So Misguided

James Glave, author of Almost Green (now in stores), has some new trailers up for his book.

I like James and his enthusiasm.

http://glave.com/trailers/

ALMOST GREEN is a quirky look at one man’s quest to build an eco shed, a sustainably designed writing studio. This “green” house was one work of wonder in terms of battling opinions, neighbours, suppliers and the land itself. 

The Weakerthans played with Feist at Deer Lake Park a couple of weeks ago. It was awesome.

The Weakerthans on MySpace.

... or at least more empathetic.

According to researchers at the University of Toronto, reading fiction elevates your “social intelligence.”

“For the first time in history there is now scientific evidence that reading fiction has psychological benefits,” writes Keith Oatley in New Scientist. Oatley is a professor of psychology and the leader of the Toronto team. He is also an award-winning novelist (The Case of Emily V.). On the phone from the University of Toronto, he explains that reading fiction appears to stimulate parts of the brain that govern empathy. “What you’re doing when you’re reading fiction is you’re allowing yourself to become another person for a short period of time ... It loosens up your personality, your rigidities.” --from TheStar.com

Petite Anglaise is the pseudonym of Catherine Sanderson, English blogger living in Paris and the author of a new book Petite Anglaise (published by Random House).

Catherine/Petite has an engaging and hilarious writing style, which appears perfectly fine-tuned in her book. You can appreciate my fandom here when I say that publishers often make the mistake of publishing bloggers and thinking that what’s compelling in a couple of paragraphs can be morphed into a full-length book. Such trepidation is not required when reading Petite Anglaise (book or blog). From blog to book really works for Petite Anglaise--a blog that sits on that fine line between reality and embellishment that is often prevalent in autobiography.

Here’s a quote from a recent blog post titled “Fraud”

I fully intended for this post to be a witty open letter to the person who stole my identity and used my bank card for an extravagant online shopping spree (total cost: €3.285,17). Or perhaps a song, in the style of Brassens, who in Stances à un Cambrioleur so eloquently thanked the burglar who had the good taste to pay his house a visit.

It would have described my joy at receiving a letter from the Caisse d’Epargne, heavy with menace, which informed me, in typically verbose (but not particularly comprehensible) French, that having noticed repeated dysfonctionnements consécutifs à l’utilisation de ma carte bleue, I was invited to “regularise” the resulting overdraft. If not my card would be cancelled, my bank account immobilised, the Banque de France notified, and helicopters would be dispatched to hover outside my apartment window so that men in uniforms could shout at me over their loud hailers and/or airbourne snipers could get me in their sights.

The book chronicles the birth of the blog Petite Anglaise and the subsequent consequences. Catherine, a young Englishwoman in Paris, in love with all things French, is feeling a little less than loved by Mr. Frog (her husband) and less than in love with her job. The discontent and the discovery of blogging results in an anonymous blog Petite Anglaise. Catherine shares the intimate details of her life in what she hopes will be read by Mr. Frog but instead captures the attention of many bloggers and blog readers. Apparently 100,000 visitors per month.

And like all anonymous and wildly popular bloggers, Catherine eventually reveals herself at a blogger meetup. She develops some very well-formed relationships with her readers, one of which is a little too well formed and it rattles her family substantially and tempts her to abandon the real life she’s created. But I’m not going to tell you what happens to Mr. Frog and Tadpole (her daughter).

Petite Anglaise (on Amazon.ca) by Catherine Sanderson.

Petite Anglaise (the blog)

A small business group that I participate in has pulled together a panel for SXSW. It’s about how to create your own small biz mafia to rule the world (or at the least to rule your niche and get support from peers).

For our session to be selected we need some votes. If you’re so inclined, please go vote for us.

You create a free login, it’s quick and ease.
Voting closes Aug 29.

Vote Here: Micromafia: Building a Local Small Business Support Network

Click on the stars beside the title to vote. If you’re not logged in, you’ll be prompted to do so.

Many thanks!

