Dig in, or skim along?

Snippets from Seth - on the willingness to go the distance, to read the whole story and understand the issues:

No need to read the whole book, I can just glance over the Cliffs Notes... I get it. No, I already heard about your vacation... remember, I saw the Instagram feed.

[via Pocket, "I get it"]

Are we going more shallow by having the fire-hose available and on at all times?

Does 200 or 500 friends mean you don't need to really pay attention to any single one?
When the book title is a story in itself, do we need to have it hammered in repeatedly over hundreds of pages?
With over 200 dimensions and metrics - does it make any sense to look at more than pageviews?

Simplification due to sheer volume and complexity - since we can't do it all, it is easier to cut corners?

It that why the allure of "BIG DATA" is so strong? Sure, there is to much to make sense of, so we'll just slap an algorithm on top, do some correlation and there you are!

42, 46, 98?

Oh the irony that is my tagline.

Initially i figured that writing would make more sense in the winter, since less time is spent outside then than in the summer months of lazy long sunny evenings. There by leaving more time to read articles, magazines and non fic books.

And by extension; more time to write and reflect, triggering more writing and musings.

Well, the last two years have shown a slight change in that idea. It seems almost like I'm mentally in a coma during the winter - I read, I get the job done and I play some games, watch some tv. But adding more value than 140 characters including a URL has not been a top priority.

Come summer and sun, the energy soars, the ideas floursih, the tv is all but banished (due to reruns of reruns from mid/early May), the games forgotten or unplayable with the sun going until late. And so the blogging picks up.

Hence it has been early summer that has triggered a resurgence of posts, and come fall this 10th year of blogging on and off I'll try to keep it going at a more measured pace.

Aiming for two post each week, possibly scheduled four at a time, seems like doing about five in a sitting works pretty well, as long as the drafts are there with links, quotes or snippets.

With 46 in the bank from May and June, another half year of twice weekly works out to around 98 for the year overall. a stretch but doable. First two full years clocked in at 107 and 98, so putting that out there as a ballpark seems right.


Update @15.7; despite a full stop the first part of the month, there are now ten posts published or scheduled 



- ...and the sun shines in the distance as I write this, who knows how it will be when I polish it up, or when it hits the blog proper...

i'm not young enough to know everything

- that's an Oscar Wilde quote taking the place of the title, having just heard it on Podcastle as I jumped off to get some thoughts in line here. Just realized the backlog and schedule was all out of content. But there are still a handfull of drafts to go - and then Pocket is filling up with good ideas and inspiration, so it looks like 2012 will be passed in terms of actual posts by the end of June.

Summer is a time of long afternoons stretching right into the night - half an hour to go for midnight, and still pretty light outside, a grey and rosy tint to the clouds. It is also a time for more reading of books on the Kindle in the sun, than skimming twitter and the web on an active screen like the ipad or laptop.

That might be why this quote is so suitable, from yet another Seth Godin post;

If you're upset that the hoi polloi are busy doing what you used to do, get better instead of getting angry.

Sure, you might feel entitled because you spent a lot of time (and perhaps a bit of effort) learning or getting access to things that were special - publishing a book, writing for a paper, designing visual or actual stuff - the list goes on. But now "everybody" can do it.

Doesn't mean they are going to be good at it.
Nor that they will be able to charge for it.

But it does mean that your nice little superior niche is busted wide open.
For some areas it means a lot more business - how many people make a living brewing coffee today?

For others it means a changing relation - being a wedding photographer amidst instagram and vine means you have to bring something more to the shoot, be it composition, scope or storytelling.

Just do it? Smarter, not harder.

I want to do it all, and then some more

How do you decide?

Chances are there are more thing you want to do, than people to do it.
More ideas than project teams.
More bugs than developers, never mind testers.

Should you focus on those big things that "wake up the neighbors" - attract a lot of attention and flair, preferably within the niche or market you play in - or should you do a lot of smaller, unknown and unknowing tests? Build the future stepwise, or stay the course first and foremost?

How do we find a balance? 

Can we?

Should we even try?

