On Friday I allowed myself to play catchup. My email inbox was blocked up with notifications – it seems many Facebook friends wanted to throw various virtual animals and plants at me, others wanted me to attend an event on Facebook, and then there were all the notifications of new Twitter people who were now following me. Plus the literally thousands of feeds I’d let amass into my feed reader, to wade through.

It was a fantastic day, to just give myself permission for the whole day to browse around, update statuses, follow new interesting people, and read new blog and news posts. The effort wasn’t without reward, either, both on a personal and professional front.

I picked up several new Twitter followers (don’t ask me how, because I don’t know) and several new blog post ideas. I received contact from a professional viewpoint, and also chatted to two real-life people via Facebook chat – one was my oldest friend whom I have known for thirty years now, and she lives 12,000 miles away. The other was my boss, who lives around the street from me. In between, I received five replies on a meme note I had published, all from virtual friends scattered across the world, none of whom I’ve ever met in real life. And there were several direct messages via Twitter which made me feel valued and noticed.

Social networking is one of those odd things. Many people use it to extend their professional networks, promote products, or even to promote their blog posts. I feed my own blog posts through to Twitter, for instance. But others use it purely from a personal basis (like my kiwi friend and that of my boss – both of whom post personal photographs up there, and gather real-life friends onto the same system).

But we all know just how distracting those regular updates from such social networking services can be to the normal day to day work required in our [writing] lives. And in a bid to remove myself from the need to keep browsing back to those websites for updates, I’ve looked at the various utilities available to keep me informed – as I go about my everyday work.

AlertThingy 2

Introduction

Previously I’ve used various tools to help me keep up to date with notifications from some of the services I belong to. Twitter, in particular, is important to me, because many ideas and links come through which I may benefit from. I have several different utilities installed, both on the desktop and as a browser plugin, which lets me keep updated with new Tweets as those I follow create and publish them. And I can also tweet my own thoughts through on those same applications.

One of those tools – Twhirl, also lets me keep abreast of another service – FriendFeed – FriendFeed aggregates many of your social network services into the one feed. But I mostly use Twhirl, an Adobe Air app, for it’s excellent Twitter facilities. AlertThingy still provides a FriendFeed edition for those who aggregate their social services on FriendFeed’s online networks, but for those who want to aggregate down to a desktop, there is the latest AlertThingy 2 which I am now using.

Now I’ve found AlertThingy, which has additional features to Twhirl. Like Twhirl, AlertThingy 2 is an Adobe Air application, and it’s available free. If you don’t already have Adobe Air installed, you can install it from the same page as the download for AlertThingy is found. Then install AlertThingy, and go to the settings to setup your services.

AlertThingy can bring in alerts for updates on the following social network services -

• Digg
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Jaiku
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• BoxedUp
• Yammer
• TinyUrl

Settings

Setting up is easy. You need to have an account with the services, and enter in your various user ids and passwords. With Facebook, you will need to go off to Facebook and go through an authorisation process to allow AlertThingy to access your Facebook profile, and vice-versa when using the update status functions within AlertThingy.

TinyUrl is simply the URL shortening service used within AlertThingy. You can use this to convert long URLs to shortened URLs to paste into your updates for Twitter or Facebook.

Now that it’s setup, you will see the latest Tweets and Facebook updates come through from your  friends / followed via the AlertThingy application stream. If this isn’t on top of your other open software, an alert will popup from your status bar notifiying you of the latest update. You can set these alert options in the settings / options side of AlertThingy also. Options include being able to stop the alert popups and the popup noise also – which I find I need to do during dedicated work time.

Posting and Updates

Via AlertThingy, and your Twitter service you can post Tweets, or Facebook updates from your desktop, retweet other’s twitter messages, post to Tumblr, and upload photos to Flickr. Via the TinyURL facility, you can add shortened URLs to these posts. What AlertThingy is missing when compared to something like Twhirl, which is dedicated to one or two particular services, is a link in to search facilities on Twitter, or elsewhere.

However, AlertThingy also have a couple of other top-notch features which make it a fantastic overall aggregator and updater for the social networking aspects of your life.

Contacts

AlertThingy provides an overall aggregation of your contacts from all the services you have setup within it. Avatars and the services used by each are listed against their online id names. If you’re particularly interested in the updates from certain people then within AlertThingy you have a filter option to mark that person’s alerts as more interesting (the default is interesting) or less interesting. Very Interesting posters will have their alert updates made more visually obvious in the stream which you will find in AlertThingy.

NewsFeeds

Aside from the social network services listed above, AlertThingy let’s you add newsfeeds. It comes prepopulated with the normal news feeds such as those from the NY Times, or BBC, so you can have the latest news alerted through on your stream also. Plus you can add your own, using a feed URL, and be alerted of the lastest blog posts as they are published.

