Since the early days of this blog, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of the “business novel” or fable and have blogged about every one I’ve come across.

At the end of this entry, I’ve listed all the biz novels (I think) that I’ve ever featured in this space, with links to the original posting about each.

I’m also adding a new one to the roster: The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea, by Bob Burg and John David Mann. Here’s a description:

In 2008 a “little story about a powerful business idea” took the business world by storm with its message: that shifting our focus from getting to giving is the simplest, most fulfilling and most effective path to success in business and in life.

Rapidly going from national bestseller to global phenomenon, The Go-Giver soon gained a devoted following in its original English and in more than sixteen foreign-language editions. From schools, churches and hospitals to law firms and information technology companies, individuals and groups around the world have applied the book’s Five Laws of Stratospheric Success to their organizations and businesses, relationships and personal lives.

The Go-Giver tells the story of an ambitious young man named Joe who yearns for success. Joe is a true go-getter, though sometimes he feels as if the harder and faster he works, the further away his goals seem to be. And so one day, desperate to land a key sale at the end of a bad quarter, he seeks advice from the enigmatic Pindar, a legendary consultant referred to by his many devotees simply as the Chairman.

Excerpt from the book:

Pindar smiled. “Please don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing wrong with making money. Lots of it, in fact. It’s just not a goal that will make you successful.” Reading the bewilderment on Joe’s face, he nodded and put his hand up to signal that he would explain.

“You see,” Pindar continued, “the majority of people operate with a mindset that says to the fireplace, ‘First give me some heat, then I’ll throw on some logs.’ Or that says to the bank, ‘Give me interest on my money, then I’ll make a deposit.’ And of course, it just doesn’t work that way.” Joe frowned, trying to parse the logic of Pindar’s examples.

“You see? You can’t go in two directions at once. Trying to be successful with making money as your goal is like trying to travel a superhighway at seventy miles an hour with your eyes glued to the rearview mirror.”

This year, the authors published a follow-up book, Go-Givers Sell More. “The new book is not a parable or story,” the authors write, “that is, not exactly a sequel to The Go-Giver. (A “real” sequel to the story is also in the works, but that’s going to be a surprise for 2011.) Instead, this book is more like a Go-Giver Companion, a set of short, essay-like chapters about applying the Go-Giver principles to real-world situations, especially in the context of sales and selling. The book is also punctuated by several dozen real-life stories of people we know who live these principles.”

By the way, the authors offer downloadable and other goodies here.

Business novels and fables previously featured on A Storied Career:

• The Napkin, the Melon & the Monkey, by Barbara Burke
• EDGE! A Leadership Story, co-authored by Corey Blake
• Navigating the Growth Curve: 9 Fundamentals that Build a Profit-Driven, People-Centered, Growth-Smart Company, by James Fischer
• There’s More to Life Than the Corner Office, by Lamar Smith and Tammy Kling
• Recognizing Richard Rabbit, by Peter Weddle
• Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling by Stephen Denning
• The Imperfect Board Member, by Jim Brown

Barbara Fillip of Knowledge for Development, LLC, is also fascinated with business novels and compiled a helpful list of examples. I posted an entry with her a link to her list, but her posting has a new address since I first posted in 2008.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

When I first mentioned stories based on Google searches, I didn’t realize that Google had created a mashup application using Google searches and YouTube (which Google owns). One of my Facebook friends turned me on to Google Search Stories Video Creator, described this way:

Every search is a quest. Every quest is a story. Use this handy tool to bring your Search Story to life. Simply type in your searches, choose the music, and watch as your narrative unfolds on screen.

The tool is a technological marvel and very fun and easy to play with, but I’m not sure the results are really stories. The first criterion, in my opinion, for the story quality in these videos is that, like Parisian Love, the search video I cited in my previous entry, the video needs no explanation beyond what you see on the screen; the viewer grasps the story without additional information.

The quick-and-dirty search video I created to test this application doesn’t meet that criterion. I’m sure I could create a better story if I gave it more thought and put more planning into it. But the process of creating it made me realize that Google Search Stories Video Creator is a good tool for helping the user think about story structure. I had to think about how I could integrate classic story elements — setting the scene, introducing conflict, and presenting resolution.

