Guest Post: The Smartphone Experiment

This virtual-book-tour guest post comes Pierre Khawand, who used his TypePad blog The 81-day-experiment as the launch point for his recently released book The Smartphone Experiment. In his post, Pierre talks about his motivation for writing the book and how his TypePad blog helped him gather feedback and build a community around the book as he wrote it.

We have two copies of The Smartphone Experiment to give away to Everything TypePad readers. Just leave a comment with your email address (it won’t be published) so we know how to get in touch.

Update: The giveaway copies have been claimed. The Smartphone Experiment is available for purchase at Lulu.com.

I have recently published The Smartphone Experiment book—how to select your smartphone in 5 easy steps, based on the 81-day-experiment blog (81dayexperiment.typepad.com) which I started on TypePad in August of 2006. In this blog, the focus was on using a variety of smartphones and reporting my daily observations about their features, plans, and usability, in order to help smartphone users make better decisions when it comes to purchasing a smartphone.

In this virtual book tour, and in the next few posts, my attempt is to answer many of the questions that I have been answering in my radio book tour, about smartphones and smartphone safety.

Question: “Why did you write this book?”

Because my focus is on productivity in the workplace (that is what my company, People-OnTheGo, trains in) and smartphones are becoming an important part of productivity. In addition, as more smartphone models are introduced and as technologies and wireless service plans become more complex, buyers are finding it more difficult to select the smartphone that meets their unique requirements. And with an average purchase price of $200-500, and several hours invested in setting up the device and learning it, a bad decision can be an expensive one.

I wanted to provide business professionals with a one-stop resource that provided them everything they needed to make the right decision.

Question: “How was the TypePad platform useful in this process?”

The 81-day-experiment blog, using TypePad, was the vehicle for creating The Smartphone Experiment book. It enabled me to easily have ongoing discussions with smartphone users and to form a community around this topic. I was able to start sharing my findings with the users starting from day 1, instead of waiting until I publish the findings at the end of the experiment. Most importantly, the ability to post the entries on a daily basis, and to get feedback frequently, gave me the motivation to keep going. It would have been a daunting project to write the book without the blog. The blog helped me break down this project into manageable and enjoyable smaller components.

Guest Post: Why Did I Write the ABCs for Expectant Dads?

The following guest post is from author and longtime TypePad blogger, Todd Lieman, who wrote the reference book, ABCs for Expectant Dads.

“What the heck have I done?”

That’s one of the first reactions I had after sharing the “line on the stick moment” with my wife. (Which is shortly followed by, “I really hope it’s mine.”) When you see that line and know your partner is pregnant, there is (usually) immediate joy. Then fear. Then insanity. Then the questions. What do I do next? Who do I turn to? Will I ever play golf again? What the hell is an episiotomy? (Don’t even get me started on the “mucous plug.”

Becoming a father for the first time is an exciting time for any man (provided, you know, it’s on purpose, and that you and the woman carrying your baby aren’t in high school…or cousins). As the time passed (and my wife grew), I quickly realized that I didn’t know the first thing about pregnancy or what to expect. My wife, on the other hand, started studying for the pregnancy with all the vim and vigor of a Harvard educated med student. She had magazines, books, Web sites and friends to turn to, all of which were loaded with what seemed like great information. She was going to be prepared.

As for me? I had no idea what to think or expect.

A brief interview with Alex Ross

If you're a fan of modern classical music, then you probably already know all about Alex Ross, the music critic for The New Yorker magazine, his TypePad blog, and his just-published book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.  If you're not (yet) a fan, Ross' writing is a great place to learn about the connection between West Side Story and Schoenberg's 12 tones, or the path from Jean Sibelius to John Coltrane.

After Ross recently published a piece in The New Yorker about how blogging (and the Internet more broadly) is helping classical music, we decided to catch up with him and ask him a couple questions about his own blog writing and reading...

Q: Why do you blog?

I often ask this myself. I do have a very nice day job, after all, at the New Yorker. But I find it irresistible. The blog allows me to indulge in a kind of writing that I couldn't pull off anywhere else — a little bit sly, a little bit whimsical, a little bit aphoristic, a little bit poetic, some days nothing more than a photo, other days a fragment of an essay. It's a very "now" medium, but it also somehow harks back to the nineteenth century when authors would publish bits and pieces of treatises and diaries in the columns of newspapers. After a while, with the fascinating suggestions coming in from readers, the blog more or less writes itself!

Q: What music blogs are you reading lately?

I'm reluctant to pick out a few music blogs for fearing of slighting others, but here goes. In my recent New Yorker piece I singled out Jeremy Denk's blog Think Denk, a compulsively readable mix of close musical analysis and personal confession. There's never been anything like it. I also regularly check in on Sid Chen's The Standing Room, which casts a very smart and sly eye on the classical world. Sid recently "outed" himself after several years of anonymous blogging: he's the artistic administrator of the Kronos Quartet.

Soho the Dog is the deliriously inventive blog of the composer and critic Matthew Guerrieri. As often in the classical blogosphere, the deeply serious mixes with the deeply zany. We're all waiting the next installment of Matthew's ongoing graphic novel, "Strauss and Mahler Re-Enact Your Favorite Movie Moments." And, for fear of devastatingly sardonic reprisals, I must cite the queen of opera bloggers, La Cieca, who knows which sopranos are about to have "procedures" and which tenors are about to go bananas — and is a brilliant opera critic on the side.

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Many thanks to Alex, and here's to continued success with his column, his book and, of course, his blog!

