On the Way to the Web Available as eBook

If you don't want to wait for On the Way to the Web in hardcover book form, you can buy it as an eBook from the publisher, APress. Here's the URL: http://www.apress.com/book/view/1430208694

--Mike

http://www.michaelabanks.com/

I Got Googled!

Last week I wrote about how the Google Street View photograph vehicles had made it up here--to farthest Oxford, Ohio--from Cincinnati. But they'd only done a few streets.

Today, I saw one of them flashing by on Tollgate Drive as I was waiting to turn onto it from Erin. And it did flash by; it was doing at least 40 in 25-mph zone. I thought about catching up with the driver after he turned to shoot a dead-end street, so I could tell him where to watch for speed traps, but I was in a hurry to get to WalMart. (There was no other traffic, as is common in that quiet residential zone.)

The vehicle was a late-model GM SUV, black and with darkly tinted windows (as I've read all the Googlemobiles have). Mounted on the top, just over the second-seat level, was a turrett about 15 inches across, with glass or plastic windows set into it. I think of this as "Mark I," as I've seen photos of other cars thus equipped, but the latest GVs have small towers on top. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, but I'm keeping it in the car from now on.

Interestingly, I saw the Googlemobile again on my way back from WalMartia, photograph more streets on this side of town. It will be interesting to see whether I'm in the Street View photo of that intersection ... and to see my home there, too.

--Mike

http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Research Resource

I've written here and elsewhere about several unconventional research toold for writers, including eBay and Amazon.com. Here's another: YouTube. If you need background on an institution, a particular city, a building style, a celebrity, or any of endless other subjects, there's a good [possibility someone has produced a video having to do with it--and uploaded it to YouTube. I found several useful videos there when I was writing On the Way to the Web and Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Invented Talk TV.

--Mike

http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Top 10 Things NOT to Do with Google Street View

Some of you have discovered Google Street View. It's a function of Google Maps at http://maps.google.com/ . (The reduced image to the left is looking up my street, Erin Drive, from from West Chestnut)

I can think of quite a few applications for Google Street View, and have in fact used it in writing Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Invented Talk TV (out in October). I took tours of Ruth Lyons' old neighborhood, which I'd visited before, to confirm my memories. I also found most of the houses and apartments she'd lived in in Street View, and all of them with the satellite view.

Google Street View can be an important research tool for writers. When you put your mind to it, you'll probably think of quite a few ways to use it to save time and money, over traveling to a given location.

But what do you want to avoid with Street View? Well, Alex Kidman at Australian PC Magazine suggests that the trail Google Street View leaves on your system might get you arrested for stalking (I say "intent to stalk," since it's virtual). He's compiled a list of such times, titled The Top Ten Things NOT to Do with Google Street View. Click the title to have a look!
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com

The ORIGINAL AOL?

It's said that if you go back far enough, everyone is related. The same is true of quite a few products and services

.

Does anyone recognize the screen at the far left? It's AOL version 1.0 for PCs, based on the GeoWorks operating system. The use of GEOS is one reason for all the gray, and why it's otherwise a bit different from AOL's immediate predecessor, AppleLink.

.

If you trace things back two more generations, you find that AOL is related to GEnie, of all things! How? It's in my most recent book, On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders.

On the Way to the Web Now Available!

My newest book, On the Way to the Web: the Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders, is now available at Amazon.com and in bookstores. (Yes, "the Secret History ..." will not be secret for long.)

Published by APress, On the Way to the Web is the complete story of the online world before the Web. If you want to meet the people and get the real stories behind CompuServe, AOL, GEnie, The Source, Prodigy, DELPHI, BIX, and AOL, this is the book! The birth and evolution of ARPANET is detailed (did you know that ARPANET's packet-switching technology first went public with Telenet?) Chapters examine dialup BBSs, Web crazies, and the three online services that were AOL's ancestors. The book goes back to the earliest commercial online services, beginning in 1962.

This is not another "Hail Steve Case" book. Nor does it focus on Time Warner. And you won't have to wade through explainations of Quadrature Amplitude Modulation and serial port pin assignments. What it is, is the inside story of how we got online, written for the non-technical reader (though geeks will have fun in these pages, too.) Find out how AOL and GEnie are related. Learn what Nifty-SERVE is. Meet the con man who was behind one of the first big online services for microcomputers. See the first online GUI for personal computers (and it's not AOL!) Read all about the nationwide wireless computer network that was operating in 1978--the first Internet. Learn about online services overseas, including those in Russia, France, the U.K., Japan and more in On the Way to the Web.

I will be posting some excepts and addenda to the book here and on a special Web site over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

--Mike

http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Three Books in 10 Months

With any luck come October, I will have had three books published in less than a year. This is something I haven't done since the beginning of the 1990s. It's fun after the fact, and friends make jokes about the "Banks Book of the Month Club."

I hear of other writers doing books really fast. Michael Crichton says he writers a book in six weeks, leaving New York to live in a Florida condo while writing. (The last two times I went to Florida, I think I wrote a total of 8 days out of five weeks. (Distractions, distractions ...) Jack Nimmersheim wrote one of his computer books in one week, back in the 1980s. Harry Turtledove is cranking out 500-page novels so quickly I can't count them.

I have written a few books in 12 or 14 weeks, so I suppose I shouldn't be impressed. Those were computer books, which often come with a lot of pressure because someone's changing the product while you're writing, and you have to go back and rewrite, and the publisher wants to know if you can get the book in a little early. At the other end of that, Dean Lambe and I drifted along for 11 months writing the science fiction novel The Odyesses Solution, which proves my contention that collaborations take longer than solo work. And it took me 20 months to write my first book. The editor and I agreed that it took that long because the person I had been when I started it couldn't have written the book--something like that.

Anyway never again (which is probably what I said last time). What am I writing next? Well, I have this novel I've been writing off and on for several years ... but there's a new novel bugging me ... and I have an offer for a biography. But it comes such a tiny advance that I can't afford to write it this year. So, I'll have to come up with something new.

--Mike

http://www.michaelabanks.com/

This what Happens When You Write Two Books in Six Months

Okay ... so writing two books in six months does indeed eat up all available time. (Unless you do a half-assed job, which I did not.) I'd forgotten that, as the last time I wrote two books simultaneously was in 1989.

Of course, spending 2-1/2 weeks in Florida during the same time period set me back a bit--though I did get in two relevant interviews while there. And the fact that the subjects had nothing to do with one another made certain there would be no doubling-up (used to do that on the GM assembly line, though).

