October 8, 2005

New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Ben Widdicombe’s Gatecrasher: Rocco’s ex-flame writes roman �chef: “Just as Plum Sykes [who?] autopsied her relationship with artist Damien Loeb [who?]in her first book, it seems former gossip columnist Deborah Schoeneman[who?] is doing the same with her ex, celebri-chef Rocco DiSpirito.[who?]

A Crown Publishing internal blurb for her upcoming novel, ‘4% Famous,’ notes: ‘Things get complicated as [Kate, the main character] starts dating Marco, the hot new chef-hunk. Her efforts to place good items about him and block damaging ones start to wear on her own career and conscience.’”

Who outside NYC buys these books about NY-only celebrities?

Product Review Policies

1. Please send a copy of your current catalog to the following address:

W. Frederick Zimmerman
Editor & Publisher
wfzimmerman.com
2006 Medford Ste C127
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

and make sure that I am on the mailing lists that you use to announce forthcoming products.

2. I am happy to receive advance or review copies of noteworthy new books, music, magazines, DVDs, hardware, and software. Indeed, as a general rule, I request that you automatically send me advance or review copies of all products that will receive significant promotional exposure or nationalnews coverage. Since my site has a high Google PageRank (5/10), keyword searches on items reviewed usually show up very high in Google search results. It is great if I have a copy of a title on hand the moment that it becomes newsworthy.

3. Please drop me a note with an e-mail address that I can use to request additional information or to notify you of the release of reviews of your products.

4. I cannot guarantee that any particular product received will be reviewed. However, if I request it, there is usually a good likelihood that I need it, appreciate it, and will (eventually) review it.

5. My first commitment is to my readers.

6. I honor embargo dates for release of reviews. However, I do encourage publishers to provide early access to forthcoming products and, all other things being equal, I would prefer to release reviews shortly before the products are in the stores. I believe this will generally be mutually advantageous because the Internet is an excellent place to generate prerelease word-of-mouth “buzz.”

7. This site’s progenitor, The Internet Book Information Center, went live on March 30, 1994, when there were fewer than 100 web sites on the Internet. Until early 1999, serverspace was provided by Metalab at the University of North Carolina which (under its former name of Sunsite) was a pioneer in public Web hosting.

8. IBIC’s Commonplace Book was chosen as an Infi.Net Cool Site of the Day, and I-Way magazine picked IBIC as one of the top 25 Web sites in Arts and Entertainment (number 2 among book-related sites). Major Internet switchboards such as the WWW Virtual Library (maintained by the founders of the Web at the MIT/CERN W3 Consortium), the America Online/GNN Whole Internet Catalog, and the University of Michigan Clearinghouse of Subject-Oriented Internet Resources all have pointed to IBIC as their primary guide to literature and book-related resources on the Net. According to Google, more than 1000 sitesworldwide link to wfzimmerman.com.

Doing the numbers on the AOL-WeblogsInc deal: “Data for the rest of us?
In acquiring Weblogs Inc., AOL has now provided us with some numbers traditional media are willing to pay for a blog. Looking at the numbers above, one can try to guess at the value of a link from an external site. a single link on the weblogsinc network represents 0.002258559942180087 percent of the overall network.

At the different rumored price points from AOL, it looks as follows:
1 link
$25 million valuation => $564.64
30 million valuation => $677.57
40 million valuation => 903.42

Fabulous news. Using inbound HTML links instead of Technorati links, The Zimmerblog is worth between $626,750 and $1,002,796.

Update: widget by the Business Opportunities blog.

Nation-creating is all there really is–inside the Gap: “■’What Were They Thinking?’ op-ed by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 7 October 2005, p. A31.

Friedman’s larger point is also key: we’re doing nation-creating in Iraq, not rebuilding. …

It is crucial for us to remember this: we will create nations in the Gap, not rebuild them. …”

Can we create nations?

Nick and Jessica Simpson take a page from Dumbledore’s book

New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Ben Widdicombe’s Gatecrasher: Rocco’s ex-flame writes roman �chef: “Here’s an angle on Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson’s relationship for the conspiracy theorist in you: An online betting site has canceled wagers on their possible divorce, claiming too many bets came from the couple’s hometowns.

‘We have an extremely strong suspicion that those betting know the couple or are in close enough association to either Simpson or Lachey that they have insider information,’ said Nine.com spokesman Jack Abrams.

‘A near unanimous amount of these bets were placed on the couple not being together,’ according to the statement.

Of course, the current Us Weekly cover story trumpeting their ‘Split!’ (which they deny) might have something to do with it, too.”

Similar rumors with local sources about the death of Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince turned out to be true.

Chris Wetherell, software engineer for Google Reader, writes in the Google Blog:

Reader: “Thankfully, we’re not alone — everyone involved from corporate entities to thousands of independent developers seem to be focused on lowering the barrier to entry for actually making feeds useful.”

Gee, and I thought they were pretty useful already. Maybe you guys should focus first on getting the Reader to actually work right. Kelsey couldn’t add feeds yesterday.

Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees and Other Creatures Unique to The republic
by Lanham, Robert

Publishers Weekly reviewed it as follows:

Lanham, author of The Hipster Handbook and creator and editor of the Web site www.freewilliamsburg.com, extends his anthropological examination of Americans beyond trendy Brooklyn neighborhoods to the entire country, where Yanknecks (’rebel-flag-waving rednecks who live outside the South’), Sigmund Fruits (’people who insist on telling you about their dreams’) and others have existed thus far without being formally studied by ‘idiosyncrologists’ like Lanham and his team. Presented with the authoritative tone of a serious anthropological study, complete with an Idio Rank Scale that assesses the weirdness of each type, many of Lanham’s profiles are hilariously accurate descriptions of co-workers, family members, friends and other acquaintances that almost every American has encountered at some point in their lives. There are the Cornered Rabid Office Workers (CROWs), who ‘claim to be poets or playwrights’ when discussing their work with strangers, ‘even if they just spent the last nine hours doing data entry on the McFlannery acquisition,’ and Hexpatriates, Americans who decry everything about America yet never actually leave the country (and who ‘refer to the Loews multiplex at the mall as ‘the cinema’ and the Motel Six by Hardees as ‘the pensión”). Illustrations by Jeff Bechtel, depicting the fashion sense of Holidorks (people who wear holiday-themed clothing) and Skants (women with shapely butts who always wear spandex pants), enhance Lanham’s characterizations. Though sometimes overly snarky or clearly just fishing for laughs-surely no Silver Surfers (sexually enthusiastic senior citizens) use the pickup line ‘So, baby, what HMO plan do you use?’-Lanham’s book offers an amusing overview of some of the quirkier folks that can be found across the country.”

It does sound funny. I put a hold on it at the Ann Arbor District Library.

Product Review Policies

1. Please send a copy of your current catalog to the following address:

W. Frederick Zimmerman
Editor & Publisher
wfzimmerman.com
2006 Medford Ste C127
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

and make sure that I am on the mailing lists that you use to announce forthcoming products.

2. I am happy to receive advance or review copies of noteworthy new books, music, magazines, DVDs, hardware, and software. Indeed, as a general rule, I request that you automatically send me advance or review copies of all products that will receive significant promotional exposure or nationalnews coverage. Since my site has a high Google PageRank (5/10), keyword searches on items reviewed usually show up very high in Google search results. It is great if I have a copy of a title on hand the moment that it becomes newsworthy.

3. Please drop me a note with an e-mail address that I can use to request additional information or to notify you of the release of reviews of your products.

4. I cannot guarantee that any particular product received will be reviewed. However, if I request it, there is usually a good likelihood that I need it, appreciate it, and will (eventually) review it.

5. My first commitment is to my readers.

6. I honor embargo dates for release of reviews. However, I do encourage publishers to provide early access to forthcoming products and, all other things being equal, I would prefer to release reviews shortly before the products are in the stores. I believe this will generally be mutually advantageous because the Internet is an excellent place to generate prerelease word-of-mouth “buzz.”

7. This site’s progenitor, The Internet Book Information Center, went live on March 30, 1994, when there were fewer than 100 web sites on the Internet. Until early 1999, serverspace was provided by Metalab at the University of North Carolina which (under its former name of Sunsite) was a pioneer in public Web hosting.

8. IBIC’s Commonplace Book was chosen as an Infi.Net Cool Site of the Day, and I-Way magazine picked IBIC as one of the top 25 Web sites in Arts and Entertainment (number 2 among book-related sites). Major Internet switchboards such as the WWW Virtual Library (maintained by the founders of the Web at the MIT/CERN W3 Consortium), the America Online/GNN Whole Internet Catalog, and the University of Michigan Clearinghouse of Subject-Oriented Internet Resources all have pointed to IBIC as their primary guide to literature and book-related resources on the Net. According to Google, more than 1000 sitesworldwide link to wfzimmerman.com.

–
Posted by wfzimmerman to What’s New for Book-Lovers at 10/08/2005 08:06:00 AM

Doing the numbers on the AOL-WeblogsInc deal: “Data for the rest of us?
In acquiring Weblogs Inc., AOL has now provided us with some numbers traditional media are willing to pay for a blog. Looking at the numbers above, one can try to guess at the value of a link from an external site. a single link on the weblogsinc network represents 0.002258559942180087 percent of the overall network.

At the different rumored price points from AOL, it looks as follows:
1 link
$25 million valuation => $564.64
30 million valuation => $677.57
40 million valuation => 903.42

Fabulous news. Using inbound HTML links instead of Technorati links, The Zimmerblog is worth between $626,750 and $1,002,796.

–
Posted by wfzimmerman to Tech Fun at 10/08/2005 07:58:24 AM

Nation-creating is all there really is–inside the Gap: “■’What Were They Thinking?’ op-ed by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 7 October 2005, p. A31.

Friedman’s larger point is also key: we’re doing nation-creating in Iraq, not rebuilding. …

It is crucial for us to remember this: we will create nations in the Gap, not rebuild them. …”

Can we create nations?

–
Posted by wfzimmerman to Against a Dark Background at 10/08/2005 07:38:17 AM

Chris Wetherell, software engineer for Google Reader, writes in the Google Blog:

Reader: “Thankfully, we’re not alone — everyone involved from corporate entities to thousands of independent developers seem to be focused on lowering the barrier to entry for actually making feeds useful.”

Gee, and I thought they were pretty useful already. Maybe you guys should focus first on getting the Reader to actually work right. Kelsey couldn’t add feeds yesterday.

–
Posted by wfzimmerman to Tech Fun at 10/08/2005 07:21:32 AM