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CBS News' Bob Schieffer defended himself against Fox News Sunday on CNN's “Reliable Sources.”

Schieffer, who interviewed Attorney General Eric Holder last weekend on “Face the Nation,” came under fire from Fox News' Megyn Kelly for not asking Holder about the New Black Panthers scandal that Kelly has spent so much air-time covering:

Attorney General Eric Holder sit downs with CBS' “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer for a half hour, a one-on-one interview. And not one question about the now-infamous New Black Panther voter intimidation case….

I'm telling you one of two things happened. You tell me if I'm wrong. Number one, Schieffer doesn't care about the story and just decided to punt on it, even though you can find facts about it on CBS.com. So, the Web site over there is doing its job, but Schieffer apparently isn't interested in the story. Or, number two, the DOJ sent guidelines for this interview and told him you can't ask about that.

Schieffer denied both of Kelly's accusations, telling Howard Kurtz that he simply hadn't heard of the story by the time he interviewed Holder.

“Frankly, had I known about that, I would have asked the question,” Schieffer said. “I was on vacation that week. This happened — apparently, it got very little publicity. And, you know, I just didn't know about it. I mean, you know, God knows everything, but I'm not quite that good. Every once in a while, something will slip by me. And in this case, it just slipped by me. If I'd have known it, I would have asked about it.”

WATCH:

Responding specifically to Kelly's implication that Schieffer and “Face the Nation” agreed not to ask Holder about the scandal, Schieffer said “that's not true. We never ever make deals with anybody that's on 'Face the Nation.'”

Schieffer also disagreed with Bill O'Reilly, who said that the major broadcast network newscasts haven't covered the New Black Panthers story because they are trying to protect President Obama.

And Now For The Rest Of The (Beginning Of The) Story …

If you saw that 30-second teaser on Thursday and wondered what the heck was going on with Batman's costume and Superman's lack of a shave, this six-minute video setting up DC Universe Online's story should answer a lot of questions.

Thanks to Antiterra for the tip.

Send an email to the author of this post at owen@kotaku.com.

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The State of Internet Music on YouTube, Pandora, iTunes, and Facebook

“The music business historically has been built around albums. This album-centrism is like saying the sun revolves around the Earth. We don't listen to albums now; we listen to collections of songs.”

“More people are engaged with music than ever before,” said Tom Silverman, chairman and CEO of Tommy Boy Records. “It's a hockey stick going up; it's an incredible opportunity that so far has eluded us.” Silverman was speaking this morning at the New Music Seminar in New York City, where he and Eric Garland, CEO of Big Champagne (who also unveiled the Ultimate Chart today), gave a State of the Music Industry address. Even if you aren't a player in the industry and only an avid music listener, the figures that Silverman and Garland culled will surely surprise you. Here are a few of their key findings.

A shift from albums to singles

Of the some 100,000 albums released last year, 17,000 of them sold only 1 copy; more than 81,000 albums sold under 100 copies. In fact, just 1,300 albums sold over 10,000 copies, an astonishing figure given that these numbers combine physical and digital album sales. And for physical sales alone? Only 2% of new albums on Soundscan sold over 5,000 copies—that's a skydiver's plummet from the golden era of the music industry.

“The music business historically has been built around albums,” explained Silverman. “This album-centrism is like saying the sun revolves around the Earth. We don't listen to albums now; we listen to collections of songs.”

Of course, the reason for significant single-growth and slowed-album sales is due in part to iTunes hawking every song as a single for 99 cents. “Historically, the price of an album was five times greater than a single,” said Silverman, who believes setting the price at a tenth of an album's cost was a mistake and that even $1.29 is too low. “It should've been a $1.99, and then we would've seen higher digital album sales because it would've been a bigger discount for buying an album.” But both Silverman and Garland agreed that this is changing, citing the fact that about 14% of all of Universal Music's digital sales are for complete albums, which suggests that the $9.99 price-tag is becoming approachable for consumers.

Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter: Track your FFF number

According to Garland, industry folks today are obsessed with “FFF numbers”—that is, an artist's friends, fans, and followers. “It's a race, but to what end?” he wondered. Garland showed through a series of charts how Twitter and especially Facebook are ballooning in popularity for artists like Lady Gaga, while once popular Myspace's numbers are stymied.

