Category: Other

Categories
Blogging Other

A Beginner’s Guide to Google Wave



Logging into Google Wave for the first time is a baffling experience. It is almost impossible to work out what to do without the help of others, so I thought I’d create a really simple, step-by-step guide to get you started.

Step 1: Find some Friends

The first thing you need to do is to find some people to connect with. The problem is that not many people are signed up yet and even if they are, you probably don’t know their google wave address.

If you are lucky enough to know their google wave address (mine is farmlanebooks (at) goooglewave (dot) com) then you can add the person using the little + button next to the words manage contacts in the bottom left of the screen.

If you’d like to find some book bloggers then I’ve created this wave:

[wave id=”googlewave.com!w+kNwYIiY_C” height=”200px” server=”https://wave.google.com/wave/”]

Just log in and add yourself to it, then click on the avatar of anyone you recognise and add them to your contacts. Once you are following this wave it will be easy for me (or others) to add you to the other book blogging waves.

Step 2: Find Some Waves

The next thing you need to do is find a few waves to read, so that you can start to join in. The best place to start is probably with waves which are open for everyone to see.

To find public waves, type with:public into your search box and then click on the magnifying glass. This will bring up all waves which are viewable by everyone. You can refine this search by including keywords, after the word public, for example with:public FAQ will bring up waves with frequently asked questions, or with:public books will produce a list of waves in which books are mentioned.

withpublic

Once you know some-one’s google wave address you can search for waves in which they’re participating  in a similar way – for example with:farmlanebooks will bring up all waves which I am currently following.

Step 3: Create a Wave

When you are ready to start a discussion, just click on the New Wave button at the top of the centre panel. Type your message in the box in the right-hand column, then add people you’d like to share your conversation with using the + button next to your avatar. You can make the wave public by adding public@a.googlewave.com as a participant. (you’ll need to add public@a.googlewave.com to your contact list before you do this)

Step 4: Enjoy Google Wave!

Hopefully, this post will provide enough information to get you started, but if there is anything you’d like to know, then just ask and I’ll do my best to find out the answer for you.

Are you managing to wave successfully now?

Do you have any hints for new users?


Categories
Blogging Other

Is Google Wave Useful?


In the last few days Google Wave has started to be used by a growing number of book bloggers. For those of you who don’t know, Google Wave is a collaborative tool that allows people to discuss a topic, or edit a document in real time. I have only used it for a limited period of time, but am not convinced that it will be much use to bloggers on a day-to-day basis.

So far the majority of ‘waves’ are discussion threads, which would be much better if available on a blog, accessible to everyone. I know that people are only experimenting with Wave at the moment, but I find the privacy of Wave worrying. I don’t like the fact that people have to be invited to join in a discussion and worry that new bloggers would find it very hard to be able to join in to the community. It all feels very cliquey, in a way that blogging and Twitter have managed to avoid.

Yesterday I set up a quick poll on Wave, to see if people thought it was useful and almost everyone thought that it would be. A few people expressed concerns about the private nature of Waves, but most thought it would be a beneficial tool.

One of the better aspects of Wave is the ability to import all its functionality into a blog post, but I am unsure as to how this will work. In the interest of science I have included the poll I created yesterday below. Unfortunately it won’t be visible in Internet Explorer, but please can you let me know whether you are able to see it with other browsers. I am particularly interested in whether those without a Wave account are able to view/edit the Wave now that I have made it public.

[wave id=”[wave id=”googlewave.com!w+0sF8bM7VC” server=”https://wave.google.com/wave/”]

.

For those that can’t see the above box – here is a screen shot of it:

wave1

wave2

I can see that Wave is a great tool for writing joint posts or working together on a bigger project, but it isn’t going to be somewhere I visit daily. If you are lucky enough to have access to Wave, please add me (farmlanebooks (at) googlewave (dot) com) as contact!

Have you found Google Wave useful?

Do you think you’ll use it regularly?

Categories
Other

Cockermouth Floods and my Twitter Disappointment

I didn’t post on Friday because I was glued to the television news, watching my former hometown of Cockermouth being devastated by floods.

Cockermouth is a small town on the edge of the Lake District, in northern England. I met my husband whilst at school there and many of my fondest memories are of time spent in Cockermouth.

To keep this post vaguely book related, here is a photo of the book shop I used to enjoy browsing in:

cockermouthbookshop

Cockermouth is also the birthplace of William Wordsworth and his former home has also been damaged by the flood waters.

I no longer live near Cockermouth, but still know a large number of people in the town. On Friday I was was searching everywhere for information as to which areas had been affected and whether everyone was safe. As a big user of Twitter this was one of the first places I looked. I had hoped to find tweets from people in the area, who would have a much better idea of what was happening, but instead I was saddened to see that 90%+ of the tweets were making fun of the town’s name. I had to read every single one of these insults in order to find the one or two useful tweets. This only made a terrible situation worse for me and the countless other people searching for news of their loved ones. If you search for Cockermouth on Twitter now you will find that about 50% of the tweets are informative, or supportive of the plight of the owners of the 1300 homes that have been affected – the rest are still childish jokes.

I was also shocked to discover that a minority of people from local towns were objecting to flood victims shopping in their supermarket. I cannot believe how insensitive some people are.

The good news is that the vast majority of people in Cockermouth are doing everything they can to help. The emergency services have done a fantastic job and the community is really pulling together at this difficult time.

I am sure that Cockermouth will be rebuilt, better than it was before, but it is sad to know that so many of the places I know and love will never be the same again.

Photos of the flood taken by local professional photographer.

BBC news flood photo gallery

Details of how to help the Cumbrian flood victims

Have you ever been the victim of flooding?

Categories
Other

Recommendations from a non blogger #3

Our recommendations this month come from Rebecca, who not only reads this blog, but also designed my wonderful new avatar! Thank you so much Rebecca! I love it!

I’ll let her introduce herself:

rebeccacox

I am an avid reader and even though I work full time as a construction manager, I manage to read two books a week most weeks. I love literary fiction, southern fiction and mysteries but will read anything that is exceptionally well written. I just love a good story. I can never remember not reading, I have always had a book in my hand, one in my car, one in my purse, one on my desk at work and one on my bedside table. The older I get the harder it is for me to read multiple books at one though, so now I find myself lugging one book around everywhere. Oh well, I still have books in all these places though, just in case.

The following are recommendations from my permanent collection.

.

A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith– This book was actually recommended to me by my son. It was required reading in his senior high school English class when we lived in Florida and when he finished it, he brought it to me and said I just had to read it because it was so good. It is a fictional history of the settlement of the Tampa Bay area in the state of Florida. It follows three generations of the MacIvey family in an epic portrayal of a pioneer family. My son was right. I am not usually a fan of historical fiction, but this one is impressively detailed and I fell in love with the MacIvey family right from the start.

Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish – This may not be the book Kris is the most famous for, but it is by far my favorite, so much so that it made it into my permanent collection which is very hard to do. This book touched my heart in so many ways it is almost impossible to explain. At 56, it is a time in my life when I am looking at where I have been and where I am going with the time I have left. That is what this book is all about, missed opportunities, lost loves and finding the power and the path to go forward.

Blink * The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell – Have you ever  had someone ask you a very difficult question and you instantly knew the answer, but instead of going with that answer, you thought it over, weighed all the options and came up with a different answer? Blink helps you understand that your first answer, the one that come immediately, the one you know without thinking about it, is right. We all have the power to instantly know what is needed but have been taught not to act on that instinct, but to over think everything. This is a very powerful little book and one I keep reading over and over. Just think how short business meetings would be if everyone would use this technique instead of talking everything to death!

