Josh's blog

ChaCha is my favorite new toy and it's currently doing my work for me (well, some of it). I'm working on a project about home energy savings, so I texted the following question to 242242 (ChaCha on most phones):

Q - How much money can I save by changing the light bulb in my room from incandescent to CFL?.

Within a couple minutes, my phone lights up with:

A - You can save about $25 a year by switching bulbs. Thanks for ChaCha-ing!

Rex Sorgatz, a blogger Garrison Keillor tried to sue for printing t-shirts parodying A Prairie Home Companion, has written a nice article on micro-fame at New York Magazine.

He uses microfame to describe people who, for a moment, are suddenly a big deal due to the nature of the online world. In the article, he lists eight steps to achieving said microfame. The analysis seems sound.

I finally jumped on Buzzword, Adobe's entry into the web-based word processing arena. Built with collaboration and change tracking in mind, it will require some use over time for an in-depth review. However, I want to offer some thoughts up front.

Ravelry.com has nothing to do with digital media. It's actually about yarn. However, their approach to moving their startup into the black offers ideas for anyone looking to fund a new site.

Other authors have found that giving away a book for free online can increase sales of that book offline. However, Paulo Coelho's (The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello) publisher wasn't initially keen on this idea. So, Coelho pirated his own books.

He used bitTorrent as his distribution tool and began a blog called Pirate Coelho to direct people to his torrents. Sales of his books jumped and Coelho believes this is a direct response to his surreptitious sharing. Speaking to TorrentFreak.com, Coelho explained publishers softening to this concept in response to sales: The blog was out there for a while, but it seems that nobody from the publishing world was paying attention to it. When I spoke about it, all eyes were aimed at the site. From that moment on, based on actual numbers, the publishers not only accepted it, but helped me.

I wonder how this idea could be adapted for print media. I've never seen a digital copy of  The New York Times on a torrent site. It dates itself in 24 hours and wouldn't be purchased after the fact. However, giving away free copies of your paper for the Kindle could encourage subscriptions.

For new media, the implications are really clear. Don't be scared to share, and produce a product that trying leads to buying. Pic from Dharvai