Finally live on the iBookstore!
For months I’ve been working to get my books onto Apple’s iBookstore. I’ve worked through a number of systems, formatting, and I’m finally glad to say that The Saints Go Dying and The Marinara Murders are both live in the store (plus the audiobook of The Little Book of Gold–the ebook version of it will be coming soon). Apple has become a big platform for book sales, and–in many ways–it was Apple that spurred me to self-publishing. When I read about the iPad, I wanted to get The Saints Go Dying on there when it launched. I never made it, Read more…
XOXO
I’m in Portland this weekend for the first ever XOXO Festival, The festival describes itself as an “arts and technology festival celebrating disruptive creativity.” That was enough right there to get me interested. But then they continue: “We’re bringing independent artists who use the Internet to make a living doing what they love together with the technologists building the tools that make it possible.” I couldn’t resist. I bought a ticket within minutes of them selling out, and now we’re finally here. I’ll be at the festival for the next two days while Mary and Hannah explore Portland. Already we’ve had Read more…
I’ve been pirated! And I think I’m pretty ok with that.
In November, I participated on two panels with the Tacoma Arts Symposium. One of them was about social media/technology for artists. We had a lot of good questions from the audience, but a significant amount of them were about the audience member’s fear of piracy. People were afraid that if they started blogging their pictures or putting there ideas online, that they would be stolen. I came down pretty hard on the other side. I said something to the effect of piracy being a validation that you had actually produced something of value. That your art was actually good. That Read more…
The future is here.
Watch these three videos. Between them, they’ll take 8 minutes of your time. It’s a good reminder that if the world looks like this in 2012 … things are going to be remade again and again in the next few decages. This warehouse robot company was just bought by Amazon. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KRjuuEVEZs?wmode=transparent] This Google car can drive itself. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE?wmode=transparent] This tiny robot can jump 30 feet. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo?wmode=transparent]
March 9th is the South Sound Technology Conference
I'm on the Steering Committee for the South Sound Technology Conference and will be speaking on a panel as well. It should be a great day next Friday! Join us for the 2012 South Sound Technology Conference! Friday, March 9, 2012William W. Philip HallCheck in at 8:30 a.m. Don't miss… Steve Jarvis, VP Product Development Expedia-Mobile Application Development Howard Schmidt, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Leaders from many community and technology organizations As the technology showcase for Tacoma and the South Puget Sound, this conference brings together leaders from industry, education, and government to discuss and demonstrate innovations and their Read more…
If you haven’t checked out pinterest.com yet, I think you should. It’s an online pinboard, and after playing around with it for awhile, you might identify with this guy. 🙂 Source: Uploaded by user via Erik on Pinterest I’ve enjoyed creating boards around my main interests: books, movies, parks, travel, etc. It’s pretty fun! Here are my boards if you want to check them out.
SOPA and PIPA
I didn't black out this blog today, but I think SOPA and PIPA and bad solutions to a trumped up problem. The SOPA and PIPA laws attempt to correct piracy in a really counterproductive way. Here's a good run-down on why that is: [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/31100268 w=500&h=283] For me personally, when I think about my books, there are worse things than having my books pirated. Like, obscurity. I have not enabled digital rights management on my books (when given the choice). I freely enabled it for as many sharing options as possible. I have willingly emailed the ebook file to book Read more…
Convenient!
This is an interesting alternative to reading newspapers online. Clicking that “next” button is so much hassle. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOMIBdM6N7Q?wmode=transparent] (via The Stranger)
“The back half of the chessboard”
Matthew Yglesias had a really interesting post last month that I keep thinking about, so I've finally decided to post on it. There's an old story about a king who agrees to pay someone by putting one grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, two grains of rice on the next, four on the next, then eight, sixteen, thirty two, etc. Each square has twice the number of grains of rice as the previous one. The king things he's got a bargain, but with 64 squares on the chessboard, he's actually bankrupted the kingdom. By just the Read more…
Steve Jobs
One of the books I started and finished over the weekend in Portland was Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. It is a massive read, and I found it at times very good.There are a lot of stories I hadn't known, but the stories of most of the products–the iPad, the iPhone, I had picked up recently. Perhaps most interesting was the role Steve played with Pixar. I had no idea how active he was with the company, and some of the stories about the creation of Toy Story were really interesting (early on Disney kept pushing for more "edge," so Read more…
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