A Resource to Flip Out About!

Have you stumbled across Flipboard yet? If you have, I bow to your tech-savvy social media prowess. I’ve been subscribing for a month or two (it’s free), but have only recently been making it my go-to feed for news and information. Turns out, I shouldn’t be so impressed with myself. Researching the so-called ‘news aggregation’ company, it’s been around for over six years, so I guess I’m way behind the curve. But like any small child who has just stumbled on something shiny and fun to play with, even if it’s antique by today’s technological standards, I’m loving it!

That’s because it’s not just a rabbit hole of non-stop news. Sure I use its good old vanilla-flavored news board. But I also have the ability to create custom magazines that I can then share with friends, family and (very importantly) others who share my writing passion! If I come across a particularly interesting article on say, blogging, or ways to keep motivated, or, well, you get the idea – pretty much anything, I can pop it into a personalized magazine and invite others to stop by and read it. It’s that awesome!

I know you’re probably wondering where all these interesting articles might be found on the interweb, but that’s the other nifty thing about Flipboard. You customize your Flipboard according to your interests. I currently follow 33 boards, ranging from short stories and poetry, to satire and Shakespeare, with a bit of France and feminism thrown in the mix. It is a great resource for getting inspired to write my weekly blog. In fact, it was while surfing my boards this week that I realized I haven’t yet shared this awesome resource, and I’m all about sharing the wealth!

Now when my better half took one look at my boards, his eyes glazed over. Sure, there were a couple of boards we had in common, but for the most part, he’s more of a baseball, football, basketball, (okay, anything involving a ball regardless of shape or size), comic books, especially Batman (yes, the Dark Knight has a board, as does Superman), Game of Thrones (yes there’s a board for GoT too). You get my gist. If you’ve got an interest, Flip’s likely got a board to match.

Is anime your thing? Flip it. British cooking? Flip it. Travel? Flip. Photography? Flip. Travel Photography? Yep, Flip that combo too. It’s easy to get immersed in the literally hundreds, if not thousands of different topics, and it always amazes me to see how many followers each board has. I was a little bummed that the Queen of the Satire Ms. Parker does not have her own board, but I garnered solace in the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald has 8,500 followers, even though so few of the articles have anything to do with the man himself.

If you decide to give Flipboard a whirl, I do give one word of caution, especially to my fellow writers. Flipboard has the lure of the mythological Sirens, and a quick dip into Flip can turn into an hour or two very quickly. Before you know it, there goes that promise you made to yourself to get at least 1,000 words on the page today!

But there again, don’t all good things in life come with a warning label?

Enjoy! ;)