Note: This is a guest post by Alex Morris.

Alex Morris works for Office Kitten in Manchester where he writes, researches and blogs about the business world. He can also be followed on Twitter.

The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck (1931)

Depicting life in China at a time before mass political and social upheaval, The Good Earth follows the life of a peasant who marries a servant. The subsequent trials and tribulations they suffer through as they raise their family displays a China vastly different to the one we now observe as a Superpower. Buck won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel in 1931, and her tale of the cycle of life is a powerful statement.

George Orwell – Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)

Orwell’s much lauded later works are contemporary classics. 1984 and Animal Farm are well within the literary canon; supremely well observed, highly intelligent, and fiercely written. Yet, for many Orwell fans, Down and Out in Paris and London remains their favourite. It is in keeping with his early interest with poverty (The Road to Wigan Pier soon followed) and dabbles with his time in destitution in the stated cities. The book is badly structured and quite aimless overall, yet the Parisian account is an utter joy to read, whilst his observations of London are fascinating. A must.

Jean-Paul Sartre – The Age of Reason (1945)

Exquisitely written, Sartre’s stunning novel follows the plight of philosophy professor Matthieu, who is seemingly indifferent to all around him yet must manage all the problems he creates. The novel, unsurprisingly, deals heavily with Sartre’s conception of freedom as the ultimate goal of human existence. The existential leaning does not overwhelm things, as the cast of characters is diverse and wonderfully realised.

Truman Capote – In Cold Blood (1956)

An exceptional piece of investigative journalism, Capote’s finest book is a must for any literature fan. It details the grisly murders of the Cutler family in Kansas, 1959, before following the subsequent investigation and trail of murderers Robert Hickock and Perry Smith. Capote gained remarkable access to the two men, interviewing them at length to gain an insight into their motives. At once chilling and mesmerising, it was also Capote’s final full piece of writing.

Philip K. Dick – The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Whilst now remembered as the science-fiction mind behind such cinema staples as Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, and A Scanner Darkly (all adapted from his novels), The Man in the High Castle is possibly his best. It sets out a nightmare version of reality where the Allies have lost The Second World War. In this new world a handful of solitary figures struggle to comprehend reality and how it has dealt them this unusual hand.

Jack Kerouac – Big Sur (1962)

Much is made of Kerouac’s earlier works, particularly On The Road with its youthful lust for life. It is Beat Generation writing at its most trendy. However, Kerouac’s superior Big Sur is just as important. Highly autobiographical, Big Sur finds a middle-aged Kerouac suffering from the effects of a lifetime’s heavy drinking. Searching to understand his myth in solitude, his delirium tremens are well chronicled and display his descent towards an addiction that would kill him in 1969. Paranoid, funny, tragic, and ever-interesting.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn – Cancer Ward (1967)

Solzhenitsyn struggled against an oppressive regime to get his superb novel published. It was banned outright in Russia in 1968 and Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union until 1994. Based on his experiences in a cancer unit, Solzhenitsyn uses the novel as an allegory for the state of Soviet Russia. It is uncompromising and brilliant, with protagonist Kostoglotov at one stage left to muse: “A man dies from a tumour, so how can a country survive with growths like labour camps and exiles?”

Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita (1930 – published in 1967)

Bulgakov’s fraught attempts to write this novel (including burning the whole manuscript, before changing his mind and having to start again from memory) are well documented. A wild and fantastical tale, it sees the devil arrive in the capital of atheism (Moscow) with his travelling band of assorted cronies. They include a giant talking cat called Behemoth and an assassin with a cracked pince-nez. In amongst this is the Master, who is in a mental institute. A remarkable work of the imagination.

Toni Morrison – Beloved (1987)

One of the most celebrated female writers of modern times, Morrison’s Beloved received wide praise. Chronicling slavery and its aftermath in America, protagonist Margaret Garner flees her shackles and makes for the safe haven of Ohio. The novel deals with subsequent events of America’s Slave Act and Garner’s attempts to liberate her children from its prejudice. A brutal novel, but culturally important and a modern classic.

Miracle in the Andes – Nando Parrado (2008)

Perhaps not yet a modern classic, but Parrado’s stunning account of the 1972 Andes Plane Crash is a remarkably humane piece of writing. It details the incident from a first person perspective; in October 1972 a plane carrying an amateur rugby team crashed into the Andes mountain range. Trapped for several months with no food except the remains of their dead friends (preserved in the freezing temperatures), it is ultimately a two week trek out of the Andean terrain which sees Parrado end the ordeal. Thrilling and humbling.

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img: thumbnail ~ Some rights reserved by Casey David

About the author: Alex Morris Alex Morris works for Office Kitten in Manchester where he writes, researches and blogs about the business world. He can also be followed on Twitter.

Sometimes I joke that the day doesn’t have enough hours, the week not enough days and so on and so forth.

But in the end it is all about time management. Especially if you are one of us freelancers or “power procrastinators”.

So. Time Management. Sounds like something out of a business seminar or self-help book, right?

To me it did when I first heard about it. And to be quite honest, it still sounds rather dull: Time Management…

In most peoples’ minds it brings up associations of discipline, routine and planning. Freelancers want to be free of all of that, don’t they?

