One Sentence had a great mention in the Boston Globe today:

Anyone who has slogged through a Charles Dickens novel or a Wi-Fi router instruction manual knows what William Shakespeare meant when he wrote, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” We couldn’t agree more, and that’s why we’re big fans of the site One Sentence.

This is the second time something like this has happened — someone actually submitted One Sentence spam. This is what was submitted:

Expand your business in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese besides ENGLISH.
[2008-02-08 01:26:24]
(name, e-mail, and web link removed)
tags: Translation German Spanish French Italian Dutch Chinese Korean Japanese

I mean, it’s not like I’m going to approve that sentence… but at least they tagged their submission!

Thanks to Chris for pointing out this washingtonpost.com mention of One Sentence:

Yo! Long Winded One…: What do you think of these?

Gene Weingarten: These are one-sentence novels. Most are poor, but if you search the all-time winners, you find some that are entertaining. I liked: “The mysterious animal hissing under the towel turned out to be a can of Right Guard.”

“Most are poor”? Really?

I’m a fan of Gene’s work in the Post and he even had a chicken named after him at the farm sanctuary where I volunteer. So, thanks, Gene! Your work’s not poor!

Matt Cutts, the head of the Webspam team at Google, mentioned One Sentence in an interview he did recently:

Stephan Spencer: Perhaps you can just supply us with your OPML file?

…

Matt Cutts: There is a lot of really good feeds that I read. I read about 70 or maybe even a 100 in the search space. A few that I read that are not search - there are only five or 10, but XKCD is a Web comic that is really pretty funny, that is very Web savvy. I found a feed on Flickr for their “Photos of the Day” which is just a nice way to start your day.

There is a neat site called One Sentence and the idea is that you have to tell an entire story in one sentence. You know, they are very compelling stuff. So, it is about 10 sentences a day, about 10 posts, and that is really a fun site as well.

Thanks, Matt!

(There’s also an audio recording of the interview linked up at the top of the transcript.)

I hate to have to do this, but unfortunately, I need to delay the publishing of the first One Sentence book, so it won’t be available for Christmas this year. I apologize deeply, but I wasn’t able to make enough progress on it by this point and I don’t want it to come out looking like a rush job. I also had trouble getting in touch with the charity that I wanted to donate proceeds to, so a delay will give me time to iron out those details as well.

Stay tuned as I continue to work on the book for an announcement about when it will be available.

Just a quick book update… there will be a slight delay in the book’s availability. I’m still working on making sure it’s available in time for holiday orders, though. Stay tuned for more info.

Reader George from Ghana sent me a note letting me know he’s set up a twitter stream for One Sentence. It totally makes sense, especially since Twitter and 1S are often mentioned in the same breath.

Thanks, George! Good use of the CC license.

I don’t know why, but I really get a kick out of negative comments about the site. Like this SU comment:

Mx2 - It’s a great idea, but poorly executed - new content is added too infrequently and in too small a quantity. Adding three new sentences ever four days just isn’t enough to warrant checking back on the site with any regularity.

Dude just caught me during a busy spell. I generally try to get 8-10 sentences approved each weekday, more if I’m feeling generous.

August 9th marked One Sentence’s first anniversary. The year has flown by and it frightens me to think how much has happened in that time.

Of course, here I am ten days late in noting this anniversary. What was I doing on the 9th? Apparently nothing — I didn’t publish any sentences that day, nor did I post the blog. It’s been a busy month!

One other thing that you may have noticed is that there’s a new One Sentence project under way, the One Sentence book! This cute l’il square tome will collect 300 of the best sentences from One Sentence’s first thousand sentences. I’m currently in the process of picking through the sentences (not an easy job!) and putting the book together. I’m shooting to have the book available by December 1st so you can have copies for yourself, friends, and family in time for the holidays. Keep an eye on the blog or the book page for updates as they’re available. I’m really excited to get this project going and I hope you’re looking forward to the end product as much as I am.

Have a good week, folks.

From…

After briefly looking at Web 2.0 Awards & Webware I went back to Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was easier to look through. Some of the award winners I found rather silly, such as onesentence.org; didn’t see any real reason for this one.

Is it weird that I enjoy these jabbing reviews of 1S?