Learn to write with Agatha Christie

Billboard presents the 100 Best Country songs of all time | Particle news also launches its AI-Assisted news reader on the web

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Clara Nafría & Ismael Nafría
May 12, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Good morning!

Welcome to "On the Net Today". Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we bring you a handpicked selection of three valuable and interesting online resources to help you get the most out of the internet and optimize your browsing time.

Here are the three resources we've prepared for today:

  • Learn to write with Agatha Christie

  • Billboard presents the 100 Best Country songs of all time

  • Particle news also launches its AI-Assisted news reader on the web

Learn to write with Agatha Christie

BBC Maestro has launched a writing course taught, thanks to technology, by the queen of crime and mystery novels herself

Educational platform BBC Maestro has just launched a very innovative writing course in which, thanks to technology, the queen of crime and mystery, Agatha Christie, is the teacher who reveals the secrets of this literary genre and teaches us how to write the best novels. 

The following video presents the course: 

Introducing Agatha Christie on Writing on the BBC Maestro channel 

Guided by Agatha Christie, the course shows how to structure a plot, how to build convincing characters, how to create unexpected twists or false clues, how to build suspense, and how to begin and end a novel.

The course, developed over two years in close collaboration with Agatha Christie's family and a team of more than 100 creatives and academics, aims to respect the writer's legacy as much as possible. Actress Vivien Keene plays Agatha Christie, but thanks to applied visual and audio enhancements, it seems as if the writer herself is guiding us throughout the course.

This video shows how the course was made: How The Agatha Christie Course Was Made

And this article, published on the BBC Maestro blog, tells all the details about how the course was made: The making of Agatha Christie’s new writing course

BBC Maestro is a subscription-based educational streaming platform, created by the BBC to offer courses linked to people's creativity, taught by experts in each field. The offering includes courses on writing, art, cooking, health and wellness, acting, business, and other creative fields. The courses offer video lessons and detailed supporting notes. Currently, BBC Maestro offers a total of 46 courses.

Price: the individual course costs 99 euros per year. Access to all BBC Maestro courses (46 currently) costs 129 euros per year.

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Billboard presents the 100 Best Country songs of all time

With almost a century of history, country has left a deep mark on the music of the United States, with thousands of songs that are part of the country's culture and people's lives.

What are the hundred best examples of this musical genre? This is what the editorial team of Billboard magazine has set out to resolve, having just published the list of the chosen ones.

All songs come with a brief explanation and the video or link to listen to them.

The top five in the ranking are, in reverse order, as presented in Billboard's special:

  1. “I Walk the Line”, by Johnny Cash

  1. “He Stopped Loving Her Today”, by George Jones

  1. “On the Road Again”, by Willie Nelson

  1. “Crazy”, by Patsy Cline

Number 1: “Jolene”, by Dolly Parton

Link:

Particle news also launches its AI-Assisted news reader on the web

The news startup Particle, which a few months ago launched a news app based on artificial intelligence to help users quickly understand information, access different perspectives on each topic, and personalize their news experience, has just launched its website, Particle News.

On Particle News, the main news of the day are presented, summarized by AI, offered from different news sources, with links to them. Additionally, users can consult the most prominent news in sections such as Technology, Sports, Entertainment, Science, Politics, Crime, Economy, and Video Games.

For each news item, Particle News prepares a summary, selects highlighted quotes and questions about the topic, and offers links to the media outlets that have covered said information, indicating how many have done so.

This video, published a few months ago, explains some essential elements of the project:

Particle is a company driven by Sara Beykpour, co-founder and CEO of the company, who worked for more than ten years at Twitter in product and engineering areas, and by Marcel Molina, co-founder and CTO of Particle, who previously worked as a software engineer at Twitter and Tesla. The main investors are Lightspeed, Adverb, Kindred Ventures, and Axel Springer Digital Ventures, along with individual investors.

The company has established agreements with numerous news companies, including agencies AFP, AP, and Reuters, and newspapers and magazines such as Fortune, Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlantic, TheStreet, and Time, among other media.

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