereal, macaroni and cheese or canned soup, but we lived."

Bill France, Jr., the man who single-handedly invented NASCAR stock car racing and helped build the Daytona race track, used to sweep the floors in his youth to make ends meet. When Daytona International Speedtrack was built in the late 1950s, France helped grade the earth, erect the stands, and even cleaned the port-a-johns on the construction site. When France passed away as a multi-millionaire on June 4, 2007 he left behind not only a legacy of sports but one of perseverance and success as well.

Marketing Notes: "Qode" and Onion's Sharp Take on MySpace

This morning a reader of mine made me aware that QR Code technology indeed exists in the United States, provided by Qode, a Florida company (www.qode.com). Thanks Ken D. for the heads up.

You can download the Qode software to your cell phone and then point it to the "Qode" (a version of QR Code) and it will take you to the related web site. I guess these must be proprietary QR codes because you would not want any cell phone to point and get to the same web site, or would you? I'm still not sure who and how money is made through this technology. What is the business model? Probably that's also changing and evolving as well as we speak.

You can point your cell phone at a Qode and take a virtual tour of a house on sale, compare ticket prices, get all kinds of info on all kinds of products and services, etc. And the information can be customized by times zone and other variables as well. For example, pointing the phone at a Qode "stamp" at 9 a.m. in San Francisco would take you to a web page appropriate for the "morning zone" but the same stamp will take you to an "afternoon" page in New York.

SECOND ITEM:

The Onion, the nation's premiere satire paper, has published an item on May 31 that made me laugh out loud because it expressed my own cynicism about MySpace's claim as a "social space." How can people who do not even know one another claim to be one another's friends, by the thousands at a time? That I could never comprehend. And The onion slashed at the whole idea with the following new story:

"MySpace Outage Leaves Millions Friendless"!!! I really laughed hard at that one. "BEVERLY HILLS, CA -- An estimated 150 million people continued to be without social lives Tuesday as a massive system failure at MySpace.com entered its third day."

Fantastic humor but perhaps also a scary harbinger of things to come... could it be true? Why not?

How to Tell Fake Phishing E-Mails from Real Ones

There is a very easy way to tell a fake phishing e-mail from a real one.

One immediate clue is to receive it from a bank where you have no account. That one is obvious (you would think) but still you'd be amazed how many people take such mails seriously despite the fact that they know they don't have an account at the said institution.

More importantly:

Such e-mails ALWAYS include a web URL link that they want you to click and visit to "update your critical security information" etc.

BEFORE clicking it, HOVER your cursor on the link and then look at the STATUS BAR at the bottom of your browser window to see the REAL ADDRESS that the link is pointing to.

If that address has nothing to do with the real-looking URL in the letter, then you can rest assured that you are the target of a phishing expedition that could drain your bank account before you know what.

Most of the time, such real addresses will have foreign country suffixes at the end since they are usually sent by scam artists from other countries. That would be a dead giveaway as well.

Remember: the e-mail address from where the e-mail seems to be originating from means NOTHING since it can easily be faked. Once I even received a scam mail from MY OWN E-MAIL ADDRESS! Wow... the scam operators really went overboard with that one without being aware of it.

The URL typed inside the body of the mail also means nothing because it is just plain text.

But the real web address to which that text is linked - that cannot be faked that easily.

Just hover your cursor over any link that you suspect and find out the real address the link is pointing at. That can save you a lot of unnecessary headache.

High Cost of Bad Information Design!

Poorly designed fax sheet causes police to evacuate more than a dozen businesses in Massachusetts!



This faxed page released by the Ashland Police Dept., shows a fax as it was to appear as a promotion sent by a marketing group Wednesday, May 30, 2007, to a Bank of America branch in Ashland, Mass.

A faulty fax arrived at the Bank of America's Ashland office Tuesday night omitting portions of the fax.

A bank employee misinterpreted the message Wednesday as a bomb threat causing authorities to evacuate more than a dozen neighboring businesses. (AP Photo/Ashland Police Dept.)

FrameMaker Tip – How to Set Up Your INDEX page numbers correctly

FrameMaker, like all powerful tools, can be frustrating if you do not know how to use it properly.

For example, FM has one of the most reliable and versatile book indexing functionalities under the sun. But setting it right might require paying attention to what’s going on in the Reference Pages and one particular paragraph tag within that page.

If you think your Index page numbers do not look right, do the following:

1) Go to your Reference Pages by selecting View > Reference Pages from your main menu.

2) In there, make a search for the Index tags by pressing Ctrl + G to display the GO TO PAGE dialog box.

3) From the Reference Page drop-down list, select “IX” and click the GO button.

4) Once you are in the Index reference page, find the building block(s) with the paragraph tag “IndexIX”. This step is very important. Just place your cursor on the building block(s) and read the corresponding paragraph tag in the status bar, at the bottom of your screen.

If there are no building blocks in the Index reference page with the IndexIX tag, you will not have any page numbers showing up in your Index.

If that is the case, type in <$pagenum>. Launch your Paragraph Designer and assign the IndexIX tag to that building block. That will display your Index page numbers.

If you have just <$pagenum>, your Index entries will be followed only by plain page numbers.

If you would like to have chapter numbers precede the page numbers, then you need to add another building block before the page number building block:

<$chapnum>-<$pagenum>

If you want your Index page numbers in bold and red (let's say), select all the IndexIX blocks, launch your Paragraph Designer, and make the necessary font changes. Apply the changes and you are done.

