November 30, 2007
Kindle Still "Sold Out"
I keep seeing references to Kindle being sold out, but I have yet to find a number of how many sold. The main Kindle page at Amazon now says you won't get one by Christmas. This seems like a problem to me--missing Christmas sales and also not even promising a specific ship date.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:04 PM
November 28, 2007
Wall Street Hearts AMZN
It's been an up and down week or so in the market, but not so for Amazon. Wishful eBook fans might imagine it is all due to Kindle, but impressive online Christmas shopping numbers are the more likely booster.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:53 AM
So You Want to be an Author?
Chris Webb, executive editor at Wiley Publishing, has written and has now assembled some terrific advice on developing a book proposal. Chris has been writing these over time, and has now pulled them together. As he notes, Chris does work in technology publishing, so some of these will be specific to computer book publishing, but much of what he has written is useful for any type of non-fiction book.
Oh, did I mention Chris was the editor for an excellent book on Digital Rights Management?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:37 AM
Social Networks
I am at the opening keynote at Gilbane. The speakers:
- David Mendels, Senior Vice President, Enterprise & Developer Solutions Business Unit, Adobe
- Andy MacMillan, Vice President, ECM Product Management, Oracle
- David Boloker, CTO Emerging Internet Technology, Distinguished Engineer, IBM Software Group
- John Newton, Chairman & CTO, Alfresco
There is quite a bit of discussion on social networks.
I just passed 500 connections on LinkedIn. I mention this because I have found LinkedIn to be a valuable resource. It's a great way to keep in touch of colleagues, especially if they are also active users. I have found long-lost colleagues and friends, made useful connections, helped other people make useful connections, and even found projects and prospects there. I compare this with Facebook, which I joined more recently. Facebook is a powerhouse, no doubt, and there seems like an endless number of applications and activities there. But I guess I am an old fart. I don't get half of the apps, and I don't like the default behavior where every new app and even every action on every app is to ask your entire network to do the same thing with that app--take the same movie quiz, answer the same question, and so forth. It strikes me as the equivalent of forwarding the same email to every person in your contact list. Of course, you don't have to ask every contact to do something--you can select some or one or none. You can even do nothing with any of the applications, which is what I tend to do.
I don't know what the effect of Google's OpenSocial initiative will be. Conventional wisdom seems to be that it won't make a dent in Facebook, and, aside from LinkedIn, the founding members seem to be a who's who of failed social networks, including Google's own orkut. And, generally, I am deeply skeptical of anything Google does outside of consumer search and pay-per-click advertising. But assuming not everyone in the world will join precisely one social network, doesn't it make perfect sense for these networks to have a common API?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:46 AM | Comments (1)
November 25, 2007
icanhascheezburger
If you like cats, and have never visited the site, you owe it to yourself. When I hear about Web 2.0, I can think of no better example. ;)
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:35 PM
November 23, 2007
Movable Type Weirdness
So I republished my blog and now I have new design for my home page, out of the blue, but the rest of my pages look like they use to. What gives?
I haven't had a chance to look into this yet, but if you have some quick ideas, let me know.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:00 PM
November 19, 2007
Mikey Lowell
Looks like Lowell is going to re-sign with the Sox. Fingers crossed, as it is not a done deal apparently, but I would love to see him stay on. As a friend of mine quipped, someone should name a town after that man.
It's official.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:17 PM
Amazon Kindle
Amazon debuted Kindle, its eBook reader, today. I haven't seen it yet, of course, but I'm impressed by the number of titles they have available at launch. And the pricepoints--NYT's bestsellers at a standard price of $9.99.
Lots of interesting details about the feature set as well as the complementary content, like Wikipedia, newspapers, blogs. Another detail, reported by CNET, caught my eye:
Kindle, which was manufactured by an undisclosed Chinese original equipment manufacturer, connects to its specialized Amazon store via an EV-DO (Evolution Data Optimized) cellular network through "Amazon Whispernet," built atop Sprint's EV-DO network. No data plan or monthly bill is required. "We pay for all of that behind the scenes so that you can just read," Bezos said, adding that he estimated that it would take "less than a minute" to download a book.
If it is really that easy to use and keep up to date, they are on to something.
WSJ.com has a blog roundup (subscription), and proving that Kindle seems to be real news, it even made All Things Considered. And, last but not least, PW weighs in.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:52 PM
November 15, 2007
Microsoft SharePoint and ECM: Ready for Primetime?
If you are interested in SharePoint for ECM applications, the webinar I recently did for Gilbane is now recorded and available on the website of the sponsoring company, KnowledgeLake.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:27 PM
November 13, 2007
Digital Text Community
Jon Noring of Digital Pulp Publishing has announced the start of "The Digital Text Community" (DTC), a public mailing list (on YahooGroups) devoted to serious discussion of digitizing "ink-on-paper" publications.
The full group charter is found at the group's home page.