However, Garland points out that Facebook recently forced most users into converting their profile favorites into “fan” data, which arbitrarily inflated the social network's numbers. For example, Garland tells the story of how when Susan Boyle's performance first blew up, a friend of his added the YouTube star to his Facebook profile. When Facebook imported this data though, he instantly became a “fan” of Susan Boyle. ” had no interest in it— liked her for like 30 seconds, once!” Garland relates. “It doesn't really indicate any consumer activity—it's automated,” added Silverman.

Garland's story serves as an indicator of just how difficult it is to figure out the influence of an artist through his or her FFF number. After all, even if Lady Gaga starts losing friends on Myspace, that's less of an indication of her popularity, and more a sign of Myspace's falling use.

Google and YouTube more important than iTunes?

Interestingly, it wasn't Apple that Garland viewed as the most important name in music, even though the company's iPods, iPhones, and iTunes indicate otherwise. “YouTube is increasingly the category killer,” argued Garland. “When people ask me what is the biggest name in music in my opinion, they want me to say Apple. I usually answer: YouTube.”

Garland told audiences that if you actually look to where people are listening to music—not even just looking at videos—consumers are turning more and more to YouTube, which he calls the “largest catalog of on-demand music on the Internet.” If only Google could make this service profitable, right?

Internet radio: Pandora

Garland and Silverman pointed out that Pandora is now the most popular Internet radio service, with a 52% market share, close to 60 million registered users, and more than 1 billion stations.

And in a sign of just how much the Web has impacted music, Silverman told the crowd that Pandora now represents 1.7% of all radio listening—really a shocking figure to think about. Obviously, traditional music media is going away. But is the music industry ready for the change?

Fast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the future of business.

The author of this post can be contacted at tips@gizmodo.com

Good news for Slacker Radio fans — the web/mobile music application integrated ABC News into its stable of content today, allowing users to customize their news consumption as well as incorporate it into their Slacker stations.

Slacker Radio has gained its share of popularity among music fans for offering a nifty cache feature that other mobile music apps lack; after creating a station, you can save it for offline use (perfect for underground subway rides or long plane trips). Now it’s distinguishing itself from other services even more by incorporating still more diverse content.

Slacker isn’t the first service of its kind to incorporate news content — Sirius | XM does something similar — but this move does serve to give Slacker what could be seen as an edge over PandoraPandora, which only serves up music and doesn’t allow caching.

For 14 days, basic Slacker users will be able to access ABC News content; Slacker Plus users can keep on tuning in after the two-week period ends (the Plus subscription is $3.99 per month). The content — which includes segments from Good Morning America, anchored by Robin Roberts, George Stephanopoulos, Juju Chang and Sam Champion; and Nightline anchored by Terry Moran, Cynthia McFadden and Martin Bashir — is located within the mobile app in a folder marked “Newsnews,” and works in much the same way music stations do (i.e. you can skip stories).

You can also choose to add hourly news updates to any of your stations, but the process to do so is laborious, to say the least. First, you have to futz around on the website, create a station, go to the “Fine Tune” tab to select that option, save the station, make it a “Favorite,” and, if you’re already logged into Slacker on your mobile device, sign in and out to make the Favorited station appear. Sure, you can choose to “Fine Tune” any pre-existing station — which is easier than creating your own playlist — or choose to have ABC News turned on for all your stations by surfing over to “Account Settings,” but all this still requires signing online. We wish it were possible to do all that within the app, as going through all that song-and-dance degrades the whole easy and accessible aspect of it.

For more Mobile coverage:

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Material from:zoozz.ru

A study conducted by usability consultant Jakob Nielsen claims that reading on e-book readers like the iPad and the Kindle still doesn't match up to the reading speed of good old printed paper. The test chose 32 people (admittedly a small sample, but one that was felt to be representative of an e-reader audience), taught them how to read on both the Kindle and the iPad, and then clocked their speed in reading through an Ernest Hemingway story on both devices, a PC-based reader, and the printed word.

It turns out, according to the study, that the iPad was generally faster than the Kindle at reading speed — about 6.2% slower than reading a normal book, compared to the Kindle's 10.7% slower than the printed word. The way it all worked out, there was no actual significant difference between the iPad and the Kindle, so the study can't say officially which one of those is faster. But the difference between the Kindle and the book was significant, so reading print is faster than e-readers so far.

The iPad and the Kindle barely beat the book in ease-of-use, while the PC lagged way behind, so the study is still bullish on e-readers in general. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of reasoning on why the e-readers are slower — is the audience just not used to them, or is there something in the mechanics that make things slower? Since e-readers can adapt for usability and your standard book is pretty much as good as it's going to get, we'll likely see the iPad overtake a printed page in usability very soon.

