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Documents of Tabat: Street Foods of Tabat

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What are the documents of Tabat? In an early version of the book, I had a number of interstitial pieces, each a document produced by the city: playbills, advertisements, guide book entries. They had to be cut but I kept them for web-use. I hope you enjoy this installment, but you’ll have to read Beasts of Tabat to get the full significance. -Cat

An Instructive Listing of the Street Foods of Tabat, being Pamphlet #5 of the first series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.

The visitor to Tabat will find themselves faced with a multitude of new things, and the food of the city is no exception. Carts and food stalls in particular supply many of the daily food needs of the populace.

No matter where you go in the city, you will find the bakery carts. Most belong to the Figgis Bakery, but you will also see some from smaller and independent bakeries. They sell a multitude of breadstuffs, including several pastries unique to the city: two and twos, large flatbreads which are half one color, half another; hyacinth cookies with their distinctive purple icing; and jelly cups.

Close to the docks, particularly around the Fish Market, vendors sell all varieties of sea food, cooked on the spot and fresh from the boats that have just brought it in. Many of these use the seaweed spices Tabat is famous for: ironbite with its metallic peppery taste; summer salt; and the mix of dried fish and seaweed that forms the basis of chal. Look for kerik, the sweet purple nodules of seaweed that are harvested in late summer, for a particularly exotic treat.

Sweets are usually flavored with honey from bees or Honey-mothers, or a touch of Fairy honey for those with more expensive tastes. Of late, though, the Southern Isles have been sending sugar to Tabat, expensive and rare, and a dusting of such atop a pastry or cake is considered to render it the height of culinary sophistication.

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Love the world of Tabat and want to spend longer in it? Check out Hearts of Tabat, the latest Tabat novel! Or get sneak peeks, behind the scenes looks, snippets of work in progres, and more via Cat’s Patreon.

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Links from Blogging 101 Class - General Social Media Links

As part of the Blogging 101 class I just finished up teaching for Bellevue College, I organized a bunch of my links into a handout. Here is the General Social Media Resources section.

Mentioned in class:
(We didn’t actually get to this, but it’s a good way to track which of your links are getting shared.)Way to shorten URLs and monitor which are being reshared: http://www.bitly.com
(Also didn’t get a chance to hit in class, but is a good way to see if your name is available on various social networks as well as a pretty comprehensive listing of such networks.) Way to check your name on social networks: http://namechk.com/
Way to look at your social media presence: http://www.klout.com
Cartoon History of Twitter and Social Networking: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/cartoon-history-social-networking_b6160

Technical:
10 Social Media Mistakes We Bet You’re Making: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-social-media-mistakes-we-bet-youre-making-2010-9
10 Things Social media Marketers Should Know about Millennials: http://socialtimes.com/socialmedia-marketing-millenials_b31715
Best Free Social Media Tracking Tools: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/02/18/social-media-tools/
Five Myths About Pushing Social Media Marketing Content: http://socialtimes.com/five-myths-about-pushing-social-media-marketing-content_b55978
How to Actually Become Friends with Social Network Connections: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-make-powerful-connections-through-social-media-2011-1
How to Crack the New York Times Popularity Code: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/12/20/how-to-crack-the-new-york-times-most-emailed-list.html
What Social Network is Right For You? (2010): http://lifehacker.com/5472223/which-social-network-is-right-for-you
Winners and Losers of Social Networking: http://mashable.com/2011/04/12/social-networks-infographic/

Food For Thought:
Fantabulous Lists of Social Media Case Studies: http://socialmediatoday.com/igiedrius/268023/fantabulous-lists-social-media-case-studies
Google+ discussion of Wal-mart’s use of social media data:
https://plus.google.com/109581870574956225297/posts/2KKuJAUUruo
How governments are using social media: http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/government-social-media/
Innovative Uses of Social Media: http://mashable.com/2011/04/07/innovative-pr-social-media/
On Social Media, Most People Don’t Want to Be Heard: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2030594/social-media-people-dont-heard
Six Verbs You Need to Understand for the New Web:
http://www.spinsucks.com/social-media/six-verbs-you-need-to-understand-for-the-new-web/
What Social Commerce Can Learn From Social Gaming: http://socialcommercetoday.com/what-social-commerce-can-learn-from-social-gaming/
Why Social Accountability Will Be the New Currency of the Web: http://mashable.com/2011/07/28/social-media-influence-accountability/
3 C’s of Social Networking: Consumption, Curation, Creation: http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=briansolis/233806/three-c-s-social-networking-consumption-curation-creation
5 Social Good Sites Aimed at Youth: http://mashable.com/2011/07/22/social-good-youth/
How 3 Cities Are Crowdsourcing for Revitalization: http://mashable.com/2011/07/20/crowdsourcing-city-tech/
5 Innovative Food Truck Social Media Marketing Campaigns: http://mashable.com/2011/07/21/social-media-food-trucks-marketing/
25 Terrific Social Media Infographics: http://socialmediatoday.com/pamdyer/266010/65-terrific-social-media-infographics

I’m glad to discuss any of these links in comments here.

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Links from the Blogging 101 Class - Stumbleupon and Other Bookmarking Sites

As I noted in class, I don’t agree with the methods talked about in that first link, but I do think bloggers shouldn’t overlook the power of Stumbleupon and other bookmarking sites to drive traffic to their site. I’ve seen a significant amount of traffic come from such sites, particularly Stumbleupon and Delicious.

STUMBLEUPON RESOURCES

How I Got 26000 Followers from Stumbleupon: http://www.dumblittleblogger.com/2011/01/15/how-i-got-26000-visitors-from-stumbleupon/
Stumbleupon Android App Discovery Feature: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/17/stumbleupon-android-app-discovery/
Stumbleupon Sent 700 Million Pageviews to Other Websites in December: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/04/stumbleupon-sent-700m-pageviews-to-other-websites-in-dec-is-growing-20-monthly/

7 Things You Should Know about Social Bookmarking: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf
10 Most Popular Fifteen Social Bookmarking Sites: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-bookmarking-websites

Good overall list of bookmarking sites: http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php

Delicious: http:www.delicious.com
Digg: http://www.digg.com
Reddit: http://www.reddit.com

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