How I Use AlertThingy

As I wrote this post, using a client utility, Windows Live Writer, I had AlertThingy working in the background. As people internationally posted their latest onto their blogs or Twitter or Facebook, I allowed myself to be notified of those by the popup from my status bar. I would glance quickly to see if the item was worth reading, else let it disappear.

During this posting, I’ve tweeted twice, via AlertThingy, and been updated with two British contacts on Twitter, both of whom are awaiting the snow promised us this weekend, so I know I’m not the only one who is let down by the non-appearance. The BBC newsfeed has updated me with the latest international goings on, and I’ve not as yet been anywhere near a browser.

When I am more intensely into work, I turn off the alerts entirely, leaving the AlertThingy application underneath my word processor or whatever I’m writing into. An occasional hourly or half-hourly stop will see me quickly browsing over the updates, and perhaps finding some new ideas or thoughts shared with me over the internet. During even more intense writing times, I simply exit the application entirely, and return to it as a reward once finished my day’s work.

AlertThingy has allowed me to remain informed as I work, and during the time it has taken to draft up this post, I have not had cause to use my browser at all. This application provides a worthy addition to my own desktop, and actually makes me feel more productive in both my own writing and social networking time. AlertThingy has taken me from social notworking to social networking with one quick and free download.

LinkMe : AlertThingy

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Introduction

D*I*Y Planner is a community based site, home to the original and official D*I*Y Planner Kits, a huge templates directory (of user-submitted templates) and now software for resizing a Dynamic Templates system produced by Ygor – which now has 2009 calendar templates included – printable to many generic planner sizes, including those for European or American purchased planners.

The site itself has templates and articles aplenty, categorised into typical topics such as Creativity, Diet, Financial, GTD (Getting Things Done productivity system), Health, Journaling, Reference, Reviews, Time Management and Writing Tools.

Starting Off with D*I*Y Planners

If you’re starting off new to the D*I*Y Planner systems, a beginner can make their way through the starter page at D*I*Y Planner Templates. Here, the person can locate instructions on making up a D*I*Y Planner and download the various sizes of template kits.

Kits come in Core, Calendar, GTD, Health and Notes downloads amongst other packages. These kits of planner pages are free, released under a Creative Commons license for personal and non-commercial use.

I would recommend starting off with the Classic size of templates (or international equivalent of A5), which will give you additional room to write in. At a later date writer’s looking for a smaller simple system to take on-the-fly which  may want to consider the card-templates found in the Hipster PDA versions. If you’re a proponer of using index cards for writing planning, then you may get on well with the Hipster.

The classic planner templates come in a series of core packages – detailed below. There is also a handbook to get you started in using them, and a beginners guide.

Core D*I*Y Planner Packages

Template packages can be downloaded as a collection in PDF form. Most of the core packages are now updated to Version 3.0 of D*I*Y Planner, but at the time of this post, the Calendar core package was still sitting at 2007-2008, so requires updating. (2009 Calendars are available outside of this core calendar package).

Once you have the core package(s) open, you can go through and select the template pages you want to print out at home, and insert these into your ready-purchased planner system.

Core Planner Contents

Core D*I*Y Planner packages (which include those named ‘Core’, ‘Calendar’ ‘Notes’ and ‘Creativity’) will give you templates for almost everything a writer might want out of a normal planner -

• Calendar pages (various forms, from daily, weekly, monthly, or overall year calendars)
• To Do lists
• Project Planning templates
• Contacts
• Weekly Trackers
• Job Trackers
• Goal and Objective Planners
• Check Lists
• Shopping Lists
• Finances

The core ‘Creativity’ package – which is designed for writers and other creatives – contains the following templates -

• Journal (left and right pages, in three different formats)
• Storyboard (left and right pages, in six different formats)
• Story Ideas
• Publications Market
• Submissions
• Web Design I and II

Further Features of D*I*Y Planner.com

1. Creativity Articles and Templates

Once you have your core templates chosen and printed out, you can find some additional templates within the side-bar sections of the site under the Article Topics menu. Although there is a writing tools section, this only has a few items under it.

I would recommend that writers look into the Creativity section in Article Topics where they will find copious articles exploring all things creative, including reviews of writing and creativity books, blog articles on writing, and the occasional release of more templates by users on the D*I*Y community.

If in search specifically for more creativity / writing templates, then a search under the user-submitted directory of templates under the topic of Creativity will locate these for you also. Also check out the other categories for templates.

2. Reviews

The Reviews category in the Article Topics menu holds quite a few reviews between stationery and equipment of interest generally to many writers.

3. Forums

The user forums contain a board for writers also.

