Tag Archives: How to

How to have a conversation with a book…

Posted on January 27, 2011 | 1 Comment
Illustration of the final chase of Moby-Dick.

Image via Wikipedia

In school as an English major, I learned how to interpret symbolism in literature. Take Moby Dick, for instance. My professor made a point, which I still remember, of how Ahab’s hat symbolized his manhood, which the whale stole from him. He likened that to the scene in Thelma and Louise when the girls blow up the trucker’s shiny big rig full of oil (like a whale, ha ha) and then steal his hat before driving away.

Finding symbols, making connections, trying to guess what the author wants you to know — this is what English class is all about. In studying literature, we are meant to be doing something “important,” which is why we spend so much time discussing what the writer intended and what the text really means. We are taught there is a right way and a wrong way to read literature, that we either get it or we don’t. No wonder so many people get turned off of reading.

In creative writing classes, however, I learned what I already had guessed –writers mostly wing it. They write from the gut, or the subconscious, if you prefer. They don’t think in symbols any more than I, walking through a mall, would see a pair of red shoes in a store window and think, “Ah, there’s a symbol of my lost youth, if I ever did see one.”

Today I’ve come to think of reading a book as having a conversation with the writer. It’s a conversation where both parties are separated by time and space, and the writer will probably never hear my side of it, but it’s a conversation nonetheless. The writer brings a lot to our conversation, of course — characters, setting, plot, theme — but as the reader, I bring a great deal as well. My life experiences, my beliefs and values, my current preoccupations, even what happened to me that morning or what I read in the news last night — all affect how I respond to and interpret what I read.

The writer has put something on the page, some words. Some time later, I read them. And together we decide what those words mean for us, in that moment when they are read. If I read those same words twenty years later, they may mean something entirely different, and then the writer and I will have a different conversation, even though the words themselves haven’t changed.

All those English classes spent trying to figure out what the author meant by such-and-such an image were probably pretty useless. The point is not to become preoccupied with what the words are supposed to mean, or try to guess the right interpretation. Any writer who’s overly concerned that his readers understand his precise meaning at all times is probably not a lot of fun to read, anyway. I think what’s more important is the meaning that is created between the reader and the writer when the book is read. A novel is not a lecture. It’s a conversation. Or at least that’s what it should be.

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How to take control of your RSS feed reader…

Posted on June 17, 2010 | 4 Comments

“And it’s like, why can’t I be a good enough person to know things about anything? Why am I so pathetic that I can’t even read, like, 100 words a day? And then I have to hit the ‘pretend everything is read’ button, which is basically like hitting the ‘lie to yourself’ button. It’s embarrassing. I hate myself when I do it. It’s like the biggest possible failure you could have in your entire life, basically.”

When I read this article in The New York Observer about obsessive RSS completists, I definitely recognized myself. Yeah, I used to subscribe to 100+ blogs and websites in Google Reader. Yeah, I used to have to get that bold number of unread posts down to 0 whenever I opened Reader. And I couldn’t just mark all as read, either. I had to skim every post — the title, at least! It felt like cheating, otherwise.

And then I had an epiphany. I was spending so much time on Reader that other things were being neglected. That was okay when I had a job, but now I have more important things to do than work. Like read real books. And take care of my child. Something had to change.

But before change can happen, there must be an ah-ha moment, when you say to yourself, as I did, “This is my tool. It does not own me. It works for me. I am the boss around here.”

The first thing I did was clean out all of my subscriptions. I unsubscribed to everything. I only kept a handful of feeds that I cherished and absolutely knew I wanted to read (almost) every post. These went into a folder labeled “Blogs I Like” and there they will remain permanently.

Next, I went on Twitter and subscribed to the Twitter feeds for the blogs I had unsubscribed from. Twitter has much different — and significantly lower — expectations than RSS. (I have written about this before.) There is no bold number of unread items. Eventually, what you haven’t read falls off the screen into oblivion. Twitter is not your ever-growing pile of homework; it is the water cooler, the fun place you drop in during work breaks.

