Landscape2art.com
Norwegian Kim Rormark runs Landscape2art.com (external link) and he does an excellent job. I highly recommend it for all beginning photographers, especially those of us struggling with landscapes. I also hope to learn more about low light and night photography. Make sure to check out his advice on photographing the northern lights.
Rormark’s site seems to be more passion project than a way to make money, but he does sell his photography here (external link). He is a professional. Take a look at that site if you’d like to browse great photography from all over the world. And sign up for his free e-book if you get the chance.
Spin Rewriter 7.0
I’m trying their online rewriting program with the wish it helps me with my news mastering (internal link). It’s supposed to generate unique content from an original story but I’m not getting good results. It doesn’t seem to key in on phrases and is therefore very limited.
For example, this sentence:
John Smith, 42, of Beecher, is considered the main suspect . . .
Could be easily rewritten as:
42 year old Beecher resident John Smith is considered the main suspect . . .
But it doesn’t do this, instead, it hands me back the original sentence with little or no change.
Good results may take AI, or artificial intelligence, something their program lacks. Spin Rewriter acts more like a giant thesaurus rather than an intelligent rewording tool. It goes word by word in deciding what to rewrite, rather than attacking the meaning of sentences and paragraphs as a whole.
Even this sentence is beyond its capabilities:
The accident occurred as a result of brake failure.
A simple rewrite is this:
Brake failure caused the accident.
For now, I will continue to rewrite newspaper articles and press releases on my own, hoping that one day better programs will appear.
Writers’ Market
As an established writers’ resource, I expected more from my subscription. The most valued part of their content, their so called Market Listings, is inadequate and often out of date. It is in the Market Listings that you find contact information and requirements for scores of magazine and book publishers. In just a few minutes, however, I found these magazines missing from their database:
Sierra Living
Sacramento Magazine
Pacific Horticulture
ICMJ’s Prospecting and Mining Journal
CoinAge
Outdoor California
Comstock Magazine
Wallpaper
Several of these magazines have submission guidelines online so there is no reason for them to be missing. I wonder what other titles aren’t listed. Popular Communications was listed but that title has been out of business for four years. According to the Listings itself, many periodicals have not had their directory information updated for what seems to be on average two to three years. I think Writers’ Market would do well to spend more time developing their listings, rather than parade before us an endless list of expensive writing workshops.
