A Publishers Weekly article today painted a disturbing picture of a Wisconsin library board that saw four of its members dismissed over refusal to remove ‘controversial’ books from the library:

The controversy began in February when two patrons complained that the library’s YA section included fiction and nonfiction books about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. The patrons accused the library of promoting "the overt indoctrination of the gay agenda in our community" and demanded that the library add books "affirming traditional heterosexual perspectives."

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Whenever I sit down to write a new short story, I usually have some sort of rough outline (even if it’s just a few bullet points of the main events). In other words, I have a plan. This is especially useful when it comes to writing the always-difficult endings. And it helps to prevent writers block.

But what about writing without any sort of plan, not even an outline? Well I decided to find out how my writing would be affected if I just sat down and started writing a short story with nothing but a basic idea. I’m writing the story in my notebook that I use for more experimental works, which I detailed in this earlier post.

Even though the story is nowhere close to being finished, I’m already seeing the benefits of losing the outline. Here are a few of those benefits I’ve found so far:

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I was working on a different blog post when the news caught my eye in my Google Reader account. I first came across this post from Teleread – Amazon.com has bought Lexcycle, the makers of the popular Stanza ebook reading app for iPhone/iPod Touch.

Then I had to see for myself and found this short article in the New York Times. Yep, the news is true. And continuing to browse through my Google Reader posts, I then read Teleread’s first post about the news. I share Paul’s sentiment – wow!

But I also share Paul’s worry as well:

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The New York Times website is probably where I get most of my news on a daily basis. I like their style and their articles are informative and well-written. So you can imagine my surprise when I read this article entitled: ‘With Kindle, can you tell it’s Proust?’

The NYT really stooped to a new low with this article. It’s nothing more than a fluff piece with superficial arguments on why the Kindle, or any ebook reader for that matter, won’t catch on. But first we get a quote from an author who actually does not want people buying her book on the Kindle:

Anne Fadiman, the author, was relieved to learn that her essay collection, “Ex Libris,” was not available on Kindle. “It would really be ironic if it were,” she said of the book, which evokes her abiding passion for books as objects.

“There’s a little box on Amazon that reads ‘Tell the publisher I’d like to read this book on Kindle,’” she said. “I hope no one tells the publisher.”

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I was deeply saddened to read this Ars Technica post about Yahoo! shutting down Geocities. The service, which was bought by Yahoo! in 1999 enabled people with limited technical and design skills to create their own little home on the web:

Started in 1994, Geocities was like the Facebook to Angelfire’s MySpace—competing webpage services that allowed over-enthused HTML newbies to create artfully horrific webpages to represent themselves in the early days of the Internet. (I was a diehard Angelfire fan, myself.) Geocities was acquired by Yahoo in 1999 with the intent of extending Yahoo’s reach with its Internet advertising and services.

Geocities was where I set up my first website, and where I first posted my short fiction and various essays. I still remember the night I "published" my first short story on Geocities, after getting the HTML just right, and wondering how many might read my story. Probably not very many.

Goodbye Geocities, you will be missed!

There’s not much to say, except that it’s Friday and have a happy and safe weekend!

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It has been a while since I’ve written about DailyLit – the site that lets you read full-length novels in increments via email or RSS feed. Back in February 2008 I posted this review, but haven’t really followed up since. Luckily for me, I continue to subscribe to their email newsletter.

When I read today’s newsletter, I was pleasantly surprised at some cool things happening over at DailyLit. Here’s a quick rundown:

1. The 6 Word Autobiography! And you thought drabbles were hard! But hey, I give DailyLit a lot of credit for keeping their customers engaged by keeping those creative juices flowing! You can read some current entries here and maybe even add your own.

2. Offering best-selling author books! You can read Nicholas Sparks’ The Lucky One and get the first 5 installments free. Not a Sparks fan? Then you can read Seth Godin’s Unleashing the ideavirus absolutely free!

3. New DailyLit Affiliate Program! I’m pretty excited about this one. Here’s what the email message said about the program:

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The glitch that caused Amazon’s website to pull many ‘adult oriented’ books (mostly gay & lesbian titles) from its sales rankings, causing the books to be harder to find, caused quite a controversy last week. I detailed it in this post Amazon ‘glitch’ stirs rumors of alleged censorship (April 14).

While the question of whether or not Amazon engaged in deliberate censorship because of homophobic tendencies is still up in the air, the fierce and harsh response to the incident on blogs and Twitter brings up other questions. Were people too quick to judge? Was there a ‘mob mentality’ in the online community?

These questions, and more, were brought up in this NYT article:

Although the way messages speed across social networks makes today’s digital world ripe for mob-fueled conspiracy theories, the controversy over Amazon was striking both for its ferocity and for the velocity with which it spread.

And at least one blogger, Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, backtracked on his criticism of Amazon:

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"I was wrong, because I believed things that weren’t true," Mr. Shirky wrote, noting that "the idea that this was an event of mainly technological propagation, rather than a coordinated bit of anti-gay bias, simply escaped me."
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Some people view ebooks as just a fad, something that’s popular today but gone tomorrow. I think they’re wrong. There are signs everywhere that ebooks are the future of the way we consume all kinds of literature.

Thus I composed this short list of the top 5 signs that signal ebooks are definitely getting more "mainstream" every day. I didn’t rank these in order of importance because I think they are all important in different ways.

1. Release of the Kindle 2: Despite my criticism, I don’t hate Amazon and I don’t even hate the Kindle, I just hate the DRM they have in place that let’s users have access to content they buy, but not actually own it. But I have to give Amazon credit, they have really pushed ebooks into the public eye.

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Up until now my discussion of the iPhone and iPod Touch have been related to ebooks. I have avoided the rumor mill that is cranking at full speed among Apple fanboys and fangirls.

My wife sent me these pictures she took at her office (with her own iPhone 3G), where a co-worker had returned from Singapore – where he purchased it for around $100. He had, what by all appearances looked like a mini iPhone (nano?). My wife says that the "mini iPhone" had a different operating system (OS), but the home screen looked identical to what’s on the market now.

Take a look for yourself:

She reports that the back casing is identical, and the smaller iPhone was a 16GB.

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