One reason that incumbents are so often defeated by newcomers is that the incumbents put their best people and their urgent focus on the stuff they used to do (like winning Pulitzer prizes, selling ads to cosmetic companies and counting dead trees) while the new guys have nothing but the new thing to focus on.

[seth, who else?]


Are you doing it wrong if you do what you know, what makes sense right now, and what "everybody" else is doing? Is radicall innovation and transformation advisable, never mind possible? Is it right to say to your current customers "sorry, we want someone else, so you'll be getting an inferior product - but it will be a lot better in a while, albeit something completely different"?

Apple could do the iPhone because they didn't have a phone business, didn't have telco relations to maintain, and an upgrade path to stick to. 3g, 4, 4s, 5? Incremental wrapping and icing on the cake.

Apple could also do the iPad, because they had 10% or less market share for laptops. Microsoft couldn't for the same reason. They had too many partners to placate, making the assorted touch screen laptops never-rans.

Facebook bought Instagram. Even if they had the bigger volume of users. Even if they had apps and were THE photo destination. But they didn't have or get mobile. As a core. As the only thing. Do they now? At least a bit more than before the 1 bn.

Just right, just so?

Repost: instant book-lovin'

Found this while cleaning up my posterous "space" - from way back in October 2010 - and really the only thing worth calling a "post" over there. 


But the points are still valid - even if the tech reading has slowed down a bit in terms of books - got a bit o.d'ed there for a while - too much reading compared to coding or use of the materials.


Just (28.10.10) bought and starter reading JS patterns, and one small thing (or three) struck me as a good sign of the times in publishing;

RT @OReillyMedia #Ebook Deal/Day: JavaScript Patterns - $11.99 (Save 50%) Code DDJPT #pdc10 http://oreil.ly/da1HrC
— Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly) oktober 28, 2010

First off, I bought it directly from O'reilly - via a promotional tweet. Forwarded by Tim O'reilly - direct relationships works really well in defined niches or areas of interest, social curation at its best, and serendipity in effect as I had just read some comments regarding the book (@rmurphy and the pubsub hubbub )

Secondly, the acknowledgments features not only bloglinks but twitter names for users such as @rem (not only html5 mad skillz) - sign of the times in terms of discovery and dialogue globally, weaving between timezones and cultures. And out in the open, not behind closed doors or sites, but on blogs and open streams available for all.

And finally I logged on and started reading the pdf version in Safari on the iPad because the laptop ran out of juice before I got around to syncing out the epub (or emailing myself the pdf) - instant gratification triggered the purchase right now rather than getting the kindle version at some later date when I really have the time to read it properly.


Going digital means less bad vibes for picking up more books - but that also actually leads to reading more because they are available, and I don't have to lug them around.

Words. Art. Make.

How many words do you need to make art?

In his post Tools vs Insights, Seth G. strips down the opening lines of Fight Club, along with the verse Green Eggs and Ham. A total of two and four lines, respectively.

And taken alone out of context it is hard to see the power of those simple words. Yet put them together as the authors have, and something powerful and moving emerges. Something memorable. And yet so vastly different.

So maybe a million monkeys on typewriters could end up with Shakespeare. Or even something more moving. Why not be one of the mmmmmiiiiiiiiiillions [ht, the rock] - go create. Make a post or a poem over the weekend

oh my apple, a run-down on iBooks maker and iTunesU

ibooks author, evil incarnate because anybody can't make money outside iBookstore - or a true revolution for learning and coursebooks?

That was more or less the two sentiments raging through the blogs and twitter back when Apple launched their iBooks author software. And for once it was a subject worthy of some strong opinions here on the blog, just not musings.

First off, the student perspective.

Having spent 4.5 years with four or five courses each semester, with an eclectic mix of solid US hardcovers, printed handouts and student curated leaflets I've spent my share of time pining over the cost of new editions and hunting through used versions for fair quality ones.

Also, with out a dedicated reading space for the first two years, dragging around 500-1000 pages books, three or four at a time for that days classes takes it toll in terms of priorities every day. For study groups we actually set up a schedule - who brings which book on what day.