(Eventually, I had to weed down the number of Twitter feeds I was following too, but more on that at another time.)

Gradually, I started adding blogs back to my Google Reader. It is, after all, not easy to really get to know someone on Twitter. If I want to dive in-depth into a subject or learn more about a particular writer, than I need to read their blog for a while. Only for a while. All of these new blogs go into a folder labeled “Trial.”

Here are my rules:

  • When I subscribe to a new trial blog, I mark everything as read right off the bat. After all, I don’t want to start off with a backlog and handicap myself.
  • If I log in to Google Reader and there are more than 100 unread items, I immediately mark everything in the Trial folder as “read.” No guilt, no mercy. I am just reading these sites on a trial basis, so I’m not missing anything. This is what I tell myself, and it works.
  • If at the end of the month or so, I haven’t shared or starred a post from a particular feed, then I unsubscribe. (I use Google Reader’s Trends to find this info.) So at the beginning of every month, it’s like I’m starting with a fresh slate. What a good feeling.

If I really like a “trial” blog, I may start following the Twitter feed. But if it moves from the Trial folder to the Blogs I Like folder — which currently contains only 3 subscriptions, by the way — then we know it’s love.

And in the meantime, I can get back to the book I’m reading. Right after I check Twitter.

Feed Me, I’m Hungry! New Yorkers Skim, Freak, Purge as RSS Reading Mounts (New York Observer)

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How to start a nonprofit…

Posted on May 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

In these economic times (imagine the ponderous voice intoning), people often dream about starting something new. A nonprofit seems like a good choice because you can also do some good in the world and it seems like you may not need a lot of money to get going. This got me thinking about what it would take to get a nonprofit off the ground and whether it would be worth it. Here are some of the resources I found to answer those questions.

First, it is useful to know what a nonprofit is exactly and how they work.

The next question is whether to start a nonprofit at all. Is there something more productive you could be doing instead?

If you decide to go ahead, here are some steps to get started. Here are some instructions for getting on the web at very little cost. And the most important thing, what you need to know about raising money.

The Resources:
About.Com: Nonprofit Charitable Organizations
Don Griesmann’s Nonprofit Blog
Foundation Center
Free Management Library
Non-profit Tech Blog

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How to protect your privacy on Facebook…

Posted on April 27, 2010 | Leave a comment

I was a latecomer to Facebook. I just joined the service a little less than a year ago. At first, it was great being able to keep up with far-flung cousins and old high school friends, with no effort whatsoever. I eagerly checked in several times a day.

But after a month or so, my Facebook usage waned. All the Farmville and quiz status updates were annoying. I started getting weird spam and friend invites from people I didn’t remember knowing. To tell you the truth, I just felt more comfortable on Twitter.

Now I hardly ever visit Facebook at all, but I still update it now and then. It really is the only way I can stay in touch online with a large group of people. Mostly I share information about my kid or photos of him from TotSpot. I never visit pages anymore, or play games, or take quizzes. I stay off Facebook as much as possible.

Given this week’s news, I’m glad I’ve limited my exposure. Facebook is now trying to integrate itself with the web at large, and it needs our data to do it. It wants us to “like” things on partner sites. Our “like” data will probably be sold to marketers, who will turn around and try to sell us more things. I don’t know about you, but I am fed up with people trying to sell me stuff all the time.

I will stay on Facebook, just because it is the most convenient way to keep in touch with some people. But I will use the site even less now. I have tried to make my settings as private as possible. Here’s what I did.

All of these settings are available under the Account tab (upper right corner). Click “Privacy Settings.”

