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September 30, 2006

Thanks to Jean Feilmoser for sending this information (and sorry for the delay in passing it along). I’d send anything you happen to have, even though it’s a few days late.

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of Levantine Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the editor seeks contributions of creative nonfiction (essay, travel, first-person narrative), short stories, poetry, one-act plays, art and photography for Iconoclasts and Visionaries, a Levantine anthology.  Read more... (430 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

Wednesday, September 27
Get Lost (travel books, maps, and gear)
1825 Market Street
San Francisco, California 94103
Tel: 415.437.0529
7 pm FREE

“Is it possible to visit Burma and not contribute to the coffers of the regime? Beyond the sites, how does one find out how the political situation affects individuals? XXXXX, from the XXXXX, a humanitarian aid organization, discusses those aspects of the crisis in Burma that are not well known in the West.” [Information removed at speaker's request because of political situation in Burma.]

I love Laura Read’s writing, and her Placer County: Back in the Pink — How one woman helped to revive profitability on the family farm is a great example of finding a local story. From the September 3 San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. By the way, I tasted the nectarines Laura wrote about, and she’s right — they’re unbelievably delicious.

Laura’s website, Read Write Shoot is here.

September 22, 2006

Although the official deadline was September 1, 2006, I heard a rumor that the eds might stretch things out by a few weeks. So if you have the perfect story for More Sand in my Bra, send it in today. And remember, these entries are eligible for the $1,000 Solas Awards competition, if you submit here.  Read more... (209 words, estimated 50 secs reading time)

I received this piece of unsolicited e-mail, which I’ll pass along without editorializing:

“Hello.

“Do you need new content/articles for your website or a story for your newspaper at rock bottom prices? If so, we can help you. We are Private Label Rights Travel Articles. I want the name “PLR Travel articles” to be synonymous in your mind with quality. More than synonymous–I want them to be one and the same. In fact, when you think “quality,” “reliability,” “versatility,” or “power,” I want you to think “PLR Travel articles”.  Read more... (313 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

“10 million travelers trust Travelzoo’s reviews and recommendations.

“With offices in Chicago, Las Vegas, London, Miami, Munich, New York, Silicon Valley, and Toronto, Travelzoo® employs a staff of 35 travel deal experts to source, research and test recommended deals before publishing. We also provide our subscribers tips on when offers are available and where to find the best deals.  Read more... (220 words, estimated 53 secs reading time)

Here’s an example of crowdsourcing: Tripadvisor.com, “5,000,000+ traveler reviews and opinions of hotels, vacations and more.”

Thanks also to John Jerney for pointing out that travel writers and photographers will need to provide service, as well as content, in order to combat crowdsourcing. Amazon.com and Google do this when they give developers access to their core services. How can we do it? John suggests we think about the mashup model that creates “new” music from sampling and mixing: individuals create value by reorganizing and repackaging existing content.

Thanks to Lee Foster for explaining the term “crowdsourcing” to me. We all know the meaning, but I hadn’t heard the term. It’s when a publisher uses a bunch of people, who may be well-informed or talented amateurs, to provide content that used to come from professionals. Wikipedia is an example: its 1.3 million articles (and that’s just the ones written in English) are all provided by (a crowd of) people who may (or may not) be professionals in their fields, but are not professional publishers.  Read more... (156 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

From Daily OM, August 4, 2006

As the technology of travel grows ever more refined, the world grows smaller. Whereas a journey of a hundred miles once took many days, we can now travel across the globe in mere hours. The four corners of the earth are accessible by plane, train, and ship, and there are few pleasures in life as soul-stirring and transformative as travel. In a new land, the simplest of joys can be profound-meditation takes on a new quality because the energy in which we are immersed is unfamiliar. Our sensory experiences are entirely novel. Yet the relative ease with which we can step out of our own culture in order to explore another means that we are ambassadors representing not only our own way of life but also the culture of the traveler. As a conscious citizen of the world, you can add value to the locales you visit while simultaneously broadening your own perspective.  Read more... (370 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

Here’s a link to the destinations and attractions section of RateItAll, an online community where you can post your opinions — and learn others’ opinions — about almost anything. Categories include American City Anthems, City Skylines, Houses in the United States, and Mysterious Places.