So, let’s see what happens when we get rid of time management altogether..

Manage Your Time, Lest It Manages You

You start your morning sitting in front of a screen and have a ton of things to do. So you first check your email, see what’s new on Twitter, hang around on Facebook a bit and before you know what’s happening it’s already noon.

By afternoon you still haven’t gotten anything done. But you have checked your email and facebook more than twenty times.

You have “so many ideas”, so much brilliance locked up inside of you just waiting for a chance to be unleashed, but somehow there’s never enough time (!) to get started writing that novel, to work on that song, to write the first few lines of code for that new project.

By the evening, your brain is tired. You look back at the day with a sigh:”If only I would have…” and halfhearted convictions for the next: “Tomorrow everything will be different” while you know that it’s probably going to be the same.

The above scenario is an absence of time management and while exaggerated it affects us all to some degree, especially if you’re one of us freelancers who can’t put the responsibility on someone else’s shoulder. Freelancer are their “own boss” but they’re also their “own worst nightmare”.

What to do? Here are a few time management ideas for freelancers…

A Handful of Tools & Practices For Taming Your Time

Here’s a few time management tips that I’ve found to be helpful:

1. Schedule A Meeting With Yourself

Now, this will sound weird to some people (it certainly does to me) but I’ve found that if I treat every task in my life like an important business meeting, a date (or any other appointment that I wouldn’t miss for all the world) things get a lot easier.

So, when I can’t seem to drag myself out of distraction, I go to my calendar and schedule a meeting with myself, let’s say: “Writing from 9:00-10:00″) – it’s very simple, but it works. And you’ll notice that getting started is the hard thing. Once you’re in it, you’re easily doing more than planned! Plus, the brain releases some of its satisfaction juices once a job is done!

2. Lock It, Block It, Break – Erase It!

If you’ve scheduled a “meeting with yourself” and you’re still checking Email, Facebook etc. it’s a sign you’re not giving yourself enough credibility. So we’re going to need bigger guns. One of them is blocking websites altogether.

I’ve described one way of doing it here.

3. Destroy The Internet (For a Limited Time)

While I’m happy to say that I’ve never had to resort to this last option, there’s a danger of unblocking temporary blocks of websites for the flimsiest of reasons like needing to “look up that message on Facebook” or “re-reading that article posted on Twitter yesterday”.

So, if you’re not taking your blocks seriously, use the Uber-Block: DESTROY THE INTERNET…or well, at least block it completely for a specific time.

There’s software to help you do that, but you could also just unplug your router for a period that you’ve agreed upon before.

But remember, freelancers – in the end, there are no magic bullets! And don’t worry, we all suffer from it. Here’s how Paulo Coelho deals with it, for example.

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 Some rights reserved by HikingArtist.com

About the author: André Klein has grown up and lived in many places including Germany, Thailand, Sweden and the Middle East. He has taught languages at private schools for many years, produced two music albums, performed at poetry slams, curated an experimental television program and is the author of How To Teach Online Without Selling Your Soul and various other publications.

These days, first thing in the morning I turn on my Kindle and read my personalized newspaper, hot off the press.

Here’s how (and why) I use a free and customizable way to feed subscriptions to my Kindle every day with Instapaper.

An Avalanche Of 1-Star Reviews: e-Ink ain’t Paper

If you take a look at the Kindle store under Newsstand you’ll find a lot of bad reviews. At the time of this writing, a subscription of TIME magazine which costs $2.99 per month has 95 reviews, 36 (!) of them only 1 star.  Bottom line: almost 38% of reader don’t seem happy.

And it’s not only TIME. Amazon’s Newsweek subscription has 52 reviews, 23 of them outraged.  NYT has 91 bad reviews out of 375…

I think a core problem here is that people expect the Kindle subscription to be the same (or very similar) to the paper experience. But what if a Kindle subscription could be something completely different, not just a daily lump from the same editorial board, but a highly customized and personalized newspaper which includes all your favorite blogs, magazines and more?

 Kindle Subscriptions: The KindleFeeder Way

If you google the topic you’ll immediately stumble over a service called kindlefeeder.com. It allows you to choose from a variety of different feeds and then send them to your Kindle.

At first I was very excited, but then I noticed a few things:

• automatic delivery is only for premium users (and there’s no other plan than $19 per month)
• there’s no way to share articles to my networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
• some of the feeds don’t display full articles but only snippets
• sometimes the formatting of the articles was broken

After experimenting with this for a few days I decided to look for another way.

A Lean Mean Reading Machine: The Free & Social Way

The heart of this system is Instapaper because it allows you to send automatic updates for free and is wonderfully streamlined for sharing to virtually any social network.

First of all, let me show you a little chart of how I got it set up. Then I’ll walk you through the steps:

1. Check if there’s a new feed item and if yes, send it to Instapaper

2. Tell Instapaper to automatically send you a collection of your unread articles

3. Read & Share via Instapaper

This is how the process works. Simple, isn’t it?

