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The Shakespeare Book Club meets tonight to talk about A Midsummer Night's Dream. Zoom link here for paid subscribers. Paid subscribers can also join this chat thread and ask me (or other subscribers) whatever they want. Tell us what you are reading, what you disagreed with me about this month. Ask niche questions someone here might be able to answer. Ask me anything you like (I might not answer!) This is an experiment... let's see where it goes... Join the chat.Katherine Dee InterviewWhen we have strong feelings about literary characters, isn't that somewhat the same as ficto-romantics—people who fall in love with fictional people and create part of the identity around that relationship? This is the sort of question you can talk about with Katherine Dee. I am a long-time fan so I was delighted to be able to ask her about the way AI is changing writing, fandom in culture, role play writing, fan fiction, ficto-romance, internet culture, and the way technology is changing what we read, how AI is changing Katherine's writing, and how she uses ChatGPT to discuss her emotional life (she says it is pretty good!). Katherine is one of the most interesting Substackers, writing at default.blog, as well as writing for other publications. You might remember her piece called “No. Culture isn't stuck”. I find her case-studies especially interesting (this is the one we talked about in the interview). Katherine is not judgemental: she simply tires to understand. Here is her Twitter. Here's what Katherine told me about fandom in modern culture.Henry: Why is there so much fandom in modern culture? We've got LARPing, people having AI boyfriends and girlfriends, fictoromance. You're writing about all these things all the time. Why is this such a big part of culture?Katherine: That's a great question. I think that the foundational reason is our culture is oriented around consuming media. And this is, you know, like, the subculture of media consumption is always going to be a fandom. But also, like, other things have eroded, right? Like, you know, it almost feels cliche to bring up, but everything from, like, third places to organized religion, you know, to national identity, you know, all of these things, right? What remains in its status is fandom. And so, you know, the marriage of the erosion of these other sort of cultural cornerstones, plus the importance of consuming media and the way we communicate, it creates this perfect storm. And I've even argued that, like, fandom is, in a way, like, you know, the main way that we know how to organize at this point. It's the chief way we express ourselves. You know, politics tend to, like, devolve into fandom. But the question is, like, well, what else do we have, really?And here's part of our discussion about ficto-romance.Henry: Now, about ficto romance. I find this, like, really fascinating and I've been reading your case studies avidly. But I also am confused, like, people have always had strong feelings for characters in novels, right? So I read an essay, a 19th century essay about Pride and Prejudice recently. And I mean, this made me laugh. Some people don't like it. But the critic was like, these are the five most attractive heroines in 19th century English fiction and had, like, robust views about what made these fictional women attractive. What is different or what feels different about ficto romance today?Katherine: You know, I don't think it is that different is the thing. I think a lot of stuff maybe feels different because it's somehow like more lowbrow or we don't respect the expression as much. I also think the role of art has changed. Like, we don't see, you know, like I talk to a lot of I actually posted an interview today with a guy who identifies as fictoromantic and his fictive other, which is the term they use instead of like significant other, is from Homestuck, which is a web comic that was really popular on Tumblr and is still very popular on Tumblr. And I think, like, ordinary people don't consider that art. Right. And so, like, it's difficult. Like, you see someone who maybe has this, like, devotion to, you know, someone in a great novel or maybe to, like, you know, Aphrodite or Venus or something like that. And they're producing what we're already primed to think of as great art in service of this love. And because the media properties that many of these people are emotionally attached to feel lowbrow, we take it less seriously and we think they're crazy. But if you actually talk to them, they're not crazy at all. I mean, it's a spectrum of expression. But I've never spoken to someone who feels like they're in active psychosis or something. It feels very familiar. Like I brought up in this interview that I posted today, you know, the way this young man was talking about this Homestuck character. And this is going to sound, I mean, this is going to sound crazy, maybe, but it reminded me of Mirabai, who I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, but she is this Hindu poet who had this great devotion for Krishna. And it was it felt very similar to me. It's just that it's reskinned in this way that is there's some dissonance.There's a complete transcript of the interview below. Transcript (AI generated so there may be errors)[00:00:00] Henry Today, I'm talking with Katherine Dee, the internet culture writer and the author of the default friend, Substack. Katherine, welcome.[00:00:11] Katherine: Hey, thanks for having me.[00:00:15] Henry: So how is AI changing writing right now and how is it going to change it in the next, say, couple of years?[00:00:22] Katherine: In the next couple of years, I'm not sure. But right now, I've noticed a lot of people who write news are using AI. AI is interesting because it's like, you know, if you read a lot of fan fiction, for example, there's like a fan fiction register. And so if you then go and read like a mass market paperback, you know, a lot of these people start off in fan fiction, you can kind of tell like who's who, right, because there's certain phrases that are common, certain slang. And the same is similar with AI, right? And so I can, I've, I use AI so much as like a chat companion, that there's like certain phrases that I know, are very specific to AI. So I've picked up from like, talking to it and, you know, it being sort of like a friend of mine, for lack of a better word, that people who write news and write digests, use AI a lot. And I've also noticed that people do like, polish on their writing, like they will fix the grammar, or what have you, which I think is less, less scandalous. But I do think that there's also a backlash, right? There is this, people want to sound human. And it's, it's opening up like, more space somehow, right, somehow, more, even more space for like, messy confessional writing. And maybe just, you know, validating that our, our, our long love for it, is never, is never going away.[00:02:03] Henry: Yeah, just when you thought there couldn't be any more personal essays, right, here they come.[00:02:07] Katherine: There's even, Substack really like, created an explosion of them. I thought, I thought it was over, but it absolutely is not.[00:02:17] Henry: I was amazed the other day, because I've been writing like, I would say quite a balanced view of AI, but people take it to be highly positive. And someone who was writing against it, actually said in their piece, oh, that last sentence was written by AI, by the way. And I was like, it's insane to me that that would happen. If you're so against it, but also that people don't realize that if he hadn't mentioned that, you wouldn't have said, oh, that was an AI sentence.[00:02:46] Katherine: Well, you don't know that it, I do think, and I went, I can't quite figure out what, what is the tell for AI writing when there's certain words that I could list, but there is a register, right? So if you're using it a lot, like, I use, I use like deep research all the time to find like, contact information for people. If I have a problem in my life, it's like, I asked chat GPT first, right? So there's like words like, you know, people have pointed out that it uses an em dash a lot. It uses the word crucial a lot. The word realm, weirdly, I've noticed, right? So you kind of internalize it, right? But there's also a register that is very like, AI specific. And I think, all this to say, I think people can tell.[00:03:38] Henry: You said you're talking to it a lot, like every day. What are you talking to it about?[00:03:45] Katherine: Like, you know, if I get anxiety about something that feels silly, or like, if I get upset about something, sometimes, like, I can't, because I'm online so much, like, very susceptible to getting this sort of, like, internet tunnel vision, where I don't know if I'm like, if my reaction is really to scale, I try not to get into, like, fights on the timeline or anything. But it doesn't mean I don't have the reaction, right? So I'll ask AI, like, I had, you know, this back and forth with someone on Twitter, and I feel like, pretty upset about it, am I overreacting? And it's not always actually, like, a good tool for that. But even just the process of me, like slowing down to ask, has made me, I think, a little bit more rational.[00:04:35] Henry: Do you think you're better at seeing when something's written with AI, because you've got this background in fan fiction and online writing, so you're, like, in a way, very highly trained on different internet registers? Whereas to some of us, it's like, people are just doing internet speak, and we don't have that kind of discrimination between the types?[00:04:55] Katherine: No, I think that if you read a lot of anything, you sort of, you pick up, you become fluent in the tone. People who, you know, there's an academic register, right? Like people who are in STEM speak in a particular way and write in a particular way. And it's not necessarily that the topics that they're talking about, it's certain phrases. People who are the humanities, there's similar things. And I think we're not conscious of being able to detect these different tones or registers, but everyone is capable of doing this.[00:05:34] Henry: How many people, how many, like, prominent people or people who are known for their voice do you think are using AI without telling us?[00:05:43] Katherine: I can only think of one who I would bet money that they're doing it. They mostly send out, like, a news digest. So it might be, you know, I haven't noticed it in their, like, opinion pieces. But in, like, their news digests, definitely, right? There's all sorts of tells. But there's, I mean, there has to be more, right? Because there's so many people who have interesting ideas, but aren't necessarily articulate. And there's probably a lot of people who collaborate with AI, right? So it's, they will have the, you know, Chachapiti or Claude or whatever, structure their piece. And then they will go in and edit it and put it in their voice. Or even the reverse, like, they'll structure it, and then they'll have it be polished or fix the grammar or put it in the tone that they want, and then they'll do minor tweaks. I think that is probably super common. But, like, wholesale, yeah, I've only picked up on this one person.[00:06:48] Henry: How close are we to a time when writers are going to feel obliged to put a little disclaimer saying this is what I do and don't use AI for in my writing? Or will that not come?[00:06:59] Katherine: Some people already do that. I don't want to skip ahead to mention our conversation, but I know we're going to be talking a little bit about fan fiction. And on fan fiction sites, there is, like, an AI-generated tag. And then in some digital magazines, they'll be like, this piece was generated with AI or, you know, was edited with AI or something like that. But I think there's probably a lot of shame around it. And people don't want to feel like they're not a real writer. We don't really know where to place or how to conceive of these tools. And it's complicated, right? And you see these conversations playing out in fandom quite a bit. And you see just how complex it is. I don't think there are easy answers.[00:07:53] Henry: Why is there so much fandom in modern culture? We've got LARPing, people having AI boyfriends and girlfriends, fictoromance. You're writing about all these things all the time. Why is this such a big part of culture?[00:08:06] Katherine: That's a great question. I think that the foundational reason is our culture is oriented around consuming media. And this is, you know, like, the subculture of media consumption is always going to be a fandom. But also, like, other things have eroded, right? Like, you know, it almost feels cliche to bring up, but everything from, like, third places to organized religion, you know, to national identity, you know, all of these things, right? What remains in its status is fandom. And so, you know, the marriage of the erosion of these other sort of cultural cornerstones, plus the importance of consuming media and the way we communicate, it creates this perfect storm. And I've even argued that, like, fandom is, in a way, like, you know, the main way that we know how to organize at this point. It's the chief way we express ourselves. You know, politics tend to, like, devolve into fandom. But the question is, like, well, what else do we have, really?[00:09:22] Henry: Right. Fandom, but also anti-fandom, right? I think that's a big part of culture.[00:09:25] Speaker 3: It's like. Yeah, absolutely.[00:09:28] Henry: Now, about ficto romance. I find this, like, really fascinating and I've been reading your case studies avidly. But I also am confused, like, people have always had strong feelings for characters in novels, right? So I read an essay, a 19th century essay about Pride and Prejudice recently. And I mean, this made me laugh. Some people don't like it. But the critic was like, these are the five most attractive heroines in 19th century English fiction and had, like, robust views about what made these fictional women attractive. What is different or what feels different about ficto romance today?[00:10:14] Katherine: You know, I don't think it is that different is the thing. I think a lot of stuff maybe feels different because it's somehow like more lowbrow or we don't respect the expression as much. I also think the role of art has changed. Like, we don't see, you know, like I talk to a lot of I actually posted an interview today with a guy who identifies as fictoromantic and his fictive other, which is the term they use instead of like significant other, is from Homestuck, which is a web comic that was really popular on Tumblr and is still very popular on Tumblr. And I think, like, ordinary people don't consider that art. Right. And so, like, it's difficult. Like, you see someone who maybe has this, like, devotion to, you know, someone in a great novel or maybe to, like, you know, Aphrodite or Venus or something like that. And they're producing what we're already primed to think of as great art in service of this love. And because the media properties that many of these people are emotionally attached to feel lowbrow, we take it less seriously and we think they're crazy. But if you actually talk to them, they're not crazy at all. I mean, it's a spectrum of expression. But I've never spoken to someone who feels like they're in active psychosis or something. It feels very familiar. Like I brought up in this interview that I posted today, you know, the way this young man was talking about this Homestuck character. And this is going to sound, I mean, this is going to sound crazy, maybe, but it reminded me of Mirabai, who I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, but she is this Hindu poet who had this great devotion for Krishna. And it was it felt very similar to me. It's just that it's reskinned in this way that is there's some dissonance.[00:12:35] Henry: So you don't think, because I read that interview and I thought it was great. Do you don't think like the behavior that the person you interviewed, like it's actively living with this fictoromantic partner and there's lots of like daily behavior involved. Right. And it's part of the structure of this person's life. Whereas, you know, in the past, like Diana Wynne-Jones used to say that she got a lot of letters about Hal's moving castle from, I think, basically teenage girls who fell in love with Hal. But that would be like. Almost entirely in their imagination, maybe if they wouldn't structure their life around it, is there some kind of difference there?[00:13:18] Katherine: What is different is I feel like because everything's commercialized, there's maybe more of an opportunity to buy products associated with the character that they're attached to. But if you look at the way people, most people, not all of them are expressing these relationships, like I ask these people, what does your relationship look like? It looks like creating art. And, you know, in another time, maybe they wouldn't have become a famous artist or whatever. But like I think it would have been more socially acceptable somehow. The student we used was Puppet, which is sort of maybe a little silly. But Puppet, who's the young man I interviewed, when I asked him, what does your relationship with Ro Strider look like? He said that he writes, he draws, he fantasizes. There is also, you know, there was also like a commercial component, like buying the body pillow. And that's maybe a little different. But to me, it reminds me of just any sort of creative expression. It's just phrased in a slightly different way.[00:14:36] Henry: Right, right. And one thing I liked about that interview was that I don't do the creative activities that this person does, but I was like, well, I speak pretty intensely about fictional characters. It made me sort of I was sort of forced to think, like, how different am I from this guy? Like I'm I have very strong feelings about people in books.[00:14:59] Katherine: I think a lot of us do.[00:15:02] Henry: Or movies, right? For a lot of people, it's movie characters, right?[00:15:04] Katherine: Yeah. I mean, that's that's the beauty of like dramatic structure, right? Like it you it allows us to suspend our disbelief and we feel like we're within the world of the narrative. And if you really like it, you want to take that feeling with you after the show has ended or the book has ended.[00:15:23] Henry: So I guess you're saying that this what it looks very weird to a lot of people, but it's not really so different from the way people grieve about like when Matthew Perry died and people were just completely distraught. It's kind of a similar thing because they had this strong identification with his character.[00:15:42] Katherine: Yeah, I mean, it's more intense, but like there were probably people who felt a really strong connection to Matthew Perry or to any celebrity. And again, it applies also to fictional characters, of course.[00:16:03] Henry: So what are people getting from fan fiction that they're not getting from other sorts of art? Like why is fan fiction so big now?[00:16:13] Katherine: It's playing in the space of a media property and an established world that you already have an attachment to. You know, people bring up a lot like there's, you know, there's certain stories that are like retold over and over and over again. Right. There's certain characters that reappear throughout novels through centuries. Right. And it's a similar idea. Right. It's like you enjoy the world of the story and you want to make it your own. Fan fiction is incredibly diverse. Right. There's some fan fiction that is that moves away from the canon so much you almost wonder, like, why, you know, why aren't you just creating an original work? But there's something that lies in there. And I also think part of it is the types of media that people are consuming are they already have these fandoms set up. Right. So it's it's it's it almost invites that form of expression.[00:17:21] Henry: Do you mean like you read Harry Potter and then you realize that there's already a massive Harry Potter fan fiction ecosystem so you can… it is to us what a theme park was to the 80s or whatever.[00:17:35] Katherine: Yeah, there's there's already this there's already somewhere to go and to meet people.[00:17:41] Henry: I was researching it earlier because I like I know nothing about it. And obviously I was asking deep research. And as I was reading all the stuff it gave me, I was like, people are trying to create almost like folktales based on this, you know, whatever the the original sources in this collectivizing impulse, whereas you say like it diverges, it has these repetitive tropes that they almost want to turn it into these kind of fairy tales or a collection of stories like that. So it seemed it seemed quite interesting to me. Now, you personally, you wrote on your sub stack, you said my lineage isn't literature, it's text based online role playing. Yes. Tell me what that what is that?[00:18:28] Katherine: So I so I always wanted to be a writer, but I wanted to be a writer because I would role play and role play, role playing the way I did it is is like playing, you know, it's like imaginative play that children do, like with Barbies or, you know, even just themselves. But it's it's translated to text because it's it's mediated. And so I would do, you know, I would role play all the time. And it wasn't like I was a voracious reader. I never was. And I don't think I am now. And I think it's it's actually reflected in my writing, actually, but it was because I was like role playing all the time. And I think a lot of people are like this, right? Like I didn't even really write fan fiction. I preferred role playing, which is a little bit more dramatic than than just than just writing. But I but at the time I thought, oh, because I'm I am literally writing something down that I am a writer. But really, it's more like theater, if anything.[00:19:28] Henry: So tell me what's happening, like you would be logging on to some kind of forum and you would be writing as if you were a particular person or character in this in the scenario and other people would be responding.[00:19:43] Katherine: Yeah, it's it's like acting, but through text, so you could do when I started, you could either do it in a chat room, there is text based role playing games, which I didn't actually participate in, like mod some multi user dungeons. I didn't I didn't even know those existed at the time. And then there was forums where and so there would be a theme and the theme could either be from a fandom like Harry Potter, for example, or it could just be a setting. So like high school or the beach or, you know, like an apartment complex and you would design a character and then you would it was it sort of looked like a collaborative story. But really, it was like you were you were just you could only control your own character. So you would just write a description of like, you know, someone says the setting is the beach and then character one comes in and describes what character one is doing and then character two comes in. And, you know, sometimes you would be ignored. Sometimes people would start a fight with you. All sorts of things could happen. And I it's I spent most of my time doing this for like over a decade.[00:20:53] Henry: So are there certain areas where this doesn't does not happen? Like, is there Jane Austen role playing or is it is that not the sort of premise?[00:21:02] Katherine: No, there's role playing for everything. There's like historical role plays. There's, you know, any novel under the sun. You could probably find someone, you know, more like Jane Austen. There's like a there's a rich role playing tradition. People love Jane Austen novels. Something I would do very often is if I was learning about a particular historical period in school, I would get like I would have I would develop these sort of like parasocial attachments with certain historical figures or even settings very similar to the way people feel about fandom. And then I would go home and role play the historical setting and I would read a lot about, you know, whatever it was, ancient Rome or whatever. And it would help me in school because I would be like acting it out online.[00:21:49] Henry: Yeah. You're working on fan fiction and A.I. at the moment. And I'm interested in this because I have this feeling everyone's like A.I. is only going to produce slop. It's not going to do anything new. But I've seen people. I've saw an interesting essay on Substack about someone writing their own fan fiction with A.I. And I sort of I wonder if the confluence of these two things is going to start leading to lots of very new types of fiction and potentially even I don't I mean, this is like a long term speculation, but even some kind of new type of literature. Tell us what you're working on with that.[00:22:32] Katherine: So I was curious the way I was curious, like how people were using A.I. in fandom spaces. And right now it looks it looks like there's this prohibition against using A.I. like people do you do create A.I. generated fan fics, but there's something about like the process and the love that you put into writing your fan fiction that people are very precious about. And they feel that A.I. infringes on this. And part of it is they're very concerned about like, where is the data coming from? Right. Is it somehow unethical because of the data that these LLMs are trained on? But where you see a real difference is people who use A.I. to role play. And that's where it's it seems like people are more open to it. It the feeling the feelings and reactions are a bit more mixed, but there does seem to be like a debate in different fandom spaces. Like some people argue like A.I. is an accessibility issue, like some people aren't good at writing. Maybe English isn't their first language. And this opens up a lot of space for them. And they feel like they're they're collaborating with this tool. Other people say that it's it's unethical and that since they're taking away the process, it is it's harming the work.[00:24:04] Henry: If they could be convinced or, you know, to their own satisfaction that it's not unethical, the data, the data sets and everything like it would be fine. Would they still just not want to do it? It would be fine. Would they still just not want to do it? Because this is the wrong phrase, but like it ruins the game. It's not the point.[00:24:25] Katherine: I think for some people. Yeah, I think the the ethical dimension is is extremely significant for a lot of people. But but for some, it's like, you know, they're not doing it to produce work for its own sake. Right. To go back to the example I gave about the writer who I suspect is using AI to create these news digests, like that person has committed to producing these digests, you know, X number of times a month as part of their livelihood. And so you can sort of see like, well, them using AI is a little bit more sympathetic. But if it's something you're doing for free, for fun, as an expression of love, I can I can see where people are like, well, you're farming it out. But I also am very sympathetic to the other side of that, where it's like maybe, you know, your writing skills aren't as strong and it does open doors and they are your ideas. And it's helping you speak more clearly in a situation where you couldn't otherwise.[00:25:32] Henry: Is it because the way people do this online together, it's a form of communicating, like it's all very oblique and indirect, but it's really just a form of people socializing and they feel like if the AI is there, then they're not getting what they need from it in that sense.[00:25:49] Katherine: Um, it is a form of communication. But I also think there is really a value placed on the like the personal dimension of it. Like, um, like bad fan art, right? Like if you know someone, someone's really trying their best, they really are committed to a fandom. They really love it. But their drawing isn't great and they share it. Of course, there will be people who are mean and who shame them. And there's all sorts of weird, like, you know, labyrinthine dramas that occur in these spaces. But there will also be people who are like, this is beautiful because you tried, because it was coming from a real place of love. And that that that devotion is a very important piece of the puzzle. Again, there there are gatekeepers, there is shaming that occurs. And you know, there's a lot of people who feel like they're not good enough. Like you constantly see this in forums on Reddit, on Wattpad, on AO3, like on all these spaces, people who are like self deprecating, they feel like their work isn't good enough. But there's again, like this, this sense of like, I did it because I love the property. I love the character. Which I guess sort of ties back to the thing about ficto romance, where it's just this extreme expression of, you know, a pulse that's already moving through the space.[00:27:12] Henry: The piece I read on Substack, it wasn't written by the person writing the book. It was written by her roommate. And she was saying, you know, to begin with, like, oh my God, I thought this was dreadful. But actually, the more I saw what was going on, she was like, I can see my roommate has written like 20,000 words in a week. And she's working really hard at it. And she's, you know, prompting and reprompting. And she knows what she likes. She really knows what she's doing and what she wants and how to get it to change its output. And she kind of, she didn't come around to saying, oh, this is a good thing. But I think she mellowed on the idea. And she could see that there was a certain amount of, there's something new happening, right? Some new kind of fiction is coming out of it.[00:27:55] Katherine: I totally agree too, that like, prompting and reprompting is in itself a creative expression. And this is something I tried to argue about AI art, where there is like, you know, not everyone is going to be able to produce the same thing. Like the writing the prompt is in it of itself a skill. And also there's your own taste, which informs the prompt and informs what you include. Like, I'm very proud of the images that I've produced with Mid Journey. Not, you know, not the same way I would be if I had, you know, painted it myself. But like, I do feel like it's informed by my unique experience and taste. And this particular combination of things is unique to me. And that's a type of art, even if it's involves different things than, you know, again, if I were myself painting it. And I think that applies to fan fiction as well. What I have been worried about, I mean, this is a tangent, is like, what happens to the generation that is like, all they know is prompting and AI, and they don't have that space to develop their own taste and their own perception. Like, I think that like, if you start out too fresh, if you started too green, and you haven't had time to develop taste, and that's where I see these platforms being a little bit more dangerous.[00:29:23] Henry: But couldn't we say that about you in the role-playing forums? Like, when they develop taste through like, deep immersive experiences with the AI?[00:29:36] Katherine: Well, no, because with the role-playing, it has to come from myself and from other people, right? And there's nothing like limiting it, right? Like, it's purely through my eyes. Like, maybe there's an issue here where like, the actual writing product would have been better if I was, you know, if I read more, right? Or if I watched different films, but it's only filtered through myself and through other people. Whereas, you don't know how you're gonna get walled in with the AI, especially if you go in too fresh, and you don't know how to prompt it.[00:30:17] Henry: Weren't those people more likely to be, aren't they more likely to get bored?[00:30:24] Katherine: I don't know. I don't know if they're more likely to get bored. I think they might get stuck. I mean, the flip side is maybe they'll innovate more because they're coming from a completely different perspective.[00:30:37] Henry: Right, that's true. I had this interesting experience recently where I saw a whole load of young people that I'm related to. They range from like eight to 16 or something. And some of them just could, they could not not be holding their phone. And some of them, they're like, they don't like the phone. They're reading Jane Austen. So there's a diversity in that sense. But they were all just against AI. Like it's a bad thing. People use it to cheat, all the usual stuff. And I was fascinated. I was like, guys, you should all be using AI. Let me tell you what the good models are. So I wonder if we'll see this bigger diversity within that generation where some of them, a bit like in our generation, right? Some people were online a lot. Some people weren't. And some people are still.[00:31:24] Katherine: I've noticed that there's a very strong anti-tech sentiment among younger generation. And it seems like bifurcated. In the same way you described, people who are so online that they're just like these internet creatures, right? Like if the internet is a forest, like they're like natives of it. And then the other side of it is people who feel like it stole a lot from them. It took a lot from their childhoods. And they're moving away from it. And as a statement, they're either getting like dumb phones or they don't have social media. Or if they do have social media, it's like very sparse. And they tend to have like two very different outlooks. The ones who are more online seem to be more chaotic, a little more nihilistic. And the ones who are more offline, like they seem to be like looking for something more. Like they're more obviously searching for meaning.[00:32:24] Henry: Are we gonna see more like book reading among the offline people?[00:32:30] Katherine: I mean, I would hope so. Who knows, right? Like who knows how much of it is a performance and how much of it is really happening. But I mean, I would imagine so. It does seem also that like a lot of digital outlets feel like something is changing. And I've noticed a lot more like physical media seems to be coming back. I'm interested in seeing how this develops in fan spaces. Early in fandom, like in the... And I guess like early is like right when it was like really starting to grow. So not at the origins, but it's sort of this like... Fandom exponentially grew in the late 70s. And the way people communicated with each other and like a very important mode of expression was a physical fanzine. And this was because first there was no internet and then the internet was confined to certain populations and not everyone had it. And I wonder if fanzines will come back or like handwritten letters. Even I have a couple of books that are collections of letters that these sisters wrote to a particular fandom. And it was just like, it was just a huge part of that particular world. And I thought that was really interesting as a way to keep in touch with people and to keep the community together.[00:34:01] Henry: Yeah, that sounds like a fascinating book.[00:34:05] Katherine: Yeah, it's a collection of... It's called like elf magic letters or something. It's really interesting. And it's also interesting because it's like not something that you can easily read because it's so specific to the time and the place. Like it really was for the people it was for, right? It's not, it doesn't stand the test of time in the same way.[00:34:28] Henry: So is there not much sense of tradition in fandom? Like are people going back to read the fanzines and stuff?[00:34:37] Katherine: There is a sense of tradition for sure. Some of these fanzines are hard to find. It depends on which fandom you're in. Fans love whatever property it is they're fans of. So there's always archivists and people who are curating these things and making these things available. I just wonder if it'll become more popular to return to physical media. And it probably is in certain spaces. I'm just not personally aware of them. Okay.[00:35:09] Henry: Do you think, like, how do you think fan fiction is going to change significantly with AI? Beyond questions of like register and stuff that you were talking about before. Are we going to see, is this going to be like a significant step change in the evolution of the form? Or is it just going to be what people are saying? Like lots of slots in the form of slot content, nothing new as it were.[00:35:33] Katherine: I'm not sure. There's a lot of fan art that's generated with AI that I feel like at first people were really skeptical of. And now they really like it. And it's sort of proven itself. I mean, there's still people who are fiercely against it. But with writing, it's a little bit trickier. And again, the reactions are like very mixed, mostly negative. Again, where I think you will see the most change is with role-playing. You know, AI is always on. You can say whatever you like without feeling embarrassed. Something that I've noticed in reading transcripts of people who, like, on some of these sites where people role-play with bots, you could publish the role-play. You could publish the transcript. And there's just completely disinhibited. Like, they're just really just saying whatever, right? Not in a way that they're trolling or trying to break the bot. But it's like, you know, there's a certain etiquette when you role-play. And they're really just going for it. And I'll just be honest. This is particularly obvious with sexual role-plays, right? They'll just get straight to it. If the person is there to role-play sex, they'll just jump straight to the point. And you don't have to worry about that. You don't have to worry about being embarrassed. If it doesn't work out or, you know, you don't get the response you want, you start it over, you reprompt it, or you go to another bot. So I think it might take away from that social aspect. Not everybody likes role-playing with bots, but I think a lot of people do.[00:37:21] Henry: To me, this is like prime material for people to write novels about. But I don't see, I don't yet see a lot of people taking that up. Do you think, like, how likely is it, do you think, that some people from within this space will end up, in whatever way this looks like in the future, writing and publishing something like, you know, a straightforward literary, whatever the word is, novel, about this subculture and about these ways of existing? Do you think some people will, like, prompt themselves into being novelists, as it were?[00:38:00] Katherine: I mean, I definitely think that people will write about AI companions and chat bots. I think we're already seeing that to some degree. I think, you know, it seems that everyone is fascinated by emotional attachment to chat bots. And there's, like, just explosions of big pieces about this, because it's so new. And what's surprising to me is, like, there's very little judgment. You know, there's very few people who are like, this is dystopian, right? You see some of that, but most of it is like, well, it is real love, you know? That's been very surprising to me. Something that I could foresee is, and I think would be very ethically tricky and might cause some controversies, people trying to publish their role-playing transcripts. Which, you know, some fan fiction is, like, downstream of role-playing transcripts, and it'll be, like, a collaborative work, right? But it would be, like, very controversial if, you know, like, you and I had a Pride and Prejudice roleplay. And, you know, so we were sending emails back and forth or something, and then I collated all of that and published it as my own story, like, you know, with some edits or whatever. Like, that would be stealing your work. What I could see happening is someone having, like, a really good roleplay and wanting to save the transcript and then, you know, cleaning it up, maybe running it through AI, and the prompt is, you know, turn this into a story and, like, remove redundancies or, you know, whatever. And then it'd be, like, is that their work, right? Like, how much of that belongs to them?[00:39:38] Henry: But I can see something happening where it's, like, you know, in the 19th century, things that were supposed to be cheap and lowbrow, like crime stories and things like that, became a whole new genre of literature, right? And by the end of the 19th century, you've got detective fiction, science fiction, fantasy fiction. They're all flourishing. They've all had decades of really interesting work, and it becomes, like, maybe even the dominant form of fiction in the 20th century. Do you think there's scope for, like, you know, a weird novelist like Muriel Spark, a new one of her to come along and, like, turn this, whatever this is happening with these role plays and everything, turn that into some kind of new kind of fiction, whether it's created with the AI or not with the AI, like, you'll get both, right? Is this, like, everyone thinks the literary novel is exhausted, is this the way out? I don't know.[00:40:37] Katherine: I think that they, like, maybe, maybe, like, a new type of, like, pulp novel or something, you know, something that's, like, considered, like, something that's considered lowbrow, right, and maybe isn't always treated that way. But I'm curious, like, how, like, I'm imagining, you know, people printing, like, paper books or creating EPUBs, but do you mean, like, an interactive form of a novel, maybe, or, like, are you talking about people, like, I mean, what are you imagining, I guess, is my question? I think, so I think it could be, I think in terms of format, it could be all of those.[00:41:25] Henry: What I really want to see is how this interacts with audiobooks, because I think audiobooks have become, like, quietly very dominant in the reading habits of people who are typically reading, like, highbrow nonfiction, literary fiction, whatever. And I can sort of imagine a scenario where, I don't know how long this takes, but, like, a new kind of pulp fiction has been created, it's drawing on fandom, roleplay, AI, so we've got this new kind of sub-genre, and then that gets morphed, a bit like genre fiction in the 19th century, into something much more, quote-unquote, literary, and that could be, like, a boring, typical old book, or it could be some kind of audio thing where, like, you're interacting with it, and you're picking the route and whatever, or you could interact with it through your LLM. You see what I mean?There's all these different ways, right?[00:42:26] Katherine: So I think this stuff already exists. Oh, okay. Oh, so that, I think that maybe what I was confusing was, you know, like, imagining, like, a new style, or, you know?[00:42:37] Katherine: But all of these, so all of these things, so I don't know if they're books, I mean, that's actually a good question, like, is it a form of literature? Like, are these bots that people are roleplaying with, is that literature, right? Because there's set parameters, and when you create these characters, you can, you have a lot of control over designing them, what their world is, what the person talking to them will receive back, right? And there's audio versions of that. So it is, like, stepping into a pre-created world where there's, like, some kind of collaboration. And then on the other hand, there's been lots of novels that started off as fan fiction, and this is actually pretty common, a lot of these, you know, like, teen romances or whatever that get popular on TikTok, a lot of those come from people who had been writing fan fiction smut, right? And turned it into original work. And you can see the traces of whatever fandom they were operating in, in the work, whether it's, like, an allusion to a pre-existing character in another property, or it's just the style of writing, or, like, the way they express romantic intimacy. So both things exist in different forms. I wish I had asked a clarified question earlier, because I feel like we were talking in circles a little bit, so I wasn't quite sure what you were envisioning. But yeah, there's a lot of, I wondered also, like, how will reading change as these bots become more sophisticated? Right now, it's a lot of, like, it's a lot of, like, just, you know, like, teenagers messing around in their fandoms, or people doing erotic role-playing, right? But what is the literary version of that? And that's a very exciting question, and, like, interesting realm of inquiry.[00:44:38] Henry: It's a good, it's currently a very good, like, footnotes-on-demand service, right?[00:44:44] Katherine: Yeah.[00:44:45] Henry: Yeah, like, what the hell is this kind of carriage that they're talking about, or whatever? Do you think it'll, you think it's going to develop beyond that kind of thing?[00:44:53] Katherine: Um, yeah, I do. I mean, something really interesting, I don't know if you've heard about this, it's not literature, but the website Every, so they have, like, several different tech newsletters, and they have a service where they'll take all the research for a given article, and you can talk to an LLM about the stuff they didn't include in the piece. But, so, here's even another idea, like, let's say, you know, you take, like, Harry Potter or something, and then there's, like, a Harry Potter LLM, and you can ask questions about the book, or, like, you know, what's in the store that didn't, you know, that we didn't open, right? Metaphorically, you know, what's behind the scenes and all this stuff we don't see in the actual text? And ordinarily, that's where fandom steps in, and fans will fill in that white space for themselves with their headcanon, so the decisions they make about the whatever narrative universe they're choosing to step into. But maybe in AI, you know, the author can say, all right, these are all my notes, and this is all the, this is the whole world that I couldn't fit into the actual story.[00:46:07] Henry: How is AI changing the way you write?[00:46:12] Katherine: All right, so I correct my grammar a lot. My grammar is, like, atrocious, or at least it is in my own opinion. Maybe it's actually not, but so I'll check for grammatical errors, and then I use it all the time as, like, a search engine. So I love, like, the deep research function on chat GPT. It's, like, I never use Google anymore. So if I have, like, questions about something, or if I'm not sure that an argument makes sense, either I'll, like, run it by, you're like, all right, I'm arguing, you know, like, this, this, and this. Like, does this make sense in my own head, or does this actually make sense? So that's a common DF question to chat GPT.[00:47:05] Henry: But, like, are you thinking about, you know, are you going to be a different sort of writer? Are you going to write more or less of certain things? Are you thinking about how people will be reading less? You know, you're competing with the AIs, you've got to write for the AIs. Is it affecting you like that, or do you feel like what you do is reasonably immune?[00:47:26] Katherine: Um, no, you know, I don't feel like I'm competing with AI. I feel like I'm competing with other people, but I'm not competing with AI. And I'm not, I'm not writing for it. I, you know, I remember that, that Tyler Cowen quote, and I wasn't totally sure what he meant by that. I mean, like, I don't know. I'm definitely not writing, writing for it. I mean, does he mean, like, as the AI, like, learns about each person and learns that, you know, each, each writer is contributing to the conversation, you want to make sure it's easily parsable. So you could, you could be included in history or something as AI starts to write our history. Actually, I guess that's a good point, if that doesn't end up happening. But no, I don't, I don't consider either of those things.[00:48:17] Henry: Um, you wrote about, you wrote a short response to the Machine in the Garden essay that was famous on Substack a few months ago. You said, if you don't have copycats, then you're doing something wrong. Just make sure people don't forget you're the original article. How, how do you do that? How do you, how does that affect the way you organize your writing?[00:48:43] Katherine: Oh, man, I publish a lot. If I feel like something is my unique idea, I repeat it over and over and over again. Yeah, I mean, that's, I guess it also, I mean, a question I don't have the answer to is like, you know, people worry about being plagiarized from or copycats, but what happens, you know, what happens with AI, right? Like, how does AI change that equation? I don't know. But, you know, you just hope for the best, you know, that humanity, you know, just the fact of being human is enough.[00:49:26] Henry: Do you think that the internet and social media are making things worse in the culture generally, the way that people like Ted Gioia argue, or are you more optimistic?[00:49:39] Katherine: Um, I'm slightly more optimistic. I think Ted Gioia is as much too dismissive of technology to the extent that I feel like I've, I've almost like taken a contrarian position, you know, and I, I've been a little bit I've been a little bit more techno-optimist than I would have been normally, because I just like, can't all be bad, right? There's a lot of really good things about the internet and about social media. I think that we really undervalue the friendships people make. And then people will say, well, like, well, look at, you know, how so-and-so got screwed over, you know, whatever famous drama. It's like, those people will f**k you over in real life, you know, in the physical world, right? That's a human problem. That's not a technology problem. I think we also, I, particularly people like Ted Gioia and John Height and Freya India, I mean, and I like all these people. I'm not, you know, but I think they also are, like, I don't know where Ted Gioia lives, but John Height's in New York and Freya is in London, as far as I know. When they talk about going like phone-free or like using the internet less or screen-based childhoods, you know, I, like, I agree. Like, look, like, I don't want my son attached to a phone or something. But I also live in Chicago. There's like a ton of stuff going on. And every single day, no matter what the weather is, he can go, one, see other children and two, go do something really fun. And so can I, right? And that's because I live in Chicago. But if I lived in a small town in Texas, like I did, you know, 10 years ago, like I need the, I, like the internet was my lifeline. Then it's how I made friends. It's how I entertain myself. And it sucks that it was like that. But like, not everyone has the privilege of a rich culture in their immediate environment. You don't have, you know, like, it doesn't mean you have to be online 24 seven, but for social media is like very important for people in those situations. And it's, I think there's this weird binary in the discourse where it's like, you're either online all the time, you know, rotting your brain with just like, you know, nonstop live leak videos, right? Or you have no phone at all, right? But I think there's even like high volume usage that isn't, you know, what I just described, that it's beneficial for certain people in certain situations.[00:52:12] Henry: What is it that you like about Mirabi's poetry? You mentioned this earlier, but I wanted to ask you specifically.[00:52:18] Katherine: Yeah, so I discovered her in my senior year of college. And I didn't know what ecstatic love was. Like I had never, I was completely unfamiliar with that concept. So even on the conceptual level, I was like, so struck by this ability to feel love for a deity, feel love for something non-physical.[00:52:54] Henry: Do you admire other poets in that tradition like Rumi?[00:52:59] Katherine: I'm not as familiar with other poets in that tradition.[00:53:02] Henry: Okay. After fan fiction and AI, what will you do next?[00:53:08] Katherine: I'm working on a whole bunch of stuff. Another piece I'm working on is about techno-animism. So this idea of like, I don't believe that technology is literally insoled, but I think that it's maybe not a bad thing to treat it as if it was. And if we're going to be in such like a technologically rich environment, like maybe if we did see a little bit of life in it, it would be better for us psychologically, which is like kind of a hard thing to argue because I think it turns people off like immediately. And I think there's like a lot of fear around it, but it's a very sad and sterile world, right? If we think that we're around all this lifelessness. And I think that's why I'm so attracted to writing about ficto-sexuals and ficto-romance because I love this idea of being able to see life in something where other people don't see it.[00:54:15] Henry: Katherine Dee, thank you very much.[00:54:18] Katherine: Thank you for having me. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk/subscribe

In this episode, Thomas Domville provides a detailed walkthrough of the ElevenLabs Reader for iOS. This versatile app transforms any text content into natural, expressive speech using advanced AI-generated voices. Perfect for articles, ePubs, PDFs, and more, it enables users to enjoy their favorite content on the go. With an extensive and ever-growing library of voices, the app offers a personalized listening experience tailored to any mood or occasion.ElevenLabs Reader: AI Audio on the App Storehttps://apps.apple.com/us/app/elevenlabs-reader-ai-audio/id6479373050transcription: Disclaimer: This transcript is generated by AIKO, an automated transcription service. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers' names, voices, or content. Hello and welcome.My name is Thomas Domville, also known as AnonyMouse.I'm going to introduce you to an app called 11 Labs Reader, and it's spelled just as it sounds like.So 11 Labs is one word, E-L-E-V-E-N-L-A-B-S, 11 Labs, space, reader.This is an amazing app that you definitely want to check out if there's something that interests you, of course.So I'm going to do a nice little review and walk through and show you a demonstration how to use 11 Labs Reader.Now before I do that, 11 Labs should sound familiar for most of you out there.If you haven't heard of 11 Labs, no problem.11 Labs has been around for some time now, and what they're known for is being able to take any text and convert it into audio for you to listen.It's incredible technology.It sounds marvelous, and it's trying to do its best to sound as natural as possible.And I personally think they're getting really close to that moment where we will be able to say, wow, this is definitely a hit on their hands.And I think this app is no doubt going to be something that's going to be popular by some of you out there.Now I have used other apps.I won't mention those names.They will take various files like text files or probably PDFs or EPUBs and try to read it out using whatever voice over voices that we have now.And as you know, well, for myself, I'm not a big fan of those things.And it's really kind of hard to read books or listen to articles with those voices, especially when I come back in a background where I'm not used to using older voices such as eloquence and such things like that.It just sounds very unnatural, very robotic.So I'm really more into more natural sounding speech.So this is no doubt one of the big app that I definitely going to keep on my main home screen from now on.Now it's saying that there are some quirks and issues with this app.Yeah, for the most part, it is accessible and usable.Now there are some things that if you need to do, it can be difficult.So I won't be pointing that out.But I'm hoping that there's definitely going to be some update to this app and to making things more efficient for voice over users.Overall, I think this app definitely has potential and it definitely is going to be something I'm going to be using a lot.So let's go ahead and…

