Internet Audiences Growing: How Will You Respond?

Internet Audiences Growing: How Will You Respond?

Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages
Via the December 30 New York Times: Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages. Excerpt:The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many. Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States.The globalization of the Web...

Via the December 30 New York Times: Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages. Excerpt:

The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many. 

Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States.

The globalization of the Web has inspired entrepreneurs like Ram Prakash Hanumanthappa, an engineer from outside Bangalore, India. Mr. Ram Prakash learned English as a teenager, but he still prefers to express himself to friends and family members in his native Kannada. But using Kannada on the Web involves computer keyboard maps that even Mr. Ram Prakash finds challenging to learn. 

So in 2006 he developed Quillpad, an online service for typing in 10 South Asian languages. Users spell out words of local languages phonetically in Roman letters, and Quillpad’s predictive engine converts them into local-language script. Bloggers and authors rave about the service, which has attracted interest from the cellphone maker Nokia and the attention of Google Inc., which has since introduced its own transliteration tool. 

Mr. Ram Prakash said Western technology companies have misunderstood the linguistic landscape of India, where English is spoken proficiently by only about a tenth of the population and even many college-educated Indians prefer the contours of their native tongues for everyday speech. 

“You’ve got to give them an opportunity to express themselves correctly, rather than make a fool out of themselves and forcing them to use English,” he said.

It's a fascinating article about an important development. I've added a link to Quillpad in the Webwriting Resources list.

American Red Cross Disaster Relief via Amazon

Firefox The IE Killer

Housekeeping changes
With the fourth edition of Writing for the Web just a couple of weeks away, I'm making some changes in this site. The most obvious is the shifting of posts to the left-hand column. This will make it easier for visitors using mobile phones to read new posts without having to scroll through all the lists that used to fill the column. I've also reshuffled some of the other lists,...

With the fourth edition of Writing for the Web just a couple of weeks away, I'm making some changes in this site.

The most obvious is the shifting of posts to the left-hand column. This will make it easier for visitors using mobile phones to read new posts without having to scroll through all the lists that used to fill the column.

I've also reshuffled some of the other lists, and dropped one or two. The next step will be to check all the remaining links and make sure they still work. If your site should be in one of my lists, email me and I'll be glad to include you.

Jakob Nielsen reviews the Kindle 2
For a quarter of a century, almost, Jakob Nielsen has lamented the low resolution of text on the computer screen, and he's been right. Webwriters have created a whole new style of writing to deal with that problem. Now he's written a Kindle 2 Usability Review (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox). The summary: Amazon's new e-book reader offers print-level readability and shines for reading fiction, but it has awkward interaction design and...

For a quarter of a century, almost, Jakob Nielsen has lamented the low resolution of text on the computer screen, and he's been right. Webwriters have created a whole new style of writing to deal with that problem.

Now he's written a Kindle 2 Usability Review (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox). The summary:

Amazon's new e-book reader offers print-level readability and shines for reading fiction, but it has awkward interaction design and poor support for non-linear content.

Quite apart from the excitement of a new toy, the reported sharpness of Kindle 2 text has a portent for webwriters: What happens when the same sharpness is available for ordinary computer monitors and even mobile phones?

For other reasons, Amy Gahran sees great promise in the Kindle 2 for journalists. In another post, she links to a story arguing that the New York Times should give every subscriber a free Kindle, and to a review of the Sony PRS-700—a competitor of the Kindle.

Obama: The first hypertext inaugural speech?
I'm not a huge fan of Stanley Fish, but today in the New York Times he did the best parsing I've seen of Barack Obama’s Prose Style. Excerpt:... if you look at the text – spread out like a patient etherized on a table – that’s exactly what it’s like. There are few transitions and those there are – “for,” “nor,” “as for,” “so,” “and so” – seem just stuck...

I'm not a huge fan of Stanley Fish, but today in the New York Times he did the best parsing I've seen of Barack Obama’s Prose Style. Excerpt:

... if you look at the text – spread out like a patient etherized on a table – that’s exactly what it’s like. There are few transitions and those there are – “for,” “nor,” “as for,” “so,” “and so” – seem just stuck in, providing a pause, not a marker of logical progression. 

Obama doesn’t deposit us at a location he has in mind from the beginning; he carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate. 

Of course, as something heard rather than viewed, the speech provides no spaces for contemplation. We have barely taken in a small rhetorical flourish like “All this we can do. All this we will do” before it disappears in the rear-view mirror. 

But if we regard the text as an object rather than as a performance in time, it becomes possible (and rewarding) to do what the pundits are doing: linger over each alliteration, parse each emphasis, tease out each implication. 

