Saturday, April 06, 2002

Here's a Business for Out of Work Writers Bit by bit I keep enhancing my Radio FAQ.  Yesterday I added a reasonably complete glossary.  Yes, I oversimplified a lot on complex topics like XML.  That's ok -- my audience is hardcore techies, its people coming up to speed on Radio.  But I digress.  Guy Haas has been helping me edit it.  I write a new section, post it, he checks it out and then IM's me with edits.  I fix them, save it, he checks it again.  He calls it "Real Time Editing".  I think its "Instant Editing" (better name for a business...).  Its neat, its realtime and it makes a big difference in final quality.  Even though I run the text through Word (I actually use FrontPage as a word processor) for a quick grammar check, a talented writer (which Guy is) makes such a difference.  So, here's the business idea.  Offer a "Instant Editing Service".  Charge by the minute, use AOL's infrastructure to cover your communication's for free, use a weblog to promote it.  There have to be tons of websites, ad agencies, etc that need something like this.  Its not really a thing for the informal nature of weblogs but for your marketing materials, product documentation, etc., its just great.  Who wants spelling errors and bad grammar when they're trying to sell someone on their product? NOTE: I'll write a billing infrastructure for this if anyone's interested... I added a story showing what an Instant Editing transcript looks like. comment [] 12:21:37 PM     I Become an Author Again (on PHP) In years past, I have been an author for Dr. Dobb's Journal, Communications of the ACM, John Wiley and Sons (a book).  After I sold my first company, NTERGAID, I basically had a "Management must review all publications prior" clause in my contract.  It just wasn't worth the effort.  Then I changed jobs but got really, really busy.  And, now, I'm an author again.  I contributed an article on "Localization for PHP" to www.phpbeginner.com.  The article is here at their site or mirrored here on my site.  I have to say, Maxim, the site's editor, was just plain wonderful to work with.  I pop onto his radar from literally nowhere, ask if he needs any content for his site, drop him my home page and resume and, poof, I'm an author.  It was just plain easy.  This is how the publishing process is supposed to be.  Only one edit too -- a conflict on the title.  Well, the process was just so painless, I just plain don't care.  Note -- I know that I publish everyday here and on my own website.  This is different -- when an editor officially blesses your work, there is a real "warm fuzzy" feeling. comment [] 6:41:05 AM

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