Nic and Lauren discuss the up and downsides of sharing pdfs of fics and also why epubs are helpful. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/roseanddagger/message

Andre is a writer and software developer. He is a hybrid author but favours self-publishing because owning your own platform is important and also because he secretly enjoys tinkering with ePubs. Andre published many non-fiction books focused on computer programming, and has been featured in a couple of Science Fiction and Horror short story anthologies. If the procrastination gods smile upon his fate, he hopes to publish his first novel in 2021. Andre is originally from Brazil but now lives in the UK with his cat. Links Blog do Andre Markdown Leanpub little.webby.press Lisp UFF Kauai's Hindu Monastery Mozilla Apress WebOS Firefox OS IoT Lua LivrosRoguelike Development with JavaScript Quick Guide For Firefox OS App Development Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs How to Design Programs Mr Robot Existenz Editor do EpisódioValdinei de Paula Junior OsProgramadoresSite do OsProgramadores Grupo do OsProgramadores no Telegram Canal do Youtube do OsProgramadores Twitter do Marcelo Pinheiro

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Enjoy LessWrong in ebook format, published by Stuckwork on February 13, 2023 on LessWrong. I would like to inform the community that all LessWrong Community Sequences are now available in EPUB and pdf format. These formats provide an alternative way to these sequences, allowing for offline reading on e-readers. You can find the library with all ebooks here: Personally, I feel that reading entire sequences have several benefits over reading individual posts. It gives me a clearer understanding of the development of ideas and the context in which the posts were written. However, most sequences are too long to read in one session and if I read them on desktop and don't finish them, I tend to forget that I was reading them. Reading sequences like I read ebooks makes it easier to keep track. Furthermore, reading on an e-reader provides a nice distraction-free environment. Ideal for those who want to read LessWrong without having social media one click away. Therefore, I have also made ebooks of the most upvoted posts on LessWrong of every month since January 2012. I'm planning to generate such an ebook every month, such that I can read the best material in a calmer environment. Also, e-readers offer features such as adjustable font sizes and glare-free screens, making the reading experience more comfortable. I have tried to make sure that the images and math are all rendered correctly, preserving the original visual content of the blog posts. I have tested a random sample of the ebooks on a Kobo Aura, Remarkable 2, and in Calibre. On these devices, they all seem to render nicely, but your mileage may vary based on your device. Additionally, the source code (written in Python) for the scraping and generation of the EPUBs is available for those interested in generating their own EPUBs. Feel free to provide suggestions for any improvements. Finally, if any authors would rather not have their content available in ebook format, please contact me and I will try to promptly remove them from the library! Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Join our guests Christine Foushi and John Foliot of Content Industries as they talk about accessible epubs. We explore the different versions, how they are structured. Did you know that epubs are basically HTML 5 documents? Stay tuned to listen to us talk about the importance of metadata at the book-level rather than the data-level. We reveal the secret of converting a zip to an epub and how to reverse engineer a word doc to get to the hidden zip contents! Christine and I also have a great discussion about the woes and wonders of alt-text for images. Finally, we get to hear about the online epub testing tool currently under development. This was a really interesting episode!    

