Just as e-books mean anyone with an internet connection has the world's biggest library to hand, they also mean anyone with a word processor can be an author. Some of the big e-book outlets have self-publishing programs that circumvent the traditional channels, so you can simply share your story and ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/otM7IKAcm6w/Twitter is changing the way direct messages work. In the past, Twitter required two people to follow each other for direct messages to be exchanged in either direction; now, users have the option to change settings so that any of their followers can send them a direct message, without having to follow them back.
     |
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/HRQIr8lcb0c/twitter-now-lets-any-follower-send-you-direct-messages-1445494857
Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner also star in drama out December 25.
By Amy Wilkinson
The Jonas Brothers recently axed their comeback world tour, which left fans wondering about the reasons behind the cancellation.
Sources reveal that Joe Jonas has picked up a nasty drug habit. Joe has reportedly become addicted to heroin after dating addict Blanda Eggenshwiler.
An insider reveals Joe has previously used heroin but is now fully addicted to the same drug that took the life of “Glee” star Cory Monteith in July.
Joe Jonas finished off their international tour before his drug use came to light. He drank and did heroin with his girlfriend Blanda during the tour, which worried crew members.
Joe’s family are fully aware of his escalating heroin and alcohol abuse, but are worried what that could mean for their clean-cut image.
A source said Joe Jonas admits he has a problem and just wanted to postpone the tour so he could receive treatment. But his family members said he was being selfish by putting their livelihoods at stake. They reportedly wanted him to pray about it and continue on with the tour.
Many of us are shocked to hear rumors of Joe’s drug habit, but it appears to be true.
The Jonas Brother was spotted with addiction specialist Mike Bayer, the CEO of Cast Recovery Services, who previously worked with Demi Lovato through her issues.
Click thumbnails for larger pictures
Images: wenn.com
Photo by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Photo by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Photo by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Photo by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
Photo by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
HTC announced a new device Monday morning: a giant smartphone with a 6-inch screen.
The One Max is the third member of the One family, so now there’s a One for everyone. Those who prefer phones of a reasonable size have the demure 4.3-inch mini. Fans of the beastly two-handers can pick up the new 5.9-inch One Max. And the rest of us can go for the flagship One, the 4.7-inch phone designed to compete with all the other Android handsets from major manufacturers that measure just below 5 inches.
HTC says the One Max will be available overseas in late October, and that you’ll be able to pick one up stateside on either Verizon or Sprint “before the holidays.”
Specs-wise, the Max is more than just a scaled-up version of the original One. It has a larger battery of course (3,300mAh), and a microSD card slot has been added. You can remove the aluminum back of the phone to swap microSD cards, but not to swap the battery. The front-facing speakers are larger on the Max, so they sound a little better. The camera is the same, but HTC has updated its software, and has made some overall tweaks to its Android skin and content browser, Blinkfeed.
There’s also a fingerprint scanner centered on the back of the Max. The idea is that if you’re holding the phone naturally, using your thumb and your last three fingers to grip the lower half, you can reach up with your index finger and stroke the sensor. One neat twist: You can set it up to launch different applications depending on which finger you swipe. So, your index finger launches the home screen, your middle finger launches Twitter, and your pinkie launches Facebook, or whatever you want. It just can’t authenticate you inside apps — for now, it only unlocks the phone.
Will the One Max sell? Well, people do seem to like the bigphones like the Galaxy Note. But the hot feature on the Note is the stylus, which can be used for writing notes and with various handwriting recognition apps. The pen has been a key to the Galaxy Note’s success in Asia, where the written characters are more complicated than ours. But the One Max doesn’t have a stylus, and I don’t know if that will make it less popular than the Note oversees. The other thing people love about bigphones is that they’re great for reading text and watching videos — they make very nice consumption devices. For that, this phone is glorious. It’s still comically large for my tastes, but I understand the thirst for these huge screens.
A full review will follow once we get our review unit (HTC probably has to ship it freight, so it might take a while).
FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2002 file photo, Canadian author Alice Munro poses for a photograph at the Canadian Consulate's residence in New York. Munro has won this year's Nobel Prize in literature it was announced Thursday Oct. 10, 2013. The Swedish Academy, which selects Nobel literature winners, called her a "master of the contemporary short story". (AP Photo/Paul Hawthorne, File)
FILE - In this Oct. 28, 2002 file photo, Canadian author Alice Munro poses for a photograph at the Canadian Consulate's residence in New York. Munro has won this year's Nobel Prize in literature it was announced Thursday Oct. 10, 2013. The Swedish Academy, which selects Nobel literature winners, called her a "master of the contemporary short story". (AP Photo/Paul Hawthorne, File)
The books of 2013 Nobel literature prizewinner, Canadian Alice Munro, are snatched from the shelves of a Stockholm bookstore, minutes after the prize announcement from the Royal academy, Thursday Oct. 10, 2013. (AP Photo/Jessica Gow)
Monica Nordberg collects an armful of books by newly announced 2013 Nobel literature prizewinner, Alice Munro of Canada, at a Stockholm bookstore Thursday Oct. 10, 2013. Customers waited for the prize announcement to be first in line. (AP Photo/Jessica Gow)
STOCKHOLM (AP) — If there were a literary prize higher than the Nobel, Alice Munro would probably win that, too.