Now the office is worse than usual, which is why I've been writing with my laptop in other rooms, and outdoors. Let's see ... the desk has 9 books on it, the printer 4. I'm afraid to count the number of books on the floor. The floor also hosts a variety of CDs, boxes filled with paper, and a pillow. My bookshelves are in disarray, with broadcast history, business bios, Cincinnati history, and aviation history all mixed together. The desk is obscured by irrelevant stuff, including Febreze air freshener, Windex, two bottles of water, CDs, cables, a VOM meter, a lot of small change, batteries, photos, and hundreds of pieces of paper. Not to mention a digital recorder, hairbrush, memory chips, and the computer equipment. This is going to take some time ...
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

The Future of Telephonic Communication

Well, here we all are in the future--as we saw it in 1967. In addition to all the great things we've been promised by corporte America, the government, and science fiction since 1967, we still don't have good phone connections!

What's up? People are buying the hell out of iPhones, and when you call 'em it sounds like two eggs over easy frying in in the background. And Skype ... well, it sounds a like like overseas calls (or ship-to-shore) in the 1970s.

I got better service from a rotary phone dialing through Number 5 Crossbar service. The phone system in Russia must be so quiet that you can hear a pin drop (maybe they have Candice Bergen doing commercials for them? )
How can this establishment bring us free--let alone competent--health care?
--Mike

An Odious Problem

Does anyone have ideas for getting rid of skunk odor? Scientific or folklore, doesn't matter (as long as it doesn't involve dancing around a fire at Midnight). The Finnish Spitz here rousted one of the striped rodents and got sprayed in the face. She ran into the house and began wiping her face on the dining room carpet ...

I wiped her down (burned the towels) then gave her a bath in tomato juice, followed by shampoo, twice. Some of the odor remains. Any ideas? There needs to be an article written on the subject... not to mention keeping skunks away.
Thanks,
--Mike

Rotating Prices

Well, this is kinda fun. Check out Blogging Heroes to see what the price is today! On June 19, it was $12.11. A few weeks back it was $5.00 (yep--five bucks. Joel Comm told me he bought ten copies at that price as professional handouts.) It's sort of like what we used to call a Chinese auction at SF conventions. Drop in and the price may be small enough to fit your pocketbook.