For our last long-form episode of 2022, we're diving into the library again, but this time we're headed to the fiction section, and the Immortal Eyes novel trilogy. These books tie in to the three Immortal Eyes setting/chronicle books from 1st edition, fleshing out the story and giving some more options for incorporating the plot (and metaplot) into one's own chronicle. It was a grand experiment that, while not unsuccessful, is difficult to define in terms of its actual impact on the game line. Nevertheless, they weren't a chore to read, and we wanted to take some time to discuss them—as well as the overall role of RPG-associated fiction in the game space. If you want to get in touch with us to comment, inquire, or just croon wordlessly about this (or another) episode: Discord: https://discord.gg/SAryjXGm5jEmail: podcast@changelingthepodcast.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082973960699Mastodon: https://dice.camp/@ChangelingPodPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/changelingthepodcast ... links in the chain You can pick up the novels on DriveThruRPG for $0.99 each. As Josh points out, they're PDFs rather than EPUBs, which makes them tough for some e-readers, but the price is actually significantly lower than what Pooka said on the show (bad research!), so there's that. Follow the links below: The Toybox: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/82356?affiliate_id=3063731Shadows on the Hill: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/82357?affiliate_id=3063731Court of All Kings: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/82358?affiliate_id=3063731 Additionally, if you want to hear our episodes where we give deep dives into the setting/chronicle books proper and their usefulness for a chronicle, behold even more links...!: Immortal Eyes: The Toybox: https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-6-immortal-eyes-the-toybox/Immortal Eyes: Shadows on the Hill: https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-13-shadows-on-the-hill/Immortal Eyes: Court of All Kings: https://changelingthepodcast.com/podcast/episode-20-court-of-all-kings/ ... your hosts Josh Hillerup (any pronoun) is building a chimerical monstrosity from stripped book covers as retribution for 90s publishers' excess. Pooka G (any pronoun/they) often turns enemies to stone and pries loose their gem eyes, and so now has more Eyestones than they know what to do with. "It's not that pookas never tell the truth. It's just that our version of the truth does not always correspond with majority opinion." —Rasputin, noted street performer, decorated war hero, and Grand Nabob of the Tenderloin

It's 5:05, on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022. Each day we bring you updates on open source and cybersecurity news that might slip by the major news sources. We have 20 reporters from around the world. Today's updates are from Ax Sharma in Manchester UK, Edwin Kwan in Sydney Australia, and Mark Miller in New York City. Let's get to it!Edwin Kwan, Sydney, AustraliaGov proposes "up to $50m" fines for serious data breacheshttps://www.itnews.com.au/news/gov-proposes-up-to-50m-fines-for-serious-data-breaches-586802Mark Miller, New York CityYou Need to Update Chrome, Windows, and Zoom Right Nowhttps://www.wired.com/story/google-chrome-windows-zoom-critical-update/Ax Sharma, Manchester UKThese China-based developers are storing 1000s of ePUBs in GitHub and npm to bypass censorshiphttps://socket.dev/blog/these-china-based-devs-are-using-github-and-npm-to-store-ebooks

“But then Chris comes to town and says, “I'm starting Chris's Winslow Lawn Care, and I'm gonna go to Google, and I'm gonna buy keyword ads against Alan's Winslow Lawn Care.” which is a trademark that you own. That's yours. You get to do that. You get to - you paid the money you'd trademark, you went through the diligence to protect your brand so that some other asshole can't come in, and like f*cking shit up, destroying your reputation - because that can actually cause damage to your business and your ability to feed your family.And Google lets Chris buy that, so everyone that searches for your thing gets his thing and it's the top three links and they click on it instead. And there is only one recourse you have, because they don't let you fight the trademark thing: you have to buy AdWords for Alan's Winslow Lawn Care, and you have to outbid him. And so now they've got you in a bidding war against someone illegally using your trademark, and they're making money off of both of you motherf*ckers.”Show Notes:Equilibrium (00:47)Cornfield Brutality (03:52)Swapping insect bite stories (10:33)thewebisfucked.com (19:38)The tyranny of cycles (26:19)How typesetting evolved (33:25)ePUBs (38:54)“That's what the internet was for.” (44:08)Basecamp vs Monday (47:48)“That's a spoiler.” (54:07)Chatter that could be commentary (58:52)Write in (1:03:18)Show Links:Lofty's (still) hiring! Check out what's on offer!Support Friday Afternoon Deploy Online:Facebook  | Twitter  | Patreon  | Teespring

"Donde se cuenta lo que en él se verá", entre otros salseos pajeriles más o menos interesantes del que esto suscribe, para goce y deleite del oidor. --- Podcast asociado a la red de SOSPECHOSOS HABITUALES. Suscríbete con este feed: https://feedpress.me/sospechososhabituales

"Donde se cuenta lo que en él se verá", entre otros salseos pajeriles más o menos interesantes del que esto suscribe, para goce y deleite del oidor. --- Podcast asociado a la red de SOSPECHOSOS HABITUALES. Suscríbete con este feed: https://feedpress.me/sospechososhabituales

Mike goes through more questions for the Lazy DM's Companion Kickstarter! Links Back the Kickstarter Contents 00:00 Start - About the Kickstarter 02:09 Any modifications based on upcoming D&D changes? No. 04:05 Will the Companion be useful for non-D&D games? Yes! 05:05 Can you show the book in action? Yes! Next time. 06:33 Will the spiral-bound Workbook be available post-Kickstarter? Yes! 07:36 Really? No Stretch goals? Yep, no stretch goals. 09:04 Will the PDFs come through DriveThruRPG? Yes! 09:22 Will we get the PDFs of existing books right away? Yes! 10:00 Will the digital versions include existing ePubs? Yes! 10:44 Can we get the physical versions of the "Fantastic" book add-ons? Not through the Kickstarter. 11:52 Is the Companion "Done"? No. First draft is done. 13:02 Can we see what the books will look like? Not yet. 13:30 Can we add audiobooks as add-ons? Unfortunately, no. 15:00 Can I print maps for my own private use? Yes. 15:17 Can I give away extra digital copies? Yes. 16:02 Can we get the digital art as a download? Yes. 17:41 Will these questions get added to the FAQ? Yes. 18:09 Will there be a retailer pledge? No, but... 19:16 Will the printed books be available on Amazon? Yes, eventually. 20:19 Will Return look like Babar in hardcover? No. 21:17 Going to any conventions this year? No. 23:05 How different are the printed books from PoD? Nicer! 25:03 Experiences with Off-set Printing? Too early to say. 29:12 Plans for different languages? Not at the moment. 31:30 How do you plan to cope with the next 21 days? It's great! 35:48 A look at the TOC and design of the Companion 37:03 The Lands of the Fey page and design 42:51 Turning a 1d20 list into a 1d400 list 45:23 Useful guidelines and generators each in a single page 48:00 Not re-creating existing guidelines 49:36 Monster templates 57:57 Can I mix and match physical and PDF orders? Yes!

Mike goes through more questions for the Lazy DM's Companion Kickstarter! Links Back the Kickstarter Contents 00:00 Start - About the Kickstarter 02:09 Any modifications based on upcoming D&D changes? No. 04:05 Will the Companion be useful for non-D&D games? Yes! 05:05 Can you show the book in action? Yes! Next time. 06:33 Will the spiral-bound Workbook be available post-Kickstarter? Yes! 07:36 Really? No Stretch goals? Yep, no stretch goals. 09:04 Will the PDFs come through DriveThruRPG? Yes! 09:22 Will we get the PDFs of existing books right away? Yes! 10:00 Will the digital versions include existing ePubs? Yes! 10:44 Can we get the physical versions of the "Fantastic" book add-ons? Not through the Kickstarter. 11:52 Is the Companion "Done"? No. First draft is done. 13:02 Can we see what the books will look like? Not yet. 13:30 Can we add audiobooks as add-ons? Unfortunately, no. 15:00 Can I print maps for my own private use? Yes. 15:17 Can I give away extra digital copies? Yes. 16:02 Can we get the digital art as a download? Yes. 17:41 Will these questions get added to the FAQ? Yes. 18:09 Will there be a retailer pledge? No, but... 19:16 Will the printed books be available on Amazon? Yes, eventually. 20:19 Will Return look like Babar in hardcover? No. 21:17 Going to any conventions this year? No. 23:05 How different are the printed books from PoD? Nicer! 25:03 Experiences with Off-set Printing? Too early to say. 29:12 Plans for different languages? Not at the moment. 31:30 How do you plan to cope with the next 21 days? It's great! 35:48 A look at the TOC and design of the Companion 37:03 The Lands of the Fey page and design 42:51 Turning a 1d20 list into a 1d400 list 45:23 Useful guidelines and generators each in a single page 48:00 Not re-creating existing guidelines 49:36 Monster templates 57:57 Can I mix and match physical and PDF orders? Yes!

In this episode… News Videos on demand for CreativePro Week 2021 InDesign + Type Summit (online event) July 29–30, 2021 InDesign Magazine for May 2021 (gradients) and June 2021 (type and typography) Making presentations with InDesign Keyboard shortcut of the month: Control-B (Command-B on Mac) Obscure InDesign Feature: On Click (Self)  Links mentioned in this podcast: Videos on Demand now available for CreativePro Week 2021  The InDesign + Type Summit Creating Presentations with InDesign InDesign Magazine feature story Free InDesign presentation template InDesign Template of the Month: Flexible Presentation InDesign presentation templates at Adobe Stock (many free) Jesus Ramirez: Yes, we have a Banana (in Photoshop) https://photoshoptrainingchannel.com/photoshop-easter-eggs/ in5's post, "Interactive PDF is dead" https://ajarproductions.com/blog/2018/03/26/interactive-pdf-is-dead-heres-what-you-can-create-from-indesign-thats-even-better/ CircularFlow for better fixed-layout EPUBs for Kindles https://www.circularsoftware.com/apps/circularflo  InDesignSecrets… YouTube videos Facebook group LinkedIn group

Brad West, the co-creator Vellum, joins us on the podcast this week to answer our questions about his ePub creating software. Brad tells us how Vellum its start, how the software works, what users can expect from Vellum in the future, and he talks to us about what he’s learned during his time as a small business owner.  Learn more about this episode!

This year SlideShare has been absorbed by Scribd; so what can we use to share and promote presentation? Scribd can be used for the purpose of uploading eBooks, PDFs, ePubs and various other types of documents apart from presentations. The rapid growth of SlideShare from a small startup to a top website began in 2009, in a tiny room in India, when Amit Rajan, Rashmi Sinha, and Jonathan Boutelle saw the need for a "YouTube for presentations." Within a few years, they had built a network of 38 million registered users by providing a desperately needed tool—and a new social channel for presentations.Sadly, that era is over and what was the best place to share presentations and gain new viewers is disappearing behind a paywall. Video killed the radio star, and quite possibly slideshare too.However, if you are looking for simpler sharing platforms explore the following:https://www.authorstream.comhttps://speakerdeck.comhttps://speakerstack.netFor the full episode, click here.SPEAK|Pr is for business owners to unlock the value in their organization for free with effective communication and is hosted by international Pr agency owner and entrepreneur Jim James.If you like this podcast, then subscribe to our newsletter herePlease visit our blog post on PR for business please visit our site:https://www.eastwestpr.com/blogs/Create content using AI - Trylately!Automatically generate social posts from videos and podcasts into dozens of social posts.Support the show (http://www.paypal.me/eastwestpruk)

This year Slideshare has been absorbed by Scribd; so what can we use to share and promote presentations? Scribd can be used for the purpose of uploading eBooks, PDFs, ePubs and various other types of documents apart from presentations. The rapid growth of SlideShare from a small startup to a top website began in 2009, in a tiny room in India, when Amit Rajan, Rashmi Sinha, and Jonathan Boutelle saw the need for a "YouTube for presentations." Within a few years, they had built a network of 38 million registered users by providing a desperately needed tool—and a new social channel for presentations.Sadly, that era is over and what was the best place to share presentations and gain new viewers is disappearing behind a paywall. Video killed the radio star, and quite possibly slideshare too.However, if you are looking for simpler sharing platforms explore the following:https://www.authorstream.comhttps://speakerdeck.comhttps://speakerstack.netSPEAK|Pr is for business owners to unlock the value in their organization for free with effective communication and is hosted by international Pr agency owner and entrepreneur Jim James.If you like this podcast, then subscribe to our newsletter herePlease visit our blog post on PR for business please visit our site:https://www.eastwestpr.com/blogs/Create content using AI - Trylately! Automatically generate social posts from videos and podcasts into dozens of social posts.Support the show (http://www.paypal.me/eastwestpruk)

Olá booktwitter,sejam mais uma vez bem vindos ao nosso podcast. E nesse episódio nós duas estaremos debatendo(sem treta),sobre nossas experiências com epubs e livros físicos,e traremos para vocês também informações sobre como funcionam algumas leis em nosso país,e sobre como funcionam os grupos de traduções responsáveis pela alegria de muitos de vocês traficantes de epubs. Sintam-se a vontade para comentar aqui e no twitter @castsumários. Espero que gostem desse episódio,e até a próxima. -Episódio editado por Vanessa Besse. -Livro citado no fim desse episódio: Bring me Their Hearts. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/entre-sumarios/message

Empower more people to read your books. This behind-the-scenes at Kobo episode features Senior QA Analyst Wendy Reid, talking about the importance of EPUB accessibility, and specific features you can include in your eBooks to make them more accessible. Wendy also discusses her role in launching audiobooks for Kobo and how specifications for audiobooks do not exist (yet). Start self-publishing today with KWL. Join the platform that’s fast, free, easy. www.kobo.com/writinglife

In this episode, I talk with AC de Fombelle about the StreetLib ebook and print book creation and distribution platform. StreetLib can help you create plain ebooks in EPUB format and fixed-layout EPUBs from a PDF doc. You can sell your book in the StreetLib store, on your own StreetLib author page (with your logo), and create a curated bookstore from the other books on StreetLib. They provide an HTML widget so you can sell direct to customers from your StreetLib store (where you get higher royalties) from your own website. There's also a marketplace where you can find editors, designers, and translators. You'll find out about their partnership with the Babelcube translation service and how to reach markets that don't have Amazon.com.