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand– This is the one book that has stayed with me more than any other. I first read it as a high school senior in 1971. The story is of one man, Howard Roark, and his struggles as an architect in the face of a successful rival, Peter Keating. Then I went to College and majored in Architecture, and I learned about Frank Lloyd Wright whose life parallels Howard Roark’s in many ways. I had many a lively discussion in college about how they did or did not compare and my belief that Ayn Rand was writing about Frank. If you have not read this book, you must pick it up, if you have but it has been a while, read it again. Even though it was written in 1943, it never seems to be out of style. And after you read it, pick up a copy of Frank Lloyd Wright A Biography by Meryle Secrest and tell me what you think. 

The Art of Happiness, A Handbook for Living by His Holiness the Dalai Lama –This wonderful prescription for living looks at finding peace, freedom from anger and hatred, ways of deepening our connections to others, benefiting from compassion and finding basic spiritual values. There is something in this book for each and every one of us regardless of our spiritual beliefs.

This is a fantastic list, but yet again I haven’t read any of them. I love Malcolm Gladwell, but haven’t read Blink yet. I have heard Fountainhead mentioned a few times, but Rebecca has made it sound really good. I’m going to ensure that I read it really soon.  

Thank you so much Rebecca!

Have you read any of the books on this list?

Are any your favourites?

Categories
Chunkster Other

Chunkster Challenge Complete!

I love reading long books – they tend to have more depth, and a more interesting plot, so I really enjoyed completing the Chunkster Challenge.

The books I completed for this challenge were:

The 19th Wife – David Ebershoff (608 pages)  stars3h

Perdido Street Station – China Miéville (867 pages) stars3h

The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins (464 pages)  stars41

Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell (1024 pages)

2666 – Roberto Bolaño (912 pages)  stars51

I read many more 450+ page books, but they were lighter thrillers so didn’t really feel like long books.

What is your favourite chunkster?

Categories
Blogging Other

The importance of branding your book blog

When I started blogging I didn’t give branding a moments thought. I assumed that you only needed to worry about that sort of thing if you were a business, trying to sell a product. It is only in the past few weeks that I have realised how important it is to create a brand for your blog.

I subscribe to 200+ blogs and browse through many more over the course of a month, but if you asked me to name all the ones I subscribe to I think I’d get to about 30 before I started to struggle. The problem is that so many blogs have similar names and so I start to confuse them. This problem was highlighted recently when I wanted to thank a blogger for recommending a book. I went to Jackie’s Bookshelf  instead of Jackie’s Book Blog (blog names have been invented to protect the people concerned, but illustrate the point) and only realised my mistake when I couldn’t find the post I was looking for. I hadn’t even noticed there were two different blogs – I had combined them in my mind.

The importance was further illustrated when someone on Twitter wanted a recommendation for a blog about horror books. I immediately thought of It’s Dark in the Dark, despite the fact that I have only been to the blog once or twice. I think that the majority of book blogs take about 20+ visits for me to get a feel for them and remember their name, whereas this one did it instantly.

Another great example of branding in the book blogging world is Fizzy Thoughts. Her site is so well designed and I remembered it from the very first visit. She also uses the same images consistently across all platforms (twitter, blogger, gravatar etc) ensuring that anything she writes is instantly recognisable as her.

I have realised that I am not doing a very good job of branding my blog. Although I am lucky in that I chose a fairly different name to other book bloggers I need to work on using the same image everywhere, as I think every picture is different at the moment. If anyone knows a great, simple drawing of a farm lane – let me know!

I don’t think it matters that we aren’t trying to sell things. If you want people to remember they’ve visited your blog, and therefore come back, you need to think about branding.

There are lots of great posts on the Internet to help. Some of the best I’ve found are: 

10 Step Beginners Guide to Blogging Your Personal Brand

How to Shape Your Blogs Brand

A Blogger’s Guide to Branding with Social Media

10 Personal Branding Predictions for 2010

Have you thought about branding your blog?

Who do you think does a great job of branding their book blog?

Are there any other things that you should think about when branding?