[via PC World]

Dear Steve:

Everybody seems to be emailing you these days about the whole iPhone 4 antenna issue and giving you guys grief over it, but don't worry, I'm not writing you about that.

Back in December of 2008, I–or rather my Romanian developer, Alex Brie–submitted my self-published mystery novel, Knife Music, as a book app to your App Store. After waiting a week for it to be reviewed, I was stunned to learn my app was rejected for having “objectionable content” (your gatekeepers even sent a screen shot of the tawdry bit they didn't like).

I never thought my book was all that racy, although it does have some mature themes, such as teen suicide and male doctors' sometimes uneasy relationships with their female patients. But it wasn't any more risqué than many popular novels these days–or the lyrics to all those rap songs and R-rated movies you have in iTunes.

Anyway, after being disappointed for a couple of minutes, I realized, hey, wait, Apple just rejected my book! In my day job, I'm an executive editor at CNET, so I have decent instincts about what makes a good tech story, though it doesn't take a genius to figure out that anything Apple related–especially something with a negative slant–seems to light up the traffic numbers. All the major tech sites picked up on the story, including our own CNET News as well as your personal favorite, Gizmodo, and some more mainstream pubs.

Suddenly, a lot more folks were aware that my book existed. As I said, I self-published the thing, but not before having some frustratingly close calls with major publishers–or so my high-powered agent said. After so many passes, it was nice to get a rejection that turned out to be good!

The only problem was I didn't have an app and I really wanted one (it's not about writing the Great American Novel anymore, it's about writing the Great American App, right?). So, in an effort to adhere to Apple's standards, I stripped out every naughty word in my book. It wasn't that hard, because, as I said, I'm no Henry Miller. And lo and behold, once I did this, my app was approved.

Not surprisingly, I got a little grief for censoring myself, but I write for the Web, and I'm used to being flexible and updating my reviews and stories as companies upgrade their software and sometimes make critical fixes. When the app was accepted, it quickly shot to #7 in the free book apps list and stayed in the top 100 for four months until I took it down. I don't have to tell you how popular the iPhone is, but over 1,000 people a week were downloading the ebook and I was getting emails from readers in places as far away as Malta (yes, they speak English there).

All that awareness also helped sales of the paperback, which I published through Amazon (Booksurge) and on the Kindle, where I was selling it for $3.99 and it briefly hit #1 in the legal thriller category (this was before Grisham was published digitally, however).

Anyway, after a little over four and half months on the market, a local TV station in New York, NY1, did a story on the book, which led to some renewed interest from publishers and an eventual contract from The Overlook Press, which is publishing Knife Music this month in hardcover, with an ebook edition to follow from Penguin, which distributes Overlook titles.

Was it all due to my iPhone app? Probably not, but it was certainly a major help, and it may be the first iPhone app that's been turned into a hardcover book.

I'm also happy to report my developer recently submitted a new, uncensored Knife Music iPhone/iPad app–it's about 40 percent of the book, not the full book, but it is free–and it was approved, with a NC-17 rating (or whatever you guys call it). So there's definitely been some progress and glad you guys listened to all of the complaints from authors who felt their book apps were unfairly rejected.

Personally, now that iBooks has arrived, I think standalone, text-based book apps are a dying breed, but the future is bright for more graphically rich and interactive book apps. I only did the app again because you guys aren't allowing authors to submit free ebooks to the iBooks Store and neither is Amazon or Barnes & Noble without some special arrangement with the publisher. I also put the excerpt up on Scribd for a limited time, though the iPhone/iPad has two bonus chapters.

Anyway, thanks again. And thanks for having a good sense of humor about some of the Apple articles I've written over the years at CNET, including my latest series on the iPad and the one where I had you and Jeff Bezos going at it in a fictional conversation, discussing the arrival of the Kindle. You do have a sense of humor, don't you? If you don't, you know there's an app for that.

In finishing, I'd like to invite you to my reading on July 27 at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park (7 p.m.), just a couple of miles from where you live. I grew up in Palo Alto and much of Knife Music takes place in the area. Come by and support a great independent bookstore that was included in the Huffington Post's recent list of favorite independent bookstores.

Sincerely,

David Carnoy

David Carnoy is an executive editor at CNET.com and the author of “Knife Music,” a novel that has nothing to do with technology.

Material from:zoozz.ru

Lindsay Banned From Borrowing Clothes; Marc's Ex Writing Tell-All

• Lindsay Lohan is apparently no longer welcome publicity for designers. The ankle-braceleted starlet has been — horrors! — banned from borrowing clothing by most fashion houses, according to one tipster. Lohan has been clothing herself by buying things.

