All the Billion Other Moments

New WordPress Plugin: Use Google Libraries 1.0

2008-11-26T14:05:02Z

Speed Up WordPress Using Google’s AJAX Libraries API

I’m happy to announce my new WordPress Plugin Use Google Libraries. This plugin loads a number of standard Javascript libraries used by WordPress from Google’s AJAX Libraries API CDN. What’s that?

The AJAX Libraries API is a content distribution network and loading architecture for the most popular, open source JavaScript libraries. [...] Google works directly with the key stake holders for each library effort and accepts the latest stable versions as they are released. Once we host a release of a given library, we are committed to hosting that release indefinitely. [...] We take the pain out of hosting the libraries, correctly setting cache headers, staying up to date with the most recent bug fixes, etc.

Or, in plain English, it should make your site load faster. It could also make other people’s sites load faster too, if they’re also using this plugin.

Supported Libraries

Any WordPress themes or plugins that load any of these libraries via enqueue_script() should automatically take advantage of Use Google Libraries.

Why not give it a try?

There’s nothing earth shattering here, but my goal was do one thing and do it well. You can read the documentation and download the plugin from the Use Google Libraries page in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

Taking a Moment to Ask Myself “Why?”

2008-11-12T13:37:18Z

Last month Mur Lafferty shared her confusion over a certain type of feedback she’d received from folks explaining in detail why they aren’t reading or listening to one of her works. I meant to comment, but my thoughts on the subject seemed fairly divergent from that of the other commenters and I held off. I’m currently re-reading Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, and parts of it brought Mur’s question back to mind. The two things collided, and here is the result. So while I’m not directly responding to Mur, without her post I may never have thought this through, and realized I once was “one of those people.”

This issue is up there with the people who tell me when they didn’t like a podcast or a story or a book. They’re entitled to their opinion, I certainly don’t begrudge them that, but I don’t understand why I need to know about it. Do they want me to edit? Never write something like that again? I don’t get it.

I think my major disconnect is I find myself making the assumption that these folks are offering this feedback not in the hopes that Mur will rewrite for them, but that it will in some way inform her future works. I can’t imagine if they’d written her off completely as not worthy of their time and attention that they’d email her at all. If I’m wrong about that, I don’t know what they want either.

Confessions of an Accidental Troll

Back in the late 90s1 I once set an author an email asking them why they insisted on doing something just to piss people off (it was a shared universe novel line, and I was far from alone in my concern). Part of the uproar centered around the fact that he was the only author at the time with the license to use certain critical characters, so there was a feeling that he was abusing this power.

Filled with “fan entitlement” of George-Lucas-killed-my-childhood proportions I tore into him. That email was not my finest hour.

The author send me a well thought out reply, which made me feel like an ass for the tone of my first email. He wanted fans to be able to enjoy his book, but he also had to tell his story his way. After some more friendly back and forth he asked for input in the form of research, letting me know that while he’d read and consider it he made no promises as to if it would change his story.

I can’t say for certain how much impact I had on the book overall, but he did say he found it helpful and made use of it. He even thanked me in the books acknowledgments.2

I really don’t know what I expected when I sent that email, and I don’t know what the author thought I expected, but his response seriously humbled me. In the end he wrote the book he wanted to write, gained a great deal of respect from me, and got some free research out of the bargain.

Never again would I send that type of email to anyone. But when I look back, the reason for sending it was that really I wanted to be able to enjoy his book, and from what I knew of it I wasn’t going to be able to. I like to think he saw that I acted like an ass because I cared strongly about something he also cared strongly about, and he was able to turn it around into something constructive.

Also, I no longer feel entitled to anything just because I’m a fan.3

I not saying anyone needs to react like he did, or that what he did was the best choice even. Instead I offer this as an example of this type of exchange, and an exploration of where my own opinions on the matter stem from.

Notes

↑1 Yeah, we had email back in the dark ages. I used elm, and I liked it. Now get off my lawn!
↑2 If you’ve seen my name (mis-spelled Jason Penny) in the acknowledgments of a late 90s media tie in book, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
↑3 I still reserve the right to get angry at bad remakes.