Apple 1 Haters 0

Then there is the year after - when you take the next class, it would sometimes be useful (especially at the start of term and before exams) to review a bit from the first book, but that meant sunk costs rather than recouping at least parts of the cost.


So, Apple has made a deal with the major text book publisher, and is pushing the price down. Way down. Talk of a max price set at $19 ???  New, normal books retail at at least three or four times that.

As an example, the MCGraw algebra book sits at $14.95 list price on iTunesU, while Amazon has a similar book at $93. The latter you can buy used and then resell while the former could be bought with volume and education discount (also sales tax free).

Imagine a student with student loans, considering getting an iPad, but needs books instead. Now every book saves the student over $40 - that adds up fast to finance the device instead. And let's face it - students want toys as well.

Apple 2 Haters 0

Then the educator perspective

The tools is free to download. You can import just about anything into it - word, pdf, code, and so on.
And anything shared directly on campus, be it in sorority, by professor or ta, or simply student groups making their own projects available - is also free, and can be distributed directly or via iBookstore / iTunesU

Apple 3 Haters 0

But... you have to have a Mac to use it. And a new one at that. And also you would probably do well with an iPad for testing the actual output as well. And the majority of educational institutions (over here at least) are like the corporations, stuck with a bunch of pc's. Of assorted age and quality. So the upfront cost could be a bummer.

Apple 3 Haters 1

Well what about the tech?

Is is all about putting things together. Not making anything that didn't already exists in some form or another.

Tools exist — they’re getting more powerful everyday — that allow us to treat digital objects as digital objects: to collect and organize them, to fashion stories from them, to turn them into bespoke devices uniquely tuned to unlocking the world’s mysteries.

And while iBooks is not the only or maybe best way to collect and enhance "other" media alongside text. Storify could do a lot of it, and a version of prezi more suited to long form text mix.ins wouldn't be all that hard. Why, all the assorted "html presentations" would be well suited to giving a structured mix of text, images, video and plug ins. So why didn't anybody else do this?

Adding annotations, and storing them. Also packaging the content for download, with a quick course guide - read this, check. Now that is usability first and foremost. And that is why Apple might be the only one who really could make this.

Apple 4 Haters 1

The output of iBooks Author is no more intended to be an industry standard than are any other Apple-proprietary document formats — Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc

Is it so strange to see that this is not all that different from Word outputting mainly Word .doc files - and actually using it's import from WP to move the market - or Microsoft XNA for Xbox live games not running all that well on a PS3?

They never said they wanted to make a new html. In order to actually move the market companies often times have to make their own solution rather than open standards. Kindle wasn't the first ebook reader by a long stretch. But it worked. Well. And it was easy enough to get books made for it and sold hassle free. While it could also read "generic" formats.

Apple 5 Haters 1

And in closing - the fine print

But the contract / terms and conditions, and the communication from Apple regarding the changes they made to clarify it? Yeah, vintage Cupertino.

Apple 5 Haters 2


And not getting worldwide deal in place, thus leaving a lot of us "out in the cold" once more? F.U publishers, studios, and assorted guilds.

Apple 5 Haters 3



Overall, big ups to Apple for moving the educational market forward, probably kicking and screaming most of the way.

Godin goes aquatic - like an eel dodging an octupus

The starfish and the long tail have trouble getting along:

If you're a starfish, then, don't sign up with the long tail guys. Build your own universe, your own permission asset. Find a tribe, lead it, connect with it, become the short head, the one and only, the one that we'd miss if you were gone. The long tail is for organizations that own warehouses.

Great short post (as most of his are) by Seth G[1].

And what beautiful imagery, going aquatic. You don't get to meet the whale of your dreams by being a krill. Or as Cory Doctrow has put it - piracy isn't the enemy, obscurity is.*The huge number of books in Kindle version, or the number of podcasts in iTunes, the number of television channels or websites, the FB groups, pages and like-a-thons.

How can and will your content break through, connect with the readers, fans and co-creators it deserves?

Can the content stand on it's own, or does it have to be about YOU - the creator, the brand, the genius behind the mask?



* or as he quotes; Like Tim O’Reilly says, “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.

the book as poster

The power of visualization:

Data is not useful until it becomes information, and that's because data is hard for human beings to digest.