My search video, Misadvententures in Moving (embedded below) attempts to tell the story of what happened this week when the moving van we’d hired to move our possessions from Florida to Washington arrived. Since the story does require some setup, here it is: Randall thoroughly researched movers to find one with a high rating for our move to Kettle Falls. The pickup of our stuff in Florida wasn’t perfect, but we had no major problems. The movers arrived here in Kettle Falls on Wednesday. Because of the steep elevation of our driveway, the movers couldn’t get their truck up to our house and had to park it nearby and shuttle everything in smaller loads. The area U-Haul outlets were all out of trucks, so the shuttling took place in a pickup truck — many trips over a day and a half. The movers wanted another $900 for the shuttling. We discovered we had already paid this $900 on the other end, as though there had been similar conditions in Florida (which there weren’t, Florida being quite flat). Many phone calls by Randall to the movers’ corporate offices and a long delay ensued. We got out of paying the extra charges for now, but the company is “investigating.” The happy ending — or beginning of the next chapter/story — is that we are here on our beloved homesite, which we call “Empowering Retreat.”

How could I have made my search story better?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

…. Well, with Facebook anyway. I’ve written about many forms of Twitter storytelling, but Snipisode is the first storytelling app I’ve come across for Facebook. Snipisode, developed Agency Zen, lets you type or paste in a whole story and then with a click of a button snip up the story either by line or by punctuation — periods, question marks, or exclamation points. Then you choose a frequency for snips of the story to appear as status updates — daily or every two days.

The story then unfolds on your status line. Visitors can click the Full Story link by the status to see all your status posts for the story, including comments, on one page.

In an 8:41 video (below), inventor Dan Zen describes Snipisode and tells how to install and use the app. (I wish he sounded more enthusiastic.)

What personal, business, and creative applications can you think of for Snipisode? Maybe a new-product launch that tells the product’s story as a series of snips/status updates … A resume or bio broken into snips … A fictional story told episodically?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Posting this on behalf of Cynthia Kurtz, who had technical difficulty posting a comment (and I, too, had trouble posting it in comment form, so I made it into a regular blog posting) — and she’s right that my list should have included Rakontu in today’s post:

Great list, Kathy.

May I mention Rakontu as a web storytelling tool? It’s different from those you’ve listed because (a) it’s open source and adaptable, (b) it’s for small groups, and (c) its purpose is not just to share stories but also to work with stories together to build new understandings and achieve common goals. It also incorporates lessons I’ve learned while helping groups work with many thousands of collected stories to gain insights and resolve problems over the past ten years. For people who want to do something with their stories, Rakontu is worth looking at. (If I may say so myself :)

As always, love getting the news from your blog!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog recently presented 100 Digital Storytelling Tools for Your Digital Selves + Natives (Part 1), 100 Digital Storytelling Tools for Your Digital Selves + Natives (Part 1), 100 Digital Storytelling Tools for Your Digital Selves + Natives (Part 3), and 100 Digital Storytelling Tools for Your Digital Selves + Natives (Part 4).

While these tools are fantastic if you’re into Digital Storytelling (upper-case D and S), they also expand the storytelling universe for those who enjoy trying new tools for telling stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

This year’s SlideShare “Tell a Story” contest underscored the emergence of of storytelling as a significant component in presentations (even if slide shows aren’t always compatible with good storytelling). (I had thought the “Tell a Story” contest replaced the more generic contest SlideShare held last year but just learned the World’s Best Presentation Contest ‘09 has begun accepting entries.)

In recognition of story’s growing role in presentations, I found these 12 interesting bits published recently:

1. Listeners go into a trance when they hear a story. So says professional speaker Andy Dooley in a blog entry that is actually not that much about presentations: “Did you know that when you’re listening to a story you go into a trance? Did you know that change happens when you least expect it? Did you know that change happens when you are in a trance?”
2. Gestures that go with your story have a specific effect on brain activity. This observation comes from research reported by Bruce Bower in Science News. In the study conducted by neuoscientist Jeremy Skipper, Weill Medical College, Cornell University, and presented in the academic journal Current Biology: “As volunteers listened to and watched a woman who made descriptive hand gestures while telling a story, activity simultaneously increased in one set of brain areas involved in planning and executing actions and in another set thought to underlie language comprehension, the researchers report … These neural systems form a network that ascertains the meaning of gestures accompanying speech, they suggest.” Different brain activity was observed when observers could see a nongesturing woman and when they couldn’t see the woman telling the story.
3. You can effectively alter the classic presentation formula by integrating stories. That formula is: Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em. Then tell ‘em. Then tell ‘em what you just told ‘em. Koert Bakker learned to turn that formula on its ear after reading Annette Simmons’ The Story Factor. “This completely changed the way I write presentations now,” Bakker said. “Instead of giving away the key point of the presentation at the beginning, I save it for last. I start with the perspective of the audience, and then take them on a tour of all the aspects that step-by-step convinced me to believe what I believe so they can step-by-step come to believe the same things. And I insert a little drama and tension along the way, to help remember the story and make it easier to pass on.”
4. Bullets [probably] can’t help you tell a story. I’ve come to believe bullet points — popularized in presentations by the ubiquitous PowerPoint — serve no real purpose except as memory aids for the presenter. In an article, “The First Five Slides: Unlocking the Story Buried in Your Presentation,” that is packed with lots of good advice about presentations, Cliff Atkinson, says: “When the primary way that we communicate is by presenting lists to one another, it is no wonder that the phenomenon of story is gaining momentum, because a story is the opposite of a list. Where a list is dry, fragmented and soulless; a story is juicy, coherent, and full of life. Presented with the choice, any audience will choose life.” Want another illustration of this point? About 1 minute and 53 seconds into this little video talk by Shawn Callahan, he tells a story that shows how poorly bullet points work compared to stories.
5. In fact, ditch the slides. Many a tree and many an electron has given its life in “death by PowerPoint” articles that emphasize not only how PowerPoint kills storytelling in presentations, but how it murders presentations themselves. Joining that chorus is José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, who, as reported by Jeffrey R. Young in The Chronicle of Higher Education “has challenged his colleagues to ‘teach naked’ — by which he means, sans machines. More than any thing else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather using it as a creative tool.” As Young characterizes Bowen’s view: “When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors.” Yes, and they will remember the stories their professors told. Some see digital storytelling as the cure for death by PowerPoint, as evidenced by this resource list: Digital Storytelling and Reforming PowerPoint
6. Stories stick. In a similar academic vein as the previous point, Joey Asher on his Talking Points blog lamented the terrible presentations he hears at his son’s freshman orientation at the University of Michigan: “Over and over college administrators, health professionals, professors, and public safety professionals would stand up to talk to us about what our kids could expect at the University of Michigan,” Asher said. “And over and over we’d get a series of bullet points, delivered somewhat randomly.” The day was saved by, not an administrator or professor, but a student who described taking an unusual course her freshman year. As Asher writes, quoting the student: “‘I had taken German in high school,” she explained. ‘But when I started looking through the course catalog, I found so many interesting courses, I wanted to take something unusual.’” The something unusual turned out to be Yiddish, and the lesson was that it’s a good idea to take some courses simply because you find them interesting. Said a relieved Asher: “Of all the messages I’ve gotten over the last two days, that message is the one that sticks more than any others. And it’s because it came through a story.” (Shawn Callahan’s story mentioned above under No. 4. also illustrates the stickiness of stories)
7. Stories connect your listeners with your topic on a personal level. Citing “a brief slide show at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2009,” Geoffrey X. Lane wrote that “Palm … put [itself] back into business competition.” You can see the portion of Palm’s “great slide presentation” that Lane refers to here. Wrote Lane: “… notice how Palm’s Jon Rubinstein, like Apple CEO Steve Jobs, treats the presentation like a story. Rather than simply spouting facts about the new phone, he employs narrative (storytelling) to connect listeners to the device on a more personal level — a marvelous marketing strategy involving the audience, and an effective technique you can adopt the next time you appear before the board or your customer.”
8. Sequence, unexpected events, and detail can enhance presentation stories. An unnamed blogger at Social Ch@nge cites the “sequence, unexpected events, and detail” in the amusing slideshow below (“An Excellent Boring Presentation” by Ishtiaque Zico). These traits are not exactly applied to a story, but then again, the slideshow can be seen as the story of how to construct a boring presentation. And even if it isn’t, sequence, unexpected events, and detail are still good story devices.
   An Excellent Boring Presentation

   View more documents from Ishtiaque Zico.
9. Make presentation stories simple enough so that audiences can easily repeat them. “Use the power of simplicity to add to your storytelling skills in presenting your ideas, products and solutions,” advises Thomas Sechehaye, who bills himself “The World’s #1 Presentation Storyboard Coach.” In his blog The Next Meeting, he writes, “Training your audience to recall your message happens when you simplify and make it easy for them to tell your story.”
10. Road-test your stories. In an article with lots of other good tips, Corey Sommers advises test out stories with trusted people who fit your audience profile: “The question you want to ask is: ‘Does this story resonate with you?’”
11. Tell stories about yourself. Carmine Gallo gives an awesome example of using self-stories in a presentation in a Business Week article:

    In September 2007, Brad Nierenberg, CEO of RedPeg Marketing in Alexandria, Va., pitched a project to Gaylord National, a massive new resort outside Washington, D.C. He, along with several other members of the team, competed for the account to publicize the hotel’s hiring event the following year. … Nierenberg told me the team members told stories about themselves in the first slides of the pitch, connecting those stories to the roles each would play on the account. For example, the account lead showed a photo of herself as a young cheerleader and discussed how her role is to lead with precision and to keep spirits high. Nierenberg brought a picture of himself as a 6-year old in a cowboy outfit. As the “sheriff” in town, he might not be on the account every day, but he would be available to make sure “all was right in the town of Gaylord.” Nierenberg knew the stories were making on impact on his audience from the smiles on their faces. “They couldn’t wait for the next story,” he said. The attendees even asked for copies of the photos to show the other decision makers. RedPeg won the account.

12. On the other hand, tell stories not about yourself but about others. While stories about oneself are great for building trust and connection, Seth Simonds makes a case for telling stories about others, suggesting it may be “possible [to] might find value in telling stories that aren’t about you” (in fact, he offers three reasons to tell stories that aren’t just about you). Simonds cites a Thai Pantene commercial (“Pantene tells us a compelling story with a message we recognize and connect with the shampoo”) and Malcolm Gladwell’s 2004 17.5-minute The Story of Spaghetti Sauce on TED Talks (“Gladwell engages us with a story about a man we can model ourselves after.”)

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Down at the bottom of my sidebar, I have a large widget under the heading “Storytelling Books.” A few notes about these books… They fall basically into these three categories:

1. Books about storytelling, primarily applied forms of storytelling, such as storytelling for healing, organizational storytelling/business narrative, and storytelling in career and job search.
2. Storytelling how-tos, such as how to journal, how to craft your life story, how to do digital storytelling, how to use stories in presentations, and how to use stories in training and communication
3. Books that are told primarily in stories, including entire books that are a story or fable, such as Peter Weddle’s Recognizing Richard Rabbit and the business novel Edge by Corey Blake et al, as well as collections of true stories on similar themes: how people got their jobs, interesting careers people have, how people escaped from corporate America, stories of marriages, workplace stories, stories of the Great Depression, stories of science, and stories about values.

The other thing I need to say about these books is that most of them are not exactly recommendations because … I confess that I haven’t read most of them. Yes, I’ve read some and can heartily recommend them. The books are on the sidebar because I have come across them while researching entries for A Storied Career. I own many of them.

But I am a slow reader to the point where my deficiency in reading speed is almost a learning disability. I once took a speed-reading class in which I discovered that I didn’t really want to read faster. I will confess, however, that my slow reading has been problematic — in graduate school for example. I have also developed a pattern of reading myself to sleep, so anytime I read, my body starts to think it’s sleepytime.

This summer, I’ve made a commitment to read a good chunk of the books on my sidebar. I just finished the book I was writing (I think I write books faster than I read them), so I have a bit more time.

My first selection was The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning, which I had come across multiple times in research for this blog. I had seen it mentioned in both storytelling circles and addiction-recovery circles. Both are directly relevant to me because I am a 26-years-sober recovering alcoholic.

The Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham essentially embodies the spirituality of 12-step groups, particularly Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not use AA in my recovery; I quit drinking cold-turkey. But this book made me realize how important storytelling is for recovery and made me long for a 12-step group even after being sober for more than twice as long as the 10-year period during which I was drinking.

It’s a beautiful, gentle, inspiring book. At first I was puzzled about where the storytelling element was even though the book is full of illustrative stories.

At this point, it occurs to me that this entry is getting kind of long. I want to share with you some of the storytelling wisdom of The Spirituality of Imperfection and thus, the sharing continues in the next entry.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Continuing my post about the wonderful book, The Spirituality of Imperfection …

It was on page 63 that I finally began to understand the book’s subtitle: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning. I want to share with you some of what the book says about storytelling and how important stories are for sharing our common humanity and imperfections. Here are some passages from The Spirituality of Imperfection:

Listen! Listen to stories. For what stories do, above all else, is hold up a mirror so that we can see ourselves. Stories are mirrors of human be-ing, reflecting back our very essence. In a story, we come to know precisely the both/and, mixed-up-ed-ness of our very being. In the mirror of another’s story, we can discover our tragedy and our comedy — and therefore our very human-ness.

