I was listening to this story on NPR about a musician who was creating random songs from random experiences when my creative juices started flowing. I could create a mash-up of existing Web 2.0 technologies to publish collaboratively authored novels that are developed, edited and produced through user contributions (user generated content). This site would combine the creativity of many people with the feedback of even more. Think of it as a novel-based approach to loneygirl15 where the user base develops the direction and also generates the daily content.

The process would be divided into the following areas:

1. Style guidelines
2. Theme selection
3. Content development
4. Production

Style Guidelines

Guidelines would be developed by the users and would be easily available to the authors. The guidelines would direct the style of writing allowing for some conformity in a novel authored by many people. Guidelines may also specify the type of novels produced (science fiction, romance, mystery, etc.). The guidelines are the key to producing a successful novel and must be made easily accessible to all authors, editors and reviewers.

Theme Selection

Users would offer very high-level plots or story lines into a theme pool. That pool would generate interesting themes through a voting and bubbling effect, similar to how stories appear in Digg. The most interesting themes would then be developed until a compelling story line has evolved.

Content Development

The content for the novel can be developed in a wiki-like environment. It would consist of many people contributing story elements and others putting them together, following the high-level outline created during the theme selection and conforming to the style guidelines. Allowing all users to develop and edit content within stated parameters would combine the creativity of many and most likely be greater than the sum of its parts. The site would be self-governing giving the users ultimate control in the outcome of the novels.

Production

A creative commons license could govern the release of the novels turning these user-generated novels into the hands of many. Electronic publishing methods are many and easy to execute making distribution a snap. There are also many options available for printed materials with on-demand printing and publishing available at many web sites. Viral marketing would be a natural byproduct of the process and guaranteed, interesting content would broaden appeal.

Combining style guidelines with an easily accessed and easy-to-use, collaborative environment could possibly create many "best sellers." The tricks are concise guidelines and the right environment.

I love Parallels on my MacBook Pro and Coherence is very cool, albeit a bit quirky. Last night after Windows Update ran I was unable to successfully boot my WinXP image. Turns out a lot of others have had similar problems and an excellent solution can be found on the Parallels Forums. The problem entails from rebooting Parallels Desktop (build 3036 Beta) while in coherence mode with an external monitor connected. Upon reboot, I received the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death)
with the error: PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. The solution is to set the screen resolution to what it was prior to the reboot. I was able to do this by:

1. Boot in safe mode
2. Uninstall Parallel Tools
3. Reboot
4. Change to the correct resolution (for me this was 1920×1200)
5. Re-install Parallel Tools

Another solution is to change the resolution after booting in VGA mode, although I did not test this; see the Parallels Forum thread for details.

If there is a problem uninstalling Parallel Tools, remove the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce\ParallelTools (or something similar to ParallelTools) and try again. You can also boot in Last Known Good Configration and uninstall.

Thanks to Mike Mulligan for his solution.

UPDATE: New Beta 3094 now available!

Ever since I learned about the ability to imbed GPS location into the EXIF information in my digital photos, I’ve greatly desired to do so. The Nikon D200 (along with a few other Nikon cameras: D2X, D2HS, others?) requires little effort to do so, just an expensive and difficult to find MC-35 GPS adapter cable and a battery powered powered GPS with a DB9 serial port that speaks NMEA at 4800baud. This solution can be about $300, depending on the cost of the GPS (MC-35 is $100).

A homemade solution can be had for about $175 and turns out is quite easy to do, provided you can acquire the MC-35. Read on for details.

NOTE! My next GPS project for the Nikon D200 (just completed) does not rely on the MC-35 and can be built for less than $100 and is much smaller and more manageable. I will be posting information about it soon. (more…)

I love my new MacBook Pro, but when I have it detached from my home network I often get application lock ups or long pauses while using it offline. I found a repeatable pattern: when selecting File–>Open from many (most) applications, often for the first time, the MBP would pause and then display a dialog stating AFP Connection Status … Looking up “<hostname>.” Clicking on the solo “Cancel” button tends to solve the problem, but the delay is hugely annoying.

It turns out the problem is due to an alias from my offline MBP to a folder on one of my networked Macs; specifically, the Pictures folder is aliased to one computer on my network that holds my pictures so I can access them from all machines. As soon as I remove or rename the alias (to something like Pictures2) I no longer receive the AFP Connection Status window. As soon as I rename it back to Pictures, the AFP Connection Status dialog appears.