Tagged by Kate

2008-11-11T17:12:12Z

I’ve been tagged by my friend Kate. It appears the rules are as follows:

Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
Tag 7 people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

As a result you now get to read these seven random things about me1:

I’m worried about how good of a parent I am. Not for anything specific I’m doing wrong, because I could fix that. Hopefully this is one of those “if you’re worried about it, you don’t need to worry about it” type of things where a truly horrible parent wouldn’t give it a second thought.
When things at home get well beyond crazy and I can’t think straight2 I close my eyes and chant “I’m a hermit. I live alone. None of you exist” until I feel calm.
I listen to audiobooks/podcasts in the shower. I have for years. I have a shower CD/Radio unit, which is now usually used to listen to the iPod via an FM transmitter. You might think this would slow me down, since I’d get involved in the story and just stay in there, but the opposite it true. I used to drift off and loose track of time in the shower. Now I’m much more aware of the passage of time and it keeps me moving.
In the PC vs. Mac battle I choose Unix. No I don’t run Linux on my desktop3. Although Mac OS X is my current desktop of choice, I’m fine as long as I can run bash, grep, sed, and awk on a decent terminal4.
I still don’t know my addition and subtraction tables. Seriously. My brain does not do the memorizing by rote thing. By now the tricks I taught myself to get around this deficiency are so ingrained that seeing most numbers written out I instantly have the answer, but it’s not because I know the answer.5
I have a strong dislike for public restrooms dating back the time a large drunk man6 busted in a stall door on me when I was a kid. Apparently it never occurred to this guy why the stall was locked until he saw me sitting there, which he and his buddies thought was totally hilarious. I did not. If there is a personal hell, mine is a bathroom stall with a busted lock in a high traffic restroom.
My most recent form letter rejection from John Joseph Adams, assistant editor of The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy was nearly identical to my previous letter, with one exception7: Instead of the familiar “Dear Mr. Penney”, it started with “Hey Jay”. I don’t know what, if anything, I should make of that, but I choose to see it in a positive light8.

And here are the folks I’m tagging (but don’t feel obligated):

Notes

↑1 Aren’t you lucky?
↑2 with three daughters this does happen from time to time
↑3 Not exclusively anyhow. I have a KVM switching between Fedora, Mac OS, and Windows XP
↑4 preferably with X11 support, and Emacs if I’m lucky
↑5 In something only marginally related, I used a Venn diagram for something at work the other day to optimize an algorithm. I guess it’s good that I know how, but it’s the first time I’ve ever used them outside a classroom.
↑6 In my memory he’s more of a giant, but I’m sure he was just a man.
↑7 aside from the title of the work
↑8 please allow me my illusions

Dursin, You Called It

2008-11-05T04:56:31Z

Hey buddy. I understand your frustration. Just thought I’d point out that you called this one four years ago.

Links of Interest (September 29th 2008 Through October 17th 2008)

2008-11-14T12:03:44Z

Glassbooth - Quiz to help you choose best 2008 presidential candidate: Glassboth lets you see where each candidate stands in relation to the issues that matter to you through the used of a weighted quiz. Slick interface that I found very easy to use and understand. Even if you’ve alredy made up your mind I recommend you check it out.
Tags: reference, politics, usa, vote, Glassboth,
Byline - Google Reader on the go.: If you use Google Reader, and you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch you should check out Phantom Fish’s Byline. Byline is essentially a Google Reader client that syncs so you don’t need a network connection at all times (and it offers features missing from Googles own iPhone interface, like an oldest post first view). It’s not perfect, but I find it a vastly preferable in most cases to the Google Reader iPhone web interface.
Tags: software, RSS, iPhone, , Google-Reader, news, Byline, Phantom-Fish,
Shyamalan Talks ‘Unbreakable’ Sequel: Seems to me that M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t exactly rule it out, but there’s no “it’s happening” in here. Still “Ubreakable” is probably in my top 10 list of films, and I’d love to see where it goes next.
Tags: M-Night-Shyamalan, Unbreakable, movie,
My Life With Gwen Stacy,Or, How an audiobook narrator redeemed his misspent youth reading comic books by getting to the bottom of the greatest comic book mystery of all time: Who killed Spider-Man’s girlfriend?: Scott Brick, one of my all time favorite audiobook narrators, recounts the story behind his 1998 Comic Buyer’s Guide article “Who Killed Gwen Stacy?”, which delved into the creative decisions behind killing off Spider-Man’s girlfriend in 1973. Like most of Scott’s posts it’s also available in audio.
Tags: comics, , Comic-Buyers-Guide, Spider-Man, Gwen-Stacy,
Web 2.Rockstar: The robotic tale of Jonathon Coulton: Ars Technica offers a nice JoCo primer, and how he succeded where the underpants gnomes failed. “When I first started the important thing was audience: if I can reach enough people, that’s leverage, or power, and maybe that leads to something that does make money.” Has some interesting thoughts on labels, and what may replace them in the future.
Tags: , Music,

