“Writing a novel (or a story, for that matter) is confusing work. There are just so many characters running all over the place, dropping hints and having revelations. So it’s no surprise that many authors plan out their works beforehand, in chart or list or scribble form, in order to keep everything straight. After the jump, you’ll find a mini collection of those planning papers, so you can take a peek into the process of some of your favorite authors, from James Salter to J.K. Rowling.”

“Oregon-based optics manufacturer Bodelin will begin shipping its brand-new ProScope Micro Mobile on May 1. One version fits the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, and iPod Touch; another the iPad; and another the iPad Mini. Whatever size, it will set you back $149.”

“I use a trick with co-workers when we’re trying to decide where to eat for lunch and no one has any ideas. I recommend McDonald’s.

An interesting thing happens. Everyone unanimously agrees that we can’t possibly go to McDonald’s, and better lunch suggestions emerge. Magic!

It’s as if we’ve broken the ice with the worst possible idea, and now that the discussion has started, people suddenly get very creative. I call it the McDonald’s Theory: people are inspired to come up with good ideas to ward off bad ones.”

“I’ll start with the bottom line – Here you can find my code for extracting the main topics/noun phrases from a given sentence. It works fine with real sentences (from a blog/news article). It’s a bit less accurate compared to the default NLTK tools, but it works much faster!”

“Overall, 52% of recent library users say their use of the library in the past five years has not changed to any great extent. At the same time, 26% of recent library users say their library use has increased and 22% say their use has decreased. The table below highlights their answers about why their library use changed:”

“Considering how much typing on a glass touch screen blows in comparison to using hard keys, it’s easy to imagine how BlackBerry saw the first iPhone back in 2007 and thought, “Bah, this isn’t a threat.” We all know how that turned out. But typing on glass still blows, and voice dictation on mobile devices (while pretty awesome) isn’t a good fit for every situation. So how can we un-blowify touch-screen typing? Two interesting software -design approaches have recently emerged: one rethinks how the keyboard looks, while the other rethinks how the keyboard acts. (Spoiler alert: I think the latter has more potential.)”

“There is no doubt that Big Data will transform business. But in an age of connected and empowered individuals, precision targeting must be balanced with personal value. If you want to build loyalty, spend less time using data to tell customers about you, and spend more time telling them something about themselves.”

“The first aspect of how Apple attained and maintains its current position explains how the company got its foot in the door. The iPhone, when it was first unveiled in 2007, so captured the attention of consumers that it figuratively sucked all the oxygen out of the mobile industry, immediately becoming a famous household brand worldwide.

It was a product with clear value to a large audience, a concept cleverly captured in a photo posted to Reddit comparing 1993 to 2013.”

“Does your business need data? Of course. But buying into something as faddish as the supposed importance of the size of one’s data is the kind of thing only pointy-haired Dilbert bosses would do. The same issues that have plagued science since its inception—data quality, overall goals and the importance of context and intuition—are inherent in the way that businesses use data to make decisions. Remember: Gregor Mendel uncovered the secrets of genetic inheritance with just enough data to fill a notebook. The important thing is gathering the right data, not gathering some arbitrary quantity of it.”

“We forget that physical objects are also just specific embodiments – or presentations – of their content and function. A paperback book and an ebook file are two embodiments of the text they each contain; the ebook isn’t descended from the paperback. They’re siblings, from different media spheres, one of which happens to have been invented more recently.

The biggest intellectual stumbling-block we’re facing is the fallacy that just because physical embodiments came first, they’re also somehow canonical. The publishing industry is choking itself to death with that assumption, despite readily available examples of innovative, digitally-native approaches.”