Short attention span publishing

“Around 1000 characters, give or take a few, is a very managable size, perfect for reading on the go with mobile devices. Its also a perfect length for writers to kick out new, innovative concepts quickly and frequently.” – via Chris Webb | hat tip @eve11.

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1. There's an underground economy of boosted books. These values are commonly understood and roundly agreed upon through word of mouth, and the values always seem to be true. Once, a scruffy, large man approached me, holding a folded-up piece of paper. "Do you have any Buck?" He paused and looked at the piece of paper. "Any books by Buckorsick?" I suspected that he meant Bukowski, but I played dumb, and asked to see the piece of paper he was holding. It was written in crisp handwriting that clearly didn't belong to him, and it read: 1. Charles Bukowski 2. Jim Thompson 3. Philip K. Dick 4. William S. Burroughs 5. Any Graphic Novel

   This is pretty much the authoritative top five, the New York Times best-seller list of stolen books. Its origins still mystify me..

   I asked the man whether he preferred Bukowski's Pulp to his Women, as I did, and whether his favorite Thompson book was The Getaway or The Killer Inside Me. First the book chatter made him nervous, but then it made him angry... Continue reading Flying Off the Shelves by Paul Constant | via The Stranger Any booksellers reading this?  I'm curious about the how the lists might compare from store to store, city to city... Not surprised Buk is at the top of this one, however.  But where is Hoffman?  Surprising omission.
2. In a technological advance that opens up new possibilities in the fields of robotics and wearable computing, researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a stretchable, rubbery material that conducts electricity and can be incorporated into electronic devices. via Pink Tentacle | Read On
3. The Beauty, Secrets and Utility of Twitter for Business Lots of people laugh at Twitter, call it a waste of time and worse, and, that's just fine with me. While they're laughing, I'm learning, listening, meeting, and enjoying a global view of an endless flow of creative thought - 140 characters at a time...[Continue reading here.] via What's Next | B.L. Ochman The above is from B.L. Ochman's business blog, but I'm posting here with the hope that those who aren't in marketing, tech, or business per se might be moved to sign up and join the conversations, offer their sage advice, and share a little of the priceless mundane with the rest of us. Follow me on Twitter if you'd like.  I've taken to calling it Twitter University after my uninformed, inexperienced knee-jerk reaction upon first hearing about the service.  Now I consider it an essential learning and communication tool (and then some).  Highly recommended.
4. Only a small fraction of funding by investment banks, mortgage companies, brokerages, equity funds, hedge funds, commodities futures speculators, etc., comes from actual investor capital. The rest—up to ninety-seven percent, in the case of commodities futures contracts—is credit self-created by the banks.

   Where did the banks get this credit? The answer is that they simply cranked it out through their fractional reserve privileges derived from their government charters. In fact the only way money comes into existence in this day and age is through a loan from a bank which must be repaid with interest. The loan is secured by the borrower’s collateral or promise to pay. But the cumulative interest load on the economy grows exponentially. As a part of the federal budget, for instance, interest on the national debt is around $500 billion a year and growing.

   via Global Research: Impacts of the Financial Crisis: The U.S. Is Becoming an Impoverished Nation

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