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PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

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Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#31

Post by shelf »

Novel interface. Get the fanfic authors on board.

A tool like this would be perfect for school English classes or creative writing workshops (and alumni).

As for making the rest of us plebs pick up the pen again... It's a little harder than just giving us nice tools. Many aspiring writers (not all!) like to hide their work away until they are absolutely certain they will get good feedback, while this is like running around naked in the front yard.

Soundcloud has a similar 'get creating' premise and magically minimises that fear of failure factor. I'm not sure how, but it's amazing. The line between supportive and vicious is grey, blurry, narrow. Take care.

Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#32

Post by forensic »

fusiongyro wrote: post #23
oulipian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But it's like using a picture of a circle, a triangle, a square, and a swastika to suggest "geometric shapes".

No, it's like using a picture of a circle, a triangle, a square and a swastika to suggest "famous shapes." And of course, Godwin's law and all that on you.

Why would you put a swastika on your business in any situation?

Ayn Rand is for Glengary Glen Ross wannabes. Not for your typical creative writer.

Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#33

Post by jasondenizac »

neoveller wrote: post #30
fusiongyro wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it in a couple of ways. Personally, it was too expensive to build because I simply couldn't see spending the time to do it. Part of that (for me) was that it was 2006 and I just didn't know what technology I'd need to invent or find that would do it. There was mod_pubsub and BOSH, and both were kind of a pain, and that's obviously not what they're planning on using. The second way is just the perennial questio…

I have a few months of runway. My previous engineer was my dad, and didn't have a sense of urgency about it. I have a month or two of runway now, and every time there's a bug to fix, that bug is the most important thing ever--because until it's fixed, I'm not delivering my users the experience they deserve. They could be elsewhere, doing something else. Neovella withered not for lack of interest--it withered because…

I think SignalR and WebApi would be perfectly suited to this type of project, @neoveller. Add some KnockoutJS and host in on Azure for the total package - all for free with BizSpark. Anyhow, I'm being slightly facetious, but you really can't blame the tech stack :)

Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#34

Post by iamdave »

neoveller wrote: post #28
iamdave wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Why ".FM" domain?

Because when you're bootstrapped and can't buy a 3 letter dotCom for $55/year, FM doesn't look so bad. So we're working with it, and kind of playing with the slogan "broadcast lit".

Broadcast lit can actually work for what you're wanting to sell this as, so I'll give you that point. But where are you looking that ended up with a $55/yr TLD? Unless you're bootstrapping from absolutely nothing, that's an investment worth making imo.

Not dismissing your product here, as a journalism nerd I think it's a novel concept and approach.

Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#35

Post by neoveller »

iamdave wrote: post #34
neoveller wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because when you're bootstrapped and can't buy a 3 letter dotCom for $55/year, FM doesn't look so bad. So we're working with it, and kind of playing with the slogan "broadcast lit".

Broadcast lit can actually work for what you're wanting to sell this as, so I'll give you that point. But where are you looking that ended up with a $55/yr TLD? Unless you're bootstrapping from absolutely nothing, that's an investment worth making imo. Not dismissing your product here, as a journalism nerd I think it's a novel concept and approach.

Indeed I am bootstrapping from basically nothing. I have this horrible tendency to leave a job right when I have just a few months of runway. It really puts my feet to the fire :)

pen.com is going to fet a pretty penny, I imagine in the higher 10,000s if not more. With funding, it becomes feasible. And to correct myself, FM domains cost $79/year not 55, so that's where I am. Got lucky in finding the short name.

Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#36

Post by acabal »

ChristianMarks wrote: post #14

An online writers' workshop--not the same as Google Docs. There are online subscription systems that support such activities, such as http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/ Getting decent feedback is a problem. Perhaps there is a workable system that would compensate good reviewers. Most writers aren't rich, but they might be willing to pay other writers (who aren't rich) to review their work.

My website, Scribophile, has been doing this successfully for about 5 years now. It looks like it's solving a different problem than pen.fm though. While Scribophile concentrates entirely on craft and workshopping, it looks like pen.fm is more of a marketing/publishing/writing platform.

Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#37

Post by fusiongyro »

forensic wrote: post #32
fusiongyro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's like using a picture of a circle, a triangle, a square and a swastika to suggest "famous shapes." And of course, Godwin's law and all that on you.

Why would you put a swastika on your business in any situation? Ayn Rand is for Glengary Glen Ross wannabes. Not for your typical creative writer.

Unless Ayn Rand murdered a few million people on the side, her face is in no way commensurate with a swastika.

Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#38

Post by forensic »

fusiongyro wrote: post #37
forensic wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you put a swastika on your business in any situation? Ayn Rand is for Glengary Glen Ross wannabes. Not for your typical creative writer.

Unless Ayn Rand murdered a few million people on the side, her face is in no way commensurate with a swastika.

Objectivism caused Goldman Sachs, Alan Greenspan, the 2008 crash, countless corporate psychopaths... The death count is more than a few million.

GS alone is responsible for a famine.

Have you ever been to their offices? Copies of Atlas Shrugged on every desk.

Destructive ideologies that advocate fucking the poor and letting them die definitely cause deaths.

Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#39

Post by fusiongyro »

forensic wrote: post #38
fusiongyro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless Ayn Rand murdered a few million people on the side, her face is in no way commensurate with a swastika.

Objectivism caused Goldman Sachs, Alan Greenspan, the 2008 crash, countless corporate psychopaths... The death count is more than a few million. GS alone is responsible for a famine. Have you ever been to their offices? Copies of Atlas Shrugged on every desk. Destructive ideologies that advocate fucking the poor and letting them die definitely cause deaths.

The logical convolutions you have to go through to make Ayn Rand into Hitler are absurd. Marxism has easily killed ten times that number, many by accident, many intentionally, yet few hold Marx personally responsible or would find his face a repugnant symbol of death.

You're allowing your opinion of an ideology to turn it into nazism, but in so doing you must overlook what makes nazism unique: that it does indeed advocate murdering people simply for being different as a solution to problems—and that it actually did murder millions of people directly. Ayn Rand did not do any of that. At worst, she advanced a philosophy whose overzealous application by unscrupulous people with power led to deaths. If that's enough to make you Hitler, nearly every philosopher or novelist is, or would be if they were simply famous enough.

In short: calm down. She's included in the image because her novels are in the 100 Most Influential List put out by some non-profit. Not because she was a saint.

Re: PenFM: Fall back in love with writing via your terrible friends

#40

Post by forensic »

fusiongyro wrote: post #39
forensic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectivism caused Goldman Sachs, Alan Greenspan, the 2008 crash, countless corporate psychopaths... The death count is more than a few million. GS alone is responsible for a famine. Have you ever been to their offices? Copies of Atlas Shrugged on every desk. Destructive ideologies that advocate fucking the poor and letting them die definitely cause deaths.

The logical convolutions you have to go through to make Ayn Rand into Hitler are absurd. Marxism has easily killed ten times that number, many by accident, many intentionally, yet few hold Marx personally responsible or would find his face a repugnant symbol of death. You're allowing your opinion of an ideology to turn it into nazism, but in so doing you must overlook what makes nazism unique: that it does indeed adv…

>yet few hold Marx personally responsible or would find his face a repugnant symbol of death.

You obviously don't live in America!

By the way, telling someone to "calm down" makes you a douchebag.

And strawmen don't help either.

And let's not kid ourselves: she's in the image because someone in that company is an Ayn Rand fan. There is no shortage of Randists among tech people. Quite a bit fewer among literary types for obvious reasons.

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