Check out Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers at A Book Apart, featuring a foreword by Jeffery Zeldman.

It turns out that many of the programs I liked for opening PDF eBooks are all wrong for ePUB versions… ugh. Also, as before, it seems like several of the programs want to convert these books to some other format. What if I just want to read the thing? I’ve done a little research, and found a few links.

First, I found Sigil.

It turns out Sigil is not meant to read ePUB at all, but create it. It’s quite a lot like Dreamweaver or Coda, with a code view and a WYSIWYG editor preview, which so far works pretty well for reading. What it revealed to me is that ePUB looks a lot like a zipped HTML file on the inside, complete with CSS and images. Useful, but not what I asked for.

Then Google turned up the desktop Sony Reader.

[NO SCREENSHOT]

I danced past this one because I assumed it was for people who owned the book reader of the same name. Sony Reader is the first electronic paper reader I know of, but it turns out you don’t have to have one in order to use this software. This program requires a restart to install, which I was not prepared to do – I’m in the middle of a blog post here! Caveat emptor.

Next up was Adobe Digital Editions.

I’m generally untrusting of anything resembling “reader” that comes from Adobe, because PDF has notorious security holes. For all I know, this is an AIR app, but I’m not sure. The “reading view” seems to work fine, but even on this small 60-page book, I can only scroll in a “page down” fashion, there is no smooth scrolling. This app also asked me activate with Adobe’s service, something I really don’t need. 2 out of 5, nothing special.

For a review of Stanza, see my previous post.

A promising development was the ePUB Reader extension for Firefox.

I normally use Camino, though I wish they would update the underlying rendering engine, and I normally just use Firefox for “work” because I have lots of extensions installed. Reading this HTML5 book counts as “work”, so this extension seems to make sense for now. It does do smooth scrolling, and I was able to open the file just by dragging it to Firefox, something that didn’t work previously, despite ePUB’s HTML-ishness. This also has a “Library” view, and support for bookmarks, so I don’t really see it as missing anything.

So far, none of the tools I’ve tried have attempted to majorly re-format the book. The world is a happy place.

The award for least intuitive website includes Calibre as a finalist. The other readers weren’t far behind.

Also open source and cross-platform like Sigil, this program made it hard to discover that it did indeed open ePUB files for reading. They go on and on about all the different formats for conversion, similar to the 1990s Mac favorite Graphic Converter, but I wasn’t sure if it was a decent reader. Once i figured out how to open a book for reading, I found the navigation unintuitive and clunky. The interface really seems geared toward converting and managing the books more than reading them. If that’s what you need, I think this program would be pretty great.

Once I came across FBReader, I stopped.

While I am no stranger to code and experimental computer programs, I really wasn’t looking forward to taking risks to read a book. I wish the developer the best of luck.

There also appeared to be some readers that worked over the internet, but I tend to see one of the advantages of books to be their on-demand nature. I should be able to read from an airplane, train or during a power outage. I do live in hurricane country, after all.

I hope this little list has helped I think I will end up using the Firefox Extension, when all is said and done. One day, I may just go for a Kindle, but for now I will keep my digital book reading on my laptop.

Credit must be given to the people who wrote this post on epub readers, which was useful in realizing that some of the tools I was passing by actually were meant to be used for this purpose.

Jeremy goes into some universal Design Principles, like the 80/20 Rule and Postel’s Law. He even touches on the current and future state of web accessibility. This video is a must-watch for anyone who writes HTML or creates websites.

The most visible way the Foundation will be providing for the community is by opening a space to work, learn, share and network in the heart of the city, in the former Urban Think! Bookstore. A few months ago we put out a survey trying to understand who is in our community, what they’re working on, what they need, and how they may be interested in working together to provide for our community.

To that end, we are asking for the community’s input on one of the very most visible parts of our project, the name. You can go to our site and vote on these names. I have copied the text here for convenience and posterity’s sake.

