I cover a lot of different sites here where people interested in new media can show off their work, promote themselves, or sell their services. I decided to start collecting all of these different sites in a single place. Right now it’s limited to online portfolios and places to sell your work, but I will soon be adding more resources as well.

New Media Resources Page

I hope you find it useful. Enjoy!

If you provide a new media resource of any type, please contact me for a review and (if favorable) a listing.

Hiya, folks! I am a busy nerd at the moment and knee-deep in that wonderful blend of right and left brain activity I love so much, but I didn’t want you to think I forgot about you! Here is some news from the world of new media!

TalentTrove wants you to shred.

I like TT and apparently so do you, from the comments I get whenever I mention them. They have a neat contest for you new media musicians that guitarists should check out. From the press release:

TalentTrove Launches Best Guitar Solo Contest Sponsored by Michael Kelly Guitars

WOODBRIDGE, N.J., June 8, 2009- Can you Shred the guitar like Slash or play blues like Eric Clapton? Guitarists will have their chance to be a star with global Internet talent Web site, TalentTrove.com’s Best Guitar Solo Contest sponsored by Michael Kelly Guitar Company. Submissions will begin being accepted June 15 at 1 p.m. and last until July 22 at midnight.

“Having a sponsor like Michael Kelly Guitar will not only give the winners quality instruments to make their music, but will take all of the participants one step closer to their dream of discovery and that’s what we’re all about at TalentTrove,” said Jaime McGee, Director of Marketing at TalentTrove.com

Contestants will go directly to the contest page where they will be prompted to upload their audio or video files for submission.

A grand prizewinner will receive a Michael Kelly Patriot Custom electric guitar along with $500 provided by TalentTrove.com. The second place winner will receive a Michael Kelly Nostalgia 60SJCE acoustic guitar.

“I love what TalentTrove is all about,” said Tracy Hoeft, Founder and VP of Marketing for Michael Kelly Guitars. “This world is filled with talented people and it is exciting to see this great venue where those people can get noticed. Michael Kelly Guitars is thrilled to be able to partner with them to create a virtual stage for guitar players specifically to showcase their talent and passion.”

For more information visit the Web site www.TalentTrove.com or email questions to contest[@]TalentTrove.com.

Wordpress wants you to update.

Everyone’s favorite open source blogging platform has popped their latest version into the main distribution. People who use the hosted service at Wordpress.com will get new features as they roll out, but for the industrious bloggers with their own installs you can upgrade now manually or automatically via the “Tools” menu in your WP backend. WP 2.8 includes some new features such as a rebuilt widget interface, faster admin navigation, and a revised plugin interface.

Users who use a lot of plugins should wait to update, as I have seen some serious bugs already, and don’t forget to back up your database first.

StumbleUpon wants you to be Su.pr.

SU has launched a new service called Su.pr, which attempts to be a better Diggbar. It allows you to post your links to Twitter and Facebook and then track the activity through those links. So far I have had great results, and in general find SU to be a better overall source of traffic and promotion for quality new media content than Digg or similar sites.

Su.pr is in private beta right now, so you will have to sign up and hope you can get in. For more great tips on using StumbleUpon to promote your work, check out SU Comments, a great little blog that will get you up to speed.

GapingVoid wants you to buy his book.

Hugh MacLeod, aka GapingVoid of “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards” has released his new book “Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity“. It’s available in text and will soon be available on audio, and no one in new media should give this one a pass. Hugh is a great cartoonist and has some great things to say on the world of creative professionals, creativity in general, and of course he is a wonder of new media, so check out both his cartoons and his books for some funny, smart, and considered ideas.

Online luminary Seth Godin has also asked an important question I want to return to in a later post, but first I wanted your opinions:

Some people avoid Hugh’s work because he’s unafraid (even eager) to write about sex and to use language that looks good on Jack Nicholson. I have no problem with this, but a lot of people do, certainly at work.

So, the question: Should Hugh leave it out?

So, should he?