About SXSW
The SXSW Interactive Festival features five days of exciting panel content and amazing parties. It’s a festival/conference for digital creatives, technology entrepreneurs, hard-core geeks, content creators, and other bright lights. I wanna go!

Spiritual pollution is also a concern at the Olympic Games.

Amazon has a list of books that have been banned by the Chinese government for supposedly contributing to spiritual pollution.

First: Julie Wilson is awesome. Check out her blog Seen Reading. There’s a little SoMisguided banner there this month. And that’s not the only reason why she rocks. In addition to the Seen Reading posts (these are short stories of people Julie sees on her commute and an excerpt from the books they are reading), there are now audio clips.

Second: (Number 1 in my heart) is James Sherrett and AdHack Are you coming to the party on Friday?

AdHack Beta Launch Party!
Anza Club, kicking off at 7 pm with some true DIY spirit.

Details:
* 3 W. 8th Ave (at Ontario) Vancouver

Entry is free, just tell us if you’re coming.

Drink beer, gossip, talk about advertising and the better stuff you could make. It will be joyous. I will be drinking. Sometimes these things are related.

PutPlace.com is one of my Boxcar Marketing/Capulet Communications clients and on July 3 we announced the Pull a Face for PutPlace contest. Remember my little photo story?

Well the 5 finalists have been selected and I think they are all awesome so you should vote on the one you like.

Got to putplace.com/pullaface to vote.

And, if you want to avoid pulling a face because of lost data. Do the Back Up!

PutPlace is one option and you can get 2 GB of free storage in their limited time offer.

Amazon Press Release on BusinessWire

Amazon.com announced today that it is acquiring AbeBooks of Victoria, BC.

“AbeBooks is an online marketplace for books, with over 110 million primarily used, rare and out-of-print books listed for sale by thousands of independent booksellers from around the world.”

Very interesting.

In my spare time *snicker* I’m helping organize a training workshop for users and developers of ExpressionEngine. EE is one of the tools that I love to use to create websites. SoMisguided is an EE site, my company site is EE, most of the client sites Boxcar Marketing has built are EE.

Who’s helping with this monster task: Hop Studios and Venn Communications. Hooray!

What do you need to know?
EE Roadshow: an ExpressionEngine training event is coming soon.

• If you’ve ever wondered how to make ExpressionEngine work better for you in your job, this is the event for you.
• If you’ve ever wondered how the other developers make EE jump through hoops and rool over, this is your event.
• And if you also happen to wonder what EE developers look like in person, well, don’t miss the EE Roadshow.

EE Roadshow is an event for ExpressionEngine users and developers. It is part training, part brainstorming, part networking and all wonderful. ExpressionEngine’s online community is friendly and productive and supportive, one of the best on the Internet. EE Roadshow is our way of bringing ExpressionEngine users and developers together in a real-world way.

EE Roadshow Event Details
Friday, September 26th
Vancouver, BC
1-5 p.m. (then stay for the part-ee!)
$50 per person

Yup, you can make it here from out of town, you can get out of the office on a Friday, and you can come to a great event for the low price of $50. Why wait? Register today!

Check out the EE Roadshow sessions. We are covering everything from basic EE setup to developing your own module. And there’ll be special guests from EllisLab (the folks behind ExpressionEngine), as well as interesting prizes.

There has never been an EE Roadshow before so come be part of the inaugural one!

About EE Roadshow
EE Roadshow is brought to you by Boxcar Marketing, Venn Communications and Hop Studios, three passionate EE development companies who want to help bring ExpressionEngine to every Web site in the world.

Have questions? Contact Monique.

In December 2007, Amazon bought JK Rowling’s handwritten book The Tales of Beedle the Bard for $4 Million. At the time I thought it was awesome for Amazon to have bought the book, and that it was fitting for the number of copies they’ve sold of the books and ... well isn’t that nice.

I was also pretty desperate to hold that book. The little white gloves of the Sotheby’s staff are etched in my mind.

