Jon Samsel

1. Apple’s design process revealed!
2. Hilarious video about ‘Death By Committee’ group decision making processes. Love the logo designs!
3. Naming tools to help get your creative juices flowing.
4. The Components of a Writing Business Plan.
5. Website up-time tool.
6. What every web designer needs: A handy Lorem Ipsum generator!
7. An online font tester!
8. 100 things on the Internet that might be of interest to you.
9. Type in a word to find rhymes, synonyms, definitions, and more.
10. Life of Pi - Interactive promo. The mood that this creates is almost like a movie. Awesome.
11. The website is down: Sales guy vs. web dude. Funny!
12. ZeFrank’s song about social networking
13. Good site for hiring freelancers to work on social media gigs or web dev projects.
14. Quantcast - Free, competitive website analytics.
15. See every mouse movement and every click on your website. Record & more.
16. Fun brain teasers and exercises.
17. Need to quickly translate text into another foreign language?
18. Nice gift idea - give a personalized book to your child or relative.
19. SEO tool. How many desired .edu or .gov links does your site have?
20. Over 1,500 stories about coffee’s impact on real lives. Very cleaver marketing.
21. Social search engine. Pretty cool.
22. Where’s WaldObama? 1,474 mega-pixel picture of the Inauguration. Wow.
23. Mint or Rudder - which is best online tool to manage your money?
24. Runners. Track your distance, pace, progress & calories with this cool NIKE tool.
25. Looking for the perfect Web 2.0 domain name? Try Dot-o-mator.
26. Download free Web 2.0 logo designs!
27. UGC traffic to triple by 2012, according to Cisco.
28. UGC / user reviews are critical. See latest Nielsen findings.
29. “The Crying Game” of viral marketing. So well done. Click till you see the surprise ending!
30. U.S. real estate prices from 1980-present plotted to a roller coaster ride!
31. I just love Howcast - learn about almost anything!
32. Creepy girl. Watch as her eyes follow your cursor.
33. Amazing interactive simulation by Motorola.
34. Heatmap simulation for any image you upload. Sweet.
35. Design for Emotion and Flow.
36. Website User Journeys, Needs, and Trust: A Volkswagen Case Study.
37. Very helpful usability blog site by Craig Tomlin.
38. Net Promoter Score: Pro’s? Con’s? Full of bologna?
39. Get Elastic’s landing page optimization webinar recap.
40. Consumer purchase preferences by zip code.
41. Free version of the Word of Mouth Manual Volume II.
42. Social media marketing case study: Will It Blend.
43. Free 34 page ebook - The New Rules of Viral Marketing.
44. Social Web Analytics eBook 2008.
45. Introduction to Good Usability - Free PDF Ebook.
46. How to think virally w/ Jeff Benjamin, the creator of  Subservient Chicken.
47. Customer Feedback Usability Insights.
48. 5 new skills for the future of marketing.
49. Bring Holistic Awareness to Your Design.
50. Long live the Cluetrain Manifesto! 95 theses ahead of their time.

Source: http://twitter.com/jonsamsel

Let’s Make a Deal - The social network for venture investors. DealHorizon.com is new, but it’s yet another intriguing web concept from Aussy, John Sharp (CEO of Authentium.com, creators of Safe Central, an amazing end-to-end secure web browsing solution).

Live Video - Flixwagon provides a network for the live broadcasting of video feeds. Whenever I am on this site, I find myself refreshing my homepage every few minutes. There is something exciting about not knowing what’s going to steam across my laptop screen next.

Percentage Calculator - A simple site where you can calculate percentages and percentage increases. I use this all the time.

Spin Your Own - Make your own discs. Yeah, physcial CD’s are a dying medium, but there’s still nothing like burning a fresh disc packed with mp3’s favs and sharing it with friends.

SEO Tool - A nice SEO tool for seeing how well your website is doing in four key areas: 1) Inbound links (especially .edu and .gov links), 2) Number of indexed pages, 3) Site age (via Wayback machine), 4) DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory listing.

Need a Rhyme? - A rhyming dictionary every writer should have in their bag of bookmarks.

