och-annie:

Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:

1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.

2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.

3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.

4. Never use jargon words like …

shortformblog:

futurejournalismproject:

The Internet Defense League

The Internet can always use more heroes and Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit, and Fight for the Future have formed the Internet Defense League to make it so.

Public enemy number one: ACTA and CISPA style legislation that seems to sprout like mushrooms these days.

Via Forbes:

Ohanian describes the project, which they plan to officially launch next month, as a “Bat-Signal for the Internet.” Any website owner can sign up on the group’s website to add a bit of code to his or her site–or receive that code by email at the time of a certain campaign–that can be triggered in the case of a political crisis like SOPA, adding an activist call-to-action to all the sites involved, such as a widget or banner asking users to sign petitions, call lawmakers, or boycott companies.

“People who wish to be tapped can see, oh look, the Bat-Signal is up. Time to do something,” says Ohanian. “Whatever website you own, this is a way for you to be notified if something comes up and take some basic actions…If we aggregate everyone that’s doing it, the numbers start exploding.”

Developers are encouraged to join the League. GitHub is here, a Google Group here and Tracker is here.

Love that Alexis Ohanian has jumped into online activism with both feet. It may be an even bigger gift to the Web than Reddit was.

bustr:

We’ve learned a lot about behavior change in the last 2 years. Here’s a bit of my current thinking on it all, and a new free app that you can print out and put in your wallet.

1) Which behavior should I change?

One that helps you learn the habit of changing habits (learn once, use forever). One…