  • I clicked on Personal Information and Posts and changed each option to Only Friends can see, except for my bio.
  • I clicked on Contact Information and made sure my phone numbers and email address were visible only to friends or only to me. I also made sure Only Friends could send me a message.
  • I clicked on Friends, Tags and Connections and set everything to Only Friends. Except for Photos and Videos of Me — I set this to Only Me so no one will see any potentially embarrassing photos of me tagged with my name.
  • I clicked on Applications and Websites and then What Your Friends Can Share About You and unchecked every box.
  • Also under Applications and Websites, I changed Activity on Applications and Games Dashboards to Only Friends.
  • Also under Applications and Websites, I unchecked the box to join the new Instant Personalization Pilot Program, which shares your “like” data with other companies.

Finally, under the Account tab, I selected “Application Settings.” In the Show menu (top right, above the applications list), I selected “Authorized.” This shows every application and website you’ve authorized to see your Facebook data. I deleted every application or website I didn’t recognize or know I don’t use.

I did not edit my employer, school or interest pages, because I considered them fairly innocuous or so broad as to be useless to marketers. But this may be a concern for some, especially people with unpopular political views or unusual hobbies. There’s a lot of good information about how to protect yourself in this post.

How to Restore Your Privacy on Facebook (Gawker)
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How to search your old Tweets + Twitter spring cleaning tips

Posted on April 26, 2010 | 3 Comments

I recently had a question: How do I search my own tweets for an old link I might need or a great quip I had made? The problem with Twitter‘s search tool is that it’s time-limited. You can search your tweets by prefacing the search keyword with your Twitter username, but the search results will only go back a week or so. This is a pretty serious limitation of Twitter’s search functionality.

It turns out there is no good tool for searching your past archive of all tweets. Google will search tweets, but it’s not at all easy to limit that search to just your own tweets.

The best solution I’ve found requires a little forethought. First, you have to archive your tweets in a searchable location. I use FriendFeed, which also archives my Delicious bookmarks, StumbleUpon finds and blog posts. Here are some other places where you can archive your tweets.

If you start the archive now, it won’t be much help in finding tweets from 6 months ago, but at least you will have a searchable archive going forward. However, if you already have a FriendFeed account or similar Twitter archive, you can use the search tool there to search through your past tweets. I use FriendFeed’s advanced search, so I can limit the search to just my feed by entering my username in the “Specific friends/groups” box.

If you just want to search links, BackTweets may help. It enables you to search links posted on Twitter, and it expands shortened links. Unfortunately, you can’t search only your own Twitter account.

A better solution is to archive your tweeted links on a searchable platform. Packrati.us fills the void. It automatically archives every link you tweet to your Delicious bookmarks. It will even tag the link with each hashtag you add to the tweet. This has been a real timesaver for me, because I like to share useful tweets on Twitter and then save them on Delicious, which used to be a two-step process.

Speaking of Twitter, now might be a good time to spring-clean your Twitter account. I just went through my followers list so I could block questionable followers and make sure I was following back the interesting people. I also cleaned up my Twitter lists. Mashable suggests some good tools to help.

The best tool on the list, I thought, was UnTweeps. This tool finds all of the people you’re following who haven’t tweeted in a while (30 days or more) and lets you quickly unfollow them. Twitter Karma also seems like a cool tool. It shows who you’re following and who’s following you back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to work for me yet; it depends on how busy Twitter is when you run it.

10 Ways to Archive Your Tweets (ReadWriteWeb)
FriendFeed
BackTweets
Packrati.us
How to: Spring-clean Your Twitter Account (Mashable)
UnTweeps
Twitter Karma
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Some Google Buzz tips: How to post privately & address your posts to particular people

Posted on March 16, 2010 | 1 Comment

I have been enjoying using Google Buzz the past few weeks (although I wish more people in my network were on Buzz). It has been a great medium for sharing links via Google Reader and then having interesting discussions, sometimes with total strangers, about the links.