• Cathy Horyn on Lady Gaga: “I like that she not only appreciates hats but understands the boundaries a hat and veil impose on other people.” [On The Runway]
• New Aquascutum designer Joanna Sykes: “So far it's going well. Obviously I've worked at huge design houses before.” Obviously. [Vogue UK]
• “Womenomics” is apparently the latest term for selling women on consumerism packaged as empowerment. “We are now in a female century. This is the century in which women come to the fore, in which the balance of power changes. By 2020, it is reckoned globally there will be more female millions than male,” says Chris Sanderson, “strategy and insight director of The Future Laboratory,” whatever that is. “At some point last year unofficially the Web turned female because there are now globally more female users than male.” Something Joan Didion once wrote about think tanks, forecasting, and walking on hot air comes to mind.
• The six pairs of sunglasses that Madonna “designed” for Dolce & Gabbana are now on sale at Saks Fifth Avenue.
• Celine Dion has eyewear line, too! And she wears hers in the product shots.
• “Mary J. Blige is set to turn the traditional fragrance distribution model on its ear this summer with her first fragrance, My Life,” writes Women's Wear Daily. How different, exactly? Is it a perfume? Yes. That you wear to smell a certain way? Yes. A perfume that leverages a celebrity's image to generate sales regardless of quality? Yes. Will Blige make money off of it? Yes. Er, not actually so “different” then.
• Model Kate Dillon is expecting her first child in December.
• Russian model Irina Shayk, who dates Cristiano Ronaldo, scored a contract with Armani Exchange.
• 29-year-old former model Olivia Inge is writing a guidebook to the industry for young models. “When I started, I had nothing in the way of advice,” she says.
• Matthew Williamson went to Oxford to speak to undergraduates with his C.E.O., Joseph Velosa. (Velosa is a Cambridge philosophy graduate.) The designer told them about how he painted the walls of his recently opened boutique himself. [Vogue UK]
• Retail sales fell unexpectedly in the month of May. The drop was 1.2%, which is the biggest decline since September, 2009, when sales went down by 2.2%. Analysts had been expecting a modest 0.2% increase.
• Rory and Elie Tahari have legally separated. They were married 11 years, and have two children.
• Cynthia Rowley is showing her resort collection from the back of a van in Midtown. No, seriously — she pulls up outside a skyscraper, models pile out, “refreshments” are served, then she drives on to the next media company. Rowley is hitting up Condé Nast first, today at 1 p.m. — burn, Hearst: you wait till 3.
• Alexander Wang bought Holly Brubach's old one-bedroom TriBeCa apartment for $2 million.
• Marc Jacobs' ex Jason Preston is rumored to be writing a tell-all about his time with the designer and his fair-weather celebrity friends, like Naomi Campbell, Lindsay Lohan, and Kate Moss. [Fashion Indie]
• Art model (and occasional ringer for Marc Jacobs) Coco Young seems like a nice girl who'd be good company at a movie. [The Cut]
• Georgia May Jagger, 18, is rumored to be dating a 25-year-old musician named Luke Pritchard.
• Miley Cyrus modeled some of the pieces from her second collection with Max Azria for Wal-Mart.
• There will be no Women's Wearhouse, folks.
• “Kim Hastreiter came off as caustic, her remarks indicating admiration for lots of designers, just not most of those assembled in the room who'd voted to honor her. But everyone else held back the nasties.” Bridget Foley didn't take too kindly to Kim Hastreiter pointing out the obvious at the CFDAs, apparently.
• The U.S. Army licensed its name to a footwear company called PSFG, which also owns Christian Audigier shoes and Ed Hardy shoes. The results are…strange and troubling.
• Turns out newspapers aren't doing so hot in France, either. Pierre Bergé might buy Le Monde.
• Way to cash in on the soccer world cup craze and the legacy of Alexander McQueen, Bebe.
• Alexander McQueen is threatening legal action over a new Cadbury advertisement that it says closely mirrors its famous holographic film of Kate Moss. A vision of Moss floating in a grey dress materialized over McQueen's Fall/Winter 2006 catwalk. Now, the filmmaker Baillie Walsh, who collaborated with the late McQueen on the hologram, made a similar film of a woman floating in a yellow dress for Cadbury.
• Nine World Cup teams are wearing uniforms made of recycled plastic. Clearly the environment is safe in the hands of Nike.
• Diana Vreeland used to send her staff memos about whatever was on her mind. Her customary location for dictations? The bathroom. “I think this note from Mrs. Simpson is delightful:” reads one such memorandum. A young Grace Mirabella was among the recipients of this wisdom. “'I saw a girl on 5th Avenue wearing blue jeans and a brilliant pink cotton pullover; on her hips was a white flowered Spanish Shawl folded lengthwise and looped over very tight in the front with fringe reaching almost to her ankles — It looked marvelous.'” How much you want to bet ten people will be on street style blogs with versions of this outfit within the week?
• Garance Doré just put up a video she made of the Chanel resort presentation in St. Tropez a few weeks ago. It's full of disgustingly pretty and well-dressed people playing bocce ball and shopping, and Olivier Zahm. [Garance Doré]
• Mickey Drexler has not bought so much as a stitch at the Gap since he was fired as its C.E.O. in 2002. “I still feel angry every time I pass a store,” he says.
• New York just cannot decide how it feels about American Apparel. It is probably either, “American Apparel is a skeevy, lying company that discriminates against people,” or, “Buy this floral-appliqué blouse, because we detect a hint of Chanel in its ivory rosettes!” [The Cut screengrab]
• Not content with offering a signature cell phone, Dolce & Gabbana now has a signature cocktail.