A Step By Step Tutorial

1. Sign up for instapaper

Under “Account” click Manage my Kindle Settings

2. Set up Sharing under Account

3. Sign up for ifttt.com

4. Activate Instapaper under Channels -> Instapaper (direct link)

5. Use this “Recipe” to set up your first query. (You could also easily create your own, but let’s begin with an example)

In our example we will be adding the feed to odditycentral.com. Here’s how the recipe looks like:

You can put your own feed where it says “Feed Url” but for example’s sake you can also just hit “create task”

5.  Repeat the same procedure with different feeds. If the blog/newspaper you want to read on your Kindle doesn’t offer full feeds, you might find this little tool here helpful. Simply put the feed URL in there first and then add the url they give you to your ifttt recipe.

6. If you’ve done everything right, you’ll now get your personalized, custom newspaper delivered to your Kindle every morning at 5am.

7. Whenever you read an article you like, hit “LIKE” on your Kindle and it automatically goes to the networks you selected in step 2.

The Result

update:

here are some screenshots of how it looks like on your Kindle and how you can use it.#

in the beginning and at the end of each article you’ll find the following buttons:

clicking like will “broadcast” this article through the channels set up in your instapaper account.

In addition to that, at the end of all the articles, you’ll find the following two buttons:

clicking “archive all” will make sure you won’t get the articles sent another time. “Download Newest” will order a fresh supply from your Instapaper unread list.

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  Some rights reserved by B.K. Dewey

About the author: André Klein has grown up and lived in many places including Germany, Thailand, Sweden and the Middle East. He has taught languages at private schools for many years, produced two music albums, performed at poetry slams, curated an experimental television program and is the author of How To Teach Online Without Selling Your Soul and various other publications.

( tl;dr – wrote a short story, you can download it here)

I’ve lived both in the Far and Middle East. Both experiences left strong memories, traces, impressions. And I noticed very early that if I wanted to convey any of my experiences to others in writing, an autobiographical account wouldn’t cut it.

Short Fiction Instead of Travelogues

It lies in the nature of subjective experience that what to one person is life-changing, to another may be trivial. In other words, the things that leave a strong impression on us are not just very different, they are often intangible, as well.

This is why at the moment I’m working on a series of short stories (and not travelogues!) about the Middle East. On top of that the Middle East as depicted in these writings (you’ll find the first short story below) is completely fictional in order to avoid the straight-jacket of preconceived notions and opinions.

Individual Publications For Individual Readers

These writings will be published independently, that is without the help of publishing houses, marketing and extensive copy-editing. It is an experimental process and whether I’ll follow through with the rest of the short stories in this series will depend (to some extent) on how people respond to this idea of a fictionalized Middle East that still contains all its defining characteristics of conflict and contradiction.

What You Get For Downloading This Story

This first short story is completely free. You’ll find the download link at the end of this article.

A few notes:

I arranged it in such a way that by downloading it, you’ll get the story in what we call here an “Indie Publishing Pack”, meaning a zip file containing a styled PDF, .MOBI file optimized for Kindle and an .EPUB for Sony and other e-readers.

The idea is that if someone downloads an ebook (or short story) he or she should be able to decide on what device and in which way to read it. So, in order to take out the guesswork, you’ll get three versions at once.

(If you need help with transferring the files to your device, see also here)

Support Independent Publishing

If you like the story and want more, here’s how you can help and support this project by one (or more) of the following ways:

Your responses will determine when the next story comes out and if it published in the same way like this one.

And now *drumroll*, the Download Link

Here it is, the first short story about a fictional Middle East, titled: “Don’t Call Me Naomi”

         —> click here to go to the download page <—

 

About the author: André Klein has grown up and lived in many places including Germany, Thailand, Sweden and the Middle East. He has taught languages at private schools for many years, produced two music albums, performed at poetry slams, curated an experimental television program and is the author of How To Teach Online Without Selling Your Soul and various other publications.

Ask any foreign language teacher, and they will tell you that the best way to learn a language is to become fully immersed in it.

You can only learn so much from reading, writing and speaking the language for short amounts of time. First hand experience, day in and day out, is an incredibly quick and effective way to master any language!

But most people don’t have the money or time to hop on a plane and live abroad for a few weeks. The solution?

House Swapping

English is a difficult language to learn. While you were probably lucky enough to learn it as an infant, many people don’t share the same luxury. Being immersed in English is a great way to learn the language, meaning that a lot of people are just like you! They’re wishing for an opportunity to live abroad and become an English speaking pro.

Swapping homes with similar persons in the country whose language you’d like to learn provides the best opportunity for both. Maybe you’re living in Chicago, but you’d like to become more proficient in German? No problem. There’s probably someone in Frankfurt who’d love to live in Chicago, immersed in English on a daily basis!

You just have to find them.

Getting Connected

Using an accredited site like Home Exchange, you only have to pay a small fee and you’ll have access to a database of users who would love to swap homes with you. In short, while you’re living in Frankfurt at Franziska’s house, she’ll be squatting at your place in Chicago! Be sure to find a site with a good track record, read reviews of other’s who’ve used the service and contact your potential swappers to see if you think it’ll be a good fit.