Continuing my Quick guide to Self-Publishing Series I talk about formatting, that is creating a version of your document that can be sold either as an eBook or as paperback. I talk about ePubs and mobi files for eBooks and PDF files for paperbacks. Show notes for this episode are available at https://beginselfpublishing.com/quick-guide-part5-formatting

Join Chrissy as she sits down with EPUB experts Simon Collinson and Ben Dugas from Kobo. They teach us everything we need to know about eBook files. They explain the different types of EPUB files, the tools available to authors to make their own EPUBs and common errors to watch out when creating your own file. The also discuss the future of eBooks and accessibility.

Ken Jones is Director of Circular Software, creating software like CircularFLO (to easily create advanced fixed-layout EPUBs) and GreenLight (to make sure that files from your team and suppliers follow all the right specs for your printer). He's also helped develop exciting ebooks like Galdo's Gift (with Tapocketa), which we talk a little about in the podcast. In this episode, Ken talks about his background in print (an actual family tradition), his time spent training and in particular his work creating software to help publishers do their jobs better. We discuss the need to experiment and learn, and how important it is to listen and understand what publishers actually need.

In this episode: Latest news: All 3 conference sites are up and running and taking registrations! Ta-da! Check 'em out: PePcon, CreativePro Conference, InDesign Conference "The White(space) Issue" InDesign Magazine/April 2016 Interview with Daniel Dejan of Sappi Paper Using One-Hit-Wonders: Single Attribute Live Preflight Profiles Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Limit Number of Rows Per Error News and special offers from our sponsors: >> PePcon (the Print + ePublishing Conference) is for anyone who's on the front lines of creating publications and wants to peek over their own cubicle to see how others are tackling the same challenges. In the two-day multitrack event (plus pre- and post-conference workshop days) we dive into the "how-to" and "why" of print and digital publishing in a broad and deep way, covering InDesign, HTML5, PDF, print production, iBooks Author, mobile app development, CMS's, Editorial workflows, EPUBs, Kindle publishing, and more. Each speaker provides a detailed PDF handout, and typically the final compiled Speaker Handout distributed to attendees is over 400 pages long(!). The seventh annual PePcon is in San Diego, June 5–8, 2016. Register and reserve your spot today!  Links mentioned in this podcast: Time for PePcon 2016! Sign up now and we'll see you in San Diego in June (also home of the Creative Developers Summit) CreativePro 2016: The Conference for Photoshop and Illustrator Users, July 11-13, Minneapolis MN InDesign Conference 2016: Washington DC, November 7–9 Premium Member content: Mike Rankin's amazing "tumbling" animation effect Steve Werner's crazy in-depth piece on CC Libraries Colin Flashman on overprinting options Daniel Dejan: LinkedIn, Haptic Brain, Haptic Brand, The Future of Print webinar Kenya Hara's book, White David Eagleman, Neuroscientist: TED talk, Incognito book Template Essentials: Preflight Profiles Creating a custom preflight profile post Video on using Live Preflight to find common errors Screenshots: Choose Define Profiles from the Preflight panel menu to manage and edit Preflight Profiles. The "OHW" ones on the left are different "One Hit Wonder" profiles (as discussed in the podcast), like the active one, OHW - Interactive, that flags any interactive elements.   Choose which Preflight Profile you want Live Preflight to check against on the fly from the pop-up menu, found to the left of the Live Preflight reporting section (red dot or green dot) at the bottom of the window:

Die Fragen, die die Welt bewegen stehen heute auf dem Programm. Muss man wirklich seinen Kalender als ein Statussymbol behandeln, gibt es den heiligen Gral um schneller Lesen zu lernen und was passiert wenn man in der Öffentlichkeit verkündet, dass man fortan links fährt… äh… unnormal tippt. Lieber Fluggast, wenn dir das Gehörte gefällt oder dir Sorgenfalten auf die edle Stirn fabriziert, dann haben wir etwas für dich: iTunes Bewertungen. Follow-Up MeisterTask Andreas hat sich nach der großen Productivity Episode noch einmal ins Zeug gelegt und MeisterTask angesehen. Das Tool ist ein Kanban-ähnliches Task Tool, wie Trello. Der Clou: Mind Maps aus MindMeister “synchronisieren” sich mit MeisterTask – was die Arbeit sehr einzigartig macht. So kann man MindMeister für Dokumentation und kreative Arbeit nutzen und MeisterTask für die ganze Erledigung der Aufgaben. Business Prozesse lassen sich so schön abbilden. Es ist leider ein Abo, das mit 9€ pro Monat zu Buche schlägt. Hier noch eine schnelle Übersicht der Feature Highlights von Andreas. The disturbance in the Productivity Force Home screen sharing time? Here is my current one. Back to simplicity. pic.twitter.com/BxNQWmLHoP— Sven Fechner (@simplicitybliss) February 23, 2016 Extensify Die Cydia Alternative für jalbreaklose rollt an. Anmelden könnt ihr euch auf der Webseite und up to date bleibt ihr per Facebook. Die Profis unter euch können auch hier schnüffeln. Pflicht zur Busyness Man muss sich schämen heutzutage, wenn der Kalendar Lücken aufweist. Beschäftigt sein wird wichtiger genommen als Kreativität, tiergehende Arbeit und Ergebnisse. Ist diese Kultur individuell selbst injiziert (durch falsche Wertewahrnehmung) oder ist es tatsächlich der Maßstab der arbeitenden Gesellschaft? Auf jeden Fall ist es innerlich und manchmal auch äußerlich ein großer Kampf nicht mitzumachen. Speed Reading Speed Reading ist eigentlich eine Lese-Methode bei der verschiedene Arten zu lesen benutzt werden um schneller zu lesen. Dabei werden sehr häufig feste Fixierungen auf eine Seite sowie die damit auf einmal eingesaugten Worte trainiert. Speed Reading versucht die Subvokalisierung zu verringern, die Verständnis zu erhöhen. Ganz anders als beim Speed Reading mit einer App, wird dabei also nicht einfach ein Text langsam oder schnell abgespult, sondern tatsächlich trainiert mit weniger Fixierungen pro Seite, mehr Worte pro Fixierung zu verstehen. Leider helfen die wenigsten Apps genau dabei. Die Speed Reading Apps die es gibt, sind häufig als Spiel maskiert. Denn beim Speed Reading müssen die aufgenommenen Worte pro Zeiteinheit erhöht werden. Das festzuhalten und zu messen funktioniert am besten als Spiel. Zum Speed Reading, also der Umsetzung gibt es leider noch weniger. Eine der Apps hat sich heraus getan, aber kommt, wie gesagt, sehr verspielt daher. Zwar kann man ePub Bücher hinzufügen. Sieht aber immer erst das, sehr farbenfrohe, Spiel. Andreas Lieblings-App zum lesen bleibt Voice Dream Reader. Diese kann zwar nicht mehrere Wörter gleichzeitig highlighten, hat dafür aber einen Scrolling Modus. Outread wäre auch noch sehr cool, würde es mal ein Update bekommen. Acceleread ist das App das Spiel ist, aber auch ePubs lesen lässt. Ansonsten gibt es noch die Reading Arena von HeKu IT, den QuickReader (der hoffentlich bald ein grafisches Update bekommt) und den AceReader. Vom AceReader gibt es auch eine Mac App. Keyboard Layouts Die 3 Bekanntesten: 1870 Qwerty 1982 The Dvorak Keyboard 2006 Colemak keyboard layout Ich kann mir auch vorstellen mein eigens Layout zu entwerfen bzw. ein existierendes anzupassen. Warum Patrick wechselt: Um von seinem selbstgebauten 10-Fingersystem wegzukommen und endlich mal vernünftig Touch-typing zu erlernen hat sich Patrick einen Trick ausgedacht: Er wechselt einfach das Layout und beugt so einem Rückfall in alte Muster vor. Bei Colemak werden zwar nur 17 Tasten ausgetauscht - wobei CMD+Z/X/C/V unverändert bleibt im Gegensatz zu Dvorak - ab das reicht auch schon, um das eigene Gehirn auszutricksen. Wie sich aus der kleinen Liste oben entnehmen lässt ist Qwerty in die Jahre gekommen. Colemak ist da “ergonomischer” bzw. gesünder, das ist der Zweite Grund warum Patrick gewechselt ist. Er sieht es als Investition in die Zukunft, abgesehen vom potentiell vielleicht mal irgendwann über die Schreibgeschwindigkeit von 83 WPM zu kommen. Warum das nicht für jeden ist: Der Mensch ist ein Gewohnheitstier. Wenn man schon richtig 10-Finger kann mit Qwerty, dann lohnt es wahrscheinlich auch nicht mehr wirklich für die drei Jahre wo man noch lebt und atmet. Wichtiger als alle “Ergo”-Keyboards und Layouts zusammen: Die richtige Haltung einnehmen und nicht verkrampfen beim Schreiben… gerade wenn’s mal schnell gehen soll (oder wenn man ein neues Layout lernt). Die aus Fellbach geforderten wissenschaftlichen Belege reicht Patrick hiermit nach: Carpalx - keyboard layout optimizer. Noch mehr Information warum es gut und gesund sein kann das Gehirn samt Hände umzuprogrammieren findet ihr auch in eurem lokalen Internet. Unsere Picks Frohlocket! Dropshare 4 ist nun endlich erhältlich. War Timo vor nur 2 Jahren schon Gast bei uns, hat er nun den großen Wurf geschafft. Version 4 bringt eine aufgeräumtere Optik mit und verfeinert damit den Workflow. Hinzu kommen neue Dienste und irgendwann demnächst auch Google Drive, worauf sich Andreas sehr freut. Die Menubar App kostet euch 24,99€. Sven pickt derweil mal wieder Drafts und Patrick Spooks womit er fortan bequemer Hörbücher und Hörspiele auf Spotify findet als mit der Hörbücher-Playlist. In Spenderlaune? Wir haben Flattr und PayPal am Start und würden uns freuen.

When Jim Collins wrote "Good To Great", he did talk a fair bit about the Hedgehog Principle. But what he stresses more on, is quite another concept called "Preserving the Core and Stimulating Progress". Why does this concept matter so much? And how do you combine the Hedgehog Principle with this concept? And where does the big, hairy, audacious goal fit in with everything? This episode shows you how to tie all the elements together in a neat little bundle. Time to escalate that route to greatness, don't you think? -------------- In this episode Sean talks about Part 1: Preserving the Core + Stimulating Progress Part 2: The BHAG Part 3: Your Action Plan To Greatness Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.   Useful Resources 5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems Why Happiness Eludes You: 3 Obstacles That We Need To Overcome Find out: Do We Really Need To Start With Why? -------------- Preserve the Core AND Stimulate Progress Recently a client called Rosa wrote to us with a request. “I would have preferred to read the series on Dartboard Pricing in ePub,” she said. She made it clear it was a request, not a demand. Which brings up a whole new set of problems for us at Psychotactics. Most business books are designed with text in mind and may contain a few graphics. Our books aren’t designed that way at all. They have dozens of cartoons and under every cartoon is a caption. In The Brain Audit alone there are almost 100 cartoons and corresponding captions. In a PDF, this layout is easy-peasy. Create the book in InDesign and export it as a PDF and it maintains its design integrity. Try to do the same thing for an ePub and it’s like stepping in poo. It’s a tedious, frustrating process to get all the graphics to align the way they should The easier way is to just make a quick excuse, apologies and move on. After all, it isn’t like 90% of our audience is asking for an ePub. It’s just a stray request, isn’t it? It’s simple to ignore the request and get on with the important task of doing whatever it is we do. But that’s where the problem lies, doesn’t it? We’ve ignored the concept of progress. Almost all of us today read on a tablet or our phones. I know I do, my wife does, even my mother in law who ranted and raved about computers—she now loves her iPad. And PDFs work on tablet devices and phones, but they’re super clunky. Sadly that’s not the only problem Jim Collins talks about two elements: preserving the core and stimulating progress. And he goes to great lengths to stress the AND in between both of them. So all of us have to stand back and ask ourselves: What’s our core? The core of Psychotactics has been the factor of “consumption”. Any one can create attraction and conversion. It’s super-hard to get clients to consume what they’ve bought from you. Books, courses, workshops—we spend hours, days and weeks trying to figure out how to achieve a skill. The cartoons, the captions in the book—they’re not just a design concept. They’re placed there as memory hooks; as a method of summary. They need to be exactly where they are in the books and courses. We could remove them and easily create an ePub like most ePubs, but that would fit in with our core. Collins says it has to be an AND. We have to preserve the core AND stimulate progress. This principle is clearly frustrating and pulls in opposite directions. When you’re starting out, you don’t have any legacy issues in place. You create a business the way you want to shape it. And the core and the progress moves along nicely. It’s when you “grow up” that you have to worry about how all the past has to fit in with the future. The longer you’ve been in business, the greater the past, and the more the past has to merge with an ever changing future. Take Nokia for instance You can almost hear the sound of the Nokia ring, can’t you? In the early 2000s, all of us would have at one point in time run into, or owned a Nokia. Nokia was no slouch in realm of being super-progresssive. They were into paper, then electricity and bounced from there to rubber, galoshes and finally were the most dominant phone manufacturer on the planet. In the early 1990’s they had a clear and accurate vision of the future. They saw the coming of the cell phone, dumped all their businesses and stuck with the cell phone. And then, just for good measure, they invented the first smart phone. That amazing device you take photos with, use to find your way around and yes, make phone calls—Nokia was on the ball way back in 1996. They even built a prototype of an Internet-enabled phone at the end of the 90’s. And then they got stuck in a loop They failed to see the link between their core—which was to make really simple phones—and the future. The future was software. The core of their legacy was hardware. They spent millions of dollars turning out failure after failure. They believed so much in their hardware that they just couldn’t figure out the software issues. And down they went, ring and all, finally selling their company to Microsoft. To go from good to great we have to ask ourselves What’s the core of our business. What do we stand for? What will we never change, never compromise on—and yet how will we step into the future when it presents itself to us. Most of us rarely have a problem with core values. Once we’ve spent enough time in our business, we know what we stand for, but what we fail to prepare ourselves for is the oncoming storm. We keep doing things the way we’ve always done. The worst three words we repeat over and over, when faced with change is: I know that, I know that, I know that. I thought I knew a lot about podcasts After all I’d rode the early wave of podcasts when Apple first introduced them. And then in 2008/09 we decided to pull the plug on the podcast. When clients—and one client in particular—kept asking me to create a podcast, I’d ignore the comment. As far as I was concerned, podcasts were a thing of the past. I wasn’t ready to listen and the years ticked away while we busied ourselves with the core of what we’d always done. Today, the “Three Month Vacation” podcast is one of the biggest joys in my day I love writing, I love presentations, but it’s the podcast that connects me to a medium I love. And in turn the podcast connects us to our clients in ways that not possible on paper, or through books. The podcast is the closest we come to an offline workshop. But I wasn’t interested in the “future”. As far as I was concerned, podcasts were the distant past. And today we know those thoughts, that strategy was wrong. We see the enormous number of clients who find the podcast, then sign up to the newsletter. At our offline workshops over 50% of the audience listens religiously to the podcast. The podcast fit in so nicely with our core. And was the medium of the future. Even so, it’s not possible to chase every rainbow Technology moves ahead at a blinding pace. You can’t play with every new phenomenon. Which is why we have to go back to the Hedgehog principle. What can you be the best in the world in? What are you deeply passionate about? What drives your economic engine? In the subset of podcasting, we achieve all three. And this is what you’ll have to do as well. Find your core AND stimulate progress, with your eye always on the passion. The passion is what drives your business today and will continue to do so in the future. If you don’t wake up crazy with happiness, then you’re not headed towards greatness. It’s the reason I moved on from cartooning back in the early 2000s. I wasn’t waking up happy as a lark—and so I had to find something else. Which, interestingly, takes us to our third element: The hairy, audacious goal—oh, it’s big too. That makes it the BHAG (pronounced: bee-hag). The BHAG Until the moment Greig Bebner set to work on his kitchen table with a glue gun and some kite material, the basic design of the modern umbrella hadn’t changed since 1928. They come in all sorts of colours, shapes and fancy gizmos, but the core elements of the umbrella are the same—and they don’t work. The moment a gust of wind comes along, you hear cursing, then more cursing and finally the umbrella being thrown on the pavement. So Greg set about on a big, hairy, audacious goal—a BHAG. He wanted an umbrella that would stand up to the crazy wind and rain on One Tree Hill. Now if you’ve ever visited Auckland, New Zealand, you’re likely to have your hair tossed around wildly on a windy One Tree Hill day. It’s certainly no place to open an umbrella. Then to push that BHAG even further, he tested the Blunt at Force 12 (117 km/h) which is the maximum setting of the test wind tunnel. The umbrella stood up to the punishment with ease. But why did the umbrella work so flawlessly? It starts with the BHAG. It’s almost a Star Trek kind of goal—to go where no man gone before. It’s not a namby-pamby set of goals. It’s one overarching factor that scares the heebie-jeebies out of you as a business owner. A windy day on One Tree Hill in the middle of a storm. That’s a good testing ground for an umbrella. Sometimes this goal is restricted to your product, sometimes it’s a lot bigger. Like Akio Morita, the co-founder and former chairman of Sony Corporation. He was working on a revolutionary product called the Walkman. Until the Walkman was introduced on July 1, 1979. Until the Walkman showed up, portable music players were non-existent. Even though the Walkman stuttered with disappointing sales in the first month, it went on to sell over 400 million units. But Morita’s goal wasn’t just to sell a ton of Walkmans His goal was a lot loftier. Before Sony introduced a ton of extremely sophisticated equipment, Japan was considered to be a backward country. It was associated with paper parasols and shoddy imitations. Akio Morita wanted to turn that perception around so that “Made in Japan” commanded respect and was associated with high quality. And he succeeded, with Sony at the forefront of his BHAG. In 2014, A Harris poll showed Sony was the No. 1 brand name among American consumers, ahead of American companies like General Electric and Coca-Cola. At Psychotactics, we have a BHAG too The goal is to get rid of information for information sake and replace it with skill, instead. We’re drowning in information, and yet every book, every course brings even more information to the table. But is that what we really want? Or do we want the skill instead. We want to write articles, create sales pages, be able to sell at higher prices. We want to learn to cook, draw, paint or acquire skills that make us look, feel and be smarter. A BHAG has to be hairy, audacious, and bigger than anyone thinks possible. Starbucks had a BHAG too It was to open up a new Starbucks cafe every single day of the year. But soon enough, Starbucks was running into trouble. Can you see why? It’s big, hairy and audacious to open up a Starbucks every single day, but does it inspire any passion? Does it feel like you’re somehow changing the world you live in, let alone the world around you? The BHAG wasn’t to make Sony the star, but instead to make Japan and Japanese products top-notch once again. Every business should have a BHAG. Something that sits there in the corner challenging you to become better—not necessarily bigger—than you are. To create a Ferris Wheel or an Eiffel Tower. To create artworks of enduring magnificence as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt did. And the way to create that BHAG is to scare yourself. To know that everyone says there are things you’re not supposed to achieve. That these things are impossible. And yet, you do it, because it’s the most inspiring thing to do! Combined with the Hedgehog principle, preserving the core and stimulating progress, you have a system in place that can take your business from good to great. And even as you embark on this journey, you know that you will forever be on the road to making things better, not necessarily bigger, but always better. Better—it’s a great place to be! Action Plan: What is the one thing you can do today? Check back tomorrow. Sean is still writing it.  