We came up with (way more than) 5 names, and one person was assigned to write a sentence or two to give the name some weight, backstory, what-have-you. Here they are:

Sharehaus
(or sharehouse)

Inspiration statement:
The single word that best reflects the spirit, activities, diversity, and potential of the space is share. Beyond sharing ideas, workspace, talents, and experiences, share speaks to the collaborative mission ahead. While also German for house, our haus is homage to the kindred spirit of the Bauhaus movement and its hallmark of uniting art, craft, and technology to improve society. Sharehaus. Organic, distinctive, and inviting. A new term for a new horizon.

Urban Rethink!

Inspiration statement:
A profound and transformative look at the role of a space, once a bookstore, in the fabric of a neighborhood, a metro area, a community of patrons, and the lives of creative individuals. Always reinventing ourselves, rebuilding the community, redoubling our efforts, and rewarding our patrons. The name has been used for the last 6 months to collect support for the as-yet-unnamed space.

Urban Think!
(or Urban Think! _____ (third environment defining word to be determined))

Inspiration statement:
If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it! The Urban Think name has long been synonymous with creativity in an urban neighborhood and although books won’t be the focus of the new space, creativity will always have a home here. The name pays homage to the original bookstore as well as the Urban Think! Foundation, which will continue to operate the space.

lively+hood
(or livelihood)

Inspiration statement:
This concept defines a place where creative professionals, enthusiasts, and beyond do more than exist or congregate – they thrive. Lively expresses the energy, vibrancy, vitality, and diversity intrinsic to creativity. Hood stems from our location inside one of Orlando’s most recognizable urban neighborhoods: Thornton Park. Lively+hood provides sustenance and a means by which creatives can grow, evolve, expand, and thrive.

Think! Collective

Inspiration statement:
The first word Think! pays homage to the former tenant of the space, the Urban Think! Bookstore, and the positive impact it made on the community of Thornton Park. The word Collective expresses the new chapter of this community staple and also defines the space as a place where creative individuals, as well as individuals who support creativity, can gather and exchange the same belief that community inspires creativity and vice versa.

We’re asking people to rate these names, 5 being best. Please visit our site and give each a rating. I really can’t wait to show you what is planned, and to get you involved in what we’re building, not just on a local scale. Keep believing!

I heard about Coworking from a friend of mine, Alex Rudloff, about 4 years ago – we met online because he had an avatar (user picture) showing my college’s logo – he was working for AOL/Netscape Propellor at the time. Alex and myself started an event which we called “Coworking Fridays”, essentially a Jelly, in order to build support for a possible coworking space in downtown Orlando. Now that group meets for Coworking Tuesdays at Stardust. A few years later, a commercial real estate landlord named John Hussey created CoLab Orlando, and we had our first space.

I have written several posts in other venues, and on this blog, about why I decided to get involved in the movement (I was interested in creating an “open computer lab” as early as 2003), and why working together is better than working alone (inspiration, collaboration, validation, community, integration). Tara Hunt asked everyone to write a blog post or tweet about these following subjects:

1. how you first heard about the movement
2. why you decided to get involved
3. when your space opened up or you started working out of a coworking space
4. why coworking is better than working alone (or in another situation, like a coffee shop)
5. Tag your tweets #coworkingday at the end of posts about coworking

What gets you excited about Coworking? In Orlando, or elsewhere?

P.S. Don’t hyphenate that word.

I have spent considerable time and attention on several podcasts in the past, including one I conducted for Florida Creatives, and some I have helped friends produce. In this way, along with my co-hosts and guests, I am able to become an environmental factor for others.