Note: For all such changes to take effect, you need to save the Reference Pages, go back to your Body Page view, and update your book index.

You Said "Testimonials"? Here are some!

Rare is a microsite which really hits the ball out of the ballpark with testimonials so many and so good that they almost sell the product by themselves.

Here is one such microsite that should be studied by all copywriters and marketers as to how the testimonials should be handled:

http://www.losethebackpain.com/backpainreliefguide.html

1) There are so many testimonials on this web site that you cannot even count. You end up saying "I'll be darn - even if only half of them are telling the truth it still is amazing!"

2) Almost all of them are accompanied by real names, real towns, and PHOTOS of real people. Very effective. The fact that some of them are riding horses or in sports gear earns EXTRA BONUS POINTS since this is a site about getting rid of back pain.

3) There are quite a few sound files, ready for you to listen. Now you decide ALL of the testimonials must be true.

Also note how they are offset from the main body text with a light green screen. It is important to visually differentiate the testimonials from the rest of the text for easy reading.

By the time you reach the end of the page you KNOW that this product works, definitely.

Three Masters of Copy who are not “Copywriters”

“Copy” simply means prose, and good copy is any piece of text that communicates well.

There are many master writers who turn out exquisite pieces of copy who are not “copywriters” since they do not write direct sales copy. But they still sell, albeit indirectly, the products, personalities and services that they so skillfully review.

Since they are so good with the words, you also don’t want to be around them when they don’t like your product or service. Their mighty sword uplifts and reflects light on their favorite objects. But the same instrument can also cut and dissect like a laser beam.

Here are the three non-copywriter masters of the copy that I read regularly:

1) Frank Deford is an award winning sports author with fifteen books, a Senior Contributing Writer at Sports Illustrated and a commentator on NPR.

Here are some Deford samples:

“Clemens, the best pitcher of this era, engages in an annual peek-a-boo. He retires in autumn, and then, like a perennial, decides to bloom again in the spring.”

“More often, though, there is the likes of Terrell Owens, diagnosed with modesty deficiency syndrome…”

“For many athletes, New York City is an intimidating place to play. Fans have high expectations and aren't afraid to boo players who disappoint them. If you can take it there, you can take it anywhere.”

For more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4499275

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2) Rex Reed is a movie critic at New York Oberver.

Here are some samples from Reed:

“…Mr. Fraser as Jamie, a frustrated, simmering wimp with a streak of mendacity waiting to surface and torch…”

“…director Rydell balances every move on the head of a pin…”

“Jane Fonda can do just about anything, but first you have to give her something to do.”

“This movie is so bad people are taking bets to see how long they can stay awake without snoring.”

“Directed by Marc Evans, Snow Cake suffers from the same faults that plague most Canadian films: It drones itself to death with the pace of a drunken ant, and the ending takes longer than to arrive than Christmas morning.”

For more: http://www.observer.com/culture_rexreed.asp

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3) Warren Brown is an automobile reviewer at The Washington Post.

Here are some Brown samples:

“If pickup trucks were a religion, most of the owners of those vehicles in Asheville would be fundamentalists.”

“Witness the all-wheel-drive 2006 Infiniti M35 X sedan, a motorized treaty between excess and practicality.”

“…finished with elegant rosewood for older, more traditional customers who know that life's bits and bytes are relatively meaningless without its poetry.”

“Sitting in the car is akin to fitting one's body into a rich, comfortable glove. It is a rare instance in which status plays second fiddle to seduction.”

“Head-turning quotient: Oh, Bess! Honey, you snapped necks everywhere with your bad self…”

“I much prefer dancing -- spending an evening with salsa, samba or tango. There is just as much sweat in such movement; but the experience is more enjoyable, memorable -- like driving a DB9 along a beach road in Coronado at twilight.”

For more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/business/columns/autos/brownwarren/

SCAMGLISH Gives Away E-Mail Scams

If you are not sure if an e-mail offer is a scam or not, just look at the English with which it is written.

Almost all scam letters have ungrammatical, awkward, stilted and sometimes outright laughable English (or, "Scamglish") since the text is copied and pasted many times over during the life cycle of the scam, without hardly any proofreading or anybody taking the time to make sure it is a grammatically correct letter. I doubt if some of them can even write or speak standard English.

Scam artists do not have the time for such niceties, thanks goodness. Otherwise how would we immediately recognize them?

Here are some recent gems that ended up in my mail box today... Enjoy!

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“You would be paid $450 every two weeks to a total of $900 per month.”

“Commission: 10% of every money order/check that is cashed instantly "cash in hand"
or "cash on counter" is what you get from the total cashed amount.”

“…our company supports any fees.”

“Thank You for taking your time to read our offer.”

“…we do not have a payment receiving personnel in these Areas.”

“I am very happy to inform you about my success in getting those funds transferred…”

“Furnish him with your informations like; Your full name.............”

Editing is a Process

ORIGINAL: This multi-pack approach saves space in the parking lot but with a lessening of system reliability.

BETTER: This multi-pack approach saves space in the parking lot but decreases system reliability.

BEST: This multi-pack approach saves parking lot space at the cost of decreased system reliability.

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ORIGINAL: "Your ticket price includes both free parking as well as free pop-corn."

BETTER: "Your ticket price includes free parking as well as free pop-corn."

OR: "Your ticket price includes both free parking and free pop-corn."