And NOW ... Amazon has the exclusive right to sell The Tales of Beedle the Bard to the masses. There is a limited collector’s edition that I just pre-ordered and a standard edition.

Here it is. Drool away. And if you want to order the book and follow my link below, I’ve signed up for the Amazon affiliate program and will get a percentage of the sale. That would be a nice Christmas present and could pay the hosting fees of SoMisguided or I could turn it back to you in the form of postage and mail you out any book that I’ve reviewed on my site (except for the signed copies of stuff I’m particularly fond of ...) Ya, that’s a better idea.

Who’s for that? If we make any money, I’ll post the amount and how many books and postage that equals and I’ll send you Christmas presents. We’ll figure out the details as we go. (I’m saying Christmas because Beetle isn’t published until Dec. 4--but you can pre-order.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is Available for Pre-Order on Amazon.

I’m fascinated by Amazon’s business strategy. It’s really clever.

* Amazon acquires Audible.com (January 2008)
* Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos invests in Twitter (June 2008) through his personal fund, Bezos Expeditions.
* Kindle sales are 12% of Amazon’s total sales [update: Kindle sales are 12% of the 130,000 titles available on Kindle and in physical form] (June 2008).

Social retail. Retail on the go. Sales using your Amazon account. Sales via cell. It’s all credit card processing.

And yesterday, Amazon beefed up its payment services by launching Checkout by Amazon and Amazon Simple Pay.

Why is this clever? Because. Amazon became huge by allowing developers to use their API. To create their own stores.With these payment options, other e-commerce sites can insert an Amazon Checkout cart on their sites. E-commerce is hard. This is easy.

* For the user: One-click ordering for anyone with an existing Amazon account
* For the website owner: Order management, shipping, sales tax calculations and more from a reputable checkout service
* For Amazon: data mining and part of the transaction fee. Transaction fees start at 2.9 percent of the order amount, plus 30 cents per order (unless you’re doing a lot of business). And for transactions less than $10, Amazon charges 5 percent plus 5 cents.

Here’s what I think their new motto is:
Amazon. Solving the Hard Problems.

Payments. Data storage. Cloud computing services. Hello Amazon. You’re not the bookstore I remember. But you’re certainly making money.

Here’s a little publicized Amazon feature: Amazon Digital Text Platform

Digital Text Platform is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets you upload and format your books for sale in the Kindle Store.

It’s Your Thing. Have a book you want to sell? Sign up with Digital Text Platform and publish your content in the Amazon Kindle Store in minutes.

Do It. If you have an Amazon.com account, you’re already signed up with Digital Text Platform. Start publishing now!

Your Way. Digital Text Platform gives you everything you need to become your own publisher today. See for yourself.

Hello Publishing 2.0.

The Magician is the second book in the series “The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel” and I like it a lot.

The first book The Alchemyst introduces readers to the legend of Nicholas Flamel.

Flamel was born in Paris on September 28, 1330. He is acknowledged as the greatest alchemyst of his day and it is said that he discovered the secret of eternal life.

My Harry Potter friends will know about him and the Philosopher’s Stone.

The records show that he died in 1418 but his tomb is empty.

The legend is that he lives on by making the elixir of life and that the secret of eternal life is hidden within a book that he protects called the Book of Abraham the Mage.

Michael Scott’s series is based on this part of the legend--that the book, in the wrong hands, will destroy the world.

The Magician, Dr. John Dee, plans to steal the book and bring about its prophecy. The Alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel, must protect the book and the good side of the prophecy, which is that twins--Sophie and Josh Newman (regular kids) are the only hope.

The Twins have powers that can be awakened and if they stay on the right side of the battle, they can save the world from the Dark Elders.

I know in writing it seems flaky, but it’s a great, page-turning adventure. I like these fantasy books that are based in reality but have a side of reality that we just don’t see or understand. We ignore magic because it’s just not sensible.

6 books in the series. Books 1 & 2 are in stores.

The Magician by Michael Scott is published by Delacorte Press (part of Random House)

Zoudov. According to GrainEdit this is a student film.