If you have any reservations about loaning your place out to a specific potential house swapper, don’t do it. Only swap with people with whom you feel totally comfortable.

Being Responsible

Hold out until you find a match that you really feel compatible with, and when the time comes to make the switch, treat their place with the same level of respect you’d expect at your house.

Take an initiative to compile a list of places you’d like to see, things you’d like to learn, and cultural activities you want to check out. Learn all you can while you’re there and ask the homeowner to leave a list of suggestions for you. You can return the favor by leaving a to-do list of suggested activities to help your guest get a feel for the city!

Use the housing swap opportunity to your full advantage! Speak the language as much as possible while you’re there and immerse yourself fully in the culture! You’ll learn more than you ever thought possible.

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 Some rights reserved by tpmartins

About the author: Henry Fitzgerald is a technology consultant located in Seattle. When he isn’t geeking out over the latest social media platforms and Apple gadgets, he enjoys spending his time sailing and attempting to cook. Follow him on Twitter or read more about the latest tech news at technected.com

Skype is not just a software. It’s a verb. As the Oxford Dictionary informs us, it can be used both with an object ”When is a good time to Skype you?” and without as in ”We skyped before we met in person.“

Skype is a word that is understood by grandmas and expat toddlers all over the world. Chances are it’s even more widespread than “to google”.

Not so well known is that besides calling family and friends or having cat conferences Skype can be a great business tool for anything from online collaboration and training sessions to reducing phone costs.  It is (not only) for these professional users that the following tips will be interesting.

1. Quick Mute

Description: Quickly mute your microphone by hitting a combination on your keyboard

Benefits: Danger of sudden background noise such as a sneeze, car alarm or ringing phone? Need to talk to someone beside you while in a professional conversation? Hitting mute will spare your caller the distraction and protect your privacy at the same time. The best thing is that these hotkeys work even when the Skype window is not in focus, meaning it will work even when the call is running in the background. (Of all these tips, this is what I use the most)

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Hotkeys

Make sure Hotkeys in general, and the Mute function in particular are enabled.

Choose a combination. Finished.

(I chose Alt+Space because the keys are directly next to one another and I can easily mute/unmute with one hand)

2. Disable IM Sounds

Description: When you get a lot of instant messages or simply use this function daily, these “plop” sounds can be very annoying, especially with headsets, especially if it is for some reason too loud and a tiny IM shoots directly through your skull.

Benefit: One of the best tips to curb distraction and preserve sanity: disable IM sounds.

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Notifications -> Sounds

remove the tick where it says “incoming IM”

3. Disable Online Notifications

Description: Whenever one of the people on your contact list goes online, Skype will tell you by popping up little window on your screen, even if you’re doing something completely different at the time, such as writing a blog post or trying to figure out where your money went that month. If you have a long contact list with a lot of users, you’ll see a lot of these notifications. Most of the time they aren’t relevant. Also, whenever someone experiences connection instabilities he will “flicker” and you’ll see these messages popping on and off.

Benefit: Clear your headspace! Remove them!

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Notifications -> Notification Settings

Remove the tick where it says “comes online”

4. Call Phones All Over the Planet

Description: Use Skype to reach mobile phones and landlines

Benefits: Very cheap, good cost control and you have your phone book with you whenever you log in somewhere else.

How To:

Simply dial a number anywhere on the planet (Skype will help you to find the right prefix)

Skype will tell you to upload funds to your account. Yep, it’s not free, but still very affordable and convenient. I never use anything else anymore to make international phone calls.

5. Call Forwarding

Description:  Forward your Skype calls to your mobile phone

Benefit: Receive Skype calls even when away from computer and offline.

How To:

Go to Tools -> Options -> Calls -> Call Forwarding

Note: You have to pay for this feature. Standard rates apply.

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Did you like these tips? Here are some more…

Even More Tips

Set up your personal Skype wake-up call

Run Two Instances Of Skype Simultaneously

Build Your Own Call Center with Skype

Record Your Skype Calls

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What tips do you use? Leave a comment below!

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img:  Some rights reserved by HikingArtist.com

About the author: André Klein has grown up and lived in many places including Germany, Thailand, Sweden and the Middle East. He has taught languages at private schools for many years, produced two music albums, performed at poetry slams, curated an experimental television program and is the author of How To Teach Online Without Selling Your Soul and various other publications.

Some of us have learned to love the screensaver images Amazon ships with their Kindle reading devices. Others quietly suffer the rotating  selection of dead poets and educational images of fishes and plants. And yet others simply ask: “What if I’d like to see something else?”

Personally, I belong to the third category. I was neither particularly thrilled nor appalled by the Kindle stock wallpapers of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and others. But, as so often, a little innocent question led me down a rabbit hole of business interests, hacks and limitless creativity.

So, in case you’re wondering. The answer is NO! You can’t change the screensaver on your Kindle. At least Amazon doesn’t want you to do it. Why? The answer to this question is a bit more complicated, but I’ve read on forums that earlier Kindles ( I think it was V2) actually had an option to choose custom screensaver images but Amazon scrapped it because newer Kindles used this feature to rotate advertisements.