There are two options in life: greatness or mediocrity. But greatness seems so elusive, even so pompous. How do you call your work "great"? How do you even know or benchmark "greatness?". And can a small business achieve greatness or do you have to be a dominant player like Apple, Disney and Walmart. In this episode we get right to the root of greatness and how the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins changed my life. But instead of the massive journey to greatness, this episode shows you a tiny path. A path most of us can manage with just a little bit of effort. A life of mediocrity is hardly worth living. Here's the pathway to greatness. ----------  Useful Resources / To access this audio + transcript: http://www.psychotactics.com/79 / / Email me at: sean@psychotactics.com / / Twitter/Facebook: seandsouza / / Magic? Yes, magic: http://www.psychotactics.com/magic ----------  Part 1: The Hedgehog Principle Part 2: Preserving the Core + Stimulating Progress Part 3: Big, Hairy Audacious Goal—The BHAG Right click here and ‘save as’ to download this episode to your computer.   Useful Resources 5000bc: How to get reliable answers to your complex marketing problems Why Happiness Eludes You: 3 Obstacles That We Need To Overcome Find out: Do We Really Need To Start With Why? ----------------- The  Transcript “This transcript hasn’t been checked for typos, so you may well find some. If you do, let us know and we’ll be sure to fix them.”   Around the autumn of 1890, Daniel Burnham was given a project. Burnham was an architect—an extremely well known architect—in Chicago. And he’d been given a job like no other. He was expected to turn a boggy square mile into what would be the spotlight of the world. He was put in charge of the World’s Columbian Exposition. He just had one tiny problem—the Eiffel Tower. On March 31, 1889, Paris had had it’s own Exposition. And it quickly surpassed the Washington Monument to become the then tallest man-made structure in the world. Burhnam had the unenviable job of surpassing the hoopla around the Eiffel Tower, but no one had a clue what to do. “Make no little plans”, he said to his team of engineers, but they could come up with little to rival the magnificence of the Eiffel Tower. Of course there were proposals: a tower garlanded with rails to distant cities, another tower from whose top guests would be pushed off in chairs (pretty much like today’s bungee jumping). And Eiffel himself proposed an idea for the Chicago exposition—a bigger tower than the one in Paris. How could the Chicago Exposition outshine the now most famous monument in the world—the Eiffel Tower? It seemed almost impossible to come up with something that would rival the French monument. An engineer called Ferris has the answer. The ideas were going nowhere and the Chicagoans were pulling their hair out, when a 33 year old engineer from Pittsburgh came up with an idea: how about a huge revolving steel wheel? He came up with sketches, added additional specifications and then shared the idea with Burnham. But Burnham was not impressed. The slender rods of the wheel were too fragile. It would be madness to carry people to a height taller than the Statue of Liberty in such a fragile wheel. But Burnham wasn’t just dealing with any ol’ engineer. He was dealing with George Washington Gale Ferris Jr—who would forever be associated with the Ferris wheel. Ferris was so convinced his idea would work that he spent $25,000 of his own money, hired more engineers and recruited investors. And consider that $25,000 would be worth over $650,000 in today’s money. Over a 100,000 parts went into the Ferris wheel. And an 89,320 pound axle had to be hoisted onto two towers 140 feet in the air. On June 21, 1893 when it was launched, it was a stunning success. As the exposition went through the next three week, more than 1.4 million paid 50 cents for a 20-minute ride. George Washington Gale Ferris had literally reinvented the wheel. The year we moved to New Zealand, I had to reinvent my own wheel. You see, I wasn’t in marketing. I had no plans of being in marketing. I was already an established cartoonist back in Mumbai, India and when I moved to New Zealand I pretty much expected to continue to draw cartoons. In fact I was so determined to take that cartoon career forward, that when we moved I had over 100 kilos worth of books shipped. These were no ordinary books. These were the books on graphic design and cartooning that I’d accumulated over the years. Plus, there were brochures. Before I left India, I had no idea what New Zealand held for me. So I printed business cards—as you do But also lavish four colour brochures, postcards and yes, stationery that I could use when I got to New Zealand. All of this material had to be shipped by air—not by sea—because I was in a big hurry to get going in this new country. Yet, almost a year later, I had to reinvent what I was doing—and it was all because of one book. That book, “Good to Great” has sold over 2.5 million hardcover copies. But more importantly, it was the catalyst in my own reinvention. In 2000 as I got on a plane back to India (I had to go back and tidy up things I’d left undone), I had loads of time to read the book and mull over the ideas. And as I’ve mentioned before in articles and podcasts, I realised that I would never reach my greatness in cartooning. To me, the pinnacle of cartooning was the comic strip, “Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson. If I couldn’t get up to those lofty heights, it wasn’t feeding my greatness appetite. And so I turned to something I was getting exceedingly good at doing—creating taglines for small businesses. Without realising it, I was wandering down the aisle of marketing. The book—and that 19 hour flight—it did it for me. It put me on my quest for what I’d consider my “greatness journey”. But just as it set the benchmarks, it also raised a ton of questions. Are there benchmarks to know that you’re moving from good to great? How do you know what you’re choosing will end up being great? With all the stories of greatness bouncing around Apple, Boeing, Disney and Walmart, how can a small business owner get to greatness, without becoming big and dominant? Big questions—and it’s best to keep the answers simple. Deep, yet simple. Let’s take a trip and explore the three core elements required to get your own Ferris wheel going—even when the odds seem stacked against you. The three elements we’ll cover are: The Hedgehog Principle Preserving the Core + Stimulating Progress Big, Hairy Audacious Goal—The BHAG.   Avis—the car rental company—was pretty much in the doldrums. Back in 1961, it was losing $3.2 million a year and there seemed to be no way to beat the domination of their biggest rival—Hertz. And the two companies had been at each others throats since the mid-1940s, when Air Force officer, Warren Avis created a niche out of thin air. As he travelled around, Warren Avis  realized that most car companies were downtown—not a very convenient place to get a car if you just flew into a city. Business travel was growing steadily and many executives would touch down, rent a car, drive to their meetings and drop the car back at the airport on the very same day. Hertz was not impressed They continued to run their rental car business downtown, as if Avis didn’t exist. Yet, over time, they found Avis gobbling up chunks of their business. It seemed logical to simply replicate what Avis had done. With this move, Hertz signalled the start of the rivalry that exists to this day. But then, along came 1962 and an creative agency called Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB). The copywriter team of Paula Greene and Helmut Krone created an advertising campaign that would take Avis from losing $3.2 million to earning $1.2 million. What’s more, it would rock Hertz’ smugness to its very core. From 1963 to 1966, Hertz smug look turned to paralysis The market share percentage gap between the two car companies shrunk from 61-29 to 49-36. The “We’re only No.2. We try Harder” immediately captured the attention of the public. But why did this “We try harder” campaign really work? When we look at the Hedgehog Concept outlined in “Good to Great”, the answer is more than apparent. The Hedgehog principle consists of three pertinent questions: – What can you be the best in the world at? – What drives your economic engine? – What are you deeply passionate about? Avis could easily answer those questions—but only once it had the new ad campaign going It was the best in the world at “bending over backwards” to make car customers happy. After all it was only No.2, and couldn’t afford to rest on its laurels. This concept of “trying harder” got the entire company to indeed try harder. And yes, we all know how their bleeding balance sheet made a sharp U-turn into decent profitability. They got the “best in the world” covered, the “economic engine” was purring away. Only one thing remained—the passion. The “we try harder” might have been just a slogan, but it was a slogan that drove the passion—and if the slogan is right, it often does drive the passion! Avis ticked all the three boxes, and they were well on their way to scaring the heebie-jeebies out of Hertz. Notice how money—or the economic engine—isn’t really the focus of greatness? Money is important, that’s for sure. A company gasps and coughs it’s way into oblivion if it can’t fire up that economic engine. And yet, it’s more than clear that for most of us, at least, money is not the driving factor. All those website owners that show you how their income doubled and quintupled are still sitting on the same sofa; they’re still typing on that same yellowed keyboard. Yes, they may have doubled or quintupled the size of their house or boat, but when money becomes the only focus, there’s no time to enjoy the good stuff in life. Which is why the “best in the world” journey needs to start with what makes you deliriously happy. It’s the stuff that wakes you up and keeps you going, no matter what. Your work becomes your passion and the complete opposite of trying to outsource everything and doing as little as possible. Money helps enormously in getting you to your goal, but the passion and desire is what’s behind the wheel. And this is where confusion comes bouncing through the door When I quit my career in cartooning, I was doing very well indeed. I’d moved to New Zealand and despite being in a brand new market, the profit for the first year was $75,000. Picture me sitting at my computer, drawing cartoons, listening to music and then taking a nap and you get the idea. It wasn’t exactly like I was struggling to put food on the table. Still, the moment you decide you want to change things—the moment I decided I couldn’t beat “Calvin and Hobbes”, I was in trouble. I’m good at a lot of things. I whizz my way around Photoshop, I can cook exceedingly well, you’ve probably seen my food and travel photos on Facebook—and you’re getting an idea of the looming problem, aren’t you? The moment you can do more than one thing, you’re not sure where to go. The journey to greatness seems to run right into a pool of quicksand. So how do you get yourself out of this mess and back on track? I’d decided I didn’t want to do cartooning—at least at that point in time—and I wanted to take this leap into marketing. I didn’t know much about marketing, but that minor detail wasn’t keeping me up at night. Still, I was in a fog—after all marketing is this big, nameless, faceless profession and I hadn’t a clue what the journey to greatness was going to look like, or whether one existed at all. And that’s when I ran into a subset of marketing. A subset is what starts the journey to greatness My story was quite accidental—as yours may well be. I joined this networking group called BNI. We’d meet every Friday, enjoy breakfast and hand out referrals. And crucial as all this referral giving was to me at the time, one factor was even more pivotal to help me on my journey. BNI has this strange custom called “the dance”—as in “dancing with a partner”. In this so-called “dance”, you go across to visit another of the members. For instance, I might go and meet the real estate agent at her office. Or another week I might end up talking to the financial planner in the group. Being new and enjoying this extroverted behaviour, I binged on the “dance” I started meeting several members of the BNI group in relatively quick succession. They’d tell me what they did—often spending between 10-20 minutes explaining the details. Then I’d ponder over what they just said, and boil it down to a single line. In effect, I’d given them a tagline—a working tagline that would elicit curiosity and get their prospects interested. The first time I encapsulated their 20 minute speech into a single line, I wasn’t aware of what I was doing. Twenty or thirty tagline later, with everyone telling me how “great” I was at taglines, I decided to make that my entry point into marketing. I wasn’t going to be the best in the world at marketing—and no one can ever take such a title. But I could create a subset. And that’s because a subset is simpler than a well-laid out, world domination plan. Which means that you’re going to make a career out of teaching a program like InDesign, don’t take on every tool bar in the program. Just teach clients how to create an amazing e-book in under an hour. The Hedgehog Concept If you’re going to be the best in the world at WordPress sites, you’re headed for chaos. But take on a subset and you could be the designer that gets clients to their destination in just three steps. Even the all-time greats in the history of mankind—take Michelangelo for instance—he made the statue of David his subset. He was headed towards the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel in time, but to start on that journey of greatness, he had to take on carving just the statue of David. Once you deal with a subset, passion almost force-feeds you with energy Avis found its passion once it had the subset of “trying harder” instead of the grand scheme of “trying to do everything”. I found my subset quite by accident while taking on taglines. And the moment you streamline your idea into one tiny bit, you’ll get enormous control over that bit—and the passion faucet will begin to flow. You’ll read more about the subset, practice it longer and harder and it will take over your life. Which effectively means you’re done with two elements of the Hedgehog principle all at once. You have your passion—thanks to your subset—and it’s put you well and truly on the road to personal and professional greatness. That leaves just the looming question. Will it drive your economic engine? Will it pay the bills? And how soon? I didn’t know the answer to that question of the economic engine In fact, I did something very silly in my quest for “being the best in the world”. I quit cartooning—yup, just like that. One fine day, I decided I wasn’t going to do any cartoons. And then something extremely strange happened. No one called me for a cartoon project any more. Right until that moment I’d been filling that balance sheet with a decent profit, and suddenly I didn’t get a single call or e-mail for another cartoon project. Be aware that I was drawing stuff for ad agencies, magazine covers, local councils and private clients. And yet, it stopped almost as if I had taken a full page ad in the newspaper that said, “Sean D’Souza doesn’t want to draw cartoons any more. Stop bugging him.” My dream had come true, but I didn’t have a buffer. The buffer isn’t just money It’s also the buffer of knowledge and of confidence. Remember, I wasn’t a marketing guy, I was a cartoonist. That thought stays in your head and seriously undermines your confidence. Getting to the library, stacking up 30 books at a time was top priority. We’re talking about economic engines here, and knowledge plays a big role in how you get paid. Having the skills to run a business is what allows you to make that engine vroom. I had to teach myself how to write great articles, how to create compelling copy—and yes, how to speak. That buffer was important for my economic engine, but money played its role too. I jumped right into marketing and out of a business I’d spend a chunk of time beefing up on the learning and the skills. But I hadn’t considered the factor that everything takes time to turnaround. It was a rash move, and luckily Renuka had a decent job. That paid the bills, the mortgage and let me fumble forward toward this “greatest in the world” dream. Um, Renuka also quit her job and joined Psychotactics a few months later, but that buffer was all we needed. We were now on a trajectory to align ourselves with the Hedgehog Principle. Like Michelangelo, we had to carve one David at a time. Like Avis, we had to “try harder” one car at a time. We were passionate about what we did. And the clients started to trickle in. But the Hedgehog principle itself, isn’t enough Jim Collins stresses a second more important factor. In fact, he considers this second factor to be the most important of all the material he’s written over the years. It’s called: Preserving the core AND stimulating progress. Let’s find out just what this means for you and your small business. Preserve the Core AND Stimulate Progress Recently a client called Rosa wrote to us with a request. “I would have preferred to read the series on Dartboard Pricing in ePub,” she said. She made it clear it was a request, not a demand. Which brings up a whole new set of problems for us at Psychotactics. Most business books are designed with text in mind and may contain a few graphics. Our books aren’t designed that way at all. They have dozens of cartoons and under every cartoon is a caption. In The Brain Audit alone there are almost 100 cartoons and corresponding captions. In a PDF, this layout is easy-peasy. Create the book in InDesign and export it as a PDF and it maintains its design integrity. Try to do the same thing for an ePub and it’s like stepping in poo. It’s a tedious, frustrating process to get all the graphics to align the way they should The easier way is to just make a quick excuse, apologies and move on. After all, it isn’t like 90% of our audience is asking for an ePub. It’s just a stray request, isn’t it? It’s simple to ignore the request and get on with the important task of doing whatever it is we do. But that’s where the problem lies, doesn’t it? We’ve ignored the concept of progress. Almost all of us today read on a tablet or our phones. I know I do, my wife does, even my mother in law who ranted and raved about computers—she now loves her iPad. And PDFs work on tablet devices and phones, but they’re super clunky. Sadly that’s not the only problem Jim Collins talks about two elements: preserving the core and stimulating progress. And he goes to great lengths to stress the AND in between both of them. So all of us have to stand back and ask ourselves: What’s our core? The core of Psychotactics has been the factor of “consumption”. Any one can create attraction and conversion. It’s super-hard to get clients to consume what they’ve bought from you. Books, courses, workshops—we spend hours, days and weeks trying to figure out how to achieve a skill. The cartoons, the captions in the book—they’re not just a design concept. They’re placed there as memory hooks; as a method of summary. They need to be exactly where they are in the books and courses. We could remove them and easily create an ePub like most ePubs, but that would fit in with our core. Collins says it has to be an AND. We have to preserve the core AND stimulate progress. This principle is clearly frustrating and pulls in opposite directions. When you’re starting out, you don’t have any legacy issues in place. You create a business the way you want to shape it. And the core and the progress moves along nicely. It’s when you “grow up” that you have to worry about how all the past has to fit in with the future. The longer you’ve been in business, the greater the past, and the more the past has to merge with an ever changing future. Take Nokia for instance You can almost hear the sound of the Nokia ring, can’t you? In the early 2000s, all of us would have at one point in time run into, or owned a Nokia. Nokia was no slouch in realm of being super-progresssive. They were into paper, then electricity and bounced from there to rubber, galoshes and finally were the most dominant phone manufacturer on the planet. In the early 1990’s they had a clear and accurate vision of the future. They saw the coming of the cell phone, dumped all their businesses and stuck with the cell phone. And then, just for good measure, they invented the first smart phone. That amazing device you take photos with, use to find your way around and yes, make phone calls—Nokia was on the ball way back in 1996. They even built a prototype of an Internet-enabled phone at the end of the 90’s. And then they got stuck in a loop They failed to see the link between their core—which was to make really simple phones—and the future. The future was software. The core of their legacy was hardware. They spent millions of dollars turning out failure after failure. They believed so much in their hardware that they just couldn’t figure out the software issues. And down they went, ring and all, finally selling their company to Microsoft. To go from good to great we have to ask ourselves What’s the core of our business. What do we stand for? What will we never change, never compromise on—and yet how will we step into the future when it presents itself to us. Most of us rarely have a problem with core values. Once we’ve spent enough time in our business, we know what we stand for, but what we fail to prepare ourselves for is the oncoming storm. We keep doing things the way we’ve always done. The worst three words we repeat over and over, when faced with change is: I know that, I know that, I know that. I thought I knew a lot about podcasts After all I’d rode the early wave of podcasts when Apple first introduced them. And then in 2008/09 we decided to pull the plug on the podcast. When clients—and one client in particular—kept asking me to create a podcast, I’d ignore the comment. As far as I was concerned, podcasts were a thing of the past. I wasn’t ready to listen and the years ticked away while we busied ourselves with the core of what we’d always done. Today, the “Three Month Vacation” podcast is one of the biggest joys in my day I love writing, I love presentations, but it’s the podcast that connects me to a medium I love. And in turn the podcast connects us to our clients in ways that not possible on paper, or through books. The podcast is the closest we come to an offline workshop. But I wasn’t interested in the “future”. As far as I was concerned, podcasts were the distant past. And today we know those thoughts, that strategy was wrong. We see the enormous number of clients who find the podcast, then sign up to the newsletter. At our offline workshops over 50% of the audience listens religiously to the podcast. The podcast fit in so nicely with our core. And was the medium of the future. Even so, it’s not possible to chase every rainbow Technology moves ahead at a blinding pace. You can’t play with every new phenomenon. Which is why we have to go back to the Hedgehog principle. What can you be the best in the world in? What are you deeply passionate about? What drives your economic engine? In the subset of podcasting, we achieve all three. And this is what you’ll have to do as well. Find your core AND stimulate progress, with your eye always on the passion. The passion is what drives your business today and will continue to do so in the future. If you don’t wake up crazy with happiness, then you’re not headed towards greatness. It’s the reason I moved on from cartooning back in the early 2000s. I wasn’t waking up happy as a lark—and so I had to find something else. Which, interestingly, takes us to our third element: The hairy, audacious goal—oh, it’s big too. That makes it the BHAG (pronounced: bee-hag). The BHAG Until the moment Greig Bebner set to work on his kitchen table with a glue gun and some kite material, the basic design of the modern umbrella hadn’t changed since 1928. They come in all sorts of colours, shapes and fancy gizmos, but the core elements of the umbrella are the same—and they don’t work. The moment a gust of wind comes along, you hear cursing, then more cursing and finally the umbrella being thrown on the pavement. So Greg set about on a big, hairy, audacious goal—a BHAG. He wanted an umbrella that would stand up to the crazy wind and rain on One Tree Hill. Now if you’ve ever visited Auckland, New Zealand, you’re likely to have your hair tossed around wildly on a windy One Tree Hill day. It’s certainly no place to open an umbrella. Then to push that BHAG even further, he tested the Blunt at Force 12 (117 km/h) which is the maximum setting of the test wind tunnel. The umbrella stood up to the punishment with ease. But why did the umbrella work so flawlessly? It starts with the BHAG. It’s almost a Star Trek kind of goal—to go where no man gone before. It’s not a namby-pamby set of goals. It’s one overarching factor that scares the heebie-jeebies out of you as a business owner. A windy day on One Tree Hill in the middle of a storm. That’s a good testing ground for an umbrella. Sometimes this goal is restricted to your product, sometimes it’s a lot bigger. Like Akio Morita, the co-founder and former chairman of Sony Corporation. He was working on a revolutionary product called the Walkman. Until the Walkman was introduced on July 1, 1979. Until the Walkman showed up, portable music players were non-existent. Even though the Walkman stuttered with disappointing sales in the first month, it went on to sell over 400 million units. But Morita’s goal wasn’t just to sell a ton of Walkmans His goal was a lot loftier. Before Sony introduced a ton of extremely sophisticated equipment, Japan was considered to be a backward country. It was associated with paper parasols and shoddy imitations. Akio Morita wanted to turn that perception around so that “Made in Japan” commanded respect and was associated with high quality. And he succeeded, with Sony at the forefront of his BHAG. In 2014, A Harris poll showed Sony was the No. 1 brand name among American consumers, ahead of American companies like General Electric and Coca-Cola. At Psychotactics, we have a BHAG too The goal is to get rid of information for information sake and replace it with skill, instead. We’re drowning in information, and yet every book, every course brings even more information to the table. But is that what we really want? Or do we want the skill instead. We want to write articles, create sales pages, be able to sell at higher prices. We want to learn to cook, draw, paint or acquire skills that make us look, feel and be smarter. A BHAG has to be hairy, audacious, and bigger than anyone thinks possible. Starbucks had a BHAG too It was to open up a new Starbucks cafe every single day of the year. But soon enough, Starbucks was running into trouble. Can you see why? It’s big, hairy and audacious to open up a Starbucks every single day, but does it inspire any passion? Does it feel like you’re somehow changing the world you live in, let alone the world around you? The BHAG wasn’t to make Sony the star, but instead to make Japan and Japanese products top-notch once again. Every business should have a BHAG. Something that sits there in the corner challenging you to become better—not necessarily bigger—than you are. To create a Ferris Wheel or an Eiffel Tower. To create artworks of enduring magnificence as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt did. And the way to create that BHAG is to scare yourself. To know that everyone says there are things you’re not supposed to achieve. That these things are impossible. And yet, you do it, because it’s the most inspiring thing to do! Combined with the Hedgehog principle, preserving the core and stimulating progress, you have a system in place that can take your business from good to great. And even as you embark on this journey, you know that you will forever be on the road to making things better, not necessarily bigger, but always better. Better—it’s a great place to be! The action plan and summary coming in the next episode. Click here to listen to part 2:  Good to Great: How To Escalate The Path To Greatness http://www.psychotactics.com/path-to-greatness/