Send an email to the author of this post at jenna@jezebel.com.

The Guardian:

It is hard to get some children inside a library — but a high-street shop selling pirate eye patches or superhero equipment is much more of a draw.

This is the simple principle behind a literacy movement that has taken hold in America, and is coming to Britain.

Read the whole story: The Guardian

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Material from:laksy.ru

With the passing of legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, it seems appropriate for all of us to be reminded one more time that he was as much a life coach to his players as he was a basketball coach.

This is one of a series of Fabulous Forum videos in which Wooden discusses his philosophy of life.

If you have a kid who wants to be an athlete, you might want to ask them to pull up a chair and watch for a while.

John Wooden recites his favorite poem:

Other Wooden videos:

John Wooden teaches a kid the right way to tie his shoes

John Wooden talks about basketball, life and death

John Wooden discusses what is important in life

– Houston Mitchell

Earlier this year I revealed the title of Glenn Beck's coming thriller and now the long-awaited publication of The Overton Window is upon us, with the publisher pulling out all the stops. There's an already much-talked-about prologue now online, and they've even released something you don't normally see for a book — a video trailer.

The screen is filled with poetry, and with words that are alternately jarring or literary — for the most part words that long-time listeners would not expect to come from the self-proclaimed “rodeo clown” of a right-wing media phenomenon. One exception does sound very Beck-ian, however — the part where “the dog returns to its vomit.”

But the words are very much not written by Glenn Beck. They are from the poem “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” by Britain's iconic Rudyard Kipling. Most viewers of the trailer — based on the comments that I've read in a couple of online postings — have no idea that this is a Kipling poem, nor would they, since the famed bard of the turn of the 20th Century is never credited.

Kipling's words are no longer under copyright, of course, and you can argue whether it's a form of plagiarism, since it's probably unlikely that many viewers would think that Beck himself actually wrote the poem (again, except for the part about the dog vomit). Still, if I were fortunate enough to get a slickly produced trailer for a book, I'd want it to include words that I'd actually written — but that's just me.

By the way, the choice of the poem does say something about Beck, who is borne ceaselessly back into 1919, the year that “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” around the time that — in Beck's also-fictionalized history of America — Woodrow Wilson and the progressive movement were destroying everything good and decent about America (like, um, rancid meat-packing factories…). Written by Kipling as he grieved over the loss of a son in World War I — an event that makes Beck look sane in comparison — it is a favorite of conservatives who see it as a warning against the totalitarianism rising in Russia and elsewhere.

Of course, the real problem comes when you try to wrap those 91-year-old concerns around the actual issues that America faces in 2010, which have nothing to do with Lenin and Trotsky, but that is the slight of hand that Beck and his ilk do not want you to see.

Also note there's one section of the poem not in the trailer — in which Kipling writes: “That All is not Gold that Glitters.” Wonder why that wasn't included.

Everyone has a book in them, right? Well Barnes & Noble wants to give you the opportunity to push that book in front of a few million people using their PubIt! service.

The new service allows you to upload a document, convert it to epub, and sell it on their B&N reader system, including on the Nook and iPad. It’s coming this summer and is currently accepting sign-ups.

