This is the beginning of a new series that describes what I’m currently working on in terms of projects. “The Desk” is what a “weblog” (‘blog’ for short) was always meant to be—a log of projects posted on the web. Most blogs have become single author news columns with lax style standards, which was not the original weblog concept. In terms of multi-author weblogs, these are more like web-based collaborative newsletters, but a web-based journal/log system isn’t designed for this. A weblog is a journal shared with the world and most weblog systems, such as WordPress and Blogspot, work well for that. However, writers and collaborative websites need something more than just an online journal publication. And that “something more” is what I have in the works.
Web-publishing writers have been using weblog CMS tools merely because the weblogs are the best tools available, not because a weblog is the best tool. The best web-publishing tools haven’t been invented yet because, as conceited as it sounds for us to say, we haven’t invented them yet. The ePub format is a wonderful step in the right direction for eBooks and should probably be better integrated into online publishing tools, such as a website and RSS/Atom feeds.
So, the current side project is getting better web tools for writers, but that will require some form of PHP study on my part, along with some cooperation with other partners that want a power blogger like myself to act as the Product Manager/Owner with a development team. I already have some prospects for this. The project just needs time to bake.
I just finished Monkeys in the Jungle, the eBook, which is already on Smashwords and should be available in the eBookstores soon. Currently, I’m working on the final translation of Revelation.
As a side note, I finally got irritated with Chrome and am completely switching to Opera, though they don’t have their syncing feature ready for v14 quite yet. I’m running Zemanta through ScribeFire since it’s not available for Opera yet. Chrome was originally wonderful because it was light-weight—So much for that idea! I don’t know what it will take for businesses and organizations to figure out that departing from the roots will kill a tree. So, I’ll use Opera until the “Monkeys in the Jungle” destroy that project as well, then I’ll just keep moving on to the new smart guys who haven’t gone stupid… yet.
As a friendly gift for following this post, I am including a Smashwords list of all my eBooks with completely free coupons. These only work for adding the books to the Smashwords.com library. If you want the eBook in another cloud, such as the iBookstore or Barnes & Noble, you’ll have to pay the full, atrocious, expensive $0.99 fee (Memoirs at the even more astronomical price of $1.99). Smashwords is a free signup.
So, I love you all! Here are the Library links for Smashwords.com users and their 100% FREE coupon codes, good through 2014: