Cassettes Anyone?

It wasn't until I actually read the article in Mashable that I even realized they were still available for sale! Yes fellow Gen Xers, the Sony Walkman's last shipment has been made ...

Like many of you, I owned a Sony Walkman or some iteration thereof. In fact, it wasn't until just recently when I was cleaning out a closet that I found a remaining, dusty box of cassette tapes beneath '80s attire I was sure was going to come back into style (and lo-and-behold it has!). From love mixes provided by ex-boyfriends to the Metallica songs I "borrowed" in high school, tapes were an amazing leap in technology.

Compared to my earlier 45 of Starland Vocal Band's Afternoon Delight (which at the precious age of eight had a much different meaning), the Sony Walkman was a technological wonder; a gobstopper of portable music.

Today of course, it is ancient history. According to the article, the last shipment of Sony Walkmans was sent to Japan this past April.

While I doubt I will have the opportunity to listen to those dusty relics I uncovered, I suppose there is some solace in knowing that I could if I still wanted to - even after all these years. I wonder if our other, more advanced digital versions will have the same staying power of the Sony Walkman.

I salute you Sony Walkman and bid you ... adieu!

From Blog to Book

What's the best way to display your blog on your coffee table? ...

Back when I lived Italy, I wasn’t privy to the world of blogging. Instead, I would compose lengthy email updates to send to my friends and family on a weekly basis. I never realized at the time, but these emails became my story, the journal of my time spent abroad. My journal, so carefully written, was emailed from an account that has since been closed.

My electronic story was lost in the abyss of cyberspace.

Today we - businesses, organizations, foodies, moms … the list goes on and on - use blogs to chronicle the world around us. But there is more to a blog than the most recent ‘homepage posts.’ There is a story, a part of our legacy. Personally, I think it’s time more of us capture that story offline.

Taking your story offline keeps it alive for the long haul. Remember my story lost in cyberspace? Thankfully, I have a friend who was one step ahead of me and kept every email I had written and assembled them into a scrapbook to house my story. Priceless.

Businesses and bloggers alike can turn their blogged business insights and personal experiences into lasting memories with online blog-to-book tools. The tools make it easy to take your blog from cyberspace to coffee table in no time. Here are a couple ideas of what you could do with your blog book:

• Have your ‘blog book’ available in the waiting room for your customers to read, in place of the typical magazines.



• Build a ‘blog book’ each year. When you look back, you’ll see how your business has grown.



• Create a ‘blog book’ to keep in your business archives. (Historians 100 years from now will thank you).



• Put blogs on a single topic into a book and distribute it as a sales tool. It’ll provide a deeper look at a service you provide than the typical sales brochure.



• Give your employees and blog contributors a personalized company ‘blog book’ for the holidays.
  
  Check out the tool I used to return the favor and turn my friend’s blog into a book at http://www.blurb.com/.