Closing up the day:

Had a lecture on user-generated content from Scott Porad of ICanHazCheezburger.com which was a good introduction to the theories of UGC and viral content. It was a bit too general for me, but for those who are new to the notions of the “Wisdom of Crowds” or “SmartMobs”, it was a good little presentation. The main points:

1. User-generated content is not new. Academic journals and other classical forms of media have used it.
2. By using the crowd, you are more likely to hit. He used the example of guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar. If one person guesses, they are probably not going to be right, even when using their best judgment. However, if many people make a guess using their best judgment and you roll the guesses into a averaging function, you are going to get closer and closer to the right answer with each guess. This is how the user-generated voting systems work to bring us content we want to see.

I wish he would have talked more about their voting algorithms and how they avoid the gaming so prevalent on sites like Digg and so on.

Right now on the stage is John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla, talking about building open-source projects that can make viable business and technological systems. His main points:

1. Asking the question “How to build a successful open source project” is too big. It becomes meaningless. Every project is different.
2. When building and engaging a community to build a project, increase the inner circle. Let everyone who wants to participate, participate. “Surprise alienates.”
3. Community are not customers, they are citizens, and the best citizens challenge the status quo and are “huge pains in the asses”.
4. Engaged citizens are noisy (insert slide of Chris Messina). Chris made an hour-long video which tore Mozilla a new one over what was wrong with what they were doing…apparently Mr. Lilly, while of course upset by such an intense criticism, reacted like a champ and took the criticisms to heart.
5. “The web is central (but it is at risk)”.
6. The web is forking among technologies that are improving at different rates.
7. Companies are trying to lock the web into traditional bindings between manufacturers, service providers, and software providers, a la Ma Bell or AT&T. This must be avoided.
8. “On the web, you don’t need to ask anyone for permission”. (just build it)

That’s probably it for the night, hope you all got something out of it.
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Philip Greenspun spoke on writing and blogging, and is making some great points on new media. While he is a bit of a rambler (bad for making spoken presentations) he made some short points:

1. Prior to the blog, there were two primary forms of publication: the book and the periodical. Because of this, important content would not be publishable because it would be either too short or too long.
2. Marcus Aurelius was the first blogger. Flame wars were apparently much more bloody then. One must also wonder as to their commenting system.

He also got confronted on some of his humor, which included racial jokes, by a young woman in the audience. His response when asked why he included the material, he responded with the old story about when Chuck Jones was asked about why he included all the violence in his cartoons, to which he explained that they “put in the violence because they thought it was funny”. While I don’t like the PC police who seem to increasingly police our words and thoughts, I thought he dealt with it well.

Next, the Lockergnome himself, Chris Pirillo, is on the stage, talking about community. His primary points:

1. We are all walking Venn diagrams of interests and characteristics.
2. Community connections through technology are becoming more and more distributed. While in the early days of Usenet one had to go to a specific location to seek out community, now those connections are non-localized.
3. The problem with closed source and closed communities is that they force you to live in someone else’s idea.
4. “A blog is just a tool. If you think a blog is a community, then YOU are a tool.”
5. “You know you have a community when it takes care of its own instead of eating its own.”
6. “Community is a commodity, but people aren’t.”
7. “Community cannot be controlled, only guided.”
8. “The best community leaders come out of the community, rather than being dropped into it.” (wise words for you community managers out there)
9. “Community is no longer defined by physical boundaries.” (this is a big idea, one that I have discussed on the Social Media Philosophy Project often)
10. He collects Garbage Pail Kids and still has nightmares about rotary phones…this seems off-topic, but he is talking about how the ability to have community has morphed and expanded since his youth.
11. “Community grows its own leaders.”
12. “Community is the antithesis of ego. It is inside of you, but it is not about you.” (best quote ever about social media in general)

More to come later!

Matt Mullenweg is giving the state of the word and has told us about upcoming features:

1. A completely redone widget backend, complete with an API for development.
2. A theme browser just like the plugin browser, which allows you to search, preview, and install themes from Wordpress.org right from your install.
3. Backend features and improvements out the wazoo! He skipped through the frames really quickly, but it looks like we will be getting better plugin support, user registration features, and security.

He also says that Wordpress is now one of the highly wanted skills on Elance and Odesk, so work on your chops and get a job!

More to come…

UPDATE:

Wordpress.org and WordpressMU are merging code-bases!