Warning Notices  and Re-Claiming eReading Turf

Fortunately, that’s not the end of this story. Thanks to inquisitive individuals all over the world, there’s now a relatively danger-free way of re-configuring your Kindle so that it will allow you to choose custom screensaver or wallpaper pictures.

Compared to “unjailing” iPhones, there’s allegedly little danger of “bricking” (destroying) your Kindle this way, and the providers of the hack even offer packages to uninstall and reverse any changes you may have made, but it does require a bit of willingness to experiment.

If you want to do it, here’s a link to a detailed tutorial.  At the top it says “WARNING: Use at your own risk! “”

At first I was sceptical, too. But never underestimate the power of an innocent question. So, finally, I threw “caution” to the wind, it worked without problems, and I never missed Amazon’s Twains and Dickinsons. Instead, I now choose whatever I want to see, just like selecting a wallpaper on any other device I own.

Where To Get Alternative Screensaver Pictures From

Keep in mind that the best format for a Kindle wallpaper is 600×800 pixels and the e-ink doesn’t display color so you might as well select something grayscale from the start.

The easiest way to find suitable, ready-made Kindle wallpaper material is to browse collections.

Online Collections

kindlesavers.com

Stylish, minimalist collection.

kindlewallpapers.tumblr.com

contains some great ones!

note: there are other collections, but I’ve found them wanting.

Browse & Crawl

If you’ve exhausted all collections so far or couldn’t find anything you like, here’s four other ways:

1. Do a FlickR search!

2. Browse Tumblr for everything that was ever tagged with “kindle wallpaper”

3. Look at /r/kindlescreensavers/ on Reddit.

4. my personal favourite: use Google image search and set image size to “exactly” -> 600 x 800 px and color to -> “black & white” (see screenshot)

Make Your Own

If all of the above still isn’t enough, be creative and make your own! Tip: Use a service like www.picresize.com to transform your snapshots  into the right dimensions.

What’s Your Favourite Source For Kindle Screensavers? Leave a comment below!

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img:  Some rights reserved by WheresWilson

About the author: André Klein has grown up and lived in many places including Germany, Thailand, Sweden and the Middle East. He has taught languages at private schools for many years, produced two music albums, performed at poetry slams, curated an experimental television program and is the author of How To Teach Online Without Selling Your Soul and various other publications.

If you’re looking for ways to help bring a language to life for your students and get them excited about learning, check out these few suggestions!

• Cook A Meal: Everyone likes to eat, especially students! Connecting over a meal is a great way for students to get to know both the classmates and the professor. Choose a meal that truly represents the country whose language you’re learning and be sure to have everyone pitch in. Encourage students to use their language skills to the best of their abilities while they’re cooking and eating the dinner.

• Visit/Move To Country: Tell your students to do everything in their power to live in or at least visit the country whose language they’re learning. Traveling to the country is especially important for students that plan to live there one day permanently and wish to speak the language fluently. It’s as important as finding a job, arranging moving companies, getting a visa or finding a place to live. Though it’s expensive, tell your students to make it a priority, and do whatever they can to make the trip!

• Start A Club: Starting a club with other people learning the same language is helpful for developing a student’s comprehension and speaking abilities. Encourage students to get together and start a weekly culture club that meets to watch movies or listen to music in the language they’re learning, speak the language, watch news or read blogs.It’s a great way to learn about the culture and learn the language simultaneously. They can act out certain scenarios like ordering food, shopping for clothes, hailing a taxi and giving directions or getting around a city.

• Connect With A Native Speaker: If possible, have your students use social media to connect with someone who has spoken the language since birth. Using Skype, Facebook or Twitter can help your students learn to use the language the way it’s used by native speakers instead of how it’s used in a textbook. They’ll also learn helpful tips about the country, in case they ever decide to travel or re-locate.

• Teach Someone Else: The true test of knowledge is whether or not your students can re-teach what they’ve learned. Do they have a friend family member that’s always wanted to know the language they’re learning? A younger sibling or cousin? Encourage students to share what they’ve learned with others. They’ll reinforce what they’ve learned and spread the goodness to others in the process.

These tips can help the language feel more alive to your students, making it easier to learn, and easier to retain. Bringing the language to life isn’t hard to do, but your students have to be motivated enough to follow through.

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img:  Some rights reserved by zinjixmaggir

About the author: Henry Fitzgerald is a technology consultant located in Seattle. When he isn’t geeking out over the latest social media platforms and Apple gadgets, he enjoys spending his time sailing and attempting to cook. Follow him on Twitter or read more about the latest tech news at technected.com

I have no other word to describe the feeling one gets when reading the blogs or watching the videos of Yet Another Self Appointed Expert: as if SEO was a secret order to which mere mortals are not admitted (unless they buy that $200 SEO-SECRETS guide, of course).

But as time passed it became very clear that 99% of it was mere smoke and mirrors. Everyone wants to be #1 on Google. And people are willing to believe almost anything to get there.

So is SEO a lie? Far from it. But you should take everything people say with a grain of salt. Instead of believing the experts, experiment!

Having said that, here are a few tips that I wish someone had told me when I started out.