There is a technical term for this kind of writing – parataxis, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the placing of propositions or clauses one after the other without indicating . . . the relation of co-ordination or subordination between them.” 

The opposite of parataxis is hypotaxis, the marking of relations between propositions and clause by connectives that point backward or forward. One kind of prose is additive – here’s this and now here’s that; the other asks the reader or hearer to hold in suspension the components of an argument that will not fully emerge until the final word.

Parataxis is what hypertext is all about: individual ideas, with no connections between them except those that the reader chooses to make. For much of my forty years as a teacher of writing, I pushed my students to make connections. 

Lead your reader from one idea to the next, I told them. That "Next" or "Therefore" or "However" would put your reader into the right frame of mind.

But for close to two decades, we have increasingly read hypertext rather than print text, and made our own connections between chunks. Obama's own prose style is quite at home in print, where he's talking to us one on one. When he's talking to a million people face to face, and a couple of billion around the world, he settles comfortably into parataxis. 

No one seems to mind.

The 2008 Weblog Awards
The polls are now open for The 2008 Weblog Awards: Polls Archives. Even if you're not a fan of such competitions, you may find some worthwhile blogs in unexpected places.

The polls are now open for The 2008 Weblog Awards: Polls Archives. Even if you're not a fan of such competitions, you may find some worthwhile blogs in unexpected places.

Four Marketing Tips for Self-Publishers
You may have already noticed that self-publishing is very time consuming. Most of your time is spent on marketing and publicity and very little time on writing.

Welcome to the White House—and the 21st Century (updated)
Back in 2002, giving a workshop in Sao Paulo, I showed my students the current White House website. It was pretty dull, but it did offer a page in Spanish. Politically smart, I guess, except that the links on the Spanish page were still in English. Politics on the web was still pretty primitive. Last year I wrote an article about the gorgeous Barack Obama campaign website. Clearly, the upstart...

Back in 2002, giving a workshop in Sao Paulo, I showed my students the current White House website. It was pretty dull, but it did offer a page in Spanish. Politically smart, I guess, except that the links on the Spanish page were still in English. Politics on the web was still pretty primitive.

Last year I wrote an article about the gorgeous Barack Obama campaign website. Clearly, the upstart understood the web far better than any other politician on the planet. 

Now, on the day of his inauguration, we have an invitation: Welcome to the White House.

Webwriters, take notes. Barack Obama has raised the standard. 

I've discussed the site in more detail on The Hook, the politics blog of The Tyee.

Update: Jimmy Orr at the Christian Science Monitor has a good article on the site, written from his perspective as W's original website guy.

Internet Marketing Blog Directory

Blogging is Publishing
I wish I could say that "blogging is publishing" was something that I came up with on my own, but that is not the case. However, I have been pondering on this phrase for a while and decided to write an entry on my thoughts.

Will E-Publishing Become the New Leader?
Let the truth be told I am not a big supporter of e-books even though I wrote an entry earlier with regards to the advantages of them. Though I am not a fan, e-books are good for one thing, and that is establishing yourself as an expert.

Clay Shirky on newspapers and what comes after them
Everyone seems to be linking to Clay Shirky's long, thought-provoking post Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable ... so I might as well too. An excerpt:The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant...

Everyone seems to be linking to Clay Shirky's long, thought-provoking post Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable ... so I might as well too. An excerpt:

The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. 

So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs? 

I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. 

The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. 

We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.

Webwriting in Spanish
Cast your bread upon the waters... I just ran across a Spanish website called elclerigo! that deals with a lot of web issues, and there was a post on how to write for the web, based on the Spanish translation of my book. The examples given were by Spanish students, dealing with Spanish subjects. This cheered me up. When I first read Escribir para la Web, I realized at once...

Cast your bread upon the waters...

I just ran across a Spanish website called elclerigo! that deals with a lot of web issues, and there was a post on how to write for the web, based on the Spanish translation of my book.

The examples given were by Spanish students, dealing with Spanish subjects. This cheered me up. When I first read Escribir para la Web, I realized at once that the examples and links were those of the English version. Native Spanish speakers would be likely to find my links irrelevant to their own needs.

(The translator, however, did an extraordinary job of echoing my writing style...it was pleasant but odd to read myself in such fluent Spanish, when my command of the language is really pretty weak.)

Well, I'm glad that the teacher and students found the book useful, and it's given me more food for thought about the fourth edition. And I'm adding this site to the Foreign-Language Resources list.

Obama's wisdom about email
Via CNN Political Ticker: Obama thinks he can keep his blackberry. Excerpt:President-elect Barack Obama told CNN Friday he thinks he may be able to “hang onto” his BlackBerry after all. In an interview with CNN’s John King, he talked about the privacy issues that threaten his ability to maintain normal communications – and his optimism that, unlike his predecessor, he’s going to be able to keep using e-mail after he...

