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6 Embarrassing Grammar Mistakes You Simply Don't Want to Make - 0 views

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    Point one, I make em', you make em', we all make em' and everyone makes these mistakes.
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The Many Meanings of Make - 0 views

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    I never really thought about just how many ways we use the verb "make".
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20 Rules for Writing So Crystal Clear Even Your Dumbest Relative Will Understand - 0 views

  • Spreading an idea means getting it from your brain into someone else’s. It means putting together the essential facts, the logical arguments and your insightful conclusions together in exactly the right way to recreate your brilliant idea in the mind of your reader.
  • Try to describe your audience with this simple formula: X who Y. For example: “Bloggers who want to get more traffic”.
  • If you can’t explain what your post is about in one simple, short sentence, it’s probably too complex or unfocused.
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  • Make sure a clear connection exists between the opening of your post and the headline.
  • If a sentence, phrase or word is particularly important or significant, use bold or italics to add stress. But don’t overdo it.
  • Always be consistent with your terminology.
  • If a point is worth making, it’s worth making twice. Or even three times.
  • Only tell them what they need to know to follow your argument. Share the minimum you need to convey the desired message.
  • Clear examples help readers understand difficult concepts.
  • Concrete language describes something detectable by the senses. Something you can see, feel, hear, smell or taste. Abstract concepts are much harder to imagine.
  • When you provide specific detail in your writing, there’s less room for ambiguity. Your reader is far more likely to end up with the same idea in their head as you have in yours.
  • Clarity does not tolerate “might,” “may” or “possibly.” If you can’t say something with certainty, perhaps you shouldn’t be writing about it at all.
  • if you’re in the business of spreading ideas, you must make friends with bullets.
  • Bullets are a valuable tool, but you should never drop your reader into a list without first setting the scene.
  • make sure each point is recognizably related to the others.
  • If you were giving your reader a list of steps, you’d present them in the order they needed doing, right? Obviously. But if the items in your list aren’t steps, they often still have a natural order – even if you didn’t have one in mind when you wrote them.
  • always supply everything the reader needs to fully understand your points within the post itself.
  • You think you’re being generous but truthfully you’re being greedy. Greedy with your reader’s time, their attention, and their patience.
  • include a clear call-to-action. Tell your reader what you want them to do.
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    20 tips on writing with clarity.
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What happens with digital rights management in the real world? | Technology | theguardi... - 0 views

  • In 1997's Bernstein v United States, another US appeals court found that code was protected expression. Bernstein was a turning point in the history of computers and the law: it concerned itself with a UC Berkeley mathematician named Daniel Bernstein who challenged the American prohibition on producing cryptographic tools that could scramble messages with such efficiency that the police could not unscramble them. The US National Security Agency (NSA) called such programs "munitions" and severely restricted their use and publication. Bernstein published his encryption programs on the internet, and successfully defended his right to do so by citing the First Amendment. When the appellate court agreed, the NSA's ability to control civilian use of strong cryptography was destroyed. Ever since, our computers have had the power to keep secrets that none may extract except with our permission – that's why the NSA and GCHQ's secret anti-security initiatives, Bullrun and Edgehill, targetted vulnerabilities in operating systems, programs, and hardware. They couldn't defeat the maths (they also tried to subvert the maths, getting the US National Institute for Standards in Technology to adopt a weak algorithm for producing random numbers).
    • John Lemke
       
      This is also why they have a hard on for developing a quantum computer.
  • An increase in the security of the companies you buy your media from means a decrease in your own security. When your computer is designed to treat you as an untrusted party, you are at serious risk: anyone who can put malicious software on your computer has only to take advantage of your computer's intentional capacity to disguise its operation from you in order to make it much harder for you to know when and how you've been compromised.
  • The DMCA's injunction against publishing weaknesses in DRM means that its vulnerabilities remain unpatched for longer than in comparable systems that are not covered by the DMCA. That means that any system with DRM will on average be more dangerous for its users than one without DRM.
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  • For example, in 2005, Sony-BMG music shipped a DRM called the "Sony Rootkit" on 51m audio CDs. When one of these CDs was inserted into a PC, it automatically and undetectably changed the operating system so that it could no longer see files or programs that started with "$SYS$." The rootkit infected millions of computers, including over 200,000 US military and government networks, before its existence became public. However, various large and respected security organisations say they knew about the Sony Rootkit months before the disclosure, but did not publish because they feared punishment under the DMCA. Meanwhile, virus-writers immediately began renaming their programs to begin with $SYS$, because these files would be invisible to virus-checkers if they landed on a computer that had been compromised by Sony.
    • John Lemke
       