I am currently at Wordcamp in (not so) sunny San Francisco getting some pointers on good blogging practices and SEO. So far, some good tips:

From Tim Ferriss

1. Check out the plugin:
   Cookies for Comments – Uses a cookie to keep spammers from directly commenting on your blog…keeps out automated commenting.
2. Change the term “Categories” to “Topics” to increase traffic.
3. Add a “most popular posts” section to your sidebar for deeper reading and longer visits.
4. Use analytics to test the results of all blogging cliches and truisms you have learned (short posts, social links, etc). Some of them break down under analysis.
5. Have Fun!

From Matt Cutts (Google)

1. Update your Wordpress install immediately upon updates. He showed us a hilarious view of the American Nazi Party’s homepage source… which had been so severely spammed it had more links about Cialis than links about hate.
2. Don’t stuff with keywords. Write naturally and then do keyword research for SEO.
3. The current Wordpress version includes the “rel=”canonical”" tag, which allows for a solution to the duplicate content problem.
4. Use the “Katamari Damacy” method for building your content: start with a small niche you know a lot about and then expand your posts slowly.
5. In your permalinks settings for Wordpress, use the /%postname%/ to include keywods for indexing. (I would actually advise using /%category%/%postname%/, as this allows for richer semantic connections between terms and allows for the creation of query spaces).

More to come later!

As some of my faithful readers from the old days at thePuckWrites may remember, I wrote the story, quests, and designed the classes for an upcoming online game called Ghostees!. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work, and since I know that many young creatives feel drawn to games (I know I do) I thought I would do a series about what is necessary when writing for a game.

For the purposes of this series, we are going to assume your game is a role-playing game because these require the most writing. If you are writing for action or strategy games, you will need to tighten up your dialogue and plot a great deal, but you have much less to worry about in the long run because there are fewer possibilities. While in an RPG each decision and will have different possible results, your average FPS or RTS has only two possibilities: live or die.

How to Build a World

Your client or boss has a basic idea of what kind of game she wants. A number of other titles are thrown at you as examples. Genres are considered and abandoned. Finally, all that will be done for you is done, and you have to create your world plot. Now what?

A world plot is the story that the player, whether with others in an online game or alone, has their story take place within. This is the background history of the world, the basic conflicts at work in the big picture, and the basis for your general quest progression. An example is in Warcraft: the storyline originally comes from three real-time strategic games and was adapted for World of Warcraft. This background story defines the locations of gameplay (Azeroth, the Outlands) and establishes the basic factions (Human, Orc, Undead, Night Elves, Dwarves, etc) and their various conflicts. Additionally, the events of the prior games established even more history, defining new conflicts and specific enemies.

Now examine how all of this world plotting works to create the rest of the game. Once you have your world plotted you have a place for the player’s characters to be from, groups for them to both identify with and have conflicts with, and a set of larger plots for them to take part in as their characters become more powerful. In the case of WoW, their world plot has given them an almost endless supply of material for expansions, quests, races, classes, and locations. So when first conceiving your world plot you have to take all of this into account.

So what does it take to make a good world plot?

Consistency

Your world plot must be consistent in its history and rules. This doesn’t mean things can’t change, but it does mean they have to change for a reason. In the plot of Warcraft, the orcs went from demon-worshipping necromancers bent on destruction to tribal warriors profoundly concerned with honor and loyalty. The game mechanic that drove this decision was a desire to make  players better able to identity with the orcs and to render the duality in Warcraft, which had before been about good and evil, a bit more ambiguous. This was a money-decision…they wanted more sides and races so they could attract more players. However, in-game they made sure to justify the change using information from the game lore. Always make sure the events in your world plot are consistent, because contradictions make for a weaker story and a weaker game.

Fertility

A good world plot is defined enough to make writing quests easy but flexible enough to give birth to new sub-plots, creatures, and NPCs. More content will be the cry you will hear from happy project managers, supervisors, and players, so if you wrote yourself into a corner you are screwed. You can’t have there be a single big bad boss, because then you have nowhere to go when your players beat that boss. You can’t have the whole world divided up between two factions and then introduce a third as the project leads you. A closed story, however easy it becomes to build your conflict and plot your quest progression, is a mistake. Instead, build worlds where there is plenty of information to add depth, but plenty of unknowns to leave yourself room for expansion.