But Buzz has been even more useful for quick, asynchronous chatting with friends and family. Gmail is a terrific email program, but it is not so good at threading. When you exchange more than a couple of emails with someone, particularly when the messages are very short, it quickly gets unwieldy. Here’s where Buzz fills the void. The comments feature supports quick back-and-forth conversations that are easy to follow and review later. So far, I have used Buzz to set up book club meetings, figure out where to go for a family dinner and chat with my husband all day long.

But you don’t necessarily want the world to read those chats. By default, what you post on Buzz is public and is recorded on your Google Profile page. Buzz makes it very easy to make any conversation private, but the process is not entirely intuitive. Here’s how you do it.

  1. Type your message into Google Buzz.
  2. Beneath the message you’ll see a button that says: “Public on the web.” Click it and select “Private.”
  3. You’re not done yet. Next to the button is a link that says “Select group.” Click this link.
  4. A list of your groups appears, if you have any. This list is taken from your Contacts. Check the group whose members you want to be able to read the Buzz. If the group doesn’t exist, click “Create a new group.” In the window that opens, give the group a name and select the contacts to add. For example, you may want to add a group containing just your spouse. Then click the Done button.
  5. Click the Post button.

The message will appear with a little lock symbol to indicate that it is private and visible only to the people in the groups you selected. (If you click the Private link next to the lock, you will see who can read the post.) It also won’t show up on your public Google Profile.

Now when you go to post a Buzz, your last privacy setting will be selected by default. So if you want to post a public message, such as a link, you will have to re-select the “Public on the web” option under the message area.

If you are posting a message for a specific person, it is a good idea to identify that person in the message itself. Buzz will send the message to the person’s Inbox, where they are more likely to see it. Here’s how you do it:

  1. In the Buzz message window, type the @ symbol followed by the first few letters of the person’s name.
  2. A pop-up box appears showing all matching email addresses from your Gmail contacts. Select the correct email address. The address now appears in the Buzz message.
  3. Continue typing the message and click the Post button. The post will contain the person’s name, highlighted and linked, instead of their email address. It will also go to that person’s Gmail Inbox.

You can use this same trick when commenting on a Buzz post as well.

Now the recipient of the message can read the post in their Inbox and reply to it using the comments feature. All of the replies should show up in your Inbox. Just like email, but easier to read and quicker to reply.

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Twitter vs. RSS: How Twitter has freed me from hours of blog reading

Posted on January 16, 2010 | 3 Comments

I used to subscribe to all my favorite blogs and read them in Google Reader. But no matter how much I tried to stay on top of them, I always ended up subscribed to 100 or more blogs, which were collectively posting hundreds of times a day. I was spending hours skimming through blog posts.

There is something about the RSS feed reader that makes a completist like me feel like I have to at least look at every post that shows up. Maybe it’s that bold number at the top. I have to get it down to 0 each time I open up Reader. It’s like my email Inbox — it must always be empty. And it feels like cheating to mark everything as read when I hadn’t actually read it.

Another problem was that I was reading about the same things 5, 6 or 10 times over in different blogs. There aren’t that many blogs that consistently post new content. Usually, they just react to the same bit of news as everyone else.

So one day, not too long ago, I unsubscribed to most of the blogs in my Reader. And I started following the bloggers on Twitter instead.

Almost everyone who blogs is also on Twitter. And they usually tweet about their own blog posts as well as other interesting bits of news and links. So everything in their RSS feeds also shows up on Twitter.

But I don’t have the same need to have to catch up with everything on Twitter that I do in my RSS feed reader. Twitter is like a river of information flowing by (I know that New York Times columnist used the same metaphor in his Twitter article but he stole it from me — he must have overheard me making this observation in a Starbucks or something). Every now and then, when I have a few minutes, I dip my toes in the river. Google Reader, on the other hand, is more like a dam, and all the new information flowing in backs up into a lake that I feel compelled to empty.