D*I*Y Planner for Writers

D*I*Y Planner.com as a community supporting planner templates, provides much for any writer, in the reviews and articles provided on the subject of creativity and writing. For any writer looking to build their own physical Writing Planner system, the D*I*Y Planner templates are professional, free to download (mostly) and available in various sizes and in easy to download packages. The templates can form a good base core of planner pages to supplement all your planning needs, plus there are various writing-orientated specific templates, and users create others when there is a demand.

New templates are being created all the time (in fact, you can create your own and upload those to D*I*Y Planner to share) and you know that each year a fresh set of calendar pages will be provided to keep your writing planner fresh. Templates come in PDF format, and can be reprinted out at home anytime you need additional pages, or for a new year.

Other planner templates available elsewhere (see 1. Review of The Organized Writer and 2. Review of The Writer’s Planner) can be inserted in amongst these planner pages also, giving the writer the freedom to manage their writing day and systems as they wish.

I would recommend that any writer contemplating creating their own Writing Planner system start off at D*I*Y Planner for the excellent core template packages available as a base for their diary planners, and some good writing templates.

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Unlike other productivity ebooks and programs (Nick does mention David Allen’s Getting Things Done and is a fan of Leo Babuata’s Zen to Done), Todoodlist is an eBook about getting back to paper. The blurb on the front cover reads -

a simple book about falling in love with paper, simplifying your life, and following your dreams.

The author provides a system of simple mindmapping to-dos, calendar systems and tagging notebooks which can replace all those Web 2.0 online to-do lists, productivity tools, list applications, reminder systems, iPhones, PDAs and beeping technology which most of us welcome into our overly complicated lives and then end up not using to their full effects – or worse, spending hours each week getting them programmed up to speed with all those projects, tasks, reminders and tags only to find you have no idea what to do next.

The Todoodlist Ebook design itself is simple, but with a slightly zen-like oriental slant. Major sections are highlighted with large page numbers, and simple drawings are used for cover-art and internally. The book is split into three parts.

Part I      7 Essays on Simplicity

Part II     5 Simple Solutions

Part III    Embracing Simplicity

In the first seven essays, we are introduced to the concepts and reasonings behind the author’s return to using paper as a simple form of listing and reminder systems. Nick Cernis talks about our human propensity to overly complicate any problem, has a bit of a rant about e-reading devices like the Kindle and other technology which he suggests may not be providing a resolution towards any of our problems, and gives some interesting examples using Einstein and his own failed Web 2.0 application for to-do lists.  In the chapter about e-reader devices I initially found the rant against paper-less books slightly contradictory, considering I was reading it in an eBook anyway, but the later chapters help put this into perspective.

Through this Part I of the Ebook we are given a good idea of the author’s background, and the concepts which lead into the central How-to section. We are also given a good idea of the humourous writing style of Nick Cernis – something quite important when you get to a solution about using a banana as a reminder system.

Part II describes the Todoodlist system – a mindmapped simple to-do list (on paper, of course), a Soduku-like paper calendar, tagging a notebook with file-tabs, using icons or graphics (called glyphies) for shorthanding notes, and the banana reminder system (really – it’s a location based system of timely reminder notes – if you want to write it on your lunchbox banana, then please do so).

Part III brings this all together in methods to re-introduce simplicity back into our lives. The five steps are summarised on Page 88 of the ebook as – Automate, Delegate, Reduce, Drop and Focus. In this section there are convincing arguments – most we’ve all heard before – towards why we should be doing this, and how. For me, this was the most important part of the book in total.

This final section is completed with some templates to help us out. The Blueprint to Launch is a simple questionnaire to work out whether we have the resources to take on a new project. In the earlier five steps listed in this section, it has become obvious that human beings often over-commit ourselves towards multiple projects. As a fun bonus, Nick then offers his Blueprint for Lunch – questions to try to get the best from meetings and business lunch meetings.

Throughout this eBook, Nick Cernis mentions other productivity gurus out there, and links to some of his favourites. His concepts are, in many ways, not new to us, and are quite compatible with those of others out there. However, it’s high time that we saw something like all those productivity systems become more workable and realistic over controlling the problems we wade through in our everyday lives. Nick Cernis wants us to simplify those problems, and take control of them with his final quote -

“Lead a simple life. Chase your dreams. The rest will follow.”

But Does it Work?

