Why You Might Want to Blur Your House on Google Maps - CNet

Today Panzer made a stop at the CNet site. With a little digging in the posts our traveling kitty boy discovered one about Google Maps.

 

Expect it to be easy? Silly human.

The post by Nelson Aguilar explains why and how you should blur the photo of your home on Google Maps. According to the post, it's not as easy or intuitive as it should be to do.

 

Panzer says, "Mom learned about Google Maps two years ago. She got a snail mail letter from some guy who wanted to buy the house. The letter had a photo of the house and said he got it from Google Maps."

 

Note: This is a long post. Bring a cup of cocoa and a muffin for while you read. If you plan to blur your house, you'll need to decide what to bring to eat and drink.

 

To read the post tootle over to Blur Google Maps

Smashwords: How to Do Box Sets at Smashwords for Audience Buil...

A multi-cat boxed set.

Panzer noticed a while ago that a lot of authors have been doing boxed sets at Amazon of either their own work or in conjunction with other authors. So, it was no surprise today when he found Mark Coker's latest post at the Smashwords blog.

This is a long post because Mark goes into detail about how to do a boxed set at Smashwords. He starts out with examples of how some Smashwords authors have already put together their boxed sets. He then goes on to give instructions about doing multi-author sets.

Panzer says, "I better get some of my cat friends together for a box set!"

If you're interested in doing a box set, tootle over to Smashwords: How to Do Box Sets at Smashwords for Audience Buil...:

How To Make An Audiobook With ACX

Maybe I'll just let Mom do it.

Panzer spent the weekend looking for help with producing audiobooks. If you've been following his adventures recently, you know he's been researching audiobooks a lot this month.

He learned about recording your own story and letting your readers hear your voice using your computer and Audacity software.

And he learned about making a soundtrack to your book using Booktrack.

And then he learned about marketing ACX audiobooks.

But ... he hadn't learned about what "professional" narrators say about how they record an audiobook.

This weekend he went over to author/ghostwriter Roz Morris' Nail Your Novel blog and found a post with an interview with audiobook narrator Sandy Spangler. Sandy discusses her recording studio, correcting mistakes, pronunciation problems, and more.

Panzer says, "The interview was a learning experience for me!"

If you're interested in reading about how a professional audiobook narrator does her job, tootle over to make an audiobook

How To Write An Ebook

The woman has no shame!

Panzer found an interesting how-to series of posts at the inkybites blog.

Jennifer Blanchard has put together eight posts (seven now, one more to come) called How To Write An eBook. The posts cover the process from finding a suitable idea to the actual launch of your ebook. While the series is geared more for nonfiction, most of the process is transferable to a fiction project as well.

Shhhhh. Don't tell Panzer, but Jennifer has a ... dare I say it ... DOG! Check out her bio at the top of her blog. She even has a photo of her and her DOG! Oh, the shame of it all. Oh, no! I think he heard us.

If you're interested in seeing how Jennifer (and her DOG) suggest writing an ebook, tootle over to inkybites .