      How the Sony DRM created serious security issues.  It should also be considered a violation of our civil rights.  Who the hell gave Sony permission to modify my OS!  Furthermore why didn't the OS companies sue Sony?  Likely because they are in bed together.
  • If I was a canny entrepreneur with a high appetite for risk -- and a reasonable war-chest for litigation – I would be thinking very seriously about how to build a technology that adds legal features to a DRM-enfeebled system (say, Itunes/Netflix/Amazon video), features that all my competitors are too cowardly to contemplate. The potential market for devices that do legal things that people want to do is titanic, and a judgment that went the right way on this would eliminate a serious existential threat to computer security, which, these days, is a synonym for security itself.And once anti-circumvention is a dead letter in America, it can't survive long in the rest of the world. For one thing, a product like a notional Itunes/Amazon/Netflix video unlocker would leak across national borders very easily, making non-US bans demonstrably pointless. For another, most countries that have anti-circumvention on the books got there due to pressure from the US Trade Representative; if the US drops anti-circumvention, the trading partners it armed-twisted into the same position won't be far behind.I've talked to some lawyers who are intimate with all the relevant cases and none of them told me it was a lost cause (on the other hand, none of them said it was a sure thing, either). It's a risky proposition, but something must be done. You see, contrary to what the judge in Reimerdes said in 2000, this has nothing to do with whether information is free or not – it's all about whether people are free.
  • The DMCA is a long and complex instrument, but what I'm talking about here is section 1201: the notorious "anti-circumvention" provisions. They make it illegal to circumvent an "effective means of access control" that restricts a copyrighted work. The companies that make DRM and the courts have interpreted this very broadly, enjoining people from publishing information about vulnerabilities in DRM, from publishing the secret keys hidden in the DRM, from publishing instructions for getting around the DRM – basically, anything that could conceivably give aid and comfort to someone who wanted to do something that the manufacturer or the copyright holder forbade.
  • Significantly, in 2000, a US appeals court found (in Universal City Studios, Inc v Reimerdes) that breaking DRM was illegal, even if you were trying to do something that would otherwise be legal. In other words, if your ebook has a restriction that stops you reading it on Wednesdays, you can't break that restriction, even if it would be otherwise legal to read the book on Wednesdays.
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How I Make a Living as a Writer (and You Can, Too) - 0 views

  • If you sit down at a blank screen every day and simply do nothing then you are a writer. If you write one word, even better. Some people will disagree. Maybe you will disagree. That's fine. We also can all disagree. Meanwhile, our DNA is telling us we are pretty much exactly the same.
  • I try to read pieces or chapters in 3-4 books a day or more. I read at least from one non-fiction, one or two quality fiction, and one inspirational. I try to read at the level I want to write. I do this in the morning before I start writing.
  • Destroy every gatekeeper.
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  • Do what you want. Self-publishing simply means you write a book and you figure out how to get it into the hands of other people. It might just be you sell it on your email list. Congrats! You're then a published author. In my post "How to Self Publish a Bestseller" I write about the details and the numbers.
  • This seems opposite of what I said above. But blogging is not such a bad idea. How come? Because it makes you write every day. And it also is fun to build friends and community around your blog. But if you want to blog, don't just register a domain name and start blogging. You won't get any traffic.
  • There's a thousand ways to build community and practice writing on the Internet. Blog is one of them but there are many others. My #1 suggestion: first practice on Quora (cc Marc Bodnick) If you go there, follow me and say "Hi!".
  • If you don't write every day, you won't know what your potential skill level is. You will be producing sub-par work. And in a world where 15 million books will be published this year, your book will have little chance to shine.
  • Do the math: if you just write 1,000 words a day that are publishable then you have a book every two months. 1,000 words a day is not easy. But it's not hard either.
  • No. You used to be able to make a living writing articles. Just a few years ago. In 2005 I made a good living writing about 3-4 articles a day for different publications while I was running my fund and before I started and sold Stockpickr. But those days are over. People just don't pay for content. And there are too many writers. It's a supply and demand thing.
  • ou have to write more than one book. And for most people, you have to write dozens of books.
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    A great article of advice from a published author.
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New, inexpensive production materials boost promise of hydrogen fuel (Feb. 21, 2014) - 0 views