--Mike

Novel Excerpt

This is an excerpt from a novel I've been working on since 2002. I type at it a while, then put it away. It's set in several parts of Indiana in 1911, and revolves around the first Indanapolis 500 Sweepstakes race. The characters are real people These two sections of the first chapter are unchanged from the original. I can't decide whether I should keep these in this order, or reverse them.
--Mike
Copyright © 2002, 2006, Michael A. Banks
-----
I. THE DRIVER
Johnny Aitken loved his job, which fact was one of the reasons people called him “Happy Johnny.” He was paid to drive—fast. The National Motor Vehicle Company gave him the munificent sum of twenty-eight dollars per month to demonstrate their cars to customers, drive them in races, and incidentally keep them and the garage where they were stored clean.
Though he had a tendency to get too “happy” at local bars, Aitken knew his business. He had won eight out of 12 races last year, and finished second or third in the rest—not bad for an old man of 45. The wins had all been in a 1910 National 40, and he was determined to drive this year’s Model 40 in the International 500-Mile Sweepstakes. His boss, Arthur Newby, had argued against this, wanting instead to build a special for the race. But Aitken convinced the automaker that winning or placing would be far more impressive in a production car than a race car.
Not that this automobile would be exactly like the Nationals sold to customers. Aitken had spent most of the past three months tuning the big six-cylinder engine, tinkering with the carburetor, and fine-tuning the chassis and steering. The results were gratifying, and the way the car burned up the track added to the fun of showing it off for spectators.
And there were always spectators. Lots of locals, but sometimes newspaper or magazine writers and photographers came to watch him and other drivers do test laps—that happened more and more often as the date of the race approached. Other times National engineers, salesmen, or customers turned out. Newby came by every Wednesday morning, usually with some VIP.
Today Aitken planned to take his friend Crosley for a few laps around the track. Originally a Cincinnati boy, Powel Crosley had worked for National as a salesman and publicist for most of 1910, but now worked for Inter-State over in Muncie, where he had some sort of family connection. He showed up at the Speedway three or four times a week, hanging around and talking with anyone who was there—drivers, mechanics, the press, whomever. You couldn’t miss him; he was tall and rangy, and never shut up. He constantly offered opinions and advice—some of it worthwhile, according to Fred Duesenberg, whom Crosley had helped out with some sort of gimmick for balancing crankshafts. For a guy in his mid-twenties, he did know a lot more about some things than you might expect.
When Crosley wasn’t telling people how to do things, he was begging to be allowed to drive a few laps around the track. Whose car it was didn’t matter. Crosley would drive anything, as long as it was faster than his Ford. His not-so-secret ambition was to become a racing car pilot, and he gloried in the few opportunities he’d had to show off his ability to handle an automobile at high speed.
Ernest L. Moross, a racing promoter and the Speedway’s publicity manager, had taken a particular liking to Crosley and helped him with introductions and advice. It was probably thanks to Moross that the brash young man was even tolerated at the Speedway—Crosley having managed to annoy or piss off half the owners, drivers, and mechanics at the track.
Crosley had recently told Aitken that Moross, who managed Eddie Rickenbacker and Barney Oldfield, was interested in managing his own driving career. But the fact was, Crosley didn’t have a racing career. Meanwhile, Newby had warned Aitken to never allow Crosley to drive a National, saying that Crosley was reckless. But all race pilots were reckless. Aitken figured it was something personal between the two, and maybe the fact that Crosley worked for a competitor.
Crosley had approached him early that week, wanting to go for a high-speed ride so he could write about it for the newspapers. Aitken wondered whether Crosley’s employer might object, but the young man had told him it was no problem, that he was using a pen-name to make extra money.
Crosley could easily have fabricated a story, but, as he told Aitken, he was a stickler for authenticity, and he wanted a ride worth writing about. “Take her out and show me what she can do,” he said. “Let’s see if you can break eighty-five!”
Never one to turn down a challenge, Aitken had agreed to meet the young man at 8:00 AM on Friday, when no one else would be on the track. So here he was, sitting at the inside of turn four, the National’s green paint gleaming in the weak sunlight and its distinctive radiator pointing at the mile-and-a-half straightaway stretching south. He had just swung the car around and raised his goggles when he saw a black Model-T Ford coupe bumping across the collection of potholes and dirt clods that was called the parking lot. That would be Crosley.
Breezing by the paddock entrance, the Model T gained the brick track just north of turn one and sped along the straightaway toward Aitken. He watched as the car accelerated, counting off the seconds. Doing forty-five, at least, Aitken guessed. Less than two minutes later, the black coupe slowed and lurched to a stop on the berm next to the National roadster. The door opened and a tall, thin young man in a starched white shirt, coat, and black bowler hat stepped out and unfolded himself.
“Morning, Stretch,” Aitken greeted him.
Crosley grinned, which had the effect of making his long face even longer. “Are we ready?”
“Ready as we’ll ever be, I reckon.” Aitken gunned the engine, its unmuffled roar shaking the ground.
Crosley placed his hat on the Model T’s bench seat, then climbed into the mechanic’s seat on the left side of the National. This being a stripped-chassis car—the only kind Aitken drove—the seat was bolted directly to the frame rail. The cockpit was completely open. The only enclosed space was the cowling around the engine. Crosley donned a cap and goggles laying on the floorboard. Aitken adjusted his goggles.
Crosley gripped the hand-hold to the left and below his seat, nodded, and Aitken throttled up. Crosley heard the roar of the engine and the scraping sound of the rear tires slipping on the worn bricks, and then they were hurled forward, leaving Crosley feeling, as he would later write, “as if the earth were being jerked out from under me.”
A minute later, they swung into turn one at sixty-five miles per hour. Crosley leaned left as the big National ran up the slope of banked track to within a foot of the edge. Aitken laughed and guided the car through the quarter-mile straightaway and the inside of turn two. Crosley glanced at the speedometer. The needle was approaching seventy.
“Hang on!” Aitken yelled, barely audible over the big engine’s roar. Coming out of turn two, a jarring vibration shook the vehicle twice, then smoothed out. Now doing seventy-six miles per hour, they were barely a third of the way through the back straightaway.
Crosley grabbed the second hand-hold, attached to the back of Aitken’s seat, and hunched down behind the cowling. They were going faster than he had ever driven. The sensation was exhilarating, but at the same time a bit discomforting since he wasn’t the one behind the wheel.
The acceleration finally let up as the car swooped through turn three, inches from the inside wall. Now Crosley leaned right, lest he come into contact with the blurred concrete surface. Dust flew and grit stung his face.
Coming out of turn four, Aitken poured on the coal again. The speedometer needle crept to eighty and hung there, quivering. Crosley glanced at Aitken, who stared fixedly ahead, his body rigid. There was a final burst of speed and Crosley felt the car “laying into the groove,” almost as if it was settling closer to the ground. The rumbling of the tires took on a deep bass note.
As they headed back into turn one, Crosley thought about tires. He thought about Cedrino. Cedrino, the ace driver who had been tossed to his death on this very turn when a tire failed and burst, turning his beautiful machine into a nightmare pinwheel.
“—qualified!” Aitken shouted.
“What did you say?” Crosley looked over at Aitken’s now-grinning face.
“I said I qualified. I passed seventy-five miles an hour and held it. That’s the qualifying speed for the race. All I have to do is do it again from a running start next Thursday, when I do my qualifying run. Should be a cinch!”
Aitken had let up on the throttle as they came out of turn one for the second time. Now the car surged as Aitken accelerated through the short straight. Crosley glanced at the speedometer, expecting it to see it rise back to eighty. But the needle was pegged at zero. The speedometer was broken and Aitken hadn’t noticed.
©
II. THE PROMOTER
Carl Graham Fisher stood pompously—the only way he was capable of standing—and glared past his cigar at the partially-completed timing stand in the oval track’s infield.
“God damn it, boys! Have you been sitting on your asses all day?” He removed the cigar to spit, then eyed the dark clouds rolling in from the northwest. “It’s looking like rain again, and you haven’t even started on the damned roof!”
The crew of carpenters and helpers scowled back at Fisher, who now stalked toward them, his expensive two-tone shoes making squelching noises in the mud. “Who the hell is in charge here?” he squawked. “Dammit—just who the hell is in charge?”
The foreman, a stocky man with a short, curly beard, nodded. “That’d be me, Mister Fisher. I’m sorry we ain’t got to the roof yet, but we been workin’ inside while we’re waitin’ on shingles, so as not to waste your time and money.”
The wind expertly taken out of his sails, Fisher squinted through comically thick glasses, spat out the chaw of tobacco in his mouth, and stuck in a fresh one. “Well, then, who in blazes didn’t deliver the shingles?” he demanded.
“That’d be the supplier,” he drawled. “Portman’s lumber yard.”
“I’ll burn that son-of-a-bitch,” Fisher muttered, then turned abruptly and marched back across the infield. Crossing the brick surface of the track, he stamped his feet to remove the mud from his shoes, which effort was rewarded by splatters of mud on his sky-blue slacks. He didn’t notice.
The big yellow 1911 Cadillac Model 30 was idling on the other side of the brick track outside the paddock entrance where he’d left it. Jane Watts Fisher sat quietly beneath the canvas roof, eyes resting on the slightly rolling Indiana landscape to the east. Trees, corn, and the occasional barn were visible in the distance, the scene distinguished from a painting only by the stirring of stunted cornstalks in the brisk May breeze.
Nearer was the timing tower, which reminded her of the pierhead light outside Michigan City at the Dunes, only square instead of octagonal. Just beyond that she could see Grandstand C, about three-quarters of a mile away. Several men shoveled a pile of something into a wagon next to the structure. A mule stood unmoving in a harness attached to the wagon.
The car leaned and creaked as Carl Fisher stepped up on the right-side running board. “Dumb bastards!” he said, shoving his bulk behind the huge steering wheel. He spoke as if he were announcing dinner.
“Who, dear?” Jane asked.
Fisher put the car into reverse and advanced the throttle. “All of ‘em, just all of ‘em. There’s not a man who can get a job done without being reminded of what he’s supposed to do. I swear, I don’t know how the world gets by.
“Five days, Jane—only five days until the race, and the grandstands aren’t painted.” He finished backing the car around to point it in the direction of the drive that led south to the highway. “The God damned mud is everywhere, and Newby’s complaining about the tickets, and—” he paused to turn his head and spit into the breeze, “and the lumber yard can’t find half the materials it was supposed to have here last week!”
Jane looked away for a moment as he wiped “tobacco juice” from his cheek with a stubby finger. “It will come together in the end, dear.” She patted his arm. “Everything you do comes together. It’s just that it takes you to make it happen, and I know that’s hard on you.”
The heavy car lurched over the rutted, tree-lined drive that led to the highway. Fisher slowed as they approached the Speedway entrance, which was framed by an eight-foot high green-and-white picket fence. He waved at the man watching the gate, and noticed that his cigar had gone out. He stopped the car, fished in his coat pocket for a match and struck it on the Cadillac’s dashboard, incidentally scarring the polished wood surface for the hundredth time.
As he puffed the cigar alight he mumbled around it, “Well, I’ll damned well make it happen, or know why. You can take that to the bank!”
They rode the rest of the way into Indy in silence, the car’s suspension fighting bravely to smooth out the bumps and dips of 16th Street. Roads, Fisher mused, now there’s something else that needs done.
But his ideas about roads—wide paved roads running south to Florida and west to California—would have to wait. For now, the race consumed nearly every waking moment. And as usual it looked like he was going to have to do everything. Allison and Wheeler had put up more money but begged off managing the new construction at the track, pleading business pressures. Business? Hell, he was in business with Allison—they owned the Prest-O-Lite Company, and made headlamps for just about every car that rolled off an assembly line, from Fords and Cadillacs on down to John North Willys’ Overlands. Though how much longer they would be doing that was debatable.
Partners—why did he bother? They left it to him to hire and supervise contractors, deal with track management and the manufacturers who wanted time at the brickyard, and handle just about everything else to do with the coming International 500-Mile Sweepstakes. Here he was, lining up last-minute publicity and confirming drivers and a thousand and one other things that a man in his position ought not to be bothered with. And on top of that, Arthur Newby was trying to slip out of paying for the tickets because he hadn’t okayed the printer.
Fisher turned south on West Street, silently appreciating the now-smoother road surface. At Washington Street a quick left aimed them at Monument Circle—the most confusing street in America, for Fisher’s money. It was a simple roundabout, but for some reason it induced manic confusion in local and out-of-town folks. But that was one of the things that made Indy its own city: rather than a town square, it had a town circle.
Fisher turned right onto Monument Circle, edging into the counterclockwise traffic flow while cursing the driver of a Buick who seemed intent on forcing him up on the sidewalk. Before Fisher could damn the driver to Hell a second time, the Buick sped up and got out of the way. He drove three-quarters of the way around the roundabout and turned north onto Meridian Street. His goal was the Fisher Automobile Agency, whose sign loomed over the building four blocks away.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he announced, out of nowhere.
Jane Fisher was accustomed to her husband speaking without referents, sometimes picking up a conversation from the day before. “About?” she prompted.
“About the Star. They want me to take out a whole signature—a four-page advertisement for the race, to run Monday. I just don’t know that I should buy another damned advertisement. The King of Siam himself must have heard about the race by now. What is another advertisement going to do? Nothing.”
He drove across the concrete apron that fronted the Fisher Automobile Agency and into the building’s cavernous garage, sounding the Cadillac’s new electric horn in case no one noticed him. He shut off the motor and climbed out, nodding to a shop hand to take care of the car as he stepped around the front to help Jane down from the running board. He paused to look down the length of the garage, wide enough for three ranks of autos, with mechanics at work on a half-dozen in the light from the big windows on the building’s north side. At a glance, he picked out several new Cadillacs, as well as Oldsmobiles, REOs, and an Apperson. Coupes, phaetons, sedans, runabouts—nearly every style of automobile made.
Jane waited patiently for him by the door to the offices. At 17, she had an infinity of patience when it came to her husband, largely because she had yet to learn that she couldn’t change him. But they had only been married for two years; that sad realization would come later. In the meantime, she was content to be the supportive wife of a mad genius businessman.
Satisfied that nothing he had to handle was afoot in the shop, Fisher spun on one heel and headed for the twin doors to the offices. He pulled open the right-hand door, held it for Jane and followed her in. Ahead of them was a long hallway that led to a showroom, with several office doors on either side. Immediately to the right was a staircase, then a wide counter behind which a neat young man operated an adding machine and made notations in a ledger. The walls were covered in dark wainscoting that rose halfway to the ceiling, white plaster filling in the rest. The ceiling itself wore painted tongue-and-groove paneling. Criscrossing it were new electrical conduits that supplied lights up and down the hallway.
Seconds after the door swung shut behind Fisher and his wife, heads began popping out of the office doors while others peered down the length of the hall from the showroom, as if a silent alarm had gone off.
They all rushed him at once. The salesmen wanted to talk with him, as did the sales manager, the office manager, and the shop manager. Fisher held up his hands, shook his head and darted up the dark staircase to his private office, Jane at his heels.
Copyright © 2002, 2006, Michael A. Banks
-----

