The Tree Frog Blog

Memoirists on MySpace

According to PW, grown-ups (erudite, introspective ones, at that) have officially populated the realm of teenagers.  In the TFB's opinion, this bodes poorly for MySpace.  The arrival of poets and essayists over 40 is like a knitting circle crashing a keg party. The teens will take themselves and their disposable income someplace a little more private, where moms, teachers and (gulp) admissions officers can't find them.

Here's a direct link to the MySpace profile, if you care to add the memoirists collective as a friend.

The Stolen Child's Winning Campaign

Keith Donahue's The Stolen Child seems to be doing everything right. He's got a blog on Amazon... Amazon sent galleys to their top 100 reviewers... and NPR covered the unique new approach.

Bases covered. But can any author do this?

Articles of Interest

Evidently LinkedIn is doing quite well.
Pluck is sending 700 blog feeds to major newspapers for potential syndication.

Everybody's getting it; in a matter of months our lives (and our futures) will be 100% online.  The question remains: does all this information enhance our experiences as workers and consumers?

New Collaborative Browser, "Flock," in the Works

Here's an article from a UK paper describing the recently unveiled web browser, Flock.

I haven't used Flock, but in my experiences as an end user of web products and surfing software, nothing will truly revolutionize my experience as much as drag-and-drop. If programmers can make it so I can name a file whatever I want with one click, then drag and drop said file or feed or URL, intuitively, into any bin or list I want, then I will pledge myself loyally to your software.

My frustration with RSS readers and shared bookmarking services like Pluck and Bloglines stems from a lack of intuitive design. I, personally, won't use a service if it takes me more than 3 steps to enroll and get started. I wonder if others feel the same. I also won't use RSS readers because they don't deliver the content to a spot where I'll be bound to see it without having to seek it out. Perhaps this is a problem Flock seeks to solve. Time will tell.

One error in the article: it's no longer true that most bloggers cannot post photos easily to their weblogs.  Creating a Flickr account and linking to it within posts is no longer necessary. I can't speak for the hardcore hard-coders using Movable Type and Wordpress, but Typepad and Blogger can now both host photos on their servers and link to them within posts with a single click.