The game Mass Effect does this perfectly: the main storyline is truly epic, with a plot spanning millennia. However, the world plot of the game allows for new races, locations, sub-plots, and now a sequel to branch off convincingly. This is because the world plot of Mass Effect is open…its basic premises define it without limiting it. Do likewise.

Tropes and Atmosphere

Tropes are repeating motifs that exist in stories. They are things like “the haunted house”, “the wise old man”, “the lover lost and regained”, and so on. Specific genres have specific tropes, so science fiction has the monster that turns out to really be a man and horror has the man that turns out to be a monster, and both of them, once identified by the audience, can be predicted. However, tropes are useful; they are like cliches in that they sort of work. The secret is not to avoid tropes, but to use them sparingly and well to create an atmosphere that guides the expectations of the audience. You can’t lead them by the nose, but you have to let them know there is something to be led to, otherwise they will get bored.

In a game, tropes are often used to establish the kind of game you are playing. A science fiction game like Fallout 3 will use different kinds of monsters and plot devices to characterize what sort of story it is than Oblivion, another RPG made by the same people using the same engine. An easy way to figure out your tropes is to think about the monsters and locations. While Dead Space and Silent Hill both feature themes of isolated locations with visually disturbing enemies, and both are indubitably horror games, they use the “abandoned town” vs the “abandoned ship” motif to characterize their genre. This example is meant to be obvious, but tropes can be very subtle (and should be!), and also illustrates the proper use of tropes: tropes characterize and establish atmosphere, they are not a replacement for real characters and stories. In your world plot you must use tropes to quickly and easily create the player’s expectations and allow them to see what kind of game they are playing, but avoid simply using generic tropes as your plot points.

Stay Tuned!

That’s it for this installment. Next in this series we will cover lore writing and the details of how to write good background stories. Please feel free to ask questions on world plotting or add pointers of your own below.

Docstoc is a neat little site for sharing professional documents, which puts the focus on essays, studies, transcripts, and articles. From the site:

Docstoc is the premier online community to find and share professional documents. Docstoc provides the platform for users and businesses to upload and share their documents with all the world, and serves as a vast repository of documents in variety of categories including legal, business, financial, technology, educational, and creative. All documents on docstoc can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded for free.

Docstoc functions as a sort of YouTube for documents, but the simple fact is that while videos are entertaining and can even be informative, documents are about business. Docstoc has sample contracts, forms, and other “getting things done” documents that will save you time and effort. You get to help publicize your work, as well, with no upload limits and a maximum file-size of 50 megabytes. They have desktop applications for uploading in bulk and allow you to store and preview your documents without sharing them.

Revenue-Sharing

Docstoc recently added some features that makes them far more attractive to writers in new media who want to add to their income stream:

Offers you a way to profit from the documents you upload. Simply sign up for DocCash and we’ll split the revenue generated by the Google Ads that run alongside your documents. Earn recurring and passive income from your documents, and get a check sent to you each month.

That’s right, Docstoc has decided share their add revenue with users. Sign up for a Google Adsense accounts, sign up for the DocCash feature, and you can get paid. This feature is not related to the license on your document, so even if you have put your work into the public domain or licensed it as Creative Commons, you an still make ongoing money on the ads running alongside your work.

This is a great program for writers like me, who sometimes write things that are more scholarly or functional. The demand for such material from online publishers is pretty low, simply because the odds of “A Treatise on Implied Definitions in Paraconsistent Logics” going viral on Twitter are pretty low. Docstoc provides a market for such pieces, allowing writers to collect residuals on work that would otherwise go unwritten or sit in a slushpile somewhere.

Full API

For all you code-monkeys out there, Docstoc also has a full API, which allows you to build your own applications for the document-based social sharing network:

Most functionality available to a user on the site can be accessed through the API. The API includes functions for registering new members, uploading, downloading, updating, and searching for documents, manipulating a member’s folder structure, and setting up ads.

Community and Fans

Finally, for those writers who enjoy social media and the benefits of social networking, Docstoc has all the normal features you would expect. You can subscribe to users, add friends, tag documents, and add reviews and ratings. There are widgets and tools for sharing documents through networks or posting on your own profiles and blog, and there is a strong community of writers and infophiles that welcomes new members.