Save Ten Dollars on Blogging Heroes!

If you click here you can buy a copy of my book, Blogging Heroes, for $14.10. If you've been thinking about picking up the book, now's the time; I don't know how long this Chinese auction will run.

--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Sell a Kidney?

An Australian M.D. recently proposed that individuals be paid by the government to donate a kidney. The idea is to alleviate the chronic shortage, and the example price given in the news story about this is the equivalent of US$47,000. Possible objections are that this might open the door to organleggers and/or private trade in organs (the poor selling a kidney to the rich).

Maybe I could live with this: If I sell you a healthy kidney, I get a $2 million credit for health care, plus a cash fee. The government would have to organize and administer this, of course. I don’t know where the money would come from. (And maybe a couple million isn’t enough.) I would have to be in very dire straits to consider it.

An alternate proposal is one advanced by my late friend, Dr. Charles Barrett. Doc’s idea was that people facing long prison terms for certain non-violent felonies be given the option of donating a kidney in lieu of serving the term. Assuming they're healthy.

All of which implies another question: should there be financial remuneration for the survivors of organ donors? It would be nice if organ donors could designate a posthumous award to go to a family member or a charity.
--Mike

What's Wrong With This Quote?

“Eleven years ago, the Internet was just an intangible dream that Prodigy brought to life. Now it is a force to be reckoned with.”
--Bill Kirkner, Prodigy Communications’ Chief Technology Officer, September 30, 1999

This is from my next book, On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders. What hubris--the mind boggles!
--Mike

Self-Refererential Writing

I am accustomed to going to some of my early books from the 1980s to check facts (and confirm my memory). Yesterday, however, I took self-reference to the next level.

I was doing a keyword search in a ProQuest article database, on an Internet topic. A title caught my eye, so I selected the article and began reading it. It had exactly the information I needed. "This is pretty good," I said to myself.

Then it began to look familiar. I zipped up to the top of the article and, sure enough, it was something I'd written years ago!--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Copyright © 2008, Michael A. Banks

Gone Writin'

Hm ... it's been some days since I posted, so I ought to explain: I'm wrapping up two books and have put all my time and energy into them for weeks now. I may post again before the end of April (my deadline), or not. Afterwards, I have quite a few posts to make. Meanwhile, here's one of the new titles: On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders. (Preorder now and save $8.50.)

How to Become a Fulltime Freelance Writer, Kindle Edition $3.99

How to Become a Fulltime Freelance Writer is now available in an edition for Amazon's Kindle Reader. The price is only $3.99. Click the title or the cover image to check it out!

--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com/

The First Online Wedding

If you search the Web, you’ll find all sorts of claims about the first online wedding. Some claim it took place on Prodigy in the 1980s. Others say AOL in the 1990s.