Links of Interest (August 25th 2008 Through September 28th 2008)

2008-09-29T00:30:04Z

jQuery and Microsoft: When Microsoft started adding some of the often requested features to their ASP.NET AJAX Client API they realized that jQuery (my personal favorite javascript library) already did what they wanted. Rather than reinvent the wheel Microsoft will be shipping the standard, as-is jQuery with full intellisense support in Visual Studio.
Tags: microsoft, jQuery, ASP.NET, javascript, ,
The Creative Process: “For me, ideas stream through my head at a frantic pace. I feel like a bear trying to grab a salmon. If my paw misses its target, that salmon is gone for good. I don’t dwell on it. I just lunge for the next salmon.” Scott Adams (Dilbert) discusses ideas, and how he sometimes forgets he’s already used them.
Tags: memory, Scott-Adams, Dilbert, creativity,
Tip: Using a background image on an image: Using CSS to create layered images (with a fun animated example). Simple but effective.
Tags: webdesign, HTML, CSS,
Fresh Out - PDF Version: Free fun little mini-comic from Natalie Metzger. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll really want some cookies! Ready for printing.
Tags: , free, mini-comic, comics, cookies,
Sizzle: John Resig has a new selector engine: Ajaxian brings word that John Resig is working an a new Javascript selector engine, which is expected to replace the one in jQuery. So far it’s less than 4k (but it doesn’t support IE yet). “4x faster in Firefox 3, 3x faster in Opera 9, 1.5x faster in Safari 3 than the other major JavaScript libraries.”
Tags: John Resig, javascript, CSS, jQuery, selector-engine,

End of the Amazon Rush?

2008-09-26T14:31:23Z

The Amazon rush is dead. I don’t think we’ll see authors getting the same kind of lift from it going forward.

Chris Miller1 shared his thoughts on the Amazon Rush 2, and how they’re getting to be old hat.

I’m glad this discussion is happening, because it’s been on my mind, but I haven’t really taken the time to form any coherent thoughts. Other people have, so be sure to go and read the comments, even if you don’t care to read what I have to say.

I think folks who listen to podiobooks may be approaching a saturation point for this type of thing. Amongst the subset of those folks who are on twitter and follow their favorite podcast authors it’s even more likely. If that’s as far as the message is getting, then I think authors have to beware of fan burnout.

As a consumer who primarily listens to audiobooks, the product that I want has already been delivered to me for free. Now I’m exceptionally appreciative of that fact, which has led me to buy many of these book (which I have no intention of reading in print form) to support the authors. In the perfect world I’d be able to buy the audiobook versions, but so far that’s only been possible for Scott Sigler’s Infected 3.

But really I bought the books for selfish reasons. I want to see these authors succeed because I want them to keep producing content4. I want to know what happens to Perry Dawsey and Keepsie Branson next. So while I can support these authors by spreading the word, writing reviews, or even just giving them money, I want to support their careers as writers, so they’ll keep writing. While I’m sure the love and adoration of their readers keep some of these folks going, I’m not sure it’s sustainable in the long term.

I have more to say about this, but I never intended to go on this long, so I’m going to let my thoughts roll around a bit more.