"Among writers, her name is spoken in hushed tones," fellow Canadian author Margaret Atwood once wrote. "She's the kind of writer about whom it is often said — no matter how well known she becomes — that she ought to be better known."
Munro, 82, was cited by Nobel judges Thursday as a thorough but forgiving chronicler of the human spirit, and her selection marks a couple of breakthroughs among prize winners. She is the first Canadian writer to receive the $1.2 million award from the Swedish Academy since Saul Bellow, who left for the U.S. as a boy and won in 1976, and the first laureate ever to be fully identified with Canada. She is also the rare author to win because of her short fiction.
"I think my stories have gotten around quite remarkably for short stories, and I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something that you played around with until you'd got a novel written," she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Her books having sold more than 1 million copies in the U.S. alone, she has long been an international ambassador for the short story, proof that the narrative arc and depth of characterization we expect from a novel can be realized in just 30-40 pages. Critics and peers have praised her in every way a writer can be praised: the precision of her language; the perfection of detail; the surprise and logic of her storytelling; the graceful, seamless shifts of moods; the intimacy with every shade of human behavior.
Her stories are usually set in Ontario, her home province. Among her best known is "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," the story of a woman who begins losing her memory and agrees with her husband that she should be placed in a nursing home. Canadian actress-director Sarah Polley adapted the story into the 2006 film "Away from Her," starring Julie Christie.
The narrative begins in a relatively tender, traditional mood. But we soon learn that the husband has been unfaithful in the past and didn't always regret it — "What he felt was mainly a gigantic increase in well-being." The wife, meanwhile, has fallen for a man at the nursing home.
In the story "Dimensions," Munro introduces us to a chambermaid named Doree, who needs to take three buses for a visit to a "facility" outside of Clinton, Ontario. Munro explains that Doree is happy in her work, that she has been told she is "young and decent looking" and that her picture once was in the newspaper, in the days when her spiked blonde hair was wavy and brown.
"Dimensions" begins in close-up, then steadily pulls back. With every page, the story darkens, and terrifies. The "facility" is an institution where Doree's husband, Lloyd, is held. Doree's picture was in the paper because her husband murdered their children.
"In all the time since what had happened, any thought of the children had been something to get rid of, pull out immediately like a knife in the throat," Munro writes.
Before winning the Nobel, she won a National Book Critics Circle prize for "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage." She is also a three-time winner of the Governor General's prize, Canada's highest literary honor. Any further awards will likely be honorary. She told Canada's National Post in June that she was "probably not going to write anymore."
Starting in the 1960s, when she was first published, she has often contrasted her youth in Wingham, a conservative Canadian town west of Toronto, and her life after the social revolution of the '60s. Munro herself lived out the fears, and celebrated the liberation, of the educated housewives in Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique."
In an interview with AP in 2003, she described the '60s as "wonderful."
It was "because, having been born in 1931, I was a little old, but not too old, and women like me after a couple of years were wearing miniskirts and prancing around," she said.
Munro, the daughter of a fox farmer and a teacher, was born Alice Anne Laidlaw. She was a literary person in a nonliterary town, concealing her ambition like a forbidden passion.
She received a scholarship to study at the University of Western Ontario, majoring in journalism, and was still an undergraduate when she sold a story to CBC radio in Canada. She dropped out of college to marry a fellow student, James Munro, had three children and became a full-time housewife. By her early 30s, she was so confined, so frightened and depressed, that she could barely write a full sentence.
Her good fortune was to open a bookstore with her husband, in 1963. Stimulated by everything from the conversation of adults to simply filling out invoices, her narrative talents resurfaced but her marriage collapsed. Her first collection, "Dance of the Happy Shades," came out in 1968 and won the Governor's prize.
At least in her work, Munro is among the least politicized of Nobel winners, who in recent years have included Mario Vargas Llosa and Doris Lessing. In 2003, she told the AP she was not inspired by current events, but instead by memories, anecdotes, gossip. The stories themselves have few topical references or famous names.
"I don't do a lot of indicators where you can tell what time it is, because that would impinge on me too much. Somebody writing about now would have to have Iraq in it. They need to have the right music and right celebrities and right style of clothes," she said.
"In ordinary life I am a fairly active, political person. I have opinions and join clubs. But I always want to see what happens with people underneath; it interests me more."
The 2013 Nobel announcements continue Friday with the Nobel Peace Prize, followed by the economics prize on Monday. The awards will be handed to the winners on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
______
Rising contributed from Stockholm and Italie from New York. Associated Press writer Karl Ritter also contributed to this report from Stockholm.
Associated Press