At the very tail end of August, Voice Dream Reader, the wildly popular book reading app, launched on Android. This opens up a huge potential market, ranging from students who want to read college coursework on-the-go, to professionals who drive a lot and need an easy way of reading materials with high-quality voices. Because of the excellent price range of Android devices, you can now own a book reader for under $100. We've interview Winston Chen who developed the iOS application, which has now grown into a comprehensive app. Getting this to work on Android from scratch was a unique challenge, as it requires a great effort and collaboration between features and platforms. Michael Scott developed the Android version of Voice Dream Reader, and it has many of the same functionality as found on iOS: Bookmarks, various high quality voices from Acapela (at the moment, Ivona is expected in a future update), along with bookmarking support, DRM-free Epubs, bookshelf views, Bookshare, Dropbox,One drive integration, visual adjustment of the document's contents, highlighting, built-in web browser... Just what does it take to develop an Android app anyway? How difficult was it to have all of these features migrate over from the iOS world? What are some future plans for the app? Ultimately, what goals might the team have in mind for its purpose? We sit down with both Michael and Winston to talk about the development and story of Voice Dream reader.

At the very tail end of August, Voice Dream Reader, the wildly popular book reading app, launched on Android. This opens up a huge potential market, ranging from students who want to read college coursework on-the-go, to professionals who drive a lot and need an easy way of reading materials with high-quality voices. Because of the excellent price range of Android devices, you can now own a book reader for under $100. We've interview Winston Chen who developed the iOS application, which has now grown into a comprehensive app. Getting this to work on Android from scratch was a unique challenge, as it requires a great effort and collaboration between features and platforms. Michael Scott developed the Android version of Voice Dream Reader, and it has many of the same functionality as found on iOS: Bookmarks, various high quality voices from Acapela (at the moment, Ivona is expected in a future update), along with bookmarking support, DRM-free Epubs, bookshelf views, Bookshare, Dropbox,One drive integration, visual adjustment of the document's contents, highlighting, built-in web browser... Just what does it take to develop an Android app anyway? How difficult was it to have all of these features migrate over from the iOS world? What are some future plans for the app? Ultimately, what goals might the team have in mind for its purpose? We sit down with both Michael and Winston to talk about the development and story of Voice Dream reader.

