Squidblog

From the SquidTeam: Seth, Corey, Megan, Heath and Gil.

And thanks to everyone who is celebrating the season Squidoo style–with lenses!

Here are a few of our favorites.

• Christmas Cookies
• Chanukah Holiday Shopping Made Simple
• Holiday Music That Won’t Kill You
• New Years 2006
• Holiday Cooking Tips from Epicurious
• Christmas Beers and Ales
• A Festivus For The Rest Of Us
• Merrie Christmas

Not long ago, we added a powerful new Google Maps Module — lensmasters can find it under Top Content Modules in the Module Picker (just click on Add Modules when editing a lens).

Lensmasters can use the Google Maps Module to add an image-based map to their lenses, indicating where they’re personally located, showing where an organization mentioned in their lens is based, and otherwise highlighting physical locations relevant to their topic. Based on Google Local, the map module offers map, satellite, and hybrid views — and lensmasters can opt to provide driving directions, as well.

Already, people are using the Google Maps Module to good effect. The Church! @ Bethany lens shares the location of upcoming launch team meetings to help people get more involved in the new church in Beaverton, Oregon. And Rev. Desmond Tutu offers “excerpts from the lectures and life of Nobel laureate and anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Reverend Desmond Tutu,” additional readings — and a map of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation in New York City.

What’s on your map? Add some place to cyberspace — using the new Google Maps Module.

Members of the Squidoo team have come across several good examples of book-related lenses today, so we thought it’d be appropriate to highlight some of the better book lenses. Interestingly enough, they each represent different approaches to making a lens about a book.

Personal Brilliance is a good example of a lens by the author of a book. Jim Canterruci, who wrote a book by the same title, links to his blog, outlines some of the major ideas in the book, and offers a wide array of tools related to the book and his work. You can buy the book, take a self-assessment test, watch a video, and even hire Jim for a speaking engagement. If you’ve written or published a book, consider making an author- or title-specific lens to offer multiple ways to approach the text.

Pride and Prejudice, then, is a reader’s lens. Teresa Fitzwilliam loves this early-19th century novel by Jane Austen, and she’s built a lens to share her appreciation for the work — and get you more interested and involved in the book yourself. Teresa combines text list, RSS, and link list modules to address all things Austen — including the multiple film adaptations of the novel. I just ordered a copy to read myself!

And Russell Smith’s C.S. Lewis lens is another reader’s lens — but one focusing on an author instead of a particular book. Russell combines pointers to articles about the man and his work with plenty of retail links. I’d like to see more content-oriented modules, but this lens is a shoe in to link to in my lens about Lewis’s book The Magician’s Nephew.

Some other book-related lens ideas: A book club lens, a publishing company lens, a book review lens, a lens in which a writer plans out a book, a lens about writing, a lens about self-publishing… The possibilities are extensive!

But what about DailyCandy from friends?

Thanks to the ever-delightful and totally on-the-ball folks there, Squidoo got some terrific coverage today. It is one of the best and most de-geeked explanations of what we’re trying to do that we’ve seen yet.

Check it out here.

Now my sister-in-law finally gets what I’ve been working on.

In fact, a lens could make your blog work better.

A lens could increase traffic to your blog
…by featuring (and annotating) your blog’s greatest hits
…or showing a live feed of your most recent posts
…and finding new readers in Squidoo that you’ve never met.

A lens could add context to your blog’s topic
…by pointing to your favorite links (or pictures or songs) on the subject
…or sending your readers to buy something you recommend (your book. your art. your enterprise.)
…and telling your readers what they need to know–right now.

A lens could flex your blogger muscles
…by tracking your Technorati results
…or by pointing to Google searches on you or your topic
…and following your tags and links in del.icio.us

And a lens could help grow your platform
…by making you a trusted guide on your topic
…or spreading ideas and changing minds
…(and earning you a royalty in the process!)

Of course, your blog could make your lens work better, too. You could post about your lens (or lenses), add a Lensroll next to your Blogroll, introduce your new lens readers to your trusted blog readers, and link them hither and yon and back again.

Blogs and lenses are like chocolate and peanut butter. For some of us, just one ingredient is enough. For others, the two mixed together is an unbeatable recipe.

I recently bought a new digital camera — a Canon PowerShot SD400 — and before I turned to the wider web for information and advice, I searched Squidoo. I found a promising lens on choosing a lens for another make of camera, and then today, via another search, I came across Daniel Sroka’s lens Lessons from Using an Epson 7600 Printer.

Now, I don’t own that printer. And I’m not in the market for one. But I was impressed and inspired by Sroka’s wide range of in-depth information about using the tool. In an email exchange, I asked Sroka about how the lens came to be: “I collected all the info in this lens from a variety of sources: web sites, online forums, phone calls with Epson tech support, and my own trial and error,” he wrote. “A lot of the info is just free-floating information — tips that normally have no home, which is why I collected it.”

The lens is a little text heavy, but it indicates how powerful a product-related lens could be. Maybe it’s a buyer’s guide. Maybe it’s a user’s guide. Maybe it’s just sharing your passion about a tool you use. If you were to make a lens about a product that you love, what would it be?

Chris Griego’s Essential Web Developer Bookshelf lens is worth checking out at a couple of levels. One, if you’re a web developer interested in standards, design, the user experience and other topics, Chris’s recommended reads are useful indeed.

And two, if you’re a lensmaster, check out how Chris uses the Amazon module. He could have just had one long list of titles, but instead, he chunked the multitude of books into smaller, simpler subcategories within his lens’s topic. There’s even a Hall of Shame in which he highlights (lowlights?) books he thinks are misguided, poorly written, or dated.

Lensmasters: For more ideas on how to build a better lens, stop by SquidU. And if folks discover other solid book-related lenses, feel free to bring them to my attention.

Some of you got a note from our computers today. It told you that if you didn’t “improve” your lens in 14 days, it would be deleted.

What a bummer. How disheartening.

I apologize.

First, instead of “improve”, we should have said, “add modules.” The goal of the email was to help avoid squatters… people who take a whole bunch of prime Squidoo real estate and hoard it.

Second, the language should have been more clear.

Third, it should have been a lot nicer. You (our beta testers) are the heart of this project.

Absolutely no disrespect was intended. I’m sorry if some was received.

As for us, the person who wrote this has been transferred to the Transylvania office, where they are now in charge of repainting the inside of all of our shipping containers. Twice.

Thanks for your patience.

Seth

As the public beta progresses (yes, it’s really a beta, with bugs and everything… please be patient) people are exploring what a lens can do.

A few thoughts (where “I” means the surfer, not me):

1. biographical lenses. The world needs at least one lens on every important thinker. A lens that highlights blog posts, books, movies, services, bio, etc. When I want to know about Malcolm Gladwell or Tom Peters or Naomi Klein, it would be great if there were a lens to get me started.

2. corporate lenses. Not only does every company worthy of a website need a lens to help people discover what they offer, but just about every product can use one as well. 20 uses for baking soda! The direct dial phone number of that hotel in Crested Butte…

3. consumer lenses. I need a lens on which digital camera to buy. Actually, a few lenses, increasingly focused, very specific and quite opinionated.

4. revenue lenses. This is a subset of #3. If everyone is going to buy the next Harry Potter DVD, they might as well buy it through you and your lens, right? Give me enough value and enough meaning and I’ll show up. Make it easy for me to buy with just a click and I’ll buy right here.

5. lenses of lenses. I know we’re getting pretty meta here, but with more than 6,000 lenses, I want to see lenses about the best lenses!

I’m going to stop at five because that’s what the headline says, but my hunch is that I’m missing another 12.

Check it out.