Tag Archives: reading

Why I Write in #PowerPoint | HBR + Book Written Entirely In PowerPoint Aims To Reinvent How Businesses Communicate | FastCompany #business #communication

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When writing business documents (aside from emails), most people turn to word-processing software. That’s not the only option. You can do everything — outlines, drafts, revisions, and even layouts, if you’d like — in PowerPoint or similar presentation programs. That’s what I’ve used to write my books, internal documents, sales collateral, and web copy, for several reasons. READ MORE: Why I Write in PowerPoint | Harvard Business Review

Raise your hand if you like sitting through slide-show presentations. How about reading dense, jargony business documents? These are the staples of modern business communication, and yet they’re enjoyed by precisely no one. Enter Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Design. Duarte thinks she can redesign business communication with Slidedocs, a new concept she defines as “a visual document, developed in presentation software, that is intended to be read and referenced instead of projected.” Think of it as a kind of a hybrid between slide-show presentations and prose documents—but one that eliminates the most annoying qualities of each. Duarte’s new book on Slidedocs, which she wrote entirely in PowerPoint, has just been released as a free download on her website. READ MORE: Book Written Entirely In PowerPoint Aims To Reinvent How Businesses Communicate | FastCompany

Boy Who Couldn’t Afford #Books Asks Mailman For Junk Mail To Read; Mailman Responds Spectacularly | HuffPost #reading #kids

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Twelve-year-old Mathew Flores is a bit different from the rest of us. He loves junk mail. Until recently, advertisements were the only reading materials available to the boy. Flores loves reading so much that he approached his mailman in a Salt Lake City suburb on Friday to ask if he could have any junk mail. The strange question prompted the mailman, Ron Lynch, to ask why. READ MORE: Boy Who Couldn’t Afford Books Asks Mailman For Junk Mail To Read; Mailman Responds Spectacularly | HuffPost.

The Picture Book That Parents Worldwide—And Google Ventures—Can’t Put Down | Co.Create #picturebooks #kids #custom #printondemand #books

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Depending how you look at it, the Lost My Name team has either created one artful book or 53,849. The Little Boy/Girl Who Lost His/Her Name, the top-selling picture book in the U.K. last year, is personalized for each recipient. The child’s name doesn’t simply get mentioned a few times—an easy enough publishing gimmick. Rather, the story itself changes; different characters appear for each name. In fulfilling orders for 53,849 children’s names so far, the company has created that many stories—and books.

The technology required for that degree of customization and print-on-demand capability is significant. “There are tens of thousands of lines of code behind every book we deliver,” co-founder Asi Sharabi tells me on a recent visit to the Lost My Name offices. “Everything we do is on software.” READ MORE: The Picture Book That Parents Worldwide—And Google Ventures—Can’t Put Down | Co.Create | creativity + culture + commerce.

Et tu, Watson? IBM’s Supercomputer Can Critique Your #Writing | Engadget #tech #IBMWatson

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It’s bad enough that robots are writing professionally (albeit badly), but now they’re criticizing, too? IBM has unveiled the Watson Tone Analyzer, the latest tool in its “cognitive computing” suite of cooking, health, shopping and other apps. Once you input a piece of text, the system will perform a “tone check” to analyze three different aspects of it: emotional, social and writing style. Each of those is divided into further categories — for instance, it can tell you if your writing style is confident or tentative, and whether the emotional tone is cheerful, angry or negative. From there, it can give you a breakdown of the overall tone and suggest new words to “fix” it. READ MORE: Et tu, Watson? IBM’s supercomputer can critique your writing | Engadget

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35 Hilarious #Books Guaranteed To Make You Laugh Out Loud | BuzzFeed #fiction #nonfiction #funny

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35 Hilarious Books Guaranteed To Make You Laugh Out Loud

We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community about the funniest books they’ve ever read. Here are their favorite laugh-out-loud recommendations. READ MORE: 35 Hilarious Books Guaranteed To Make You Laugh Out Loud | BuzzFeed.

This is Your Brain on #JaneAusten, and Researchers at Stanford are Taking Notes | Stanford News #books #reading #neuroscience #cognition

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Researchers observe the brain patterns of literary PhD candidates while they’re reading a Jane Austen novel. The fMRI images suggest that literary reading provides “a truly valuable exercise of people’s brains.” READ MORE: This is your brain on Jane Austen, and researchers at Stanford are taking notes | Stanford News

The Science Behind Why You Can’t Read in the Car | Thrillist #books #reading

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For many of us, carsickness is the bane of every automotive experience: It’s always there, preventing us from navigating with our phone or even reading a book to pass the time without the sudden onset of a headache, cold sweats, and crippling nausea. It’s like being hungover, but without the fun drinking part that precedes it.

What exactly is going on here? Why do some of us fall violently ill just by glancing at a book in a moving car, while others can read through an entire road trip without any problem at all? Here’s the scientific lowdown on what makes carsickness tick, as well as what you can do to prevent (or at least minimize) its wickedly brutal effects.

READ MORE: The Science Behind Why You Can’t Read in the Car | Thrillist

A Woman Made A Comic Book About #Abortion And It’s Awesome | HuffPost #comics #graphicnovels #women #books

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One woman is on a mission to demystify the realities of abortion — using illustrations. Writer and artist Leah Hayes created an illustrated book, Not Funny Ha-Ha: A Handbook for Something Hard, which takes readers through the thought processes of two women who choose to have abortions — one medical, the other surgical. She hopes the book will chip away at the stigma that often surrounds abortion. READ MORE: A Woman Made A Comic Book About Abortion And It’s Awesome | Huffington Post

I Never Noticed How Racist So Many Children’s #Books Are Until I Started #Reading to My #Kids [Opinion] | Vox #diversity #racism #culture

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What happened to Little Black Sambo? As a white girl growing up in West Virginia in the 1970s, I remember it on my childhood bookshelf. It was on my friends’ shelves too. It may also have been in the dentist’s office, along with Highlights for Children and Joseph and His Coat of Many Colors.

It was not on the shelves of the local day care, a center run by an entrepreneurial black woman who saw a business opportunity in the droves of young white mothers who were socialized in the 1950s and ’60s to be housewives and then dumped into the workforce by the 1970s economy.

I remember the story primarily for its description of the tigers chasing one another round and round a tree until they melt into butter, butter that Sambo’s mother uses for a stack of crispy pancakes. In the 35 intervening years, I knew the book had been relegated to the dustbin of racist cultural artifacts, but I didn’t remember it well enough to know why. READ MORE: I never noticed how racist so many children’s books are until I started reading to my kids | Vox.

14 #Aboriginal #Women #Writers to Read this Summer | Room Magazine #diversity #books #reading

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I was both honoured and delighted when Room asked me to compile a list of Aboriginal women authors as part of the 2015 celebration of National Aboriginal Day. While this list is by no means a comprehensive list of all the great Aboriginal women writers in Canada, it includes 14 writers whose work I have either come to know and respect or that are on my “to read” list. I have been blessed to have the opportunity to know many of these writers on a personal level.

We are a relatively small but growing community. I have found gatherings such as the National Indigenous Writers Conference and the Ânskohk Aboriginal Literature Festival to be important as they have offered opportunities to meet and learn from Aboriginal women writers. The authors listed here are all accomplished women that have had, or will have, a major impact on Canadian literature in general and Aboriginal literature in particular. READ MORE: 14 Aboriginal Women Writers to Read this Summer | Room Magazine.

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