But what if I miss something? Well, so what if I do. The Internet is so vast, and there is so much interesting stuff going on all the time, that I’m bound to miss many things. Besides, the truly interesting things get reposted so much that I will see them sooner or later. By doing most of my reading through Twitter, I have found that I am more in control of how long I spend surfing. Whether I want to stop in for a few minutes or hang out for an hour, when I am done and ready to move on to other things, I just close the page and walk away.

Twitter lists are the new feature that have made this really possible for me. I obviously don’t want to follow thousands of people — too much noise. I tend to follow just the people who are consistently interesting. But I can add anyone I want to a list without having to follow them. So when I want to dip into a particular subject of interest, such as the world of book bloggers or minor celebrities, I open up my list on that topic.

I still use Google Reader, but it’s a much more targeted use now. RSS is a very handy way of keeping on top of news that really interests me, such as local events or personal friends’ FriendFeeds or Google alert results. And there are still a very few blogs where I want to see every posting. For instance, I know if it’s interesting, eventually it’s going to show up on MetaFilter, so I still subscribe to that feed. But now when I open Google Reader, the bold number that faces me is usually less than 20, which is a lot easier to zero out.

This is yet another reason why Twitter is so much greater than people generally think it is. And it’s not at all addictive. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find out whether Justin Bieber is still trending.

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    Predicting the future: A futile exercise

    Posted on November 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

    Buddhists advise us to live in the moment. It seems simple, but it is probably one of the hardest things we can do as human beings. Being aware of time gives us consciousness, and is our curse. As Jonathan Franzen says in The Corrections:

    The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid the price for the privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself.

    We obsessively live in the past, wishing we could get a “do-over” or just trying to figure out why things happened the way they did, usually an exercise in futility. But we are even more obsessed with the future. Turn on the TV or NPR, surf the blogs, open the newspaper. You will find story after story, one “expert” after another, trying to tell us what will happen. How will the Senate vote on healthcare; what will the 2010 election results be; what will happen to the economy?

    Stand back from all this noise and view it as a whole, and it quickly becomes meaningless. What makes these pundits’ predictions any more accurate or trustworthy than the predictions of the ancients reading the future in the entrails of their animal sacrifices, or the old lady trying to find a pattern in her tea leaves?

    We look into the future and what we see is the darkness of the abyss. Hardly comforting. So we try to do the impossible: We try to act like we know what is going to happen.

    That’s why “live in the moment” is such great advice, even if it is so difficult to achieve. Think of the concept of flow, of being so focused and in tune with what you are doing that time effectively ceases to exist. It may occur when you’re fixing a car or shaping a vase from clay or taking a run or talking with friends. For me, it usually happens when I’m writing, cooking, gardening, organizing or am caught up in a project that has me fully engaged. Regardless, at that time of flow, you are truly in the moment. The past and the future have lost their significance. For many people, including me, it is these times of “flow” when they are happiest.

    If we all spent more time in flow (or pursuing those activities that bring about that state) and less time worrying about the future, I think we’d actually achieve that other elusive element of human existence: peace.

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    How to give Google Wave invitations

    Posted on November 11, 2009 | 10 Comments

    Notice: Please do not ask me for a Google Wave invitation. I am not giving away any more.

    I see a lot of people have been visiting my blog because of my recent offer of Google Wave invitations, and judging by the search terms, some are confused as to how to give out invitations. I always try to be helpful, so here’s a quick tutorial.

    To give out invitations, you must have gotten some from Google. I don’t think everybody got them. If you were invited by Google to be a beta tester, you did. If you were invited by someone else, you probably didn’t. Google will be sending out more invitations as soon as their servers can handle the additional capacity, by the way, so keep checking.

    Open up Google Wave. In your Inbox you should see a Wave sent just to you with the subject “Invite others to Google Wave.” Click on it to open it. At the bottom of the Wave, you’ll see the number of invitations you have and a box to enter the email addresses of folks you’d like to invite. Once you enter an email address, scroll down in the Wave a bit (use that teeny scroll bar on the right side of the Wave), and click the “Add to invite list” button to nominate them.