The first online wedding was held on CompuServe on February 14, 1983. The couple were George Stickles and Debbie Fuhrman. They met via CompuServe’s CB Simulator, and decided it would be fun to get married in the same venue.

The service was conventional and the logistics were fairly simple. A minster and the couple sat at different computers in the same room in Texas. All three were logged into a CB channel, along with more than 100 other CompuServe members. The minister spoke aloud while an assistant typed in his words. Stickles and Furhman spoke and then repeated their vows by typing them out.

If you’re broad-minded in your definition of “online,” you’ll be interested to know that the first long-distance, electrically enhanced wedding cermony was held in 1876—by telegraph. (See The Victorian Internet, by Thomas Standage.)

The booik? On the Way to the Web is my next title, due out in hardcover at the end of June. Click on the title or the image to buy a copy.

--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Copyright © 2008, Michael A. Banks

Used Car Buyers: Beware of New Scam

I don't usually post anything about scames, but a friend was almost pulled into this one: A guy is selling a car at an incredible bargain. He's in the military overseas and can't take it with him to his next duty post. Where he is stationed it's impossible sell a car (because the citizens of that country have to pay a big import duty, or whatever). He'll even supply the car's VIN. (On the deal my friend was considering, I did a search on eBay using the VIN, and found that the car with that VIN had recently been sold by a dealer in Texas. The scammers are geting legitimate VIN numbers for sale on eBay.)

The seller says a military aircraft will bring it to you free--right! All you have to do is send him half the money--that's the tip-off--which will be held in escrow by eBay.

Problem is, eBay doesn't hold money in escrow. The seller will have you wire the money to what he says is an escrow acocunt, but it's really a Western Union pickup.

You'll get an assurance that the car is being put on to a military plane, then you'll never hear from the guy or see your car gain. This scam has been posted on Craig's List and similar venues recently. Remember: If it sounds too good to be true, it is. (And the words "escrow," "overseas shipping," and "guaranteed" are alarms.)

Now Available as E-Books!

Several of my titles are now available as E-Books.

First, Blogging Hereos can be downloaded at the Wiley Web site as an Adobe Eboook: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470262141,descCd-ebook.html

How to Become a Fulltime Freelance Writer is available for the Amazon Kindle reader here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0014A5A8C/michaelbanks-20

Plus, my short biography of Hugo Gernsback, titled Hugo Gernsback: The Man Who Invented the Future, is here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0014AFWQC/michaelbanks-20

I think you'll find the Kindle editions have friendly prices.

--Mike

What's Up with Amazon.com?

So what's up with Amazon.com's "Search Inside The Book" program? It was there one day, and gone the next. Maybe it's a glitch. If so, Amazon must have a backup of every listing ready to go without the "Search" illustrations.

Speaking of Amazon, I've just put two books into their Kindle publishing program. One is an edited edition of How to Become a Fulltime Freelance Writer. The other is a brief biography titled Hugo Gernsback: The Man Who Invented the Future. I'll post about 'em (with links) when they show up on the system.
--Mike

Another Blogging Heroes Chapter on the Web!

One of the m ore fun interviews for Blogging Heroes was the one with Scott McNulty, of The Unofficial Apple Weblog (or TUAW). Scott has the nearly unique perspective of not being a died-in-the-wool computerphile. He didn't buy his first computer until after he graduated from college in 1999. (And despite that ended up working as a systems administrater for Windows computers).

You can read Scott's ideas and thoughts on blogging here.

In preview, here are a couple of quotes from the interview:

Never say/write anything that you are uncomfortable standing behind.
Write about whatever you are passionate about, and success will follow.

Book Preview

For anyone who may not have seen them already, there are several chapters from my book Blogging Heroes available online in PDF format. The chapter that interviews Chris Anderson is right here at his blog, The Long Tail. Have a look--it's a good sample!

In the interview, Chris notes that, "I do my best thinking via my blogs." Here are quotes from a few other bloggers I interviewed for the book:
* "For me, the future of journalism is blogging."-- Mary Jo Foley, All About Microsoft

"One of the true beauties and powers of blogs is that they can give voice to people who are not heard."-- Frank Warren, PostSecret

* "When I look out at the blogosphere, I don't see lots of inconsequential blogs. I see lots of possibility."-- Gina Trapani, Lifehacker.com

1948: Crosley Broadcasting Puts its First Television Station on the Air

As the original author of CROSLEY: Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation, I enjoy sharing information and images having to do with the various aspects of the Crosley empire. Today (February 9) is the 60th Anniversary of Crosley Broadcasting’s first regular commercial television broacasts. WLWT, Cincinnati’s Channel 5, went on the air on February 9, 1948. Here’s an artist’s rendering of the Crosley Broadcasting facilities as seen from the air. This site was on Chickasaw Street in University Heights.

I'll be sharing some photos of early Crosley television activities over the next couple of weeks at my Crosley blog: http://blogspot.crosley.com.

Crosley's initial experiments with television began in 1939, with TV demos at the Carew Tower and inside the Crosley Pavilion at the Chicago World's Far. (Crosley was partnered with DuMont at the time.) --Mike

HDTV Converter Box Coupons

Five people have asked me this week about the Federal government's HDTV converter box coupon program, and TV newscasts are pushing it hard. With so much interest, maybe someone who needs the info will find it here.

The deal is that the Feds will give you one or two (maximum) coupons for $40 off a digital
TV converter box. But you have to use the coupon(s) within 90 days of when they're mailed to you. I figure the retail end will mark up prices when the coupons start coming in.

For info, call: 888.388.2009
Or go to http://www.dtv2009.gov/ and apply for a coupon.
Or write: TV Converter Box Program, P.O. Box 2000, Portland, OR 97208. (Correction: I don't think an SASE is required.)
This is also the address to which you send your application if you download it at this URL: https://www.dtv2009.gov/docs/Coupon_Program_App_en.pdf

Why Blog? According to Chris Anderson ...

As a part of the interview with Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) for Blogging Heroes, I asked him whether blogging required a significant time commitment. His response addresses the question, but also talks about why he blogs, what he gets from it, and more. He comments you may find interesting if you're a blogger or intend to be.

You know, I don't spend that much time blogging. I feel guilty about how infrequently I post. I’ve got this massive backlog of draft posts for the Long Tail blog, for example, that I feel guilty about.

As you've heard from probably everyone you talk to, having a blog is this beast—a monkey on your back. It wants to be fed every day, but we all have jobs and it's hard to do. So I don't blog as much as I'd like. I try to post on one of my blogs every day. But that doesn't mean that on every single blog I blog once a day. But I feel like I’m blogging all the time, and I also feel like I’m under-blogging.