Firstly, let me give you a brief history of what my current life is – from this list you will have some knowledge of the complicatedness and possible over-extensions on my time and ability to achieve which surrounds me as I write this: -

• I am currently involved in the major project, the 30 Day Challenge. This, for me, started in mid July, went all through the official 30DC month of August, and now continues with a team through all of September. Not 30 days, more like 80 of them.  Each day there are online videos to watch (up to 3 or 4 of them, for up to 1/2 hour each), lesson crib sheets to read, and exercises to do, including a lot of social networking, website development, internet marketing and plain old learning – often this project alone should take up to 2 hours of my every day.
• I am currently enrolled in a paid-for six month online writing course, How to Think Sideways, and am sitting in Week 6 of this, without having done the weekly exercises from Week 3. Each week there is new reading materials, some video content, several subsidiary exercises. I should spend several hours a week doing these.
• I am currently enrolled in a paid-for six month online blogging course, Blogging Mastermind. This course, again, has weekly exercises to read through, videos and audios to watch or listen, additional links and content to source out, and web development exercises to step through. I should be putting forward several hours a week towards these exercises.
• I am also enrolled in another paid-for six month course, in which I am trying to take away all the content from, to use for later.
• I own three blogs currently – a longstanding one, this one, and another on Writing. Both the Writing one and this one are part of either the 30DC or Blog Mastermind programs and exercises, and both require consistent content to be added to them (sometimes several articles per week). My other longer standing blog is not getting as much attention of course.
• I am writing two EBooks myself, one of which requires the creation of quite a few crafting products, each of which can take a day to complete (I’m a slow crafter).
• I am planning to (if possible) write a novel in a month in November, with NaNoWriMo.
• I am a mother of a five year old, and a part-time worker at the local primary school before and after-school kid’s club.
• My family is at the end of the Adoption Process assessment, and will shortly be attending a panel meeting where, if approved, we face a future of suddenly welcoming a new child or children into our family. And we don’t have any furniture for them.
• My closest companion is an old english sheepdog named Simon. Simon needs walking once a day.
• My house – like yours – needs regular attention, and cleaning. And I probably need to cook dinner each night, too.

If you didn’t get through past item two above, I’d not be surprised. Does this sound like an over-committed life? Possibly – but I couldn’t choose the timings for when all those online programs ramped off, and technically I do have the time to commit to each of these. However, to win through so many inboxes (as Nick Cernis calls them) calling for my time, I’m going to have to be much more organised than I may have needed to be in the past, even when I was working full time and managing twenty other people’s tasks and projects.

On my computers I tried out several to-do list applications, database applications, ebook and article writing applications, and I’m a bit of a social networker (it’s encouraged through the 30DC program) and love all things technical anyway. I tried out online to-do lists, and discounted online calendars, but settled recently on a PC application which I can share the database across my two computers more easily. I don’t like online for to-do lists – I don’t know why, but it possibly makes things a bit more centred and real if it’s closer to me. Online is distant. On the PC is closer – there and in your face, especially if I have it open first thing each morning.

So, would a paper-based system work out for me, as being even closer? Afterall, I can’t take my laptop with me everywhere, can I? And sometimes I don’t start it up, even. Some days, I spend all day with my family, because that’s the priority.

I tried the paper Todoodlist, and can say that it just doesn’t work for me that well, as a general list. I just have too many projects on the go right at this moment to make it workable on paper. There are dependencies between the projects and tasks which I can’t link across several pages of paper in any manageable order.

However, mindmapping and diagrams are something which appeals to my own creative mind, and something I always use. So I am currently and slowly developing a mutant between the two – my PC Task Management software, and a physical todoodlist for the day, in mindmapping and glyphie style. What I do in my Task Manager application is filter for all of today’s tasks, then draw those down quickly onto a one-sheet todoodlist. Scratching it out in diagrams on paper is a reminder system in itself – it ingrains the tasks into my mind from first-thing (just as any hand-drawn mindmap will do) and it’s actually quicker than setting up settings, turning the printer on, finding paper, and printing it out.

But most importantly, It feels good to be able to then cross those off with a physical (and often quite dramatic) mark out. It also takes me away from the worrying bigger picture of looking at all of those project tasks in the central Task Manager – looking at that makes my life look way to scarey.  I can even add in more if I need to, without cluttering up my screen with many un-needed fields. A simple box, circle task, and mark it though when completed – it mentally does one good to be able to do that on paper.

I’m not such a fan of the Soduku calendar approach, but then – I’ve never had a problem with remembering recurring dates. My desktop is setup with a simple diary program with these recurring and one-off appointments. I don’t have reminders setup very often at all – the chances of me opening my emails to find those reminders, or sitting in front of the PC when the reminders go off is remote anyway. Instead, I glance down the calendar list – which shows the week in list form, and month with icons for tasks (pin notes and the like). This is normally done the night before, to remind myself of things of importance. This has an easy slant into Nick’s banana (location and time specific) reminder system. I can take the most important out to sticky notes and place them on my PC mouse, or bathroom mirror for the next morning, should I see the need.

The tag book isn’t that new a concept to me – I often owned the only tagged meeting notebook in my corporate career, and was always able to find what I needed relatively quickly. But I see this as being applicable outside of any productivity system and into that of my own writing side. Carrying around a writer’s notebook, which can have all kinds of things in it, is quite relevant to any eBook or other writer. The tagging of important pages in there with a structured tagging file tab is a great idea, and one I intend taking through to my own notebooks.

