Writing Tips

Have you thought about repurposing your content? It's a great way to share information in different formats.

One example is using content from a blog post or article and putting it into a video. It doesn't have to be anything fancy - most of what I see on video podcasts are talking heads and screenshots. It's the information - the content - that comes out of these heads that counts.

Another way to repurpose content is to create an infographic with a tool like Canva. A third way is to create a slide deck for presentations, with or without a video.

SEO/Content News

This was news to me:

Chrome releases its updates in four stages, or release channels: Canary, Dev, Beta, and Stable.

Canary is "the bleeding edge of the Web." Its download page warns it can be unstable. But it features the latest ideas from the Chrome team, some of which won't make it to the final stages.

Dev is a set of developer tools to identify website performance and provides detailed reports on what's working, what isn't, and why. Results can be sent to Canary.

Beta is what I assumed (violating Agreement #3!) was the pre-release stage. It's where users can try out new features that survived the cut.

Stable is the latest release and what counts for SEO. Search Engine Journal explains more about Chrome's updated channels.

How to Live with Predictions

For me, the best part of a new year is not having to listen to all those forecasts and predictions for the next 12 months. The new year is already here, so the pundits are finally calming down.

Engaging in forecasting is human nature, FlashForward podcaster Rose Eveleth writes in Wired. And the research shows that big events like wars (thankfully) and medical breakthroughs (sadly) are rare events. Smaller events like gradual warming can be huge in hindsight.

We don't have to know what's going to happen and exactly when it will, Eveleth says. What helps is "focusing on the structures that will keep us safe, that will support us...that we can improve and act upon right now."