Via CNN Political Ticker: Obama thinks he can keep his blackberry. Excerpt:

President-elect Barack Obama told CNN Friday he thinks he may be able to “hang onto” his BlackBerry after all. 

In an interview with CNN’s John King, he talked about the privacy issues that threaten his ability to maintain normal communications – and his optimism that, unlike his predecessor, he’s going to be able to keep using e-mail after he enters the Oval Office. 

Then there’s the BlackBerry. “You like these,” said CNN’s John King. “I was just with you before this, and you had a couple of them. And there are a lot of people who say, because this will end up in the presidential library, because you don't have privacy any more. Your life's about to change Tuesday noon. You have to give this up.” 

“Yes,” conceded Obama. 

“You going to do it?” asked King. 

“I think we're going to be able to beat this back,” Obama responded. “….I think we're going to be able to hang onto one of these. Now, my working assumption, and this is not new, is that everything I write on e-mail could end up being on CNN. So I make sure that — to think before I press ‘send.’”

If only the rest of us would think before we press "send."

The Advantages of Creating Your Own E-Book
E-books have become more and more popular in the recent years. Although some people prefer a printed book in their hand, e-books are still in demand.

Get aboard the Cluetrain again
Via Inspecht, an Australian blog: The Cluetrain rides again. Excerpt: Almost 10 years ago Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine published a book that was going to change the way we saw the world, The Cluetrain Manifesto. The basic premise in the book is that markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, and honest, sometimes even direct. Basically you can’t fake it....

Via Inspecht, an Australian blog: The Cluetrain rides again. Excerpt:

Almost 10 years ago Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine published a book that was going to change the way we saw the world, The Cluetrain Manifesto.

The basic premise in the book is that markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, and honest, sometimes even direct. Basically you can’t fake it.

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to engage in a corporate monotone of mission statements, product strategies and , marketing brochures.

However everything is now changing. People are connecting, and working together. The Internet is enabling these conversations and there is nothing corporations can do to stop it.

The blog post contain a slide show of the Cluetrain Manifesto's key points. Very much worth reviewing (for the old-timers) and discovering (for the newbies).

Thanks to Amy Gahran for the link.

Worst websites of 2008
I haven't visited Web Pages That Suck in a long time, but I did so this evening. Not sure it was a good idea. I clicked on the button for Contenders for worst web site of 2008 group 1, and no, it was not an exaggeration. I looked at the first ten, and decided not to go further. While HavenWorks.com ranks just #3, it was the only site that made...

I haven't visited Web Pages That Suck in a long time, but I did so this evening. Not sure it was a good idea.

I clicked on the button for Contenders for worst web site of 2008 group 1, and no, it was not an exaggeration. I looked at the first ten, and decided not to go further.

While HavenWorks.com ranks just #3, it was the only site that made me cry out in horror.

Here we are, well into the web's second decade, and people are still creating sites like this?

Not only that, people are still providing Websites That Suck with plenty of new material.

Free Bonus Gifts

A new blog for a new book
I've started a blog for a new book just getting under way: Write Your Nonfiction Book Online. After using blogs (including this one) to create and promote three books, it seems natural to do it for a fourth. Blogs make good workspaces for print projects, especially those requiring access to online resources. And once the book is out, the blog becomes a promotional space and a way to update and...

I've started a blog for a new book just getting under way: Write Your Nonfiction Book Online. After using blogs (including this one) to create and promote three books, it seems natural to do it for a fourth. Blogs make good workspaces for print projects, especially those requiring access to online resources. And once the book is out, the blog becomes a promotional space and a way to update and correct the text.

It's also now possible, of course, to write and publish online, so webwriters may find some of the content of the new blog useful for that purpose also.

Slow blogging
Via The Canadian Journalism Project: Slooowww is a post about "slow blogging," which has been around since at least 2006 but isn't in any hurry to impose itself. Slow blogging has its own Slow Blog and an advocate at Oxford University Press. I sympathize with the concept. Over at H5N1, I may post ten or twelve items in a busy day. Apart from the demands on my time, I wonder...

Via The Canadian Journalism Project: Slooowww is a post about "slow blogging," which has been around since at least 2006 but isn't in any hurry to impose itself.

Slow blogging has its own Slow Blog and an advocate at Oxford University Press.

I sympathize with the concept. Over at H5N1, I may post ten or twelve items in a busy day. Apart from the demands on my time, I wonder how much impact any given post may have.

But it's essentially a clipping service, and seems to be valued as such. Here and on some of my other blogs, the posts come less often. But I hope each has some useful value.