Randy Cragin - Author

Books - Atlantis Descending - Chapter Four

2010-03-01T19:28:00.004-07:00

Chapter four is up! Click the preview link under the book cover.
Preview Chapter 1
Preview Chapter 2
Preview Chapter 3
Preview Chapter 4
Chapter 5 coming soon.

Word - Blogs & Profiles.

2010-02-02T06:30:00.001-07:00

In order to get the word out you need to network. Networking has become about getting profile pages setup from various places. It all started with a space that belonged to the user, hence MySpace. With it you could change the look and feel of your profile by adding html to various sub components of your profile page (Now called Modules) This became a hackers paradise for awhile and changes were made to keep that down to a minimum. Meanwhile Facebook came on the scene without html customization, in fact if you don't like the basic blue on white kill me now theme, your not going to visually appreciate it at all. But it has it's pros, some of which was retraining the user to get them to use it socially instead of commercially. But just like anything else it is now loaded with just as many pages that sell you somethingSo in order to really get the bang for your buck out of these sites (And others) you need to be able to have a blog. Both sites provide the basic ability, but a lot of users already had a blog on the web and where MySpace failed to incorporate existing blogs through their official modules you can add to your profile, Facebook allowed you to pipe in your blog and have it show up in it's equivilant portion of your profile (Notes) whoo hoo!

But all is not pleasant as all these users were getting hooked on Twitter and it's minimalist format and the ability to tweet(post, update status, cry out loud) directly from your phone using text messages. From there one wants to be able to either tweet from Facebook or have their tweets show up on Facebook as one of their status updates. Officially there's a program(App) put out by Twitter to feed your Tweets to Facebook status updates, but it's inconsistent and doesn't allow for reverse flo. What happens to your Facebook status when you tweet from your phone? Nothing. So in order to fill the need many apps are provided, but most seem to just fail. From their another site comes along to fill the gap. Either as a stand alone App for your desktop or working through the web to feed all your Tweets, Status Updates, links, pics, videos, etc. What's a social networker suppose to do? And what about MySpace? It's no friend of Facebook and you can wait until the cows come home before something automatically happens between the two. Although you can get your tweets on Facebook (With an App) you can't get your Facebook updates into MySpace or vice versa. But maybe you can get a flo from Facebook to Twitter to Myspace, with the help of a few apps? Are you confused yet?

After days of working on all this I finally have twitter acting as a bridge between sites and they show up everywhere and start out as FaceBook updates. I think I am finished with this, but I am sure I'll get a new idea soon of how to pipe all this information, including this blog to all the places I want it to go.

Lulu - Updated my storefront. Changed Previews

2010-01-29T01:34:00.003-07:00

Okay so I did some work on my storefront. I was tired of the tiny text for my page text so I switched to an html block so I could add size and color. I know you're excited! I lengthened the preview for The Last Rainbow to be the entire first chapter. Although the link to the down loadable file for the preview of Wicked Winds still works, first chapter, I also added it to the built in preview generator, so there's also a preview link under the book cover like some other ones. The reason for this confusion is due to the changes lulu made awhile ago which removed the old preview links, but somewhere the file still exists that's why my links in the description still work.

Books - Atlantis Descending - Chapter Three

2009-07-31T17:22:00.002-07:00

Chapter Three of the free read is up and ready for you to read, for free!

Books - Atlantis Descending -The Free Read is On

2009-07-18T17:01:00.001-07:00

I just uploaded the second chapter of my latest free read. Just a reminder that this one follows two of my other books and contains spoilers for both of them. If your past that or not bothered, enjoy. All chapters of this book will be available to read before I turn it into a single book. Other chapters have been written and will be posted as I get to them.

Lulu - Blog

2009-04-12T20:25:00.001-07:00

It appears that lulu has stop running a blog for users. Therefor it no longer appears on the storefront page. I have added a feed to my official blog. I will be updating my main blog which appears in several locations with books news as well as general news.