  • The trouble with solar fuel production is the cost of producing the sun-capturing semiconductors and the catalysts to generate fuel. The most efficient materials are far too expensive to produce fuel at a price that can compete with gasoline.
  • "In order to make commercially viable devices for solar fuel production, the material and the processing costs should be reduced significantly while achieving a high solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency," says
  • Choi and postdoctoral researcher Tae Woo Kim combined cheap, oxide-based materials to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases using solar energy with a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 1.7 percent, the highest reported for any oxide-based photoelectrode system.
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  • "Without fancy equipment, high temperature or high pressure, we made a nanoporous semiconductor of very tiny particles that have a high surface area," says Choi, whose work is supported by the National Science Foundation. "More surface area means more contact area with water, and, therefore, more efficient water splitting."
  • "Since no one catalyst can make a good interface with both the semiconductor and the water that is our reactant, we choose to split that work into two parts," Choi says. "The iron oxide makes a good junction with bismuth vanadate, and the nickel oxide makes a good catalytic interface with water. So we use them together." The dual-layer catalyst design enabled simultaneous optimization of semiconductor-catalyst junction and catalyst-water junction.
  • In a study published last week in the journal Science, Choi and postdoctoral researcher Tae Woo Kim combined cheap, oxide-based materials to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases using solar energy with a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 1.7 percent, the highest reported for any oxide-based photoelectrode system.
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    I am an advocate of switching to hydrogen for combustion engines.  One of the best reasons is that combustion produces water.  Furthermore, it is much safer than most people believe.  (Your car is not going to turn into the Hindenburg.) In Ben Bova's Book "Break Throughs" he talked of huge floating solar powered hydrogen producing plants.  In Room's "The Hype About Hydrogen" he painfully points out that H2 production is still not cost effective enough to complete with Gasoline.  That said, research like this leaves us hope for the future.
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» Earn $100 a Day With Textbroker : Freedom With Writing - 0 views

  • Textbroker makes it possible to not only claim assignments from the job board but to also set your own price for private clients that contact you through the system. This is a great system that allows you to make more money from repeat clients.
  • Once you sign up you can apply for writing privileges. This is a standard writing sample based on a topic that they choose. It’s important to write this as though your salary depended on it because it does; your sample will be rated and the better the rating, the more you get paid per assignment.
  • This is where Textbroker outshines every other site: While you are looking over the assignment no one else can look at it or claim it. You have 10 minutes to make your decision. If you accept it then you can write it. You have 24 hours to write it after claiming it. If you don’t want to write it then it goes back into the assignment pool for someone else.
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  • The problem is that once you have accepted an article you have 24 hours to write it. While that is not a problem in and of itself, while you have that article selected you cannot select another article. You write one, submit it and then choose another one.
  • The writing platform at Textbroker is not great. There is really no way to sugarcoat it and make it seem better than it is. It’s basic, has no automatic save and is honestly one of the worst out there.
  • Every article you write is rated. Your rating is the average of the last 5 articles that you have written. If you have consistently high ratings, ask to be moved to a higher category. Your rating can also be lowered if your reviews are consistently poor. There is room to move at Textbroker.
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    A good review of the textbroker writing site
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5 Tips for Quality Content Creation That Won't Bust Your Budget - 0 views

  • Forty percent of respondents admitted that poor spelling and grammar reduced their favorable impression of a brand.
  • As a marketer with a limited budget, the good news about focusing on quality content creation is that you don’t need to think in terms of producing more content but rather in terms of making each piece of content more effective.
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    I liked this article as soon as it mentioned spelling, grammar and being too "salesy". In short, it makes good sense.
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The Most Lucrative Ways to Make Money Off Your Blog - The Write Life - 0 views

  • the most commonly used are a 728×90 “leaderboard” and a 300×250 “medium rectangle”.
  • If you don’t collect email addresses on your site — for example, to send out a weekly or monthly newsletter — you should start. (
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How to Make Your Writing Concise - 0 views