Possibly some of Todoodlist’s Simple section is what will really be taken onboard with my own systems in the near future. I am already leaning towards using only one email inbox, and being an ex-IT manager, know well how to drop some valueless projects, if found to be so, in time. Todoodlist’s Part III re-emphasises the simplification approach which I always almost let slip through when juggling around so many projects.

So comes the time when I recommend this as an eBook, and this discovery is no different. Todoodlist is a wonderful eBook for anyone looking to recover some control over their lives. You will find the concepts in here compatible with whatever system you may be using yourself, and possibly even better.

Todoodlist has 97 pages, and at $14.00 is a good bargain for the concepts and methods contained within. I’m a fan, and will continue to open this book, for both a good laugh, and some basic ordering of my own life, for quite some time.

Originally published on the Juiced On Ebooks blog in September 08.

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Let’s take a look at Smartlinks from a real-life perspective, with a quick book review.

No Plot?  No Problem! by Chris Baty

No Plot? No Problem! is a quick book to read, by the creator of the NaNoWriMo novel writing event, Chris Baty. Chris gives some comprehensive but humourous ideas and practices on how to write a novel – in a month.

It’s not a hugely serious book, in that you have probably already sought out many tombs of knowledge on how to write the great novel. But if you’re looking for steps to actually get you writing then this may well help you out. Chris gives your inner critic a good work out, by sending him or her off to a chair or cage alone for the period of time. And there’s a button printed into the book for doing just that.

This is the book that I bought in February or March, and which introduced me to the concept of trying to get that book out of me, that I’d been pondering (ie. procrastinating over) for weeks if not months beforehand. And I did! I wrote 150,000 words and completed my first novel in April of this year, following (almost) the practices in No Plot? No Problem!

I enjoyed Chris’s sense of humour which helped take the serious sting out of such an effort. And I’m living proof that it can work for some. However, I’ve got an admission – I don’t follow or agree with the title of this book – No Plot? No Problem. The book suggests that you can just write a novel with very little planning beforehand. It only gives you a few days – or a week or so – to do this before starting off on the writing. And I can believe that many writers can actually do that, but I couldn’t.

A couple of chapters into my own novel, and I was already forgetting what I’d named some relative of the main character, and it bothered me. And after the initial first scenes, I found myself stuck in a middle and not knowing where to go from there to get to an end. Not that, for this novel, I had an ending at all. So, although it was as free-form as possible, I became unstuck.

I resorted to documenting settings, characters – who would be reused in another novel I thought – and started pre-blocking out scene cards and juggling these from Week 2 of my effort. And although I possibly spent as much time on that than writing, it gave me the push to carry on, and come to an ending.

I over-extended on the No Plot? No Problems initiatives and challenges, of course. Instead of the 50,000 words during the month, I wrote 150,000, and came out with an outline and scene and chapter cards, character and setting profiles for all the main characters and places also. In the middle of it I also spent ages on research, yet I still got through based on the general principles within Chris Baty’s book.

I would recommend it from a newbie writer’s perspective, and as a challenge to follow for those more experienced, and just looking at using different tools to see what might be pulled out of the hat.

Link: No Plot? No Problem (at Amazon)

More on SmartTags

Above you will find my review of a particular book which is timely given NaNoWriMo starts again in a month’s time. And now you will see how SmartTags works also. For the book link, I used an URL to Amazon.co.uk. That’s because I shop there, and regionally we can’t shop elsewhere either. And I could have linked to this as an affiliate link, but didn’t. The teeny percentage that Amazon offers on affiliate sales is hardly worth the effort of creating the affiliate link.

Off of my soapbox, I’ll now point out the smartlink tag which automatically populates against the Amazon link. Smartlink is indeed smart. It populates little icons against Amazon links, movies linked to the IMDb site, and music tracks / radio stations you may link through to last.fm for.

Click on the icon itself and a popup window will open giving you much more information on the book, and linking you to U.S. sites for this information. Including Amazon.com of course.

This is how, with a U.K. locale, I can provide you with links not only to books on amazon.co.uk for any U.K. readers, but also to amazon.com for those in the States. And you will be given other links to find the book at different online retailers.

Music tracks smartlinked (ie. I’m currently listening to some Wombles at Last.fm) will give you links to purchase at several stores, and People linked to may be found on Twitter (Here I am at Twitter) or Linked In. There are even smartlinks pointing to various recipes if you list a recipe like, say, Greek Pasta Salad.

From the AdaptiveBlue website you can also setup and get the code for various Smartlink widgets for your blog – say, if you want to show all those amazon books you’re linking to, or all that music.

Installation for some blog systems is automatic. You can run it from the AdaptiveBlue site. For others such as WordPress, you will be sent to download the appropriate plugin to install yourself.