1. Know Your Keywords: What Would Google Do?

Keywords. You read about them on every SEO blog, in every SEO guide, so it must be important, right? That’s what I thought when I first heard about them. And still I had no clue what I was supposed to do!

Now I know that this reaction was perfectly natural. First of all, there’s not much to do! This doesn’t refer to secret knowledge of any kind. No, it simply means learning to think like a search engine.

Because, despite all the “smart algorithms” search engines are stupid. They are machines! They don’t have a clue what you mean when you search for something. All they know is key words or phrases. So, for example, when you write 1,000 words about the “White Album” by the Beatles, and you neither mention its title, the band’s members, producers or anything, it’s invisible to Google or any other search engine for that matter.

This is the cornerstone of SEO. You have to use the right words and phrases for your content in the right places. How do we know which are the right ones? Simply look at what other people are searching for.

Google’s Keyword tool is a great way to do this. Simply enter a keyword and see how many people are searching for it. If the number is too low, or if the competition is too high, think of another one or let yourself be inspired by Google’s related keywords.

Okay, so where do we put them? Here are some general guidelines!

2. If It’s In The Title, It’s Important (Must Be, Right?)

This is how a search engine spider thinks when it crawls your website. (Don’t worry, there aren’t any insects on your site. “Spider” is simply the name for a search engine program that constantly and restlessly scours the internet for new information to include in search results.)

In other words: Use your keywords in your titles. For WordPress that means, first of all the headline. But even when you use sub-headers (“Heading 1, 2,3, etc.”) within the post, spiders will pay special attention to them. So you should, too.

3. Bold, Italic, Underline: A Search Engine Spider’s Paradise

After scouring the titles for important keywords, spiders also like to look at everything that’s bold, italic or underlined. The idea here is that if an author gives special attention to these words, they are especially important! So if you want to make sure that they are being seen, give them some extra attention, too.

Note: I wouldn’t recommend to overdo it, but doing it once in a while will help both spiders and readers’ eyes to quickly spot what your content is about.

4. A Picture Says More Than A Thousands Words, But Nomen Est Omen

This is simple but underrated. When you upload an image on your post, make sure to rename it. In other words: Don’t upload an image called 347233X.jpg but instead, name the file for what can be seen on the picture, example: beatles-white-album.jpg. If you can couple this with your keywords (without forcing it), even better! Also, images can carry additional information, such as “Description” and “Title” – make sure to fill these out, too, if you can.

5. On Page SEO: Taking Out The Guesswork and Writing More

How do you remember all of this? Either keep practicing, or, one of my favorite solutions, lately: simply use a plugin to remind you to think like a search engine!

For a long time I dallied over a tool called Scribe which does exactly that. It reminds you, while you’re writing a post, to pay attention to all of the above and more. But paying $20 dollars per month just to have a piece of software remind me what I already knew seemed a bit steep. I wanted to have something simpler. So I looked for alternatives, and after a few hours came up with this free plugin called Copy Compass.

I’m immensely grateful to the guys who made this plugin possible. Not only is it a great way to remind oneself of certain SEO practices while racking one’s brain for creative juices, it’s also a great way to train oneself to think like a search engine.

Again, there are no magic bullets in the world of SEO, but a few habits here and there will improve the chance of being seen online.

Check the video below to see Copy Compass in action. And make sure to buy the programmers a coffee!

P.S: You don’t need to get a 100% on each article. These are just guidelines. Simply write your post and click “Analyze Content” to get some ideas.

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img: snoopy sherlock via flickr Scott Monty

About the author: André Klein has grown up and lived in many places including Germany, Thailand, Sweden and the Middle East. He has taught languages at private schools for many years, produced two music albums, performed at poetry slams, curated an experimental television program and is the author of How To Teach Online Without Selling Your Soul and various other publications.

About seven years ago I painted my television’s screen with thick bright colors to turn the distracting time-sucking device into a permanent artwork. My friends resorted to even more drastic measures such as cutting the power cord with scissors (turn off the device first, thank you!)

But we all had one thing in common: We were sick and tired of being programmed. We got rid of our tellies and never looked back. But we were no media ascetics. As much as we loved to watch our favourite movies, series, music clips, etc. we simply wanted to decide what to see and when to see it.

Set-Top Boxes & Sofa TV

Nowadays, many televisions come with Internet access and free apps either directly embedded into the device or fed through a set-top box. I don’t own one of these plasma-spewing monsters (not yet?) but I was curious about the “new TV” experience.

And what I quickly found out that it’s very easy to build your own customized home media center. Here’s how I did it.

Step 1: The Hardware For Your Media Consumption

What you need:

- computer

- screen

- loudspeakers

- remote control

I had an old netbook with Windows XP, a set of tiny but powerful USB speakers and a nice big screen. The only thing I added was a dead-simple little remote control for free browsing that I got from Ebay for $3.

Some people also simply buy little mini-desktop PC for about $200 bucks to do the job. But if you have an old computer lying around somewhere, chances are it’ll do just fine and you can build up a media center for free! (note: desktops can be too loud!)

The main thing is that  all the hardware you selected is compatible with the software part.

