blogging and online privacy survey

I took an intelligent survey about blogging and privacy. The survey was as anonymous as anything can be on the Internet. It’s part of the work that Karen Mc Cullagh is doing. She’s a PhD researcher at CCSR, University of Manchester, England. She’s sponsored by the ESRC and Office of the Information Commissioner, UK.

To take part in her survey, click here: http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/privacysurvey/. Find out more about Karen and her research.

The survey asks a lot of the questions that need to be asked. It only takes a few minutes.

The UK seems to have bigger privacy issues than us here in the US. According to this very interesting map, the UK is the worst privacy offender (aside from the usual suspects like China and Russia). The US is second to the UK, but most of our bad marks seem to stem from corporate offenses. (Which I’ve been suspecting for some time.)

If you blog or otherwise publish online, Karen’s survey asks questions you need to be asking yourself, whether or not you fill out all the answers and send it in.

From her e-mail to me

If you participate you will be asked to answer questions anonymously about your blogging practices and your expectations of privacy when publishing online. All answers will be stored and analysed on a confidential basis. The responses will be used to inform academic and policy discussions on blogging practices and attitudes towards privacy.

national author’s day

Did you know today is National Author’s Day?* Not many people do. How to celebrate? Well…um…how about…kiss an author today!

Speaking of authors, I guess I am one now. Officially. Mostly. Sort of. Apparently enough of one that my ideas have already been lifted. As usual when being co-opted, I feel a mix of amusement and anger. This time I also feel a touch of envy.

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a squidoo convert

I heard about Squidoo over a month ago; closer to two months, actually. I checked out the site and decided it looked like too much work. Later, I decided it wasn’t too much work, but I didn’t have anything written down.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to just go for it. So here’s my Squidoo lens, with more lenses planned. To find out more about Squidoo, click here (this is a PDF).

It took me four painstaking hours to come up with that little bit of text. But now that I’ve done it, I can do it again! It’s not that it’s fun, but it’s sort of like creating an instant Web site without all the coding. I can think of all sorts of topics I want to Squidoo about (I don’t know what the actual verb would be).

I haven’t played much with this Web 2.0 stuff (beyond blogging) but this first experience was great. Next time, I hope I can get my lens up in just a couple hours.

If anyone else has created a Squidoo lens, let me know!

how to sell books (globally)

In a recent Newsweek bit, a very enterprising fiction author is promoting his book by joining book clubs and discussing his work. He’s become so popular that book clubs are now booking him to appear and talk. I assume his sales are up too.

That’s a smart guy.

But what about non-fiction authors, particularly those with controversial subject matter or languishing sales? There’s only one way to promote such a book: think big.

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