Brilliant idea by Godin, and a whole new set of options for pushing information in a visual way, taking it beyond a small infographic that is skimmed in twenty seconds.

- and lo and behold, somehow the g reader to blogger works again, or perhaps just for this link with this version chrome. Fingers crossed that the actual posting will work as well!
-...and the sun don't shine...

Internet is a book

A nice to the point tweet from Hugh kicked of this train of thought. With the announcement that iBooks can handle javascript it became clear that ebooks are digital files in their own right. And with the region CSS suggestion from Adobe (or the FT webapp or the Playoby one), the boundaries between "publishing" something as a fixed file as opposed to making it flexibly available is blurring a bit more.

A blog post is fixed, until it is edited. But a tweet is a self contained unit of content. Except when it is a retweet, or a reply, or garners retweets and replies - then it is a part of a conversation more than content. Right?

So that is where the "microblogging" comes in (and no, I don't include twitter in that bucket - due mainly to the lack of easy navigation and structure when compared to the others) - tumblr and posterous, surely many others as well [see wikipedia], but those are the two that I've played with myself.

Sitting between the possiblity of conversation in a blog (aka the comments, and sometimes pingbacks) - and the almost necessity of it at twitter, the microblogs make sharing posts and following users a central part of the experience.

But does that make them fundamentally different? Or just slightly improved for the users that want the whole flow rather than the main content?

How does it compare to publishing a "fixed" piece of content, be it on Slideshare, as a downloadable pdf, or in the form of an ebook?
Does the temporal permanence change how we as users/readers perceive and interact with the content?
Or is everything consumed in a "here and now" setting, rendering the packaging irrelevant to the usage?

hey everybody: ebooks are just websites built for special browsers. it should not suprise you that ebooks can do what websites do [1]

@hughmcguire 

And for some twisted thoughts brought out in music, the new single from Bjørk is streamable over on another tumblr - reminds me that I actually have three of her albums, and here they come into the play queue shortly... when this was written - pre-scheuled for release.

Digital wins most times. (now on Debut, track 04 - There's More To Life Than This - oh yes)

Flow like that!

Finally got around to testing out the Adobe CSS Regions Prototype today. And boy was that fun fun fun! As a proof of concept it is really stunning to see how well it handles text-flows between containers especially, but also around regions or objects - in multiple layers or stacks just like InDesign.

The download can be found in the Adobe Labs - it is basically a tweaked version of Webkit along with some sample html pages and the documentation that mirrors the intro article from early in May.

For setting up a flow all you need are a couple of target DIV's and two lines of CSS!

One for setting up the content source;
-webkit-flow: "main-thread"

And another for assigning it to the blocks; content:from(main-thread)

From looking at the FT.com webapp javascript code, and thinking about how I would attack it in terms of parsing the text, duplicating tags etc - this is scary simple.

One caveat is that, at least for now, you loose the ability to "target" the text in each container separately. You can adjust anything relating to the block element itself (margin, padding, background) - but CSS related to the actual flowing content has no effect. That means only one style for font-size, color etc. Which I'm sure makes sense from a performance standpoint on window resize, but is a bummer in terms of recreating a "true" magazine feels like a Wired page.

Hopefully that is something that could be added - but would require a bit more integration into the CSS rendering and parsing engine. Right now it looks like the content blocks are added as new containers (no inspector included in the custom build)

And it is important to note that it is actually CONTENT blocks - not just text level elements, but also images inline in the flow are slotted into the 'right' container.


On a sidenote; I'd love to see how aside works in the browser not just on the iPad, but that means bypassing their eight-step browser-sniffing script (reproduced at jsbin) in some meaningful yet simple way... guess I could try firebug breakpoint and just replacing the values?


- ....and the sun shines brightly outside despite the watch showing nine in the evening, summertime is really here again...