The stories that sustain a spirituality of imperfection are wisdom stories. They follow a temporal format, describing “what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.” Such stories, however, can do more: The sequential format makes it possible for other people’s stories to become part of “my” story. Sometimes, for example, hearing another person;’s story can occasion profound change. Telling the story of that change then follows the format of telling a story within my story: “Once upon a time, I did not understand this very well, but then I heard this story, and now I understand it very differently.”

When a [person] comes to you and tell you your own story, you know that your sins are forgiven. And when you are forgiven, you are healed.

Stories help us attend. And “attending” in a setting of storytelling and storylistening, helps us to remember… “Memory” is communal.” Thus, although a spirituality of imperfection insists, “Pay attention to yourself,” such attending is not self-centered self-seeking but an awareness of oneself as related to others, as a member of a community.

Spirituality’s long-standing connection to story and storytelling ensures that we will never be alone in the spiritual way of life. For whenever and wherever there is a storyteller, there will also be a storyhearer. In the communal act of telling and listening, listening and telling, the sense of belonging begins.

If we would listen, we must also tell; and if we would tell our stories, we need places where we can tell and listen.

It is … a human truth that we are able to listen only when we know that in time. we will be able to tell our own story. Perhaps the main benefit of thr storytelling format … is that it invites, enables, and teaches listening. When we are able to tell our storied, when we are urged to stand up and tell them, we learn respect for other people’s stories and for the need to tell them. The practice of telling stories gives birth to good listeners.

… Community is where we can learn and practice storytelling and its virtues.

That [sober alcoholic] way of life, [early AA members] discovered, could be learned and taught only through the process of telling stories — stories that disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.

Discovering a new “map” through storytelling:

When newcomers to Alcoholics Anonymous become immersed in storytelling and storylistening, they begin to see the form and outline of a new map, which details where they are, and how they got there, and — most importantly — the way to get where they want to go. … Through the practice of hearing and telling stories, we discover and slowly learn to use a new “map,” a map that is more “right” because it is more useful for our purpose. … what happens in the remapping of storylistening and storytelling is that in telling our own story, we come to own the story that we tell.

At times … adulthood seems to consist of fending off others who try to impose on us their ideas of what our roles should be, their versions of our stories. Our spiritual problems stem, at least in part, from the fact that we continue to allow someone else to tell us our story.

Recovering our own story, our own spirituality:

The spiritual leaders recognized as “great” … invited their followers to question the handed-down maps by making their own maps — their own stories. Rather than trying to tell their listeners’ stories, rather than imposing interpretation, the sages and saints told the kind of stories that invited identification. For they understood what the ancients had discovered: The best way to help me find my story is to tell me your story.

More in the extended entry.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Storytelling tools continue to emerge on the Internet at a rapid pace. On this Easter day, I bring you a roundup of them:

• whirrl has generated significant buzz in the blogosphere and twitterverse. This tool, currently in beta, is a “storytelling application for the web and mobile that lets people share and remember their real-world stories as they happen.” Whrrl’s Community Manager Erin Crabb writes: “Whrrl allows you to share what you’re doing, who you’re with and where you’re at, with rich content, as it’s happening.” You can find reviews at TechZulu and GPS Obsessed, as well as read an interview Jeff Holden, founder of Pelago, the company that created whrrl
• Tumbarumba is an extension for the Firefox Web browser that “hides stories—twelve new stories by outstanding authors—where you least expect to find them, turning your everyday web browsing into a strange journey.” Hard to see how this tool is useful, but it’s intriguing.
• MakeBeliefsComix is described as a “place for you to come to and have fun by creating your own world of comic strips.” Interestingly, creator Bill Zimmerman targets the site at diverse demographics: “those wanting a few minutes of fun; youngsters and their parents; students and teachers; business executives trying to unwind from the stress of work, and activities directors and social workers who try to help people express their deepest thoughts and feelings.” Zimmerman says his intent is “that you will regard this site as a safe place where you feel empowered to create and to test new ideas and ways to communicate through art and writing.”
• Storybird is “Collaborative storytelling for families and friends,” but it hasn’t gone public yet and invites visitors to submit an e-mail address so they can be alerted when the site does go public.







