My illustrious tech-writer counterpart Jeff Carlson did me a solid yesterday in a personal-blog post that generously promoted the work of others —including mine — as well as his own.
As 2013 wraps up, and especially now that it’s a week before Christmas, I’m sure you’re getting pitches from all directions for products and services to spend your money on. I certainly am. I retweet and share things on Twitter and Facebook and Google+, but that’s just as scattershot.
So I’m trying something new that I hope you’ll find helpful. Here’s a list — a curated list, if that makes it sound even better — of projects and products that I think are worth your attention and money at the end of the year. This isn’t a “best of 2013″ or a gift guide, which can easily spiral out of control. These are things I believe are valuable, and will give you more satisfaction than just a smile as you open a present on Christmas morning …
… Buy The Mobile Writer 
In that spirit, with this post, I’d like to tout a St. Paul Pioneer Press colleague’s new book as well as my own.
Joe Bissen, a crack sports copy editor at the Pioneer Press, has just published a lovely volume — Fore! Gone. — that expounds upon golf courses that were lost to history until he tracked them down (and plotted them on a Google map):
A golf course in a swamp? On a prison grounds? Next to a sewage disposal plant? Yes, yes and yes — and joined by courses built by millionaires, played by champions and designed by experts. From the crazy to the classy, Fore! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, 1897–1999, revives more than 80 abandoned layouts, many of them long-forgotten.
I am not a golfer, but this book (very much in the vein of Lost Twin Cities and similar volumes by another Pioneer Press veteran, Larry Millett) is … awesome.
Today's Joy of Tech comic!