Share Your Experiences and Links

If you have used Docstoc and have any comments on their service, I want to know! Feel free to also comment with links to your profiles and documents…we do-follow our links! Great pieces will get reviews here on WriteNewMedia, so get yourself some free traffic and, if you have DocCash activated, a chance to earn some money.

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One of the most exciting examples of new media is the video revolution. Thanks to cheap technology and social media sites like YouTube, it is possible for people to create and distribute shorts, movies, and even full series as compelling as anything on mainstream television or in the theaters. A lot of the people involved in the projects get recruited by agents and headhunters, but even for those that don’t get “discovered”, this is a great way for independent scriptwriters and other creatives to see their vision come to the screen.

There are some amazing talents at work in these videos, and because of how much information is out there, a lot of it gets lost in the shuffle. Everyone has seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog, but some comparable writing (with admittedly lower budgets) slips through the cracks. Most superhero films made by amateurs are just mashups of other movies, but these five are real winners, created (almost) wholly from scratch.

Enjoy!

Grayson

Click here to view the embedded video.

Batman is dead and Dick Grayson, the original Boy Wonder, is investigating his murder. With appearances by heroes and villains from all over the DC universe, including Green Lantern, Batgirl, and Superman, this trailer to a great comic book movie that never got made is a testimony to how far an idea, a little cash, and some serious costuming can go. This is some especially fine scripting because so much has to be conveyed with no real dialogue. As anyone who has tried to write a play or script can tell you, having to convey your story in images and motion is very difficult. Grayson is an amazing piece. It will never get made (Robin in a movie is a hard sell since the nineties), but we can hope. A few scenes in Grayson fall flat because they were poorly executed scenes (Commissioner Gordon for the intro was a risky choice, I would have gone for Alfred) but overall it works very well.

World’s Finest

Click here to view the embedded video.

All you comic fans out there know exactly what that title means: Batman and Superman, together. And that is exactly what you get. This movie probably will get made; it’s just too good to pass up, and it will make a killing in the theater even if it is awful. Until then, this trailer is pretty damn good. There is a lot more dialogue in this one, and it’s important to note how the writers used characterization in dialogue to empasize and bring out the minor characters while allowing Batman and Superman to work off of their costumes and movements. Every moment Lois is in a scene she is talking, and they manage to throw in her nickname for Clark Kent (Smallville) without it seeming forced. While the scene choice and physical work is not as heavy as in Grayson, World’s Finest certainly makes up for it in dialogue and direction.

Green Lantern

Click here to view the embedded video.

This one actually is getting made right now, but this video is not related to the movie. Here we have no dialogue at all and it was mostly done with 3D modeling and bits of footage from movies, so the creator had to imply his tale through his choice of images. We see that he deals with this by creating tensions and quickly switching from one establishing shot to another; anyone familiar with the Green Lantern comics and cartoons will be able to put together a possible plot just from the imagery of the Guardians of the Universe and Sinestro alone.

Son of Batman

Click here to view the embedded video.

This one is a little dark. OK, it’s a lot dark. The next one is funny, I promise. As far as the writing…you aren’t going to get much better; this scene is taken from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. For those who haven’t read the book (you should), it takes place in a dark, dystopian near future where Batman is old and tired, Superman is a tool of the government, and a gang of vigilante punks have taken up the cowl…in a fashion.

Batman Gets Pwned

Click here to view the embedded video.

Told you the next one was funny. Respect the funny…writing funny is hard.

Suggestions

If you make videos or can recommend good videos, I want to see them. They don’t have to be about superheroes, but it helps!

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I have been hard at work since I resolved my decision to move the blog in a new direction, and I think it has turned out pretty nicely. I have decided to expand the scope to all of new media, and while I am going to still have a lot to say about writing, we are going to be covering videos, education, and every other aspect of new media. I hope that all of my old and faithful readers with stick with me through the transition to the new domain and host, and I hope for some new readers  to be attracted by the new dimension to the content, as well.

Oh, and for all you loyal commenters out there, I have decided to put up two new features. We now are Commentluv-enabled and we also have an ongoing commenting contest in the lower right sidebar. You are all ranked in ration of number of posts to posting frequency, and each of those have links back to your homepages. So you get deep-links and domain-links, plus a little bit of healthy competition as well. As it stands Busby is ahead by a strong lead. Who will overtake him? So…I have to ask. What do you think of the new site?

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