• MapSkip asserts that “places have stories” and describes itself as a site that “makes the world a canvas for our stories and photos.” Those who join the MapSkip community are told they can explore “the world through shared stories and pictures about all the places in our lives.” One cool (slightly stalker-ish) feature is that MapSkip knows the location from which you’re visiting the site. I was slightly unnerved to see a map of my city of DeLand, FL, on the MapSkip home page.
• Also place-oriented is Datascape, “a social geographic storytelling platform that enables artists, researchers, community groups and others to narrate their communities and physical spaces through interactive virtual worlds that are laid on top of the physical world.” Says its creator, Eric Kabisch: “We are developing software and devices to create and explore these narrratives through a vehicle-based virtual periscope, a gallery-based installation, and mobile phone and web applications. Our research goals are to explore the opportunities for spatial narrative that can be offered by a system like Datascape, to understand the interactional consequences of different configurations and manifestations of the system, and to examine the range and use of community-authored narratives and how they can make legible digital/physical spaces.” Kabisch seeks brief expressions of interest outlining the issue, data, story or experience users would like to convey and asks for e-mails. I don’t grasp Datascape or how it is story-related, but maybe others can make more sense of Datascape’s documentation video than I can. It reminds me of futuristic films in which the starship’s computer has a (sort of) human voice:

• Empressr is a “rich media presentation tool” with which user can “tell your story anyway you like. Add photos, music, video, and audio, and share it publicly or privately in an instant.” A significant aspect of Empressr is that it’s “a way for anyone to create rich media presentations without having to be a technology expert.” The result, the creators say, “is the first free online visual storytelling and presentation rich internet application.” I really like the way Empressr enables attractive, full-screen presentations stored and watchable on the Web. I’d love to test it to see if it’s as easy to use as the creators say.
• LifeSnapz is LifeSnapz is “a free, easy and secure way for people to record and organize important events, milestones and memories in their lives,” says its site. “Users of LifeSnapz can contribute text, photos, and video to describe these events, share them with self-designated groups (like family members, colleagues, schoolmates or youth sports teams) and explore these events using dynamic timelines, maps, and lists.”
• With bookr, users can create and share photobooks using flickr images. The site is short on documentation and has no About page (as well as a lot of type so tiny it’s illegible), so it’s hard to know exactly how to use bookr.
• Despite its name, Storyblender isn’t especially story-oriented and is kind of goofy. The idea is to take a photo, record a voice to go with it, and superimpose an animated mouth so the photo appears to be talking. One really does wonder how people come up with these ideas. Some applications seem like the product of people with too much time on their hands.
• Penzu, its creators say, was created out of a need “why isn’t there an easy way for me to keep my thoughts on the web?” They contend that “every journal or diary service is extremely confusing and complex: long sign-up processes, intertwined with blogging services, and most importantly it took a long time to get writing. All of these lackluster sites made it an obvious decision to start Penzu,” which they assert is “intuitive, fast, and accessible” for keeping a personal journal or diary.”
• Finally, Smilebox blows my mind for a couple of reasons. It’s actually not Web-based but a downloadable application that, amazingly, is free and available for both Mac and PC. The product could best be described as digital scrapbook pages. “Smilebox makes it easy for … users to share photos, videos and music in minutes,” the site says. “Story” is not even mentioned on the site; yet, Smilebox strikes me as every bit the storytelling tool as others in this roundup, and it offers a vast variety of designs to get the user started. I’m interested in using it for the family-history Web sites I’m working on.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

During my PhD program, one of my doctoral committee members suggested I look into semiotics and storytelling. I was interested, but I had plenty of other storytelling material to digest, so I never explored semiotics, which Wikipedia defines as “the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.”

Recently, though, I came across two remarkable examples that I think nicely illustrate the ability of signs and symbols to tell stories — and hence, make meaning.

The first comes from Xu Bing, whose spare Web site depends on the visitor’s ability to navigate signs. More amazing is Xu Bing’s project — Book from the Ground, “a novel written in a ‘language of icons’” that Xu Bing has been “collecting and organizing over the last few years. Regardless of cultural background, one should be able understand the text as long as one is thoroughly entangled in modern life.”

Here’s a sampling:

You can “read” more here.

The other example is this short video from the terrific series of TED talks. It consists of storyteller and poet Rives using typography/emoticons to tell a tale. Would we say this example is less successful (yet highly entertaining) than Xu Bing’s because it requires narration and explanation of its symbols to tell the story?

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.