Interestingly, they’re focusing on independent publishers, which suggests that we won’t see too many scrawled treatises on alien mind control in the Carter cabinet or the how the ghost of Jack Ruby is coming to inappropriately touch an older man in Boca Raton.

There will be a “competitive royalty model” but they’re not announcing specifics right now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a freebie: if I were an author looking to get the most out of the social web (and I am), I’d do something along the lines of what I’m about to share. Your mileage may vary, but here’s a decent approximation of the things I’d do. Please feel free to share liberally. Just link back to An Author’s Plan for Social Media Efforts, please.

An Author’s Plan for Social Media

1. Set up a URL for the book, and/or maybe one for your name. Need help finding a URL? I use Ajaxwhois.com for simple effort in searching.
2. Set up a blog. If you want it free and super fast, WordPress or Tumblr. I’d recommend getting hosting like Bloghost.me.
3. On the blog, write about interesting things that pertain to the book, but don’t just promote the book over and over again. In fact, blow people away by promoting their blogs and their books, if they’re related a bit.
4. Start an email newsletter. It’s amazing how much MORE responsive email lists are than any other online medium.
5. Have a blog post that’s a list of all the places one might buy your book. I did this for both Trust Agents and Social Media 101.
6. Make any really important links trackable with a URL shortener. I know exactly how many people click my links.
7. Start listening for your name, your book’s name. ( Covered in this post about building blocks.)
8. Consider recording a video trailer for your book. Here’s one from Scott Sigler (YouTube), for his horror thriller, Contagious. And here’s one from Dallas Clayton for his Awesome Book. (Thanks Naomi for pointing this out).
9. Build a Facebook fan page for the book or for bonus points, build one around the topic the book covers, and only lightly promote the book via the page.
10. Join Twitter under your name, not your book’s name, and use Twitter Search to find people who talk about the subjects your book covers.
11. When people talk about your book, good or bad, thank them with a reply. Connect to people frequently. It’s amazing how many authors I rave about on Twitter and how few actually respond. Mind you, the BIGGEST authors always respond (paradox?)
12. Use Google Blogsearch and Alltop to find the people who’d likely write about the subject matter your book covers. Get commenting on their blog posts but NOT mentioning your book. Get to know them. Leave USEFUL comments, with no blatant URL back to your book.
13. Work with your publisher for a blogger outreach project. See if you can do a giveaway project with a few bloggers (here’s a book giveaway project I did for Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years book).
14. Offer to write guest posts on blogs that make sense as places where potential buyers might be. Do everything you can to make the post match the content of the person’s site and not your goals. But do link to your book.
15. Ask around for radio or TV contacts via the social web and LinkedIn. You never know.
16. Come up with interesting reasons to get people to buy bulk orders. If you’re a speaker, waive your fee (or part of it) in exchange for sales of hundreds of books. (And spread those purchases around to more than one bookselling company.) In those giveaways, do something to promote links back to your site and/or your post. Giveaways are one time: Google Juice is much longer lasting.
17. Whenever someone writes a review on their blog, thank them with a comment, and maybe 1 tweet, but don’t drown them in tweets pointing people to the review. It just never comes off as useful.
18. Ask gently for Amazon and other distribution site reviews. They certainly do help the buying process. And don’t ask often.
19. Do everything you can to be gracious and thankful to your readers. Your audience is so much more important than you in this equation, as there are more of them than there are of you.
20. Start showing up at face to face events, where it makes sense, including tweetups. If there’s not a local tweetup, start one.
21. And with all things, treat people like you’d want them to treat your parents (provided you had a great relationship with at least one of them).

This sounds like a lot of steps. It is. But this is how people are finding success. Should this be the publicist’s job? Not even a little bit. The publicist has his or her own methodology. The author will always be the best advocate for his or her own work. Never put your marketing success in the hands of someone else. Always bring your best efforts into the mix and you’ll find your best reward on your time and effort.

You might have found other ways to be successful with various online and social media tools. By all means, please share with us here. What’s your experience been with promoting your work using the social web?

Chris Brogan is the New York Times bestselling author of the NEW book, Social Media 101. He is president of New Marketing Labs, LLC, and blogs at .

 photo: alancleaver2000

High-interest credit-card balances, crushing mortgage payments, student loans, car payments: if you feel like you’re barely holding your nose above water at the end of the month, it may be time to consider debt consolidation.

The idea: take out one low-interest loan to repay all those high-interest debts and breathe easier knowing you’ve got just one – and more affordable – payment to budget for each month.