Free Translation - What’s not to like about Babel Fish, a quick and easy tool that translates online text and web page language into over 30 languages?

The Future of Search? - Ms. Dewey is an experimental Microsoft video search engine launched in 2006 with a touch of humor that plays prerecorded clips of Janina Gavankar, an actress who entertains you with her witty commentary based on your searches.

Poem Power - Selected poetry of e.e.cummings, a modern American poetry icon. Need I say more?

Do-It-Yourself Videos - A fun video search site. I especially like Revver’s how to section. So many magic trick reveals and Photoshop how-to’s. Sweet.

A funny thing happened to me the other day while conducting a vanity search on Flickr.com. I typed in my name, Jon Samsel. A single result appeared—‘Writing Display’ by Pesky Library.

What the…

I clicked on the photo. Upon careful inspection I saw that it was a table display showcasing an array of books supporting the different styles of writing. The display was located in the Carl A. Pescosolido Library, which is said to be the academic core of The Governor’s Academy—the oldest boarding school in America, located near Boston.

What do ya know…

I perused the book titles in the photo:

• Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know About Writing by Patricia T. O’Connor
• The Pen Commandments: A Guide for the Beginning Writer by Steven Frank
• First Paragraphs: Inspired Openings for Writers and Readers by Donald Newlove
• From Reader to Writer: Teaching Writing Through Classic Children’s Books by Sarah Ellis
• True Notebooks by Mark Salzman
• Write Where You Are: How to Use Writing to Make Sense of Your Life by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg Ph.D.
• The Writer’s Mentor: A Guide to Putting Passion on Paper by Cathleen Rountree
• Free-Lancer and Staff Writer: Newspaper Features and Magazine Articles by William L. Rivers
• On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser
• Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark
• Crafting a Life in Essay, Story, Poem by Donald M. Murray
• Shoptalk: Learning to Write with Writers by Donald M. Murray
• Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity by Susan K. Perry Ph.D.
• Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose
• Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process by Peter Elbow
• How to Write and Sell Historical Fiction by Persia Woolley
• Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir by William Zinsser, ed.
• The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier: How to Solve the Mysteries of Weak Writing by Bonnie Trenga
• Writing Personal Essays: How to Shape Your Life Experiences for the Page by Sheila Bender
• Getting the Words Right: 39 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Theodore A. Rees Cheney
• Interactive Writer’s Handbook by Jon Samsel and Darryl Wimberley
• The Pocket Muse: Ideas and Inspiration for Writing by Monica Wood

A flitter of excitement gripped me suddenly—what esteemed company to be included in!

It’s amazing to me that a group of high school aged kids have access to a library stocked with such a variety of writing manuscripts. That got me thinking about The Governor’s Academy. Why hadn’t I heard of it before? What was its story?

According to the school’s website, the academy was established in 1763 as Dumm’r Charity School through a bequest from Massachusetts Bay Lieutenant Governor William Dummer. It was later renamed Governor Dummer Academy and the school provided educational opportunities during the Colonial times. The school has often been referred to as the foundation for the preparatory school tradition in America.

Many famous people have been entwined with The Governor’s Academy over the years. Booker T. Washington Jr. was a member of the school’s football team; John Quincy Adams once served as secretary to the Board of Trustees; Paul Revere fashioned the first seal for the school; Captain Edward Preble, commander of the USS Constitution and a hero of the War of 1812, attended the academy.

Then there is the library. Constructed in 1997, the Carl A. Pescosolido Library is couched between two historic brick buildings. The Pesky Library (as it’s commonly known) includes more than 20,000 square feet of study and research space, a 30,000-volume collection, 175 dataports and wireless access, hundreds of periodicals, and an unrestrained, light-filled research areas and team study rooms.

In summary, I guess you could say my vanity search morphed into a odd sort of historical, hypertext spelunking adventure. Yes, it started out as a story about me but it grew into a story about us—chronicling the narrative of a book display, a book co-authored by me, a modern library, a prestigious boarding school and a historic compendium of times gone by. Hopefully you will agree it was a tale worth sharing.

How much money can you earn as an interactive game writer? Half as much as the last gal and never as much as you need! Actually, it varies, depending on the job, the time schedule, and your level of experience.