You can use this site to create public or private weblists — interactive ratings lists to solicit opinions: “Maybe you want to find out what other people think about some of your favorite books. Maybe you need quick feedback about potential solutions to a problem at work. Or maybe you’re planning a trip to Mexico and want the RateItAll community’s tips on what to see there.”

And if you liked drachenfutter, you won’t want to miss heinzelmaennchen. (No, it is not a large house covered in ketchup.) Thanks to Leslie Rose and Katrin Mueller for the link.

A Constrained Vision, a blog with “Thoughts on economics, education, politics, and other stuff from a recent-ish graduate of Duke University now living in Washington, DC,” directs us to William Safire’s invitation to enjoy such words as mishpoche, schadenfreude, and drachenfutter.

What We’ve Learned: Five years after 9/11, travel is tougher than ever. Here are 46 ways to cope. From the Washington Post, Sunday, September 10, 2006.

From WritersMarket.com, 9/15/06: “Recently, the WritersMarket.com staff added two new listings with the same name–Ocean Magazine. While these magazines share a title, they share very little else:

OCEAN Magazine (from North Carolina) covers the ocean, its ecosystem, its creatures, recreation, pollution, energy sources and the love of it. This magazine pays $75-500 for nonfiction features of 75-5,000 words. This magazine also publishes ocean-related fiction and poetry. The editors say, “Submit with a genuine love and concern for the ocean and its creatures.”  Read more... (147 words, estimated 35 secs reading time)

Smithonian magazine writers’ guidelines are here.

Staff picks from Get Lost (travel books, maps, and gear)
1825 Market Street
San Francisco, California 94103
Tel: 415.437.0529

No Holiday: 80 Places You Don’t Want to Visit . . .
Martin Cohen, The Disinformation Co., Ltd., $16.95, paperback.  Read more... (164 words, estimated 39 secs reading time)

There’s interesting information being shared on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree blog about ancestry visas (and the luck o’ the Irish).

Thanks to Diane LeBow for sending this information about Global Exchange’s upcoming Middle East Delegations:

“Dear Friends,

I would like to let you know about several important up-coming delegations to the Middle East. With the recent invasion of Lebanon and siege on the Palestinian Occupied Territories, it is crucial, now more than ever, to examine the role of U.S. foreign policy within the region.

Through connecting with people and engaging with civil society organizations, U.S. citizens are able to bear witness to the wide range of ramifications resulting from the Bush Administration’s vision of a ‘New Middle East.’ The delegations also serve to present the diversity of opinions among Americans not represented within our government.  Read more... (175 words, estimated 42 secs reading time)

Inger Hogstrom is a blogger and a photographer specializing in nature and travel subjects.

Thanks to Eva Schlesinger for the link to information-packed Travel and Transitions.

Thanks to Terry Redding at Travelbum for providing a well-written site full of useful information for first-time travelers to Europe. Travelbum is adding articles (“written for travelers, by travelers”) about budget travel, so if you have an article you haven’t been able to sell, send it to Terry; you might get a good clip out of it.

Thanks to Don George for telling us about this new free weekly e-mail newsletter, Weekend Sherpa, “giving you the scoop on a variety of outdoor pursuits exclusive to Northern California.” Subscribe today; the the newsletter will come out every Thursday.

Thanks to Andrew Dean Nystrom for sending this travel quotation:

“If it’s called tourist season, why can’t we shoot ‘em?”

– Bumper sticker outside a bar in Gardiner, Montana

Julia Weiler writes, edits, and blogs at Julia’s Whirled View.

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