That’s easier said than done these days, with lenders tightening the belt even for their most creditworthy candidates–but it’s certainly not impossible. Here are your options:

Tap Your Home Equity

Taking out a home equity loan or line of credit (also known as HEL and HELOC) used to be the most common form of loan consolidation in the real estate boom days, when banks were willing to lend to anyone who could sign on the dotted line.

With one in four homeowners under water (i.e. owing more to the bank than their home is worth) and ever tighter mortgage-lending standards, borrowing against your home equity is a strenuous process. Banks are still lending, but you’ll need perfect credit (a FICO score of at least 720, if not 740), says Keith Gumbinger, a vice president at HSH Associates, which tracks mortgage rates.  You’ll also need a sufficient equity cushion: together, all loans you have against your home cannot exceed 80% of the home’s value. (On a house that is now appraised at $200,000, that means you must owe no more than $160,000.)  That said, if you do qualify, the cost of borrowing against your home remains comparatively low: home equity loan rates now average 8%, while HELOC rates (which are typically pegged to the Prime rate) are around 5.5%.

Borrow From Your Peers

When banks started tightening their lending standards during the credit crunch, peer-to-peer lending gained traction with consumers. Borrowers who couldn’t find loans elsewhere headed to web sites like Prosper.com and LendingClub.com home.action to seek loans from, well, their peers: individuals with spare cash hoping to earn a higher yield offered by their bank.

Not surprisingly, the majority of loans made through Prosper and Lending Club these days (60% at either site) are consolidation loans.  Rates will depend largely on your creditworthiness – and on how much your prospective lenders are willing to pay. At Prosper, you need a minimum 640 FICO score to apply, rates range from 7.5% to 30%. (The borrower sets the maximum rate they’re willing to pay.)  At Lending Club, the minimum FICO score is 660; rates range from 6.39% to 21.64%. To be sure, those loans aren’t free: both sites charge origination fees as well. 

In addition to consolidating high-interest credit-card debt into a lower-interest loan, p2p lending can be good for your health, says Gerri Detweiler, a consumer credit adviser at Credit.com.  Prosper and Lending Club report debts to the credit bureaus as “installment loans,” which together with lower credit-card balances (presumably paid off through the p2p loan) can push up your credit score.

A word of caution: online consolidation loan scams are a dime a dozen these days and you should think long and hard before going with a loan offer you found on the internet. “At best, you’ll end up with a very high interest rate,” Detweiler says.  “At worst, you’ll be scammed.”

Take advantage of low-rate credit-card offers

These days, credit card companies certainly aren’t tripping over each other to mail out 0% APR offers. But if get one, you might as well take advantage, Detweiler says. Thanks to new legislation (known as the CARD Act), these offers are much more transparent and predictable than they used to be.  “Now issuers can’t retroactively raise your rate unless you fall 60 days behind [on payments],” Detweiler says.  “If you’re lucky to get one of these offers, at least you know what you’re getting.”

One caveat: watch out for high balance-transfer fees. Some banks these days charge as much as 5%, with no cap. That means shelling out a $500 fee for a $10,000 balance transfer.  And once the promo period is over, you’ll go back to paying the card’s regular APR.

Your 401(k)

Most financial planners will shriek in horror if you as much as hint at borrowing from your 401(k). “You’re mortgaging your future,” they’ll cry. “You’ll miss out on market gains and interest compounding!” You get the picture. For the most part, they’re right: 401(k) accounts should be funded, not depleted.  But if you’re carrying a 27%-APR credit-card balance around your neck, you may be better off taking care of that first. (After all, why pay someone 27% while earning far less?)

The good thing about borrowing from your 401(k) is that any interest that you pay you’ll pay for yourself, says Detweiler. The rates are pretty low, too: still in the low single digits.  But because these loans typically need to be repaid within five years, your monthly payments may remain high.  “Many people realize [after taking on a loan] it doesn’t provide as much relief as expected,” Detweiler says. 

The biggest risk with 401(k) loans: should you leave your job, voluntarily or not, most companies require that you pay back the loan, pronto. Fail to do so, and it will be considered a “hardship withdrawal,” which means you’ll owe income tax on the outstanding balance, plus a 10% early distribution penalty if you’re younger than 59 1/2.

The bank of Mom and Dad

They say that friendship and money don’t mix, and with good reason: too many a friendship has been ruined by loans gone bad and awkward loan-collections attempts.

If you must borrow from a friend and relative – even your parents – make sure you document the loan, says Detweiler. This will not only keep the Internal Revenue Service happy, it will give your lender peace of mind, too. Online services like LendingKarma.com offers a loan forms kit for as little as $14.95. (For $59.95, you get all necessary forms to document the loan, plus payment tracking and year-end reporting that will come in handy at tax time.)