Paint me a picture, cut me a film

Riffing off of "the other" Chris Anderson, and his TED talk on video as the great enabler for new innovation in a broad sense, "the wired" Chris Anderson promoted the maker-agenda in issue 19.04 of Wired;

"There are also so many really great websites where people can share their projects. We have Instructables and iFixit and Etsy and Make and Hack a Day and our own Adafruit. So people who used to do this stuff alone now have even more community. It used to be just freaks in garages; now it’s freaks in garages working together." - Limor Fried of Adafruit

It is the same in web development - with new bite-sized video tutorials popping up every day, from the to the point experimentation of jQuery for Designers, to the slightly more quirky Rails for ZOmbies. With the ability to chose or mix and match between the written word (and most importantly copy the code) and the video presenting it gradually and immersively (not a word, but mayhap it should be?), learning picks up pace.

The video in and of itself is also good, because it can be consumed in a more "leisurely" way that a written tutorial, giving more room for reflection since you are listening rather than reading, often leaning back rather than forward. iPad and tablet based reading slightly excluded - whilst it is a more relaxed setting and mode, for code related tutorials it is less useful since jumping into JS Bin to test is a slight hassle compared to cmd-tab'ing or even ctrl-tabbing within the browser.


"We’re a tutorial company. We’re a project company. We do video shows and tutorials and teach people, and then there’s a gift shop at the end" [p2]

The sentiment in many ways mirrors some of the discussion regarding books and authors in the digital economy; you buy the e-version of a story for $4.99 - but if you really love it and want to display it (or simply support the author, be a patron of the arts), you get the $29.99 special edition hardcover with bonus short story and illustrations. I subscribe to this view, as promoted/explained by amongst others Michael Stackpole in his blog - and as 'lived' by both up and coming authors such as Scott Sigler with his Galactic Football League series, and truly established authors such as Tracy Hickman, doing a subscription based book with his wife.

On a side note I'm still a bit peeved with Mike&Mike at the Dragonpage for not pushing the guest authors about lack of digital version (like a Kindle version of Song of the Dragon, I'd have bought it last July, and pre-ordered vol2 by now!) - especially when talking so much about new models as they did with Tracy



- ...and the sun shines brightly, 'tis a feeling of summer in the embrace of May ...

Once upon a time a new technology cut the price of books by 90%, flooded the market with many times as many as before crowding out the real classics, and supposedly cut into the quality and care given each book.

Ebooks?

No, still just the Gutenberg and moveable type innovation.

The literate classes experienced exactly the kind of overload we feel today — suddenly, there were far more books than any single person could master, and no end in sight. Scholars, at first delighted with the new access to information, began to despair. “Is there anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books?” asked Erasmus, the great humanist of the early 16th century.

[Boston globe]

And yet we still read. In fact most people can read in the Western world, even if they chose not to buy prose books all the time.
So the market is "flooded" with readable content;

296 newspapers in 2003. These account for a combined circulation of more than 3 million.

Wikip

Would the world suffer if there were fewer printed options?
Is online and digital a viable substitute? For news? prose? Poetry? Facts?

Apparently it might look like the politicians here in Norway will have to make some educated guesses along those lines - the main ruling party (labour, social democrat) is more or less pushing for sales tax to be applied to electronic books (but not printed) and the discussion is on for the future of media support (currently newspapers get no sales tax added, magazines do get the full 24%) in general and for digital in particular.

Fun times ahead. Might just need to look into an US or online based payment solution for my Kindle needs.

Books? Who needs them...

The first printed books came with a question: What do you do with these things? (boston.com via Nieman Lab)

Great read on the history of print and publishing, and how it evoloved - lots of interesing similariteis to the cahnge towards digital now; business leading the way with internal documents, lots and lots of classics reprinted / repurposed, and slim odds for authors expecting to make it big.

And one more thought from this weekend, as I've picked up a couple of magazine for the iPad - at 20-30 NOK ($ 3-5) the digital version is going for ~20% of the retail price here in Norway. And pretty close to the coverprice for a daily newspaper (at least weekend editions)

What does that imply short to medium term for those selling magazines at retail in Norway? 

And for those translating and re-issuing localized versions? Suddenly there is a very direct and very cheap competitor right there. Would you rather have the latest fashion trends the same day as 'everyone' worldwide, or at best a week or three later when the print editon is in the store - or the local version is out?