Basically I devote an hour a day to blogging-related functions. That is, either writing posts, or editing other people’s posts, composing drafts, or thinking about or pulling together research that will go into drafts. I wish it were three hours a day. I'd love to spend more time. It's a really satisfying process. I think I do my best thinking via my blogs. Because that is really what a blog is about: a blog is a scratch-pad, and a discipline to collect your thoughts, compose your thoughts, advance your thoughts, and do it in public in a way that can amplify your thoughts by not only reaching an audience, but also getting feedback on your thoughts. Blogging for me is really largely a way to make myself smarter.

Blogging is incredibly satisfying. I’d love to be blogging full-time. But blogging is an avocation; I don’t make a penny from it. I have to balance it with my day job. We have colleagues here at the magazine who have taken blogging sabbaticals, which is to say they've taken sabbaticals from work so they can blog more. I'd love to take a blogging sabbatical.

Too Busy Writing to Write?

While I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, it wasn't because I wasn't writing. Several posts are saved in the background here and at the Crosley blog, awaiting completion. And over the past three weeks I've written something over 20,000 words' worth of chapters for the two books I'm writing. Another 12,000 words need need editing before I can turn them in.

The 12,000 words (about 50 manuscript pages) are waiting because I keep abandoning them to write new material. Just like I set aside the posts here. Why? Because I lose interest in the part I'm currently writing, and jump ahead to write later parts of the books. (The counterpart of that in terms of blog posts is that I think of a new subject while I'm writing a post, and put the current post away so I can get started on the new post.)

This isn't a constant for me in my writing; if it was, I'd still be working on my first book, instead of having written 42 books. It sort of comes and goes, and probably represents a desire to have the current project(s) finished--which of couse won't happen if I don't finish chapters. Fortunately, as I've done in the past, I'll eventually pick up those abandoned chapters and finish them, largely because I'll become bored with the later chapters.
--Mike

Interview with Me at Virtual Wordsmith

I enjoy being interviewed for the obvious reason that it gives me the opportunity to talk about my work to someone who's interested. More than that, I can use an interview that focuses on a particular book to share the experience of writing a book. Which I did in this recent interview with me about Blogging Heroes.

Have a look at the rest of Lynn's blog. She has a fine collection of interviews and reviews. And check out her Web site.
--Mike

Blogging and Ketchup (or Catsup)

When I was a child in the 1950s, we had hamburgers every Friday night. It was a big deal, largely because my mother cooked full-course dinners with all the trimmings the rest of the week. Hamburgers were fun food. (There were no fast-food outfits around then--not where I grew up, anyway).

The Friday night table always included a squeeze ketchup (or, if you prefer, catsup) bottle that carried a line art illustration of a waitress holding a tray on which there was a hamburger and a squeeze ketchup bottle. That bottle had the same illustration on it, as did the bottle it depicted, and so forth, as far as one could make out the details.

I was reminded of this a little while ago when I was browsing the list of bestselling books about blogging. (I have a vested interest in that list, of course.) Like the ketchup bottle illustration, the blogging books mirror a reality that mirrors a reality that mirrors ... and so on. It fascinates people; nearly a hundred books about blogging are selling in the thousands of copies. And some of the books are turning into blogs, while others started out as blogs. It's like squeezing the ketchup bottle and having another bottle come out!
--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com

Interviews and Reviews

Having spent quite a lot of time interviewing people by telephone for Blogging Heroes, I was rather surprised to be attacked in a recent review of the book. The point of attack was the reviewer's contention that I had other people write the book by asking questions via E-mail. I don't think that's a good way to write a book--unless you intend to give the people who did the writing for you credit as co-authors.

Besides, that's not how I did it (something the reviewer would know, had he bothered to read the book before writing the "review"). The interviews were the result of actual conversations, from which I pulled quotes to use in the book, along with detailed research. I also wrote mini-bios of each interviewee. So putting together Blogging Heroes was anything but the cut-and-paste job of which I was accused. Having written 42 other books, I can tell you that planning the interviews, finding the right subjects, conducting the interviews and writing the book took as much effort as the average book of that length. Read this post, this one, this one, and this one to see what went into the book. It was no walk in the park (my editors will agree).

Had I sent a bunch of questions via E-mail, I would have had to poll a couple hundred bloggers to get a 320-page book. When you ask people to type up responses to questions, you're asking for minimal replies. You get more (and better) material when you actually talk with your subjects and get involved in the conversation. The bottom line: interviewing is another kind of research. The quotes were created by the subjects and me--not unlike going out and gathering facts by hand-searching old newspapers, magazines, and books, and on-site research--the kinds of research I did for CROSLEY and my other non-fiction books. The reviewer recommends that people page through the book. You can do better than that: there are entire chapters available free on the Web. If you like those, get the book.

No, I'm not bummed out by the carping. This is only the fourth negative review I've had in a quarter-century of writing books. Besides, in-person response at recent book signings indicates that people are fascinated by Blogging Heroes.

Not incidentally, some of the interviews I did last week were for this forthcoming book.
--Mike

Let's See ... Am I Michael A. Banks or Iain M. Banks?

Back in 2003 I wrote a book about being a fulltime writer. The publisher gave it the descriptive, if basic, title How to Become a Fulltime Freelance Writer.

The publisher was The Writer Books, which Kalmbach Books had bought some time before I contracted to write the book. After my book was in print for about a year, Kalmbach found that it just couldn't sell how-to books on writing. (Writer's Digest Books pretty much owned the market.) So Kalmbach dropped The Writer Books line and my title with it in 2004.

Even though it's out of print, you will still find How to Become a Fulltime Freelance Writer for sale at Amazon, because Kalmbach sold the stock it had left to another publisher. Almost from the beginning, there have been troubles with this arrangement. For openers, I make no money from the arrangement because I've already been paid the royalty on the copies being sold. The Amazon listing carried the wrong cover image. I got that fixed, and then the new "publisher" put different pubisher names on the Amazon listing. I got that corrected. That was corrected for a time, but now the wrong image is back.

But here's an even bigger blunder (or a prank): sometime in the past few months someone changed the author's name to "Iain Banks." Iain is a bestselling science fiction writer who lives in Scotland, and the author of classics like Consider Phlebas. and The Algebraist. (He sometimes writes as Iain M. Banks, though the "M" does not stand for "Michael.")

Should I be up in arms? I'm not so sure; putting Iain's name on the listing has quadrupled the book's sales. But perhaps I could perk up the sales of The eBay Survival Guide and some of my older books by making Iain the author. (Iain: I'll even give you a cut, brother!)

(I'll stop short of doing that with my New York times bestseller. I did write it, and I've already suffered from someone trying to steal the credit. And I haven't been paid for all the work I did on that book.)

