What's In It For You? - Why I Just Launched Five Digital Newspapers!

How are you at keeping up with news and stories in your main interest area? The Internet is great and Google and Wikipedia are wonderful research tools I use all the time. But sometimes I get lazy. How about you?

Sometimes I just want a quick, easy, inexpensive (free is best) way to keep up with topics I'm interested in, personally and professionally.

So during December I discovered paper.li, a free (for now?)  digital publication utility that "organizes links shared on Twitter and Facebook into an easy to read newspaper-style format"

Note: paper.li is currently in "alpha" release, which is pre "beta", which means it's a work in progress - so far I've found as long as I stick to just papers generated from Twitter, it works fine, the Facebook version I haven't gotten to work yet (as of 1/4/11).

So anyway, my friend and Mastermind partner D'Vorah Lansky focuses on book marketing so she has a paper.li newspaper called The Book Marketing Daily, which she started in November.

I live in the Wilmington, NC area and the merchants here put out a paper called The locally-owned-ilm-biz Daily which any local area could do. (I think it's a cool idea).

So after I noticed those two papers, I decided to start one of my own, and then took it just a bit further, I set up five. (Note: I realize I put out a lot of info, but nothing I put out locks anyone in, always easy to unsubscribe or just not sign up - I don't take it personally; but hey, I have a lot of interests and I love to share.)

So the five I'm currently publishing, each of which reflects one of my professional interests, are:

Networking Events Daily

 Living Life on Purpose

 Relationship Marketing Update

The Law of Attraction at Work

Personal Power with Self-Hypnosis

(Note, the links for each of the above take you to the latest 'issue'.)

What are they? A paper.li newspaper is automatically generated by the software that searches every article, video, image, audio file, whatever that's linked in posts in Twitter or Facebook (like I said above, so far I haven't gotten the Facebook part to work, and would particularly like to have the ability to combine links from both to create one newspaper for each topic - for me 5 is fine, 10 is too many - so even I have limits, lol.)

All you have to do is enter some search times that you want your paper based on, give your paper a title, and then get it started. You can also set it to automatically update Twitter when you publish and set the publication time for each day. Mostly you do nothing and it's put out daily. People can subscribe, they can get an RSS feed, and they can also embed the code for the newspaper in their own blogs or websites. There are a few Google ads from paper.li in each paper but I don't find them bothersome.

How Well Does It Work? Overall I'm pleased and impressed. Not every article really fits my specified area of interest, but most do maybe 80-90%. So that's great for my purposes, and a small (but growing) number of folks are subscribing to my papers as well - sometimes I'll Tweet about an article I think is particularly interesting or helpful, and sometimes put an update and a link on Facebook as well.

One thing that's cool is that (in the Twitter-based) people who's links I've included in the papers (and remember it happens automatically) notice their material is there and often thank me, which is a great way to meet nice people with shared interests and expertise.

Also, my latest Tweets and updates and an archive calendar for the paper are automatically included on every issue, so that's helpful, too.

So What Can You Do? If you're interested in one or more of the areas I'm covering (see above), just click the links and subscribe and choose to get daily updates. Or start your own paper.li digital newspaper.

I don't know if it will always be free (I have a suspicion there may be different levels including a basic, free version), but it is for now and for me it's a great way to quickly check each day for new and interesting material.

If you're already using paper.li I'd love to hear your opinions or experience.

Broccoli vs Shrimp and (I can't believe it either) Broccoli Won!

So an odd thing happpened at Chez Brown tonight.

And I'm here to tell the whole sorry tale (but worry not, I'll keep it short).

It started a week or so when Yahoo! News had a feature article called something like, "7 Wonder Foods That Are Really Good for You that You Should Have in Your Kitchen".

Well, at the top of the list was broccoli (which I had to check how to spell for this post, it's two "c"'s, one "l". So anyway, when we went grocery shopping a couple of days ago we bought some broccoli and brought it home. I figured, "Cool, with broccoli in the kitchen we'll both be healthier!"

Somehow I hadn't made the connection that you're actually supposed to eat the stuff.

I thought maybe it was like garlic and vampires. You know, you just keep garlic around (I think you're supposed to wear it on a cord tied around your neck) and anyway, vampires supposedly will give you wide berth. So, we had broccoli in the kitchen, and f'sure it would look really stoopid threaded on a cord and worn around your neck so I assumed that like on the shelf in the kitchen would do the trick. Or maybe in the refrigerator. You know, out of sight!

Hey that's an idea, maybe it could be like baking soda. Just shove some broccoli in the back of your refrigerator and it will make all the other stuff like butter and bacon even better for you. (Do ya think?)

Anyway, it being New Year's Day and all we wanted to have a good meal to celebrate the new decade so I told Marge I'd make Shrimp & Grits, which, if I say so myself, I do up pretty well.

And Marge dropped the bomb, "Okay, and I'll cook up some of that broccoli."

Gulp.

So we kind of discussed it a bit. I posited that if we actually ate it then we'd have to buy more in order to have that "healthy food in the kitchen" that Yahoo! was so insistent about.

But yeah, Marge won.

So here's the deal. I made up the Shrimp & Grits with my usual recipe (email me for it if you want it). And it was good. I use a lot of cheese in the grits (and real butter), and bacon and scallions and some other stuff plus I dose my own serving with a hefty dollop of Marie Sharp's habanero sauce. So it was excellent.

Except for the shrimp. I used some "back of the freezer since can't remember when" shrimp and it was okay, as in not spoiled or anything, but it was sorta tasteless and a little rubbery.

But the broccoli? The broccoli rocked! I know I've never had broccoli as good and I don't think I should count on ever having it as good again (maybe we really should go back to the keep it in the frig for the good of the other food strategy), but Marge's broccoli was outasight. I even finished (a few) extra servings on the theory that it was so good right in the moment that leftovers would be a disappointment.

So the broccoli clearly won.

Do I feel healthier? Hmm, not sure. Yet, but let's say Yes just to keep the peace and end the story.

And, oh yeah, there was a goodly portion of Shrimp & Grits left, so, even with the tired shrimp, I know what I'm having with my 4AM coffee. tomorrow.

Happy New Year Everyone!