  • It’s not as violent as it sounds, but this process can prove painful for many writers; it’s all about getting rid of self-indulgent, flowery writing
  • don’t go off the deep end with the thesaurus. Don’t choose every synonym Word suggests for your replacements, as some lead to awkward phrasing and don’t fit within the context. Your words should fit naturally in the sentence while also decreasing redundancy.
  • go over your work as if you were an editor. Take a red pen to your words, and cut out anything the content can do without.
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  • Look for words and phrases like “a number of,” “in order to,” and especially “that.” All can be replaced with shorter and more powerful words or can be completely cut out.
  • it should never be the first thing on your mind while writing.
  • Don’t be too hard on yourself if you can’t get rid of all forms of “to be,” but make sure there is no other way to phrase the sentence before you give up.
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How to Make Absolutely Sure Your Article Gets Killed - 0 views

  • When your article assignment is to write 1,000 words and you turn in 2,000 words, it creates all kinds of problems for your editor. She’ll need to comb through your article and decide which 1,000 words she can cut. After all, she has only so much space, so she has to make it fit. Now, don’t get all wishy-washy on me and turn the extra material into a bonus sidebar. Just squish all those extra words in there and let your editor deal with it.
  • Avoid showing even a modicum of personality. If you want your article killed, it should look like it was written by a robot…a robot that doesn’t speak English.
  • When you get an assignment, your client will send you a little thing called an assignment letter, which details the specs of the assignment. Ignore this.
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  • If those don’t work out, over-rely on source-finding services like ProfNet and Help a Reporter Out, using whoever happens to respond — and whatever you do, do NOT check out the sources you get from there to make sure they’re credible.
  • When the editor asks you for backup on your facts, tell him you’re the backup. And whenever you get the chance, inject your opinion into the article.
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How To Become A Prolific Writer While Holding Down A Day Job | Positive Writer - 0 views

  • The author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), continued to work day jobs throughout his life.
  • Other authors who held down day jobs throughout their writing careers include Bram Stoker, Philip Larkin, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, among many others.
  • she wrote the bestselling book Interview With The Vampire while working her day job as an insurance claims examiner.
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  • Anne Rice
  • Having a day job makes it imperative that I allocate time for writing. I insure I write at least 2 hours before I go to work come rain or shine. And I do this by following my rituals every morning without fail.
  • Regardless of what time I work (shift work), I wake up at least 3 hours prior and like clockwork, 1) I brush my teeth, 2) make breakfast, 3) sit down at my desk, 4) check emails, 5) check in on my social connections and finally 5) after stretching my legs for a moment, I write on cue for at least two hours.
  • ake note of the things you do consistently every day before and after work.
  • Create a space of time within your current daily rituals for writing every day. Make sure it’s at a time of day that works best for you.
  • Commit.
  • I highly recommend creating a writing sanctuary for yourself, somewhere you only go to write, and therefore, your mind will associate being there with writing.
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    A good PMA oriented article.
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» Writing Jobs from TextMaster.com (Full Review) : Freedom With Writing - 0 views

  • TextMaster.com is an interesting little site that is fairly new but already has a reputation for being a good way to get started as a freelance writer. They make the claim that they are writer centered and by all accounts are fair and honest.
  • To become a member of the site, you simply sign up and verify your email address. Then you can go and explore the site.
  • There are 3 categories on TextMaster that will be of immediate interest to you: Copywriter, Translator, and Proofreader. These are the 3 areas that you can apply to for work.
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  • You can choose up to 7 interest categories and then select a star rating based on your expertise in the area. Because your list of available jobs is based on this list, you might want to tweak it to get the best search results. It’s not a long list and the categories are fairly standard with one exception: There is a separate are for the sensitive topics of religion and pornography.
  • There are two methods of finding a job on this site: Look for one and wait for one to come to you.
  • there is no direct client to writer communication which almost always increases the issues with editing.
  • there is the warning that if a writer has a lot of requests for rewrites or changes their status may be downgraded and eventually suspended.
  • There are several different levels of writers on this site and they are ranked in two different manners. Your initial level after submitting your sample is going to be Bronze. This means that you have written less than 10,000 words. The more words you write, the higher your level is going to be. The levels are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, and Platinum.
  • Basic, Standard or Expert. So if you do well on your sample then you might enter the site as a Bronze Standard. That would mean that your initial pay rate is 3.9 cents per word. It sounds low but you can move up quickly. If you do well you will be rated again and if you are granted the expert level then you get a bump to $0.10 a word. You can eventually make more than $0.15 per word.
  • payment threshold of $70
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Synesthesia In Literature: Definition and Examples - 0 views