    This is important — I don’t think the nominations are automatic. Google wants to control the flow of people coming onto the service, which may explain the delay in someone receiving your invitation. Have patience. I’m fairly positive everyone I nominated eventually got their invitation.

    And that’s it. I haven’t actually been using Google Wave, sad to say. Anybody else doing something cool with it?

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    How to get started in the Web 2.0 world

    Posted on October 2, 2008 | 1 Comment
    Web 2.0

    Image by Daniel F. Pigatto via Flickr

    I have a colleague who’s interested in bringing some of our organization’s knowledge management efforts into the Web 2.0 world, and she wanted to know how to get started. My advice was, before getting an organizational blog or setting up a wiki or something like that, that she — or ideally everyone on her team — get involved on a personal level. Because I don’t think you can get Web 2.0 — and therefore your organization can’t get Web 2.0 — unless you’re doing it. It’s all about participation and collaboration, and that means you have to dive in.

    So here are my suggestions for the steps you should take before you even think about setting up an organizational blog or wiki or anything like that.

    1. Start bookmarking. You are soon going to be touring all over the web, and you need a way to remember the best blogs, videos and other stuff you find. You can use your browser’s bookmarks feature, but the Web 2.0 way is to share. So I suggest getting an account on a social bookmarking site. I recommend Delicious because it is so clean and easy to use, but StumbleUpon is also a good option. Both provide toolbar buttons so you can bookmark as you surf. Get in the habit of bookmarking the sites that interest you and tagging them in meaningful ways.

    2. Read some blogs. Blogs are the heart of the social web. Somewhere out there, someone is writing about something you’re interested in or working on. Use Google’s blog search to find 5-10 blogs on those subjects and start reading them. Take a look at their blogrolls or the blogs they cite often, and start reading them too. Of course, there’s an upper limit to the number of blogs you can read, but you do want to be keeping up with at least 20, probably more if you can handle it.

    RSS feed readers make it a lot easier to keep up with all those blogs, because they deliver new content to you, instead of you having to go out on the web to get it. I like Google Reader myself, but there are many  other choices. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have RSS feed readers built in, as well. To find the feed, look for the orange RSS feed icon and click on it: RSS feed icon

    The most important thing, though, when reading blogs is to comment on what you read and like. Web 2.0 is all about participation, and commenting is one of the main ways to join in. Once you start commenting on blogs in your niche, you’ll meet the bloggers and other commenters and begin getting to know the community that you’re joining.

    3. Jump into Twitter. It’s time to up the interaction a notch, and Twitter is a good way to do it. You can start out small and build up as your confidence increases. Find a few people to follow; first check the blogs you’re reading, as bloggers are typically on Twitter too. See who they are following and follow any of those people who seem interesting, as well. There are plenty of Twitter applications that make following tweets easier.

    Why are you on Twitter? You will get in the habit of sharing: what you’re working on, what you’re reading, links, whatever. And you will have a ready-made community to ask questions and get feedback from. What’s more, it’s fun.

    4. Get a blog. It’s now time to join the conversation. And I don’t mean starting an organizational blog. That should come later. First, you should start your own personal blog where you can write in your own voice. You may choose to write about your work or about some other passion. What matters is that you’re adding your voice to the conversation.

    Starting a blog is easy and takes less than five minutes. I recommend WordPress.com as the best free blogging platform, because even if you don’t know the software, it’s easy to learn and get started on right away. If you’re intimidated by having a full-fledged blog or don’t have the time, you can start a “micro-blog” on Tumblr and share interesting links, video, quotes and other short snippets. Remember to keep commenting on other blogs and leave a link to your blog when you do. You’ll soon find that folks who read your comments are stopping by your blog and commenting on what you’re writing.

    And before you know it, you’re part of Web 2.0.

    If you follow these steps, more or less, and get involved in the online community on a personal level, you’ll probably find it much easier to think of creative and worthwhile ways your organization can get involved.

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