Step 2: The Media Center Software

If you’ve ever used a Windows PC, you might have seen the Windows Media Center (MCE) – a so called 10-foot user interface with easy access to photos, music, videos, etc.

But did you know there’s tons of free alternatives? Here’s a selection:

• Boxee
• Elisa
• Entertainer
• Freevo
• MediaPortal
• My Media System
• MythTV
• Neuros OSD
• Plex
• XBMC

(quoted from deviceguru)

I tested a few of them on a lazy afternoon and decided on XBMC for its sleek interface and huge repository of add-ons, apps or plugins (all of them for free!). The following might differ, depending on which Media Center you use, but here’s what I did:

Step 3: Extending Your Media Center Functionality

XMBC worked right out of the box on my hardware. So I added my music library and looked around a bit in the add-ons section. The cool thing about XMBC is that you can easily download/install add-ons or plugins from within the system.

Among other things I installed:

- Grooveshark - After entering your grooveshark login details you can browse, search and listen to playlists.

- Youtube – Simple and effective interface to access Youtube.

- Academic Earth - streams lectures and discussions

- IceCast - Huge selection of internet radio streams

- Mediathek - Various German TV streams for my expat existence

and so on and so forth…

Step 4: Troubleshooting And Hacking

It’s possible to boot XBMC directly before Windows but I decided on a more moderate approach and simply replaced the windows shell  to fire up my media center immediately. [tutorial]

The tutorial linked above also mentions EventGhost, a brilliant free software with which I was able to map, edit and customize some of the buttons on my remote, i.e. opening music library with one click, etc.

Summary

I’ve been using it now for two or three days and I think it’s great. Since I don’t own either a TV or sound system (anymore) this home-brew media center is a one-size-fits-all-solution and it lets me consume media without being consumed by it!

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img: xmbc

About the author: André Klein has grown up and lived in many places including Germany, Thailand, Sweden and the Middle East. He has taught languages at private schools for many years, produced two music albums, performed at poetry slams, curated an experimental television program and is the author of How To Teach Online Without Selling Your Soul and various other publications.

Note: The term indie does not have anything to do with Indiana Jones, Native Americans or Bollywood but is simply a short form for independent as in indie rock or indie games.

Indie Publishing Vs. Traditional Publishing

What is the difference between traditional publishing and indie-publishing?

Well, they got money, we ain’t got none…

But, seriously… I would define it as follows:

“The indie publisher strives to provide the highest quality output based on the lowest quantity of physical or financial resources.” 

In other words, as an indie-publisher I have exactly one employee (me) who does everything that in traditional publishing would be handled by whole teams and departments:

I’m everything from my own worst boss, waking me up in the middle of the night to catch that deadline, to the disorganized cover-designer, over-worked tech-guy, bad-tempered pedantic editor and coffee cooking intern.

Why would anyone put up with all of this?

One word: freedom. You can do whatever you like.

This doesn’t mean not being able to process criticism or get all snobbish when someone doesn’t understand a sentence that – to you – was poetic genius but to most of your readers only comes off as syntactically garbled mess.

Freedom without responsibility is not real freedom. It’s just recklesssness. But that’s a different kind of discussion. So let’s just leave it at that.

The indie publisher can choose what to write, how to write it, in what order to present the material, how to package it, and so on and so forth. Traditional publishers may have the benefit of out-sourcing or distributing the work among various professionals, but the indie-publisher can imbue his work with a strong character, spirit or attitude from the way the fonts look to the way the product is being marketed.

It is this wholeness injected by one individual’s spirit that gives this feeling of authenticity, of not just another mass-produced thing off the shelf but something real.

The success of the indie game Minecraft (made by one person) is a good example of how convincing and captivating this spirit can be, compared to all the many corporately produced games that take millions to make and feel just like all the others.

But there are many other examples in the music world. Read this article about Sargent House for example.

OK, enough preparatory preachery. Here are my 5 insights of the year:

#1 Piracy Is Not A Problem: Inflexible Publishing Models Are

If you open any newspaper this day you’ll find the reports of “ebook sales soaring” next to warnings of “intellectual property theft”. But it’s a misconception that piracy destroys writer’s lives. Whether it’s the music, movie or book industry, people have been copying stuff for decades. With each new technology, our abilities to copy stuff have soared but not less music, books or movies are produced. The opposite is the case: The lower the threshold to write and publish a book or record a music album, the more artworks are actually getting out there.

As publishers we have to ask ourselves: If stealing our stuff is more convenient for the reader than buying it, maybe we should do something about it? Maybe we should remove hurdles, reduce complicated sign-up procedures and just deliver the bacon?

And: If the payment process can not be streamlined, then maybe free is the best option.

#2 Free & Premium Is Not A Contradiction

We had a few free offers this year. And what I learned is this: Giving books away for free is the best possible thing you can do. If you absolutely have to, offer the books as a “bribe” for signing up to an email list but the best thing is to let people just download, no questions asked.

Interesting: Some works I put here on the site and simultaneously on Amazon for a low price. The result: The more people download something for free, the more will also buy it.