Police surrounded a health club on Tuesday evening after a frightened employee reported that a bearded man who appeared to be covered in blood had entered the club to use the facility's showers.

It turned out that man was Lee Backhaus of Alexandria who had just played “Jesus” in the annual Passion Drama presented by Zion Lutheran Church and Good Shepherd Lutheran in Alexandria, Minnesota.

Three Alexandria police officers responded to Racquetball Plus Fitness Center on Tuesday, March 30th, on a report of a suspicious male with dark hair, bearded and bleeding. The caller had stated the suspicious man walked down to the showers.

Upon arrival, Backhaus informed police he is actually a member of the club and was taking a shower after playing “Jesus” in Zion Lutheran's annual Easter Passion Drama. He also told police he had informed Racquetball Plus' management he would be using the club's showers following the conclusion of the Passion Drama. When police realized the circumstances of the incident, they left the scene.

In a recent report, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker Meeker claimed that mobile will revolutionize e-commerce. She cited location-based services, push notifications, transparent pricing, and instant mobile delivery as four potential areas where this will occur.

Mobile advertising is also a growing segment. In November, Google acquired AdMob, a mobile display ad serving platform, for $750 million. In January Apple acquired Quattro, a relatively unknown mobile advertising network, for an estimated $275 million. Later in January, Opera bought AdMarvel. In April, Apple announced an advertising platform called iAd.

Cloud Computing

According to a recent study from Juniper Research, the market for cloud-based mobile applications will grow 88% from 2009 to 2014. The market was just over $400 million this past year, says Juniper, but by 2014 it will reach $9.5 billion. Driving this growth will be the adoption of the new web standard HTML5, increased mobile broadband coverage and the need for always-on collaborative services for the enterprise.

Explained ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez in February, "there are already a few well-known mobile cloud apps out there including Google's Gmail and Google Voice for iPhone. When launched via iPhone homescreen shortcuts, these apps perform just like any other app on the iPhone, but all of their processing power comes from the cloud."

Health

Mobile health applications will play a large and important role in shaping the future of the health care system, wrote Mike Kirkwood at the mHealth initiative conference in February. He wrote that mobile and wireless health applications "directly impact the individual's health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit, they don't become “lost” in the system. It allows consumers to be engaged with health and wellness in their daily lives and connect back to their health care provider."

It's not just from within the health system where mobile services will change health care, it's also in the applications that consumers are downloading to their smart phones. In February I surveyed the latest health and fitness apps on the iPhone platform. For example, an iPhone app called Diamedic allows diabetics to record their blood sugar levels and insulin doses.

Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010:
- Part 1: Design & Development
- Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps
- Part 3: Emerging Markets

We'd love to discuss these and other mobile topics with you at our ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010. See our announcement post for more details.

If you're a company in the Mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire, WorldMate, Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo.

The first thing that seems to disappear in the life of many new moms is “their fitness routine”. It is very easy to get caught up in the “mommy world” and put everyone else first but ourselves! For women who have toddlers and pre-school aged children at home, finding the time to work out can be quite the challenge. Not everyone has a nanny, a cousin or even a babysitter to watch the children while you get a quick workout in at the gym. However, do we really need to go to the gym all the time to get an effective workout? As a spokesperson for various fitness products , I knew all too well about the options for home workouts. However, as a former gym groupie it was very difficult for me to think about exercising at home. However, with two sets of pre-school aged twins at home, going to the gym was not an option. I was lucky to be able to brush my hair and throw a on a coat of lipgloss. Who was I kidding with my thoughts of going to the gym for an hour? What most of us don't realize is that working out at home can keep you in the loop of the fitness world!

The most rewarding element about home workouts is that you can exercise with your children. We should all be teaching our children about exercise as early as the toddler years. Believe it or not, you CAN workout with your children. You just need to be a little creative and get back to the basics.. My favorite workout with my four little ones involves creating your own obstacle course. All you need are fairy wings or superhero capes, a tambourine, hopscotch mats and hula hoops. Simple moves like skipping is great for the quads. Jumping in and out of the hula hoops tones the gluteal area or buttocks and incorporating a tambourine increases the overall aerobic intensity. Check out the video to see how you can workout with your children right in your own backyard. The best part about this workout is what your neighbors will be saying when they see you skipping around the yard in fairy wings. Stir things up in the neighborhood this Spring & give this workout a try