Link : Smartlinks

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Zaid Ali Alsagoff has published this ebook via the Open Source Books section of the Internet Archive, where you can view the PDF online, or download it. This is a 46MB ebook, full of graphics, so pay attention to your timing on this one, as I struck peak hours on the internet and had a very slow download.

The eBook has also been published via a Slideshare version, and SlideBoom version. The Boom version is available to view onsite at Zaidlearn.

The 60 Page “Amazing Free e-Learning eBooks Collection” features one page per book, with a brief description of the contents of the ebook, a link and covershot”. Zaid has amalgamated an absolutely awesome collection of ebooks which are free to download, and provide a lot of information about e-learning, appropriate to not only educators but anyone interested in providing e-courses and e-content to a virtual audience.

The last twenty pages of this directory does not provide more links to actual ebook downloads, but helpful tips on methods to find our own resources (the first being the expected google search) and links to searchable sites. Zaid also advertises his free ebook inside, which features 69 Learning Adventures in 6 Galaxies. He also have two other learning ebooks coming out soon.

Zaid also provides all of the ebooks and links as a quick link list on his blog, giving readers permission to replicate this list here. As a wonderful marketing device, I would suggest that you do go and get this ebook from Zaid’s site itself (the links are below) to share in the fun cartoons and graphics, and details towards what each ebook contains before you select from the many available. Go and get it (or watch it onsite) at ZaidLearn now.

Links :

• Zaidlearn – Amazing Free e-Learning eBooks
• Ebook Download

Zaid’s Quick Links List:

1. LEARNING 2.0
   
2. Educating the Net Generation
3. Learning Spaces
4. Theory and Practice of Online Learning
5. Open Educational Resources Handbooks: One, Two, Three
6. The Insider’s Guide To Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro
7. Top 100 Tools for Learning
8. MASIE’s Free eContent!
9. FREE eBooks from The eLearning Guild
10. e-LearningGuru’s 5-Minute Summaries
11. ICT in Schools: A Handbook for Teachers
12. E-Learning Concepts and Techniques
13. Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New WWW
14. Knowing Knowledge
15. Moodle E-Learning Course Development
16. Using Moodle
17. FREE Guide to Online Education
18. Informal Learning
19. Engaging Interactions For eLearning
20. The Cluetrain Manifesto
21. Stephen Downes Papers, Presentations and Books
22. KINEO Magic!
23. Learning Technologies (250+ Articles!)
24. Horizon Reports
25. Clive’s 33 Columns
26. Creating Learning Communities
27. Digital Education
28. Web-Teaching
29. Brandon Hall Free Resources
30. elearningeuropa Papers
31. Learning Circuits Field Guides
32. eLearn Magazine Articles Archive
33. EDUCAUSE Books
34. Google Book Search
35. Project Gutenberg
36. Scribd
37. LearnOutLoud.com
38. LibriVox
39. Great Books Index
40. CIA World Factbook
41. FreeBookSpot
42. FreeTechBooks.com
43. OnlineComputerBooks
44. Free-eBooks
45. ManyBooks
46. Globusz
47. BookYards
48. The Online Books Page
49. Wikibooks
50. Free eBooks

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But it’s the How to Be Creative report which initially intrigued me, relevant as it is to both my interests in creativity and writing, and in writing eBooks also. The report, written as a free giveaway from an initial blog article on the Gaping Void blog (you can still find this full article in the archives for the blog), is now available (still free) from the wonderful Change This website, where you can find many other manifestos with some quality content, all free, and on a large range of topics.

Here’s my two perspectives on the manifesto :

1. On a creativity / inspiration front – read it.
2. On an eBook perspective, it’s a good example of using a free info product built from a popular blog article to market your blog and work further afield. Read it.

Read : How to Be Creative (Manifesto at Change This)

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Did I mention it’s free? Oh yeah, it is. And at 134 pages of on-the-spot information, there’s no excuses for you not going and getting it. The book is the outcome of a blogging competition between John Cow and Gary Conn. The competition attempts were documented on the blogs, and have since become this eBook, available through JohnCow.com.

From goal setting, to making a commitment to working a blog as a business, the Building a Business NOT a Blog book must go down as a blogger’s bible out there. The book is huge in content, including everything from planning for why you want a business blog, to setting up the correct affiliations, using systems like clickbank, aweber, feedburner, wordpress; and techniques for on-page optimisation, promotion, and of course – the ever-present task of keyword identifications, research and usage on the page. Much is applicable to an eBook writing business also, of course.

As a newbie into all of this from a business sense, this eBook is a fundamental arsenel to my own knowledge and what I need to do here, and it’s also a very good example of the kind of eBook which I would like to be involved in writing in the future myself. The book style is fun, with the expected cartoonish graphics which make the John Cow site itself such a fun visit, and it has a good contents page, and resource links at the back.