Notes

↑1 Didn’t I just say he was everywhere? And note that his post was spawned by a comment from Kris Johnson. I’ve seen this before. These two may be working together in some capacity…
↑2 “Amazon Rush” refers to a concerted effort by an author with an established fan-base to get into the Amazon charts by mobilizing said fan-base into purchasing their latest book all on the same day.
↑3 which is finally available from audible.com, although I was impatient and bought the CD version and converted it.
↑4 And being brutally honest there’s an even more selfish (and perhaps self-delusional) reason: If they can make it, maybe I can too.

T Is for…

2008-09-17T15:45:12Z

Last night, after the little ones were in bed my wife pointed to a pile of papers near the mail containing my oldest daughter’s school work (she’s in first grade). For one of the assignments she had to color a picture of something beginning with the letter T.

Yup, my kid drew a TARDIS. I’m so proud!

Unspecified Error: Learn by Doing

2008-09-17T13:05:07Z

The ever prolific Chris Miller 1 started a new site dedicated to learning by doing. That initial post resonated with me. I’ve felt that rush he’s talking about, and I’m thankful to Chris for allowing me to contribute.

My first contribution covers one of the many ways I use Python to bend iTunes to my will. Check it out2.

Notes

↑1 Seriously, Chris is everywhere. He’s just stealthy about it. If he were ninja we’d all be dead by now. I could easily see him becoming some kind of evil genius.
↑2 My posts should also show up in my LifeStream if you’re into that kinda thing.

Re-Learning How to Think (About Writing)

2008-09-02T19:37:23Z

Yikes! It’s September and I never posted my “Writing Update” for July. I’ve been busy, and one of the things I’ve been busy doing is taking Holly Lisle’s new online course: How to Think Sideways. I’m really enjoying the course, and I’m amazed at how well some of the techniques are working for me.

The first section of the course is all about ideas. If you write anything like me, sometimes you get ideas that seem to almost write themselves. In my case a lot of these had themes of objects that seemed to pop up in multiple otherwise unrelated stories. One of the first things I got out of this course was a much fuller understanding of what this means, how to map out the things that set off my imagination, and how to use this understanding to tap into story ideas in a more “on demand” fashion. It’s like finally having the address for that P.O. Box in Schenectady.

One of my biggest problem with ideas is that I do get a lot of them1. More that I possibly have time to write2. Sometimes I get pretty far into turning the idea into a story before I realize that it’s not as great as I thought, or it’s just not for me. One of the biggest things I’ve taken away from the course is how to figure these things out quickly, and well in advance. This lesson came with four versions of the proposal for her novel Talyn, three as examples of what not to do, and the version that sold to Tor (that’s about 150 pages of examples for one lesson).

The second section (which I’m getting into now) is about planning. What to plan. What not to plan. How to avoid over-planning. How to plan and still allow things to grow organically. This is something I’ve struggled with over numerous short stories and three novels, and I welcome any help in making sense of my experiences.

Invitation Only Limited Time Offer!

The first run of this course (300 seats) sold out fast. Holly has opened up sign ups between now and September 8th, at 9am EDT on an invitation only basis. If it’s sounds at all interesting, consider yourself invited.

Notes

↑1 That is too a problem! Trust me.
↑2 Although if someone wants to fund my early retirement I’d be willing to give it a go!

I’m a MINER

2008-08-29T13:15:11Z

I’m incredibly excited to announce that I’m now an official contributor to MINE. MINE, a pop-culture blog that digs a bit deeper, is the brain child of author/podcaster JC Hutchins, and I’m honored to listed amongst all the other great folks on board.

MINE is your one-stop shop for entertainment news, crazy rumors, Internet memes, whimsical news bites, music, gossip … you name it. We’ve amassed a small army of savvy, slightly-snarky writers — we call them “MINERS” — dedicated to extracting the most fun and interesting stuff from the webscape.
We dig bubblegum pop, video games, TV, podcasts and vidcasts, rock ‘n roll and R&B, movies (if they’ve got fireballs and giant robots, we’re so there), celeb gossip, nutty YouTube videos, the list goes on. Like you, our interests are all over the place, and we’re gunning to be the first online place you visit for the fantastical, fascinating and frivolous.