At the very tail end of August, Voice Dream Reader, the wildly popular book reading app, launched on Android. This opens up a huge potential market, ranging from students who want to read college coursework on-the-go, to professionals who drive a lot and need an easy way of reading materials with high-quality voices. Because of the excellent price range of Android devices, you can now own a book reader for under $100. We've interview Winston Chen who developed the iOS application, which has now grown into a comprehensive app. Getting this to work on Android from scratch was a unique challenge, as it requires a great effort and collaboration between features and platforms. Michael Scott developed the Android version of Voice Dream Reader, and it has many of the same functionality as found on iOS: Bookmarks, various high quality voices from Acapela (at the moment, Ivona is expected in a future update), along with bookmarking support, DRM-free Epubs, bookshelf views, Bookshare, Dropbox,One drive integration, visual adjustment of the document's contents, highlighting, built-in web browser... Just what does it take to develop an Android app anyway? How difficult was it to have all of these features migrate over from the iOS world? What are some future plans for the app? Ultimately, what goals might the team have in mind for its purpose? We sit down with both Michael and Winston to talk about the development and story of Voice Dream reader.

KWL US Manager Christine Munroe interviews Carla King, a travel writer and self-publishing expert. Tune in to hear them discuss: What self-publishing was like when Carla started out in 1995. Self-Publishing Boot Camp, the program of books and workshops that Carla co-founded and continues to manage. Balancing writing travel books and how-to guides. Tips for effective social media presence. Highlights from Carla's latest book, The Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors. After the show, KWL Author Care Coordinator Vanessa Ghosh offers tips for creating reflowable ePubs.

Boston Comic Con announces new guests for 2014 John Rhys Davies at RICC Dead of Winter by Rob Smales is out: You can find it on Amazon and PDFs, Epubs and the like can be purchased through Ganxy Hell Really Did Freeze Over Disney Princess Lingerie Disney appoints a group to determine a new, official Star […]

DROPBOX - pdf to epubsEn esta clase se muestra como se convierte un PDF a ePub y como se envía al Dropbox

DROPBOX – IPAD epubsEn esta clase se muestra como enviar un ePub a dropbox y una vez ahí compartirlo para leerlo en grupo y reenviar las anotaciones del estudio al profesor o un amigo en el iPad.

Ab sofort können Sie das beigefügte interaktive Programm zum CAS Digitale Kommunikation mit bewegten Bildern der FHNW Abteilung Wirtschaft in Olten auf ihr iPad laden. Die Broschüre ist eine der ersten in dieser Form und zeigt direkt die Möglichkeiten von interaktiven ePub Anwendungen für Marketing und Kommunikation. Das interaktive ePub wurde vom Kursleiter und Dozenten Dr. Matthias Haeberlin eigens für diesen Kurs erstellt. Die Teilnehmenden des CAS werden direkt im Kurs lernen wie entsprechende interaktive ePubs selber geplant und umgesetzt werden.

Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-186.mp3 (17.4 MB, 32:37 minutes) See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode. The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon. News: Upcoming speaking gigs, InDesign User Group web site, Scripts for Indexes in EPUBs, Our mascot Zoey (picture below!) New Year's InDesign Resolutions (and non-InDesign related) About the Primary Text Frame "Negative Number" Quizzler Answer and Winner Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Relink File Extension News and special offers from our sponsors: >> Rorohiko’s TextExporter 3.1 plug-in makes exporting text out of InDesign CS2-CS6 so simple! You can export all the stories in an ID file into one single RTF, plain text, or ID tagged text file, and you control how it orders the text as it extracts and concatenates it.  The RTF Export option now supports nested styles, which InDesign's own RTF Export does not! Special for InDesignSecrets listeners: Use the coupon code INDESIGNSECRETS186 in the Rorohiko.com store to get 25% off the TextExporter plug-in. -- INDESIGN "PRODUCTION NIGHTMARES FROM THE TRENCHES" STORIES: We want to hear your stories! Send us a short (less than 3 minutes) "InDesign doc/client/user/coworker Horror Story" that we can play on the air (you'll be anonymous) in an upcoming episode: leave us a voice message at +1-801-459-4477 to record it, or send in your own voice recording. Please follow-up with an e-mail, which we will keep private, including any additional information that you'd like us to know. You'll get a nifty gifty from us if we play it in a podcast! -- Links mentioned in this podcast: > David's speaking at Macworld where he'll be talking about his new book, Spectrums: Our Mind-Boggling Universe from Infinitesimal to Infinity > Anne-Marie is presenting a workshop at O'Reilly's TOCCON, Feb 12–14 in NYC, titled, "Beautiful Typography in EPUBs" > David and Anne-Marie will be presenting InDesign seminars and labs at Adobe MAX, May 4–8, 2013 (right after PEPCON!) > Adobe's InDesign User Group web site is still down, as of this podcast > Indicies or Indexes? Actually, both are correct > EPUB Indexes: Overview from EPUBSecrets.com, Ben Milander's Index for EPUB script, DTPTool's CrossReferencesPRO > Devon ThinkPro vs Evernote > Anne-Marie's lynda.com video tutorial, Social Media Marketing with Facebook & Twitter > Three great blog posts on InDesign's Primary Text Frame: here, here, and here > Our Quizzler winner is from Khartoum, Sudan We'll miss you Zoey! Good girl.

Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-177.mp3 (16.5 MB, 30:32 minutes) See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode. Interview: Brooks Jensen, LensWork magazine Using InDesign to create the print and enhanced PDF publications Nuances of color and duotones with fine-art photography and the printing process Moving to an InCopy workflow over a holiday weekend (!) Optimizing rich-media PDF eBooks for iPad and Android tablets Golden Oldie post: Select Text All the Way to the End Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Clip Contents to Cell News and special offers from our sponsors: >> lynda.com is an online learning company that helps anyone learn software, creative, and business skills to achieve their personal and professional goals. With a lynda.com subscription, members receive unlimited access to a vast library of high quality, current, and engaging video tutorials. Many InDesignSecrets.com contributors have authored titles at lynda.com, including Anne-Marie and David, covering InDesign basics (of course) and beyond, such as EPUBs, interactive PDFs, DPS, GREP, and InCopy workflows. Get a one-week free trial to the entire lynda.com online training library. And don't forget to check out our InDesign Secrets video title on lynda.com, with two new free videos every month! -- Links mentioned in this podcast: > Brooks Jensen's magazine is LensWork, and yes, he does have a podcast! (click each thumbnail to see a larger size) > More about Ansel Adams (duotones/tritones) and Alfred Stieglitz (Camera Work magazine) > LensWork uses an InCopy workflow for its print and PDF editions > Brooks moved to InCopy after watching Anne-Marie's lynda.com video tutorial about it > Golden Oldie post: Select Text All the Way to the End

New bug fixes from Adobe; Cool Keyboard Shortcuts; CS6 Features for EPUBs; Obscurity of the Week: Insert Number Placeholder ----- Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-176.mp3(18.1 MB, 34:25 minutes) See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode. InDesign News: Fix for InDesign Crashing on 2012 Macs Fix for InDesign CS6 "Revert to Trial Mode" bug Some useful new ideas for Cool Keyboard Shortcuts New features in InDesign CS6 for EPUB publishers Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Insert Number Placeholder News and special offers from our sponsors: >> Real World InDesign CS6: Get this book! You'll find everything you need to successfully master InDesign’s advanced page-layout tools; manage color; build XML templates; and run your own custom InDesign scripts. You’ll also find complete coverage of all of InDesign’s new features. This is the reference book of all books on InDesign, written by Olav Martin Kvern, David Blatner, and Bob Bringhurst; published by Peachpit Press in print, EPUB, and Kindle editions. -- Links mentioned in this podcast: > David's blog post on the release of Real World InDesign CS6 > Steve Werner's post about the 2012 Macs bug for InDesign CS6 and Adobe's fix > When CS6 Reverts to Trial Mode (post) and Adobe's fix > Interesting InDesignSecrets forum thread on cool keyboard shortcuts from users > New EPUB Features in InDesign CS6 , recording of the Adobe CSPro webinar by Anne-Marie > More info on using Insert Number Placeholder in this blog post

New lynda.com InDesign videos; Creative Cloud; Acrobat forms tools in InDesign CS6; Obscurity of the Week: World-Ready Composer Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-172.mp3(18.5 MB, 33:21 minutes) See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode. Yikes! We recorded this on May 9 (pre-PePcon), but didn't get a chance to publish it until today, a week later (post-PePcon). Apologies for time-shifted content! News News in PEPCONland, Adobeland, and Lyndaland Join us in New York City, June 13-14, for InDesignSecretsLive! in NYC InDesign CS6's PDF Forms Features in depth Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: World-Ready Paragraph Composer News and special offers from our sponsors: >> PrintUI.com / In-Tools.com: Get free setup on an InDesignServer solution from PrintUI.com! Or, if you're more into EPUB, contact Harbs to learn more about a cool soon-to-come tool that provides EPUB preview and editing CSS files inside InDesign! >> Mediatrad, a great new tool for translators and InDesign users who need document language translation. It's free for non-commercial purposes. You can create a free trial 30-day account and translate up to 100 pages. Entering the special code: "indesignsecrets.com" gives you 100 additional pages! >> Rorohiko has a new script that helps InDesign users create fixed-layout EPUBs from InDesign files! Check out the free CSSGeometry.jsx script to quickly get the CSS markup for all your absolutely-positioned text frames, ready for copying and pasting into your CSS document. While you're there, be sure to check out all of their other neat InDesign scripts and plug-ins Kris and his crew at Rorohiko offer that are designed to "slash the time it takes!" -- Links mentioned in this podcast: > Adobe Creative Cloud was released > Adobe's redesigned online InDesign Help site > New lynda.com videos: InDesign CS6 New Features and InDesign CS6 Essential Training > David's rant/post about the split in PDF Export methods in InDesign > Another post about single page vs. spread Interactive PDF export > Harb's plug-in for World Ready typesetting, "WorldTools Pro" > Adobe blog post about the surprise indicpreferences.js script in InDesign CS6

Notre invité Samuel Petit, entrepreneur dans le monde numérique, nous emmène dans l'univers féerique des ePubs, Apps et eBooks qui sont l'un des futurs de l'édition. En compagnie de Docteur Non, de Post Carbone et de Lord Ton Père, nous nous aventurons sur les territoires des tablettes et autres eReader.

Notre invité Samuel Petit, entrepreneur dans le monde numérique, nous emmène dans l'univers féerique des ePubs, Apps et eBooks qui sont l'un des futurs de l'édition. En compagnie de Docteur Non, de Post Carbone et de Lord Ton Père, nous nous aventurons sur les territoires des tablettes et autres eReader.

In this episode I'll show you the new features in Adobe InDesign CS 5.5 for publishing ePUBs with Video to the iPad and other devices that support ePUB standard 3.0. 

2011 PeP Conference; InDesign to EPUB; Acrobat X and InDesign; Quizzler winners (and a new Quizzler); Obscurity of the Week: Output Condition Name, Output Condition Indentifier, Registry Name ----- Details below, or go to http://indesignsecrets.com/indesignsecrets-podcast-138.php for Show Notes, links, and to leave a comment! ----- Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-138.mp3 (19.9 MB, 36:48 minutes) See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode. The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon. 2011 Print & ePublishing Conference announcement! InDesign to EPUB: Recap and tips from Liz Castro's webinar Acrobat X and InDesign InDesignSecrets newsletter Quizzler winners ("How many InDesign users to change a lightbulb?") Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Output Condition Name, Output Condition Identifier, Registry Name New Quizzler! Listen to the episode to learn how to win -- News and special offers from our sponsors:   >> Recosoft is the developer of PDF2ID, the miraculous solution for converting PDF file to editable InDesign files. Install the software and you’ll be able to open (not just Place) PDFs in InDesign. Styles, tables, layers, threaded text, it all gets reconstituted. It’s amazing! The latest version, PDF2ID 3.0, is compatible with InDesign CS3, CS4, and CS5 on Macintosh and Windows platforms.   >> MathMagic, the ultimate equation editor from Info Logic, Inc., is a WYSIWYG equation editor/plug-in that lets you create inline, editable EPS equations from within InDesign (if you use the MathMagic Pro edition). It even converts equations set by Word’s Equation Editor, LaTex, MathML and MathType, to MathMagic-style equations. For InDesignSecrets listeners, they’re offering a time-limited discount of 25% off any MathMagic Pro product that’s $199US or more, until Dec. 30, 2010 (extended deadline!). Here are the details of the offer, or just remember to use the coupon code INDS at the MathMagic order page to get your discount. -- To enter this episode's Quizzler: Send an email to info@indesignsecrets.com with the word QUIZZLER in the subject line and your best answer in the body of the message. You have until Friday, Dec. 10, at midnight CST to send in your answer, one per user! We will choose the most correct answer, or in the case of a tie, we will randomly choose from the correct answer(s). Winner will be announced in the first podcast after Dec. 10. 2011! -- Links mentioned in this podcast: > Liz Castro's webinars: InDesign to EPUB and Advanced EPUB Formatting > ePubChecker utility > Springy utility (for editing EPUBs and ZIPs without extracting files) OS X only > Acrobat X info and Anne-Marie's Acrobat X Essentials video lessons on Lynda.com > Download Reader X (free), available for Mac and Windows! > Don XX, the most interesting guy in the world > ICC registry profiles > Rimshot app (sound effects)

Colin Fleming interview; Conference/Seminar news; Members drawing winner; Obscurity of the Week: Shared Hyperlink Destination ----- Details below, or go to http://indesignsecrets.com/indesignsecrets-podcast-118.php for Show Notes, links, coupon codes, and to leave a comment! ----- Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-118.mp3 (14 MB, 26:35 minutes) [media id=39 width=* height=20] The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon. Interview with Colin Fleming, Senior Solutions Engineer from Adobe How he became an expert on ePub ePubs on Kindles, iPads and Sony eBooks Videos and whitepapers on ePubs that Colin recommends Update on our Print & ePublishing Conference Early bird registration saves $200! Pre-conference all-day tutorials from Mordy Golding, James Fritz, and Michael Ninness New cities/speakers for our InDesignSecrets Live Seminar tour A lucky InDesignSecrets member gets a TruMatch swatch book as this episode's random winner Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Shared Hyperlink Destination News and special offers from our sponsors: >> Rorohiko sells a neat plug-in called SudokuGenerator, (and offers a free, more limited version called SudokuGeneratorLite) that lets you create those mind-bending number puzzles for fun and profit. Normally $49, you can get $10 off by entering INDESIGNSECRETS118 in the coupon code area of Rorohiko's shopping cart. -- Links mentioned in this podcast: > Colin's Adobe MAX presentation, "Creating an eBook for Distribution on Sony Reader Digital Book, Amazon Kindle, and Apple iPhone" > Colin's three AdobeTV movies, Using InDesign to Create Digital Books: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 > New Adobe whitepapers on Producing ePub eBooks from InDesign > InDesignSecretsLive.com for seminar and conference info & registration links > Make sure you're in our Members database (free) for upcoming prize drawings! > Katey's DocumentGeek.blogspot.com blog