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    Synesthesia is a when more than one sense is evoked by a single stimulus. People who are synesthetes often have superior memory. (It can also be triggered by psychedelic drugs.) So it makes sense to incorporate it into your writing. I like the taste of the article.
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AJ Kohn talks Hummingbird, social, authority, writing and MUCH more! » SEO Co... - 0 views

  • My mantra is to do it instead of thinking about doing it. If I catch myself doing the latter I just switch to doing instead of thinking. Easier said than done for me, but I’ve gotten better at that. But there aren’t enough hours in the day. Or not if you’re also going to stay healthy and be a part of your family and not get burnt out. So things fall off the table, even more so if you’re hell bent on creating really great work. Yet, I find that quality is what wins at the end of the day and that solves a lot of other problems.
  • People scan and don’t read, so you have to format your content to meet that reality.
  • And if they share it, you gain greater readership. So I encourage writers to think of the entire canvas when creating content. Think about the headers in your piece and about the images you’ll use to enrich the story.
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  • Writers still concentrate too much on the text and not enough on formatting and presentation. Making the content you create readable, portable and memorable is what will gain success.
  • The other thing that I think was important was commenting (with links) on other content.
  • I believe in 90-9-1 participation inequality. Comments are the area on a piece of content where the 9 (contributors) and the 1 (creators) are most frequently found. Those are the people I wanted to connect with because I had a better chance of them carrying my content to other places. And they did.
  • Social media is a key factor in SEO and Internet marketing for businesses and individuals. You rock at social media, sharing across multiple platforms and gaining reach. Social media can be intimidating and time consuming. What advice do you have for managing individual as well as business social accounts? Well you hit on the big issue; it’s time consuming and most people don’t want to invest that amount of time. So that’s the first thing. You can’t half-ass it and expect to do very well. One of the things I try to do is make my content on these platforms consistent, readable and memorable. On Twitter I decided to use a convention for the vast majority of my tweets. [Activity]: [Title] [URL] [Comment] [Hashtag]
  • The last one is to not do work for free.
  • Well, I’m seeing more and more evidence of what I describe happening and believe that Knowledge Graph Optimization (KGO) is going to be more and more important moving forward.
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    Many good points about writing in this new era are brought out in this interview.
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» How You Can Make Money At Home Through MadContent : Freedom With Writing - 0 views

  • MadContent.com is a bit unique in that they cater to customers and clients who are in need of SEO services. SEO, or search engine optimization, is a method that involves strategically placing specific keywords at predetermined intervals in articles, product descriptions, and more. Through using SEO, customers and clients of MadContent.com may be able to boost their search engine rankings organically when the specified keywords are searched for.
  • However, MadContent does require prior experience. Specifically, when applying to work for the company through the online application form, you will be required to submit a sample of your work. Prior SEO experience is a plus, and work completed through the site will be required to meet certain SEO requirements. Understanding the basics of SEO and being apply to apply the strategy into your work is necessary. Further, assignments are provided to you via Elance.com, so you do need to have a valid Elance.com account in order to apply to work for this company.
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    Mad Content requires experience and is SEO focused. You will have to submit a sample and meet certain SEO requirements on all assignments submitted. 
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» Making Money From Home: Is Constant-Content Worth Your Time? : Freedom With... - 0 views

  • Set Your Rate.
  • Write What You Want.
  • Wait For a Buyer. The downside to working through Constant-Content, however, is that there is no guarantee your work will sell. Ever.
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  • You can sell usage rights only, which allows you to resell your article over and over again.
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13 Ebooks and Courses That Make Great Holiday Gifts for Writers - 0 views

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    I actually have a few of these ebooks and I am aware of the success of some of the other authors on the list. In my opinion, especially for the cost of free, these 13 should be worth checking out.
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Getting Access To Your Own Data Sounds Like A Good Idea, But So Far It Hasn't Been Easy... - 0 views

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    While this sounds like a great idea which could empower the consumer to make more informed choices (health care and energy use were specifically mentioned in the article), there seem to be many issues with getting the consumer data in a usable form.
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Storyvile: Putting Your Life in Your Fiction | LitReactor - 0 views

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    This articles list things you can use from your life experience to make your fiction better.
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