DTC will be lightly moderated primarily to ensure civil discourse, and a separate archive of the discussion will be started and maintained (Jon notes that YahooGroup's default archive is poor, to say the least.)
Jon explained his rationale for starting the group:
The primary reason why I am starting DTC is that there is, surprisingly, no independent and dedicated forum to discuss the various, interrelated technical and non-technical issues of digitizing "ink-on-paper" publications, such as books, periodicals, etc.
Current discussion on digitizing paper publications is disjointly spread around in various nooks and crannies. For example, there are forums for particular digitization projects such as Project Gutenberg (e.g. "gutvol-d") and Distributed Proofreaders (which maintains a set of online-only forums.)
And then there are more generalized forums which touch upon various topics of relevance to text digitization, but which is not their main focus. Examples are Book People (which John Mark Ockerbloom is sadly closing the end of the month) and The eBook Community (another YahooGroup which I administer.)
The summary purpose of DTC is given in the last paragraph of the DTC group charter:
"This group is not affiliated with any particular project or organization, but rather is independent. It is hoped this group will be a bridge between the various text digitization projects, enabling information exchange for everyone’s benefit."
This sounds like a great new resource, and I have already subscribed. You can too, here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:27 PM
Adobe Management Changes
Adobe's CEO Bruce Chizen steps down, and the market is reacting. But Adobe also said Monday that "fourth-quarter sales would be near the top end of its guidance of $860 million to $890 million."
Oh, for the record, I don't own any stock or have any other financial interest in Adobe. As a rule, I avoid investing in companies that I cover or might do business with--partly to avoid a conflict of interest but also because I am terrible at picking tech stocks. They either go bust, or I sell them at a small loss or profit the second before they take off like a rocket.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:37 PM
November 11, 2007
Lest I Forget
My granddad, Wilbur Halliday. He was born in 1900, but was not in World War I, which would have ended a few months after his 18th birthday.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:16 PM
Oh, What the Heck
A second pic for Veteran's Day. My Dad and Grandmom. I don't have a date for this one, but I like to think this is after the war, and my dad is home. That would explain his big smile.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:54 PM
Veteran's Day
My dad, Sgt. Charles M. Trippe, Army Air Corps, a wing gunner on a bomber in the Pacific Theater from 1943-1945. The picture is inscribed, "As ever, Charles, 5-7-44." His squadron was making their way across the Pacific as the Japanese retreated. I will have to look at the records I have to figure out whereabouts he was in May 1944. It looks like a studio picture, and was either colorized from black and white or the color was enhanced. Maybe they were in Hawaii on some R&R? Maybe, though my recollection is that his unit took a much more southerly route, down near Australia and of New Guinea.
My father would have been just over 18 in this picture, but he already looks older, doesn't see? He saw a lot of action in the war, and it didn't sit well with him. I wonder how much he had seen by this point. Like a lot of veterans, he rarely spoke about it. I only remember two stories, both quick and offbeat and funny and a little scary. One was when his bomber hit what he described as an air pocket and he found himself plastered to the roof of the plane. Only as I write this does it occur to me that maybe the air pocket was enemy flak or an evasive maneuver. The other story was about having to eat bugs for food in the Phillipines. Kind of a cool story when you are a kid, but not so cool thinking about it as an adult.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:30 PM
November 7, 2007
What kind of computer do you have?
You wonder if these are too good to be true, but they are still funny.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:44 AM | Comments (1)
November 6, 2007
Microsoft SharePoint and the Enterprise Content Management Market
On Thursday, I will be doing a webinar on SharePoint and ECM. I wrote a bit about the topic over at Gilbane (and we have a white paper on the topic coming out shortly). If you are interested in attending the Webinar, you can register over at KnowledgeLake, the company sponsoring the webinar.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:44 PM
November 2, 2007
Sentiment is for Girls
Not my sentiment, of course. Mark Twain's, as recently shown at a great new (and free!) repository launched by the University of California Press.
Damnation, (if you will allow the expression,) get up & take a turn around the block & let the sentiment blow off you. Sentiment is for girls—I mean the maudlin article, of course. Real sentiment is a very rare & godlike thing. You do not know anybody that has it; neither do I.The homepage for the repository is here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:37 PM
November 1, 2007
XForms and Rich Text Editing
Over at Developerworks, Steve Speicher and Andy Smith show some approaches for adding rich text editing controls to an XForms application.
By following some of the integration rules defined by XForms, XBL, and a rich text editor, the end result is a simple and powerful addition to the XForms set of controls. This can further enable the application of XForms in a variety of applications, such as blogs, e-mails, social networking sites, and more. These can then leverage the built-in capabilities of XForms for validation, XML submission, declarative programming, and more.This kind of thinking reminds me of some of my early thinking about XForms in particular and XML-based forms in general. When does a form end and a text editor begin?
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:16 PM