Back to How to Become a Fulltime Freelance Writer, I can imagine the reactions of people who saw the listing: "A book on writing by Iain Banks? I'm all over that!" And then the reaction when they get the book and find out it's not really by Iain Banks ... Oops! But hey, folks: it's still a how-to, based on the experience of a New York Times bestselling author. So keep it and read it--and let me know what you think. I'm working on a revised edition.

--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Thanks

Here I am at one of two B. Dalton signings I did on Sunday, December 23. Although the crowds didn't quite equal last December's crush, it was all fun. As with all the signings I do, I collected stories for my next book from several folks who stopped in to talk about Crosley and Blogging Heroes. This emphasizes how important it is for a writer to get out and talk to people, beyond getting out for its own sake. (Speaking of stories, who remembers "Save cash with Kash?")

Thanks to Art Metzger, Sherry, Linda, and Mel from B. Dalton. And thanks to Sonny Moormon and Carmen Moorman for stopping by. Hope to see you all in July and August, when new books are out!

I Am Interviewed About Blogging Heroes by Nano

Recently I was interviewed by Ido Hartogsohn for Nano, one of Israel's largest news sites. You can read the interview in Hebrew here. Here's the text in English:

--

You call your book Blogging Heroes. What are blogging heroes? What makes one into a blogging hero?

As a title, Blogging Heroes was suggested by my publisher, Joe Wikert. To follow up on the theme the title implies, I looked for bloggers who were admirable in various ways. Like any hero, a blogging hero would have to be someone others want to emulate.

How did you choose the bloggers to participate in your book?

I chose the bloggers based on several criteria. First, I looked at the most popular sites, those most favorited at Technorati, for example. But I didn’t want the book to be just the words from those who attracted the largest numbers of readers. I also looked for bloggers whose blogs other bloggers blogged about. BoingBoing.net and Engadget.com are just two examples.

And I looked beyond my own personal interests for blogs to include. ParentDish.com is one of those. My own children are grown and I have no grandchildren, so parenting isn’t exactly a big interest for me, but I know many of the book’s readers have young children. Similarly, I included InternetDuctTape.com and The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW.com) because hundreds of thousands of readers follow those blogs.

I had several goals in putting this book together. First, I wanted to make sure that the book wasn’t top-heavy with technical subjects. Second, I felt it was important to include as many women as I could. I would have liked to have included more women, but many didn’t get back to me when I tried to set up interviews (true of many male bloggers, too). They may have been too busy blogging to talk about blogging. But there are a good number of female bloggers who have something to say; perhaps there’s a book there.

Finally, I looked for unusual blogs--blogs that didn’t confine themselves to gadgets and computers and hobby interests. Deborah Petersen’s Life in the Fast Lane (http://www.lifeinthefastlane.ca) is one of those. So are PostSecret.com and LongTail.com.

Was there a common denominator between the blogging advices the different bloggers you interviewed gave? Do you have a few popular ideas to mention? Is there a formula for a popular blog?

The common denominator in advice was to blog about your passion--something in which you are intensely interested. Other tips from the bloggers in the book involve persistence and blogging regularly (don’t disappear for a few weeks, then return and expect your readers to still be there). Dave Taylor (askdavetaylor.com) emphasized the importance of participating in other blogs. (At the same time, Chris Anderson of longtail.com told me he doesn’t comment on others’ blogs.)

The formula for a popular includes all of those things, and many more subtle concepts--some unique to this or that blogger. But all recommend patience, more or less “If you build it, they will come” mindset. More than one blogger stated that someone starting a blog now should expect to wait a year before seeing substantial traffic.

Who surprised you?

First and foremost was Frank Warren, of PostSecret.com. Frank has an intense dedication to this project--and he doesn’t view it as a moneymaking project or a freak show. He treats the secrets with respect, which is one reason he doesn’t have ads or otherwise try to monetize PostSecret.com. He has been granted an important public trust, and handles it that way.

I was also surprised by Deborah Petersen (lifeinthefastlane.ca), who also doesn’t try to monetize her blog. She covers such a wide range of subjects and spends dozens of hours each week blogging. She researches every post as if she was writing on assignment for National Geographic or The London Times. She is really dedicated.

Robert Scoble keeps up with over 700 different blogs--wow!

Chris Anderson wrote this very entertaining paragraph about the book's winning strategy:
This is very clever. First, Banks created a book by appealing to the vanity of bloggers, which is always a safe bet. Second, the book is mostly just those interviews with a few paragraphs of introductory text and talking points at the end. User-generated content! ... Wiley is giving away the book in small chunks, harnessing the combined distribution (and ego) of the prominent bloggers that are featured in the book. Each of us promotes the book to promote ourselves, and the book gets the collective blog buzz. Others who have done what I'm doing in promoting their own chapter include Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing, David Rothman at TeleBlog and Steve Garfield.

Very clever indeed.. :) Any comment on that? Was that kind of winning strategy in your mind when you decided to write the book?

The idea of promoting the book via the blogs it covers was a natural one, but it didn’t come along until after I started interviewing subjects. The way Chris and some others have described it, it’s promotion by ego. It seems to be working; sales are really good with the book out just two weeks now, and there’s lots of favorable response to the chapters and excerpts that have been posted. In addition to the chapters posted by the various bloggers, there are excerpts at http://www.theaveragejob.com, and I frequently post summaries and interesting quotes from the bloggers at my Real Writing Life blog, which is at http://mikebanks.blogspot.com.

You also used a pretty interesting marketing method, allowing bloggers to publish chapters from the book on their site. What was the idea there, and aren't you afraid that it will stop people from buying the book when they can get it online?

I think the interviews (and, in all modesty, the biographies and background information I wrote) are so interesting that people will want to have it all in a convenient format they can refer to often. Which is the hardcopy book itself.

Getting someone else to place chapters on popular, high-traffic Web sites is of course an obvious marketing device, perhaps the best way to get buzz started. I’m waiting to see others do the same thing. We’ve had blogs turn into books, and books turn into blogs, but this is the first time that multiple blogs have promoted a single product in concert. I guess we could call it “distributed book promotion.”

Blogging as Practical Politics?

A while back, Amazon added a feature that displays a book's rank in the top 100 titles in specific categories. I wasn't surprised to see Blogging Heroes show up frequently among the top 100 Internet Books. But it was a bit of a surprise to find myself at No. 7 in the Politics/Practical Politics category--one ahead of P.J. O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores.

My only real experience with politics was holding a low-level elected office twice in the 1980s. I happen to live in the small town where O'Rourke attended college; maybe that's more relevant.