More about this: >>> 

#3 From Zero To Hero: Publishing A Bestseller Is Easy

Books are not what they used to be. The role of publishing is changing. So is the meaning of a “bestseller”. I found out this year that it’s fairly easy to write a bestseller on Amazon. Why? Because a bestseller is relative to its category or target group, there is not only one bestseller list but hundreds!

More about this: >>> 

#4 Collaboration Still Rules

The book “Education Is A Cow That Anyone Can Milk” was different from the beginning. Instead of just editing it on my own as usual and giving it to one or two friends to proof-read I made an open call on this blog to participate. Many people sent in their feedback and helped to improve the final result. It was so much fun that I’ll definitely do it again. The book is available for free, by the way, or on Amazon for a reasonably small price.

More about this: >>> 

#5 Blogging Is Not An Option, It’s A Must

I published a little guide about blogging this spring and I’m convinced now, more than ever, that blogging is an absolutely essential component of making this whole indie publishing thing work. It has many reasons, but the two most important ones are: developing reach and creating new contacts. In other words: The content of a blog is important but not as much as its context! Its power is indirect (people will find a blog for one reason and become interested in it for another) and asynchronous (people will stumble over older articles through search engines).

More about this: >>> 

Having said that..

I wish you a Happy New Year!

About the author: André Klein has grown up and lived in many places including Germany, Thailand, Sweden and the Middle East. He has taught languages at private schools for many years, produced two music albums, performed at poetry slams, curated an experimental television program and is the author of How To Teach Online Without Selling Your Soul and various other publications.

On many people’s wishlists this year was probably one (or even more) of the many different Kindle devices. Americans might have scored a Kindle Touch or Kindle Fire while the rest of the world had to make do with the entry level devices.

But politics aside…

While many people know that using an e-reader with e-ink or similar technology does improve the electronic reading experience (no glare!), not many people are aware that their Kindle can be a real power-house when learning a foreign language.

1. (Foreign) Language Dictionary

Every new Kindle comes with a built-in dictionary in English and (correct me if I’m wrong) depending on your location, another one for your native language if you live in one of the “Kindle Countries” (UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.)

It’s a well-known fact that reading in a foreign language is one of the best ways to extend your vocabulary, see grammar in action and simply have fun.

By using the built-in dictionary you can easily move the cursor to the beginning of a new word and you’ll see the definition directly on screen.

So, if you’re learning English as a foreign language, you don’t need to do anything, at all. Just start reading one of the thousands of free classics and use the built-in function to look up new words.

But what if you’re learning French, Spanish, German or another foreign language?

Also not a problem. Here’s how it goes:

• You’ll need to get a dictionary file for your language. You can buy one or check out this list of free ones. (Please note that all of these dictionaries are one-way (Eng->German, German->Eng, etc.), so make sure you get the right one!)
• Transfer the file to your Kindle into the documents folder. (If you bought one this happened automatically)
• Press Menu, go to -> Settings, press Menu again and select Change Primary Dictionary
• choose your dictionary and start learning!

2. Kindle Notes

While opening any Kindle book (dictionaries, too) you can highlight words and sections or even add notes. Your notes are saved in a file called Name-of-Book.mbp (read-only). The notes also go into another file called My-Clippings.txt.

There are many ways to use this, but one of the most obvious is to create vocabulary lists.

After reading you can go to clippingsconverter.com and convert your notes into Excel or Word format, PDF and even post them to Evernote.

This way you can easily print or edit your notes for further study or exercises. A good idea for example is to use the new words from your clippings by building sentences from them in the foreign language you are learning.

3. Foreign Language Learning Materials

Now, the Kindle shop offers a huge variety of bestselling top titles for lazy afternoons and holiday reading. But did you know that there also many different publications on Kindle specifically aimed at foreign language learners?

Yep, there’s actually a huge variety of non-fictional works that can be useful, besides the already mentioned dictionaries for Kindle. Here are some ideas:

• textbooks & workbooks: Search the Kindle Store for “Learn Hebrew” and you’ll find a little booklet published by my colleague that includes 5 Hebrew dialogues with transliteration, translation, vocabulary lists and exercises. This is just an example, of course. There are many such materials available for other languages as well.

• flashcards: Something not as obvious is to use Kindle as a Flash Card browser. Yes, really. Here’s how it works: Each word occupies one page on your Kindle; by clicking next and previous page on your device you can “flip” the words and see the translation, just as you would do with flashcards on paper. Here’s an example.

Note: Although Kindle officially only supports a handful of languages, there are many publications in the Kindle Store for other languages as well. Since Kindle doesn’t display Hebrew, Arabic or Cyrillic letters, for example, these books use images as a workaround.

You won’t be able to use the dictionary function, but until Amazon supports more languages natively this is better than nothing.

If you buy ebooks in PDF you won’t have any problems on your Kindle, either, by the way – no matter what language.

Happy Reading and Learning!

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img: tutorial screenshot via rekindle, photo by mwkelley 

About the author: André Klein has grown up and lived in many places including Germany, Thailand, Sweden and the Middle East. He has taught languages at private schools for many years, produced two music albums, performed at poetry slams, curated an experimental television program and is the author of How To Teach Online Without Selling Your Soul and various other publications.