And, did I mention – it’s Free!

To get your copy of Building a Business NOT a Blog eBook, go here.

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Written by Leo Babauta, this book is a compilation of his blog series, Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System which featured on his popular blog, Zen Habits. It was my discovery of Leo’s first eBook, Zen to Done which first set me off on wanting to write

my own also. Since then he has also produced another eBook compilation from his site, called The Zen Habits Handbook for Life, which is another good read, and bargain at the price.

The ebook’s style, with a simple table of contents image at the bottom is what initially drew me to the book itself – very Zen-like in appearance. The eBook itself contains copious information, requiring perhaps more than one read to take it in. There are grammatical errors I noticed also at the start – but I found Leo’s writing style as skillful as the principles and methods he has developed. The eBook is pure information however – I would have liked perhaps some more graphics to break up the sheer weight of the information, perhaps. However, the text in Zen to Done is broken up with sidebars and quotes rendered in a very appealing style. And despite those minor niggles, I must re-iterate that it was the actual style of the whole eBook which actually drew me to it in the first place.

Then I delved into the contents, which can be summarised as -

1. 1. The key habits needed to be productive, organized, and simplified (10 habits)
   2. How to implement these key habits with tips on forming a habit.
   3. How to organize these habits into a simple system that will keep everything in your life in its place.
   4. How to simplify what you need to do.
   5. Minimal ZTD. Also includes an even simpler version called Minimal ZTD.

The 73 page eBook contains 17 sections plus some checklists and exercises which extend David Allen’s Getting Things Done principles (fundamentally task management for business users) with Stephen Covey’s goal setting and prioritization methods.

That, initially, sounds quite complicated, but Zen to Done provides ten very do-able habits, and even provides a “4-Point” Simple ZTD system called “Minimal ZTD” (located on Page 17) for those who want it. The final product actually simplifies the GTD system for anyone like me who found the GTD system quite overwhelming at first, and gives it structure. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about regarding GTD, then Zen to Done may also be a very good book to get hold of, simply because it makes no prior-knowledge expectations on your own productivity skills.

If you do a search over the web for Zen to Done reviews you will find several sites where the ten habits are listed along with some discussion over these. I won’t be doing that here, because I believe to get the most from the principles, you can at least pay out the small charge for this information, and purchase a Zen to Done copy for yourself. Here are the 10 habits however, to allow you to see the layers of information found within this economical and highly recommended eBook:-

1. 1. Collect.
   2. Process.
   3. Plan.
   4. Do.
   5. Simple trusted system.
   6. Organize.
   7. Review.
   8. Simplify.
   9. Routine.
   10. Find your passion.

Looked at this way, it makes sense. And Leo Babauta’s eBook gives you the processes and habits to be successful in that passion.

Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done system makes a workable solution to our busy personal lives. For the principles and depth of content inside, Leo only charges $9.50 through his site. That’s incredibly reasonable pricing for a system which will easily prompt us all into organising our lives into more productive ways. I actually consult this eBook consistently.

Recommended reading : Zen to Done (5 out of 5)

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It’s not necessarily defined just towards eBooks either – DBO provides equally appropriate information towards a new Blogger looking at niche markets or other info products. It’s a How To Book

for Ebooks, Info Products and Web Businesses. Still, the price seemed a bit daunting for me initially given the page quantity and my own budget. Could it be worth it in content, I wondered?

So, if I were to take this whole thing seriously, and keep away from where many thousands of others have fallen, I knew that I needed to invest in my own education and learning towards the entire ebook industry. So today I found that $77 and downloaded the ebook itself.

Written in 2006 by Alexis Dawes, Desperate Buyers Only contains over 90 pages of sense. There are other websites, blogs, reports, eBooks, mail lists and people saying the same thing, but this ebook is convincing, and rings true to the soul of any wannabe eBook writer like myself who realises just how saturated the internet is with eBooks out there, many on the same few topics. And many not making their writers the riches that the great Ebook Dream told them it would.

The book stopped me at Page 7 with the following -

How to Choose Topics That Attract Buyers Like Bee’s to Honey – (It has NOTHING to
do with “Doing What You Love”)

Online infopreneurs fail for 3 main reasons–

1) They focus on general topics.
2) They focus on so-called ‘hot’ niche topics.
3) They follow the all-time favorite, and frequently quoted, adage, “Do
what you love and the money will follow.

Do I agree whole-heartedly with what Alexis says? Hmm, I’m of the “Do What I Love” school. Being a wannabe writer first and foremost, I want to enjoy what I write about (and possibly live in the distant hope that somebody else might to?). Alexis also maintains an opportunistic slant on choosing topics. She favours writing about anything that has a desperation around it – and not sticking to the one or two niches where you might become an expert at. This initially may grate against those sensitive writers like myself.

