Offline with Google Docs

Google announced this week we can now use their "Google Gears" feature to work on Google Docs offline.

This is a big step because it means you no longer have to be connected to the internet to interact with Google. You can now be offline and still be Google and that is a momentous happening that few seem to understand.

Google, by going offline, livens up your entire life instead of just your virtual one. You can use Google as you wish and on your own terms. You don't have to look for an internet connection. You don't need to worry about losing data in a disconnection.

You just write in Google Docs in offline mode and then later, when you go online, Google Docs will reconcile your documents between your computer and its servers and you're good to keep going!

Google Docs Offline sets the mark for Google books you own at home, Google cellphones you hold in your hand, and Google pillows that float you off to rest in that beautiful Google dreamland.

Helping One Million

Our sister site, Urban Semiotic, is in the middle of a campaign to reach ONE MILLION READERS by the end of the year.

We ask you to join that effort.

Currently Urban Semiotic has 863,000 readers and to reach the million mark they need around 3,000 readers a day.

Please be one of the 3,000 to help them make their own history.

Does Copyright Matter?

With the advent of online publication, does Copyright matter any longer?

With RSS feeds spewing new content into the world directly every day can a person claim Copyright to their original material if they are unable to enforce their right and prosecute infringement?

If you give your work away for free, can you still own it if others take your work, revitalize it, repackage it, and use it to create profit?

How can we begin to protect our Copyrighted work if there are no longer firewalls and safety implements to shield the work from thieves?

Celebrating Static Pages

There is nothing wrong with creating a plain text, static, non-MySQL webpage that serves as a personal online portal for identification and being.

Information does not need to move and wiggle and have comments in order to be important as the ARClog blog argues:

Arguably, blogs appear to have eclipsed what was once the domain of the published journal article. While I still believe in the viability of the published article as a communication vehicle and as a demonstration of one’s ability to succeed in the venue of traditional disciplinary publishing, for many academic librarians - particularly those new to the profession - that may no longer be the case. And if blogs were ever to replace scholarly journal articles as the gold standard for those on the tenure track, published journal articles would likely languish even more.

The power of the world is in the living expression of thoughts and in the association of meanings -- and the frame around those ideas must never matter.

A cave painting is just as valuable as a hieroglyph as is a crayon drawing as is a printed page in a magazine as is a personal web page that has been indexed by the search spiders, but not updated, for the last five years.

Celebrate the static page by recognizing the value in the reverence for the creation of the human word in any form.

Writing Four New Boles Books

It is a great honor and pleasure to announce we are writing the following four books for Thomson/Cengage Learning:

Picture Yourself Learning Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Picture Yourself Learning Office for Mac 2008

Picture Yourself Learning American Sign Language, Level 1 (includes Bonus DVD!)

Google Apps Administrator Guide

The writing schedule is hectic but we will get it done.

Three of the four books will be published before the end of 2007.

We will keep you updated on the status of our onward progress in bringing these semiotic books to life. We love and honor the power of the image on the page and these full-color books will prove that devotion in spades.

David W. Boles' WordPunk ™

David W. Boles' WordPunk ™ is a new blog about "writing about words in the wilds."

We hope you enjoy that site and that you also add it to your RSS read list every single day!

When Tech Editors Go Bad

If you write a book that deals with computers or the Internet you will likely have an important cog in your editorial process in the form of a Technical Editor.

Your Tech Editor watches your back and checks your steps, facts and work process.

A Tech Editor is your guarantee of excellence -- but if that editor drops the ball in the review process and begins missing deadlines -- the entire book project is plunged into jeopardy.

Delays of even a few days in replacing a misbegotten Tech Editor quickly translates into thousands of lost dollars because the book is late to the marketplace.

The lesson is this: Pick your Tech Editors wisely and those you know may not be any better than those you have yet to meet.

Money, deadlines and responsibility can wound even the best informal relationship so choose wisely and carry a big blue pencil.

Publishing Kills the Weak and Weakens the Strong

Writing is hard work. Hurtful work. Deadly work.

Putting together a book is a long and painful process of recognition, writing and ongoing negotiation.

Binding a book on deadline kills the weak and weakens the strong because the book waits for no one and when crunch time hits you better be prepared to give and take some harsh strikes.

Because the publishing process is so brutal, few companies or people are able to do it on a regular basis. You're dealing with geographic constraints, human aesthetic, and a changing target audience.

Bringing a book to readers is the process of a miracle realized.

Cheating to Get Ahead

There is no greater harm to intellect or the education process than plagiarizing.

When you steal or purchase the thoughts of others and claim them as your own -- the entire salvation of the world crumbles to ash.

We were thrilled to learn this week that Google have refused to accept advertising from Paper Mills as reported by Chronicle.com:

Term-paper and essay-writing services join prostitutes, firearms dealers, and hacking sites in Google's forbidden-advertising zone, the company announced yesterday. Academic paper-writing services, or "paper mills," will no longer be able to buy search terms in the Google AdWords program, and thus their ads will no longer pop up in the "sponsored links" sections of a Google search-results page. (Links to those sites could still be found among the results on the main part of the page, however.) The paper mills, which offer buyers papers written to order for a fee, have been the subject of sharp complaints from universities, which view them as sources of plagiarism. But the companies themselves have a different view.

We here at Boles University believe it is vitally important to protect original thoughts and to demand from our students their own unique ideas.

It is only in the free discussion of ideas that thought gains purpose over emotion and instinct.

We are humanized by our minds and the facts of our shared human memory.

Boles Books Writing and Publishing

It is a great delight for us to tell you about a new book from Boles Books Writing and Publishing -- one of our premier content partners.

Google Apps for Your Domain is a new book in process written by David W. Boles and published by Thomson under their Course PTR imprint.

You may read this blog entry for more information and also visit the official website for the book.

Boles University Official Quarterly

The Scientific Aesthetic scholarly journal is now the official quarterly of Boles University!

The big idea here is there is a guiding Aesthetic purpose brought to Science and Medicine that is consciously employed or even unwittingly called upon to Heal based upon the genetic universal human desire to find meaning in shaping and creating beauty as demonstrated in the Arts and the Humanities.

We look to Kant and Hegel and Foucault and Aristotle and other great minds as cornerstones of inspiration for this journal. Making curious connections between Science and the Humanities and how they inform and influence each other is the purpose of the journal. Narrative Medicine, Health and Healing, Quantitative Methods, Imaginative Literature, Oral History Methodology, Drama and Music Therapy, Integrative Medicine, Qualitative Research and other therapeutic courses are all subsets of a Scientific Aesthetic.

If you are interested in submitting an article for publication in Scientific Aesthetic, please let us know by touching our email address in the left sidebar here!