Thanks to a Twitter from Jill O’Neill, I was introduced to a very clever little gimmick that turns out to be more than a gimmick. Read at Work is a parody of Windows that buries poems, novels, and satires in mock-PowerPoint presentations so that you can read at work without being perceived as reading at work. From a distance, it looks like you’re reviewing a typical business PowerPoint presentation, but in fact, you’re reading Emily Dickinson or T.S. Eliot.

Because the notion originated in New Zealand, not everything works outside that country. I found the Emily Dickinson and F. Scott Fitzgerald items sometimes worked. Find one that does, and you’ll see why this tickled both me and Jill with its cleverness. It also shows that there are more ways to use our electronic tools than merely shoveling content into HTML.

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson is the CEO of RedLink and RedLink Network, a past-President of SSP, and the founder of the Scholarly Kitchen. He has worked as Publisher at AAAS/Science, CEO/Publisher of JBJS, Inc., a publishing executive at the Massachusetts Medical Society, Publishing Director of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Director of Medical Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Opinions on social media or blogs are his own.

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