But then, I happen to have lived virtually in a hobby community for many years, and in which I could easily write eBooks for, with a lot of love, knowledge and passion. But would I have any hope of selling them to that community? Nope, not on your life! My hobby is full of community boards, women and websites which not only expect to get their information free, but also has hundreds of volunteers across the world working on those boards and blogsites who are giving away that information for free, and who are doing it for no pay also. Now, that’s love, but not exactly a profitable topic for me to spend my time writing for, and expecting a buyer to somehow materialise from the niche when they can find out all they want for free.

My example above would have Alexis explaining this as the difference between an interest (or want) and a genuine and desperate need for information. And that’s a difference which will, well, make all the difference in finding the correct topic.

The premise of Desperate Buyers Only is therefore to give anyone who needs to locate a profitable topic for their eBooks the tools to do so. This is obviously centred around locating topics which are so sought after by desperate buyers out there willing to whip out their credit cards as soon as you give them the product. And those buyers know how to find it also. Alexis’ methodology goes roughly like this (for “audience”, you can also substitute “topic”)-

1. Choose an Audience – the section has 13 different types of audience bases listed (and most of them you have probably heard of all over the net).
2. Find the websites for your chosen audience – where do they hang out. DBO suggests methods of how to outsource this. Personally, I’d prefer to know what they’re talking about, so that I do…
3. Study the audience habits and terminology. Steps 2 and 3 are about the Who, What, When, Where and How of your topic.
4. Isolate the audience’s most pressing problems – what questions keep popping up for them.
5. Understand the psychology around those problems – what pains (niches) are they feeling
6. The Dealbreaker – methods to work out if potential buyers are searching for a solution to these problems.This is more than following standard traffic-driving marketing guff, it’s understanding how people go about searching for their own solutions.
7. Assess the competition – this sounds a bit obvious, but Alexis gives us methods to differentiate our product from that of any competitive product.

The Book itself is broken into sections, and I very much enjoyed the writing style within. Alexis writes creatively, and provides some interesting stories and personal examples which personifies the entire thing. She doesn’t pull punches however, including details which makes it obvious that this isn’t a get-rich-quick promise. The eBook acknowledges that choosing the right topic, researching this, and writing it is hard work, as is the marketing needed to allow your targeted audience to find your product. Alexis also gives details on how much marketing money she spends to earn the income she does get from her best-selling reports. And she packages all of this information into a succinct and reasonably small package (at 99 pages) with only four main sections.

The list above comes from the first section on choosing a topic. Other sections are listed in my own words below -

Choosing a Topic
Quick Content Creation – some simple methods for writing short quick reports
Taking on Competitors – an excellent section on how to create great sales letters
Websites – and generating traffic

The Sales letter / copywriting section in Desperate Buyers Only is good enough to have sold me the book in itself. As my own first venture into the thick of internet marketing and into a world with terminology I have little knowledge about, I had a few strange ideas (and abject dislikings) for those sales letter pages I constantly come across on the internet. Alexis’ Five Point Fish Hook, describing in no uncertain terms how to annihilate the competition, began to frighten me – until I saw the same details become an exciting sales letter – and one which would entice me personally (as your pathological reluctant viewer of such webpages).

Each section ends in some defined actions. The book itself would work well as a workbook for students, and gives copious details and methods in everything from the sales letter copywriting I spoke about earlier, to keyword searching, and affiliate marketing. Page 93 is a tabulated checklist which can be printed out when working through the selection of topics for a winning and successful info product. There are plenty of other websites and books out there dealing with the same areas, but having everything so detailed and packaged into common sense means this book is a winner for me.

I will re-read this ebook often, I am sure. Although the whole emphasis on making money from desperate buyers is a little off-putting to my own naive thinkings, I still understand that the information inside contains workable methods for my own writings and marketing. I have a fresh understanding from this eBook over how to find topics (even within my own passionate niches where I would ideally love to write for) and topics which will be profitable for me to spend time and energy within. The author has introduced me to methods which will allow me to get to know my potential customers, and build an expert reputation with them.

For my first Review on a product advising on eBooks, I am surprised to find that I’ve purchased a keeper and one I would definitely recommend to anyone wanting to write and publish eBooks. Desperate Buyers Only gives you the tools to find the topics within the something you love, or other desperate markets, and locate areas where buyers are willing to spend money on your problem-solvers for them.

The book should be read by beginners in the field before they go out and write that eBook (blog, or other information product) they always had in them, then come crashing down because they can’t make money out of it. But it has also received good reviews from experienced infopreneurs and internet marketers out there on the web.

This eBook should be on all of our reference library e-shelves, and is a genuine go-to Report for your collections. Without any doubt I will be referring to Desperate Buyers Only often. It won’t just gather pixel-dust on the hard-drive.

Recommended reading : Desperate Buyers Only (5 out of 5)

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