It's interesting to see things go in directions you hadn't considered. And I'm certain that blogging will be an important tool in the coming elections.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Blogging Heroes Excerpt in Blogger & Podcaster Magazine

The December issue of Blogger & Podcaster magazine has an excerpt from Blogging Heroes. The excerpt is the interview with Peter Rojas of Engadget. The magazine bills it as "an interview in a book excerpt." Click here to have a look; the layout is nice, and the opening page carries Pete's photo. This interview presents an interesting viewpoint on SEO--one that's shared by successful bloggers throughout the book.

Last Sunday's Signing at Borders

(Photos courtesy Tom Miller)

Many thanks to Borders in Mason, Ohio, for hosting a signing for Blogging Heroes and Crosley this past Sunday, December 16. We had a great turnout, and Tom Miller brought in his 1948 Crosley wagon.

That's me in the top photo, at the signing table wit my books and Crosley Reds shirt at the signing table. Behind me is Marjorie of Borders. The photo below shows my view from the signing table. (Click either photo for full-size image.)

As you can see, the Crosley is just about the biggest car you could get into the entryway! Click here for photos of the car inside the store!
--Mike

Congratulations, Susan!

Congratulations to my daughter, Susan Banks, who graduates with her degree in Social Anthropology from Northern Kentucky University on December 15!

Looking for Blogging Heroes Intervews Online?

Click here to read The Long Tail author Chris Anderson's comments on my new book, Blogging Heroes. You can sample chapters at The Long Tail blog, Mark Frauenfelder's BoingBoing.net, and video blogger Steve Garfield's Off on a Tangent.

Also, Joe Wikert has posted an excerpt from Robert Scoble's (Scobleizer.com) interview here. Finally, click here for more info about Blogging Heroes.

To see some fascinating quotes from the interviews and a good summary, click here. This will take you to the Blogging Heroes listing page at Barnes & Noble.

--Mike

Books Cause the Darnedest Things--Sometimes

A while back AuctionBytes ran an article I wrote about how books can affect the price and volume of merchandise on eBay. That had to do with how the Crosley book seems to have had an effect on the sales and prices of certain items on eBay.

Earlier this week I encountered another phenomenon apparently caused by the publication of Crosley. I was checking some records in the online genealogy section of Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery, where Powel Crosley and many of his family are interred. When I did a search for the name "Powel Crosley," none came up. Powel's wife, brother, mother, and others are there, but Powel, his father (Powel, Sr.), son Powel, III, and grandson Powel, IV were no longer listed."Might this be the result of the Crosley book?" I asked myself, thinking the popularity of this book may have led to too many queries for Crosley.

I contacted Phil Nuxhall, the official historian of Spring Grove Cemetery, and Phil consulted with the company's Webmaster. The four Powel Crosleys are now restored. There had been a problem with the fact that each was listed with a variant of the last name: Crosley Jr, Crosley IV, and so on. Now you can find them at http://www.springgrove.org/sg/genealogy/sg_genealogy_home.shtm

This sort of thing has happened in the past, notably with songs, like Wilson Pickett's "634-5789," among others. In the case of the song, telephone companies hosting that number had to shut it down.

If you want more information about the Crosley family plot (Section 17, Lot 6 at Spring Grove), see Find a Grave. You can also leave virtual flowers and a comment.

--Mike at michaelabanks dot com

http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Book Signing in Mason this Sunday, December 16!

I'll be signing both Blogging Heroes and CROSLEY this Sunday, DECEMBER 16, from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM at Borders in Mason, Ohio. Click here for directions.

Mason is the home of WLW's transmitter and famous Blaw-Knox diamond antenna tower. You can see it as you drive into town.

Come on out: I'll have some special free handouts for everyone, whether you buy a book or not! Bring a copy to be signed, or buy a copy for your Crosley fan friends or blogging relatives as a holiday gift!
--Mike

Radio Changes

I've been interviewing a number of people in the broadcast business, in connection with a book I'm writing. I've collected an interesting set of opinions on where radio is going--AM radio in particular. Just about everyone I talked with expressed the thought that the AM radio talk show with its "angry white men" has been overdone, and that something new is going to emerge. Problem is, nobody can say what that might be.

Thinking about it, one of the reasons the call-in talk show format got popular is because it is live programming. Radio listeners didn't just start demanding people screaming and saying shocking things--though many of them were certainly looking for a way to get on radio and speak their piece. I believe that the live element is what grabbed listener interest. Consider the success of Gary Burbank on WLW. He's not one of the angry white men--but he is live.

Live programming is, of course, where radio started. It makes one wonder if more live programming--of a different type--is waiting in the wings as the angry white men duplicating one another's shtick fall away. It seems as if everything comes back if you wait long enough ...

For some interesting background on all this, have a look the book Something in the Air, by Marc Fisher. You'll find my review of the book here.

--Mike

http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Blogging Heroes Now Shipping

Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble are now shipping Blogging Heroes.

Several reviews and interviews are scheduled in various media. One of the first reviews is by Joel Comm, here at Amazon. Joel is the author of The Adsense Code and is one of the book's subjects. In his interview, he has quite a bit to say about blogging and how to put Google Adsense to work. Have a look at Joel's Web site and The Adsense Code, too.
--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Cincinnati Radio Archives

There are precious few audio archives from the heyday of Crosley Broadcasting, from the 1920s through the 1940s. A lot of what exists isn't available, including The Nation's Station: Cincinnati Radio (1921-1941) (an important resource when I was researching Crosley).

Fortunately, WGUC, Cincinnati's public radio station, makes available two great audio archive/tribute CDs. (And they have great prices--at least ten bucks less than I've seen one of these for sale at eBay and Amazon.com.) Shown above, the CDs are:

• Cincinnati Radio: The War Years (1941-1945) offers lots of audio from WLW, as well as other stations. The program is narrated by Nick Clooney.
• Let Me Entertain You: A Ruth Lyons Memoir is a tribute to the woman who invented television talk shows. This one's narrated by Jane Pauley, and has interviews and lots of 50-50 Club sound bites.

--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Blogging Heroes in Bookstores This Week!

My author copies of Blogging Heroes arrived Friday. This means the book will show up in your local bookstore this week. (Amazon starts delivering copies on December 5.)

It's a good-looking book. Michael Trent did a fine job on the jacket design. The green type on the the covers almost glows in the dark, and the endflaps are distinctively different. Inside the book, and design and layout support the text wonderfully. Click on the image above to get an idea of the layout, full-size.

The illustrations (images of blogs and other interesting items) came through fine, and it has a decent index. At just over 300 pages, Blogging Heroes is a good-size hardcover. Pick up a copy and let me know what you think.
--Mike
http://www.michaelbanks.com/
P.O. Box 175, Oxford, OH 45056