Novice writers may have to create entire interactive scripts or design documents on a speculative basis (collecting no up-front income) in order to demonstrate to others an ability to conceptualize an approach to a subject, as well as to showcase your writing skills.Generally, it’s never a good idea to work for free unless the potential employer/buyer is a prestigious corporation or a prominent publisher–and this assignment is your big break. For any other firm, a writer must insist on some form of payment. A $3,000–$7,500 fee paid to a writer to work a few weeks on an interactive writing assignment is not uncommon.

Writer/designer Carolyn Miller claims that top interactive writers working on interactive entertainment titles are making rates comparable to that of Hollywood movie-of-the-week writers—somewhere in the $40,000–$50,000 range. That’s for delivery of a complete design document.

Noted interactive attorney Richard Thompson, says that the general range for his clients is around $30,000–$40,000. Writers with experience may get $60,000–$70,000. If you are simply copy-fitting (adding dialog or punching up previously written material), a writer may earn as little as $10,000.

Attorney Richard Thompson shares his thoughts:

Point number one. Lots of money.

Point number two is to define when the client gets paid –and for doing what. There’s a real tendency for projects to spin out of control and go on forever. Writers usually don’t earn much money on a web site or interactive game deal so the assignment really shouldn’t take up a year and a half of the client’s life. You won’t be able to eat if you do that. It is also important to try to define what the writer actually has to do to get the money.

Another thing a writer should insist on is a royalty. There are situations when a writer can’t get a royalty. For example, the writer is coming in on something that is a preexisting property or something that has a lot of design work already done on it. Many software companies, for example, don’t want to pay royalties. The reality is that once a writer who’s any good gets involved in a project that is already under way, the whole thing oftentimes must be substantially redesigned. It turns out to be a huge amount of work for the writer and that warrants a royalty.

A writer needs to figure out the scope of the work. If the work is more than just coming in and laying some copy on top of something that’s essentially done, then I think it’s something that merits getting a royalty. It’s an important deal point.

Another important deal point is credit. The only credit that writers are entitled to is what they negotiate for in their contract. And even though software companies and Fortune 500 firms tend to think that credits aren’t important, credits are important. In large measure, they define who people see you as in the business. Your stature and your ability to make future deals is often dependent on what you’ve already done.

Attorney Richard Thompson answers the question this way:

I think that in any case where you need either, you need both. The kind of person who doesn’t necessarily need any kind of representation is somebody who has a relationship with one company where they’ve worked a long time and they just want to keep on doing the same deals over and over again. They are prepared to be paid a fairly modest wage for their work, and don’t aspire to gain control of their own destinies.

If you want to be paid better or if you want to develop more industry relationships, or to gain control over your own destiny, then you probably need representation. Very few writers are capable of doing those things on their own. And it’s not the best use of their time if they are, because they should be writing.

That’s what they do best.

Agents are very important in helping to get the word out about writers, to help them develop relationships and to get particular projects submitted to the appropriate buyers. Buyers look to agents more and more to perform the screening function of weeding out the good material from the bad.

I suppose there are deals for which an attorney is not required, because the deals are non-negotiable. But it may still be a good idea to pay an attorney to review the deal to help the client decide whether to accept the non-negotiable terms or walk.

Former Talent and literary agent Carl Bressler had this to say about the role of an agent:

To me, what an agent does is procure, negotiate, advise, and counsel. Procuring is finding work. Negotiating is getting the best terms for the client without making the buyer hate the client. Advice is of the day and counseling is long-term. In other words, the agent is a mirror. This is where you said you want to go. Are you doing that or do you see yourself falling away from your dream plan?

“My father’s definition of an expert is somebody who has done something once. And I’ve also heard it described about “experts” that an “ex” is a has-been and a “spurt” is a drip under pressure. I believe that those who fancy that they know it all have peaked. We are in a young industry and I suppose it makes more sense that we behave like youths: having fun, experimenting, doing naughty things, disobeying our elders, learning how to grow up, and seeing a universe of many possibilities.

– Larry Kay

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.”

– Zen saying