TypePad Books: My Start Up Life

Ben Casnocha, one of the brightest minds in the online world, brings us My Start-Up Life. This is an engaging entrepreneurial tale from a (very) young and energetic entrepreneur and an instructive how-to, with lessons learned from Ben and his "brain trust" of advisors who contribute guest essays on business. Current or aspiring start-up founders will find the story and insights valuable, as will anyone who wants to learn how to think like an entrepreneur.

Ready to get inspired? Buy the book or check out his TypePad blog.

TypePad Books: Journal Revolution

Journal Revolution: Rise Up and Create! is an artistic inspiration authored by sister duo, Linda and Karen, as they convey their take on communicating personal history through artistic journals. Visual Chronicles is all about YOU: your dreams, your memories, your daily routines, your greatest loves, and your secret pet peeves. Enjoy the fun of getting to know yourself better, savoring the wonderful ebb and flow of your everydays, and celebrating it all in vibrant, visual mementos of your life journey.

The View has called Visual Chronicles, “...the only book you’ll ever need to scrapbook in a way that is uniquiely yours.” Read more reviews, join the discussion group, or hear the latest from the best selling authors via their TypePad blog.

Citizen Marketers

We're really excited about this month's TypePad Book, Citizen Marketers by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. We've already featured their excellent TypePad blog, Church of the Customer, where the Chicago duo dispense marketing wisdom to thousands of savvy subscribers and casual readers. That's why we were expecting a solid hit from the team's second book, following up on 2002’s Creating Customer Evangelists. That said, we think Citizen Marketers, a narrative look at how social media is changing the way individuals and companies interact, is pretty much a home run.

That's why we decided to not only make Marketers the January Book of the Month, but offer a 10% discount and a free copy of the book to new TypePad Pro-level annual subscribers. If you know someone who is ready to move from having a web site to having an influence, point them to this promotion where they'll get the tools they need to make an impact, and also learn about the motivation and methods of the online influencers that McConnell and Huba discovered during their research.

If you want to get a taste of the duo's deep knowledge about the intersection of networked media and marketing strategy, just listen to the TypePad Books podcast, which features McConnell and Huba in conversation with our own evangelist, Anil Dash. We think you'll find some great takeaways, no matter where along the business blogging spectrum you fall.

We particularly enjoyed the authors' take on blogging software: "Whenever we talk to people about blogging, we always point them to TypePad because it has the best systems, we think, for the different levels of engagement that people need for blogging. Whether they're a beginner or they need industrial-strength tools for working towards a large crowd."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

Listen to our conversation with Steven Johnson

We've been fans of Steven Johnson ever since his Feedmag.com days of the late '90s, and Interface Culture, his seminal book on computer user interfaces.  (Interface Culture is worth revisiting now, especially for its chapter on the simple hyperlink, the building block of blogs.)  His latest book, The Ghost Map, chronicles a pivotal outbreak of cholera in 1854 London, and is our featured book of the month at books.typepad.com. 

Yesterday Anil Dash and I had the pleasure of talking with Steven about his new book, life in mid-19th century London, life in early 21st century Brooklyn, and his new startup, Outside.in, a site that lets you share and discover what's happening in your neighborhood. Steven blogs on TypePad, of course, at stevenberlinjohnson.com.

You can listen to the conversation here, or grab the MP3 file directly.

Listen to our conversation with Debbie Weil

Yesterday I had the pleasure of chatting with Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, for our series of podcasts with authors who blog on TypePad.  Debbie was gracious enough to spend 20 minutes with us to talk about why business are blogging, who's doing it well and to pass on some advice to business that are just getting started with blogs.  You can listen to our conversation here, or you can grab the 9.5mb file directly.

This is our fourth TypePad podcast; hopefully we're getting better at these!  Our apologies to the intrepid users who tried to tune into our Skypecast with Debbie last week; to simplify matters we went a bit more "old tech" for this week's conversation.  If you're interested in subscribing to our amateur radio experiments in iTunes or another favorite audio player, you can grab an RSS feed of just our podcasts from our friends at Odeo.

Chat with Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book

Debbie Weil is a well-known corporate blogging consultant, author of The Corporate Blogging Book and our featured author for October at books.typepad.com.  She blogs on TypePad at BlogWriteForCEOs.com, where she covers the ins, outs, ups and downs of business blogging.

We're very pleased to be hosting a moderated Skypecast conversation with Weil this Thursday, October 12th at 2:00 pm PDT to talk about her book and best practices for businesses that are blogging.  To participate, all you need is Skype and this link: skypecasts.skype.com.  If you can't join us, don't worry; as always we'll be recording the conversation and releasing it as a podcast just a few days later.

Update: We had some technical difficulties with the Skypecast this afternoon, and we apologize for that!  We're going to record an old-fashioned podcast with Debbie and release it as soon as possible!  For everyone who tried to join in this afternoon, we apologize.

 

Listen to our conversation with Shari Caudron

On Tuesday we had the pleasure of hosting Shari Caudron for the latest in our monthly series of Skypecasts / podcasts with authors who blog on TypePad.  Shari is the author of Who Are You People, a Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America, and blogs on TypePad at whoareyoupeople.typepad.com.  Shari and I talked about everything from Barbie dolls to storm chasers to the Grobanites, as well as the combined power of blogs and MeetUp.com.  If you missed the Skypecast, you can listen to our conversation here, or you can grab the 19mb file directly.

This is our third TypePad podcast; if you're interested in subscribing to our amateur radio experiments in iTunes or another favorite audio player, you can grab an RSS feed of just our podcasts from our friends at Odeo.