So far I’ve MINED up something truly evil, and truly awesome, and some incredible new software that will let you walk through your photos. I hope you’ll enjoy my contributions, and be sure to check out all the great content MINE has to offer.

Available August 25th: Mur Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps in Print

2008-08-22T17:52:54Z

Next Monday, August 25, Mur Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps will be available in print1 from Swarm Press. I’m really psyched about this one.

Welcome to Seventh City, the birthplace of super powers. The First Wave heroes are jerks, but they have the best gifts: flight, super strength, telepathy, genius, fire. The Third Wavers, like bar-owner Keepsie Branson and her friends, are stuck with the leftovers: the ability to instantly make someone sober, the power to smell the past, absolute control… over elevators. They just aren’t powerful enough to make a difference… at least that’s what they’ve always been told. But when the villain Doodad slips Keepsie a mysterious metal sphere, the Third Wavers become caught in the middle of a battle between egotistical heroes and manipulative villains.

Playing for Keeps does a great job of showing what it might really be like to live it a world where some people have super powers. It does this not by focusing on the heroes and villains, but on the folks with lesser powers. But it’s not all “I wish I had a cooler power and people liked me” angst (although there is some of that). It’s about friendship, about the dangers of seeing things as black and white. It’s also an action packed romp that’s a whole lot of fun.

But wait, there’s more!

The Podcast

Playing for Keeps was first release as a serialized podcast (in both audio and PDF form). The unabridged audio version is available from Podiobooks.com where it currently has five star ratings across the boards. This is how I consumed the book, and I recommend you check it out.

The Theme Song (now with video)

The audio version also featured the books theme song, written and performed by Beatnik Turtle. Mur recently held a contest where fans sent in video clips of themselves dancing, or lip syncing, or acting out a scene, or whatever to make a music video for the song. The results can be seen here.

Stories of the Third Wave

One of the most interesting thing that was done to promote the original podcast, was Stories of the Third Wave, a companion podcast featuring fan created content2. For the print release Mur has started a new season of Stories of the Third Wave featuring short fiction and in-universe radio programs. You can get them all by subscribing to the feed at PlayingForKeepsNovel.com. So far it’s quite the line up:

Easter Egg Commentary 1 — featuring the Easter Eggs originally hidden in the PDF version of the podcast
Manic Mondays #169 — a PfK themed episode of Tom Rockwell’s Manic Mondays
Super 107! — featuring Casey Shultz of SciFi Surplus and Natalie Metzger of Radio Isopod
Geek Survival Guide — a PfK themed episode of Zach Ricks’ Geek Survival Guide
Political Heroes — from Christopher Lester and Bryan Watson
The News from Bewilder Pond — from Matthew Wayne Selznick
Faith Matters — from Dr. John Cmar
The Cockroach’s Bite — fiction from DK Thompson
Conversations About Things With Wheels — from Joe Mieczkowski of On The Podcast
LoveLines — a full cast program, produced by Kimi Alexandre
Knit Spirit — a PfK themed episode of Ivy Reisner’s Knit Sprit
Gestalt — fiction from JC Hutchins
Block Party! — a PfK themed episode of Jason Block’s Block Party
This Seventh City Life — from Christiana Ellis
A Klamath Home Companion — from Grant Baciocco

The PDF

Want to give the book a read right now? Then head on over and download the entire book in PDF, including a all new short story Parasite Awakens, not currently available anywhere else3.

Still Not Convinced?

Look, Playing for Keeps is an awesome book. You should buy it, next Monday, August 25th, from Amazon.com. But you don’t have to take my word for it…

Notes

↑1 Technically the book is available right now due to the fact that Amazon listed the books when they arrived, but just ignore that. You can also ignore it if Amazon says “Out of Stock” because it’s practically meaningless.
↑2 I contributed to Episode 6
↑3 This story is intended to bridge Playing for Keeps with it’s planned sequel

Links of Interest (July 18th 2008 Through August 21st 2008)

2008-08-22T09:47:07Z

Tor’s e-book giveaway: Someone is WRONG on the Internet: Tor books recently gave away a batch of free e-books as publicity for the new Tor.com. Many of the books were of the “first in series” variety. Some folks expected to be able to buy the sequels at Tor.com when it launched, and weren’t happy to find they could not. A representative from Tor responded, and it seems thing got a bit heated. An interesting look at an unintended side effect of “free” (be sure to read the comments).
Tags: Tor, e-books, free, backlash, Chris-Meadows
Zombies attack musician, everyone laughs (including musician): JoCo attacked by Zombies an the 2008 New Media Expo
Tags: video, Jonathan-Coulton, zombies, Music, New-Media-Expo, NME
It’s a tasty thing: J. Dack posits “Scalzi’s Law”. I doubt this will be disproved any time soon.
Tags: John-Scalzi, Scalzi’s-Law, bacon, funny
Ballantine Books to Publish Book Inspired by the Webcomic Garfield Minus Garfield: I enjoy the heck out of “Garfield Minus Garfield”, but I assumed it would go the way of “Dylan Hears a Who”. I applaud Jim Davis and Ballantine Books for embracing the comic strip remix rather than issuing the standard cease and desist notice.
Tags: Garfield, Garfield-Minus-Garfield, Jim-Davis, Ballantine-Books, mashup, remix, comics, webcomics,
PDTool: A sliderule to help determine copyright status.
Tags: copyright, public-domain, tools
A Talk with JoCo: Five part interview with Jonathan Coulton (both mp3s and transcripts are available).
Tags: Jonathan-Coulton, interview,

Double Trouble: Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris Rush Amazon.com

2008-08-22T11:36:47Z

Authors Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris are attempting to make a splash on Amazon.com with their new novels, both sequels to award nominated novel. You can help by buying their new books today (08/08/08) at 8am PDT1. An event they are referring to as Double Trouble.

Digital Magic by Phillipa Ballentine

The Fey are gone… and with them, magic. At least, that is how things seem at the conclusion of the award-nominated novel Chasing the Bard. ~ Lord what fools these mortals be. ~ Penherem is a quaint, sleepy English village where people go to escape the 21st Century. Hiding from the world of laptop computers, the Internet, and wireless communication, is Ella. A writer, now barren of ideas and drive, she resigns herself to a quiet life of solitude. Everything changes with the arrival of a shapeshifting thief. Suddenly, everyone begins to change–from the local librarian to the lady of the manor–revealing their true natures and dangerous secrets. Something in this sleepy English village is awakening… something that might be better left alone.

Digital Magic is the sequel to Chasing the Bard, which is available in paperback, or as a free audiobook.

The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant by Tee Morris

Chicago, 1930, and following the financial calamity of Black Thursday, Billi is doing everything he can to keep his business afloat. The change in seasons, though, brings him a case that appears to be a true blessing from The Fates. Chicago Cubs Manager Joe McCarthy suspects something fishy with the Baltimore Mariners, a new team in the league, and he’s hiring Billi to look into it.

What appears to be the dream job - being paid to research and attend baseball games - turns out to be a nightmare as he discovers one of the Nine Talismans of Acryonis somewhere in play at Wrigley.

And wouldn’t you know it - with two outs and bases loaded, the heavy hitter of the Underworld “Big Al” gets early parole from The Big Dugout and is swinging two in the Batter’s Circle.

The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant is the sequel to Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword available in paperback and as a free audiobook.

Notes

↑1 I checked with Tee and no matter what’s been said, he meant Pacific Daylight Time

Re: Cover to Cover #319B: Electronic Formats Revisisted

2008-07-28T10:06:32Z

Dragon Page: Cover to Cover has been discussing ebooks at length lately, especially since Mike Stackpole is selling his stuff in the iTunes App Store. In the latest episode they spend the opening section lampooning the idea of e-book standards. The conversation that ensued contained a good deal of misinformation1.

So I’m posting this in response here, hoping to keep the conversation going (I could post it as a comment on the site, but it’s a bit long for that, and it’s way to long to leave as a voicemail without sounding like even more of a crank).

Stand Alone Readers in the iTunes Store

The discussion gives an impression about the stand alone readers (specifically Stanza and eReader) having access to a bunch of old public domain content nobody actually wants to read. No mention is made of putting content you purchased outside iTunes or creative commons works into these readers, which seems to be their primary purpose.

Stanza

The Stanza iPod Touch/iPhone app is an offshoot of the Stanza desktop reader (Mac Only). Any file you can read on the desktop reader2 can be transferred to the mobile Stanza app. This covers a lot of commercially available content.

Also the mobile Stanza app is pre-configured to pull ePub files from Feedbooks. Feedbooks has 2500+ titles available for free. While many works are those you avoided reading in high school, it also includes titles from authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Lester Del Rey, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft, Andre Norton, H. Beam Piper, Robert Silverberg and E.E. “Doc” Smith. Those too old school for you? How about Steven Brust, Tobias Buckell, Cory Doctorow, James Patrick Kelly, and Charles Stross, to name a few.

eReader

Although it’s stated that the eReader can be used to download free content (I admit I don’t even know if can download free content), no mention is made that it is actually designed to download your purchases from eReader. Also, any multi-format purchase from Fictionwise is also supported.

Since I personally avoid books that come locked in one format, the vast majority of my Fictionwise purchases are instantly downloadable to my iPod touch. That’s a big win for me, because it means when I’m home I can read on my dedicated e-book reader, with it’s larger screen, but when I’m stuck in the waiting room I can keep reading the same book off my iPod Touch without buying it twice.

ePub and Tower of eBabel

There is a group of [...] e-book enthusiasts who are deaf on anything that is not the one true ring, the one true way. They want everything to be available in one universal format, which doesn’t happen to exist yet. [...] and they want it to then be cross-platform available because they’re very resentful if seven years ago they bought a book for their palm pilot and now they can’t play it on their iPod.

Yeah, those people. Me.

Mike and Mike then then proceed to talk down to “those people” as if we all just fell off the esparanto truck by giving the same arguments all the digital music players that didn’t play MP3s used to give and why music would always have DRM. Making a buck will always trump the demands of the consumer. Format wars will always go on forever and ever and there will be no standard delivery mechanism3.

More importantly, the format does exist in the form of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)’s ePub, and it does have vendor support. Adobe, Amazon4, eBook Technologies, OSoft, VitalSource and LibreDigital (among others) all support ePub in their current products. Sony just added ePub support to it’s line of readers, and Bookeen is currently working on adding it to their Cybook readers. You can get any of Feedbooks 2500+ titles in .epub. Heck, even the last of the freebie releases from TOR was released in .epub rather than .mobi.

Maybe I’m Crazy

I like e-books. I prefer them to print. I like being able to increase the font to rest my eyes. I like being able to read them on multiple devices. I don’t want this to happen to my books. I feel that e-books have to be more convenient that print to really take off5. So either I’m a nut-job, or I’m who the people trying to sell these things should be targeting. I’m the one going to go out and extolling the virtues of these things to the people I know who are hanging by the sidelines waiting to see if they want to jump in. Feel free to tell me which one you think I am in the comments6

Notes

↑1 I honestly don’t believe this was intentional.
↑2 Stanza supports HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, RTF, Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, Palm doc, and EPUB (at least the DRM free variations of the above)
↑3 Yeah, that’s why we don’t have a way to deliver audio programming in mp3 files over HTTP using RSS to any number of devices.
↑4 Amazon supports ePub in it’s Mobipocket products, but there’s no mention of the Kindle yet
↑5 It’s very likely publishers don’t what them to take off. Record companies still want you to buy CDs too.
↑6 If I don’t get any I’ll know I’m a crazy person talking to myself.

“Brave Men Run” Web-a-Thon Followup

2008-07-22T12:22:53Z

In case you’re curious, Matthew Wayne Selznick posted a two part followup to his Sovereign Summer Sunday Event: Part 1, Part 2.