This is all a very long way of introducing a new podcast, whose name is derived from the building where I spend most of my waking (and sleeping) hours. My home is near downtown Orlando, and it is a distinctive Yellow color. Therefore, I would like to introduce the Our Yellow House podcast. (please excuse my plain-looking site)

The first episode features a great friend of mine, Eric Marden. It was recorded a couple of weeks ago, but I’d say few people outside of Twitter have seen it yet. I have included the player here for your enjoyment:

Download Eric Marden MP3
Download Eric Marden OGG

Why a new show? I thought about recycling old show titles, and I listened to several episodes from my past audio adventures, searching for the passion that brought me to create the first fleet of shows back in 2006 and 2007. I decided the driving force was a sense of curiosity and wonder, and that discovery needed fewer boundaries. Several of my past shows seemed to be “about” something. One show was even (poorly) titled Art::Meta, before I re-named it Florida Creatives. Therefore, the new goal is less agenda, more talk. More free association, more passion, etc.

It’s certainly not “a show about nothing”, and I am starting to get the idea that we will end up following breadcrumbs from show to show. In this first show, we touched on Temporary Autonomous Zones, the GPL, Free Agency, Coworking, and a few other topics that deserve some more exploration. I certainly believe I will be inviting all kinds of people to the show. If you’re interested, drop me a line. We’ll chat. While you’re at it, subscribe via RSS, iTunes or on Miro Guide to follow me.

From 53 Coworking Centers in the Top Cities for Entrepreneurs:

Of course while bootstrapping a business every entrepreneur is looking for ways to keep what little money they do have but build an empire at the same time. Coworking is a relatively new option for business owners when it comes to getting office space.

If you don’t already know coworking centers are places that allow you to rent a desk, office, or simply come to hangout in an open room with other business owners doing the same thing. The centers will offer wifi, coffee, comfortable furniture, printing and of course an innovative setting. You have to signup for one of their packages that could range from $10 for a day pass to a few hundred dollars to rent your own desk for the month and a variety of options in between.

Whatever you do it becomes a cheaper and often more comfortable and innovative setting then renting your own private office space.

Very nice, I can save some money. I was glad to see the list of spaces so long – 53 spaces in 10 cities – but I was not very happy at their coworking sales pitch.

Edit: Plus there is a picture of a bunch of folks at a Jelly working in someone’s living room (I assume JellyNYC). That’s fine. There was even a token female in the picture. I was not too sure this screamed “entrepreneurship”.

My reply:

Your description of Coworking is abysmal. It does not lend any help to differentiating Coworking from a shared desk, pay-as-you-go office environment.

One of the most important things about a great coworking space is the safe atmosphere it creates for collaboration and mentoring.

At a coffee shop, I can’t turn to the person next to me and ask their opinion on something, or brainstorm an idea for my project – they would look at me funny.

At many shared desk environments, it’s dog-eat-dog, and if two people are in the same business, they’d be in direct competition, and likely stealing clients from each other.

Since the coworking space is more collegial, you can share that project with your potential competition, or hand it to him when you get to busy, and he might be inclined to hand the next one to you.

Also, the vibe of a great coworking space is hard to match, even at most places that use the term “Co-Working” somewhere in their sales pitch. The collected energy, passion, and raw talent is often dripping from the walls. There are many spaces where people are not just getting started, they’re putting down roots.

Since I’m involved in creating a space with Coworking elements right now, I feel like I am a bit more touchy about this subject than otherwise.

P.S. If you haven’t taken the Urban Re-Think Survey yet, I’d love it if you did. It would really help us out.

Orlando Art Scene 1 hour ago

…and I just had to read it and leave my two cents.

There was a comment by Colleen B, the local community manager for Yelp. Then there was a comment by Neon F, whom I know to be Neon Forest, a new art gallery opening up down the street from me next week.

At the end of Neon’s post, there was this line:

Orlando Art Fair 2011, who’s on board? I’ll help get it organized…let’s see who’s really motivated

Ouch. One of my pet peeves is people who say “hey, let’s start something huge and complicated!” It’s one reason why I tread lightly before agreeing to work with a startup company, and why many of the emails I’m sent about building some crazy website go into the Archive bin pretty quickly.

Then I started Trolling. I probably was too extreme in my commenting, but I tried to add some positive stuff in there too:

Please don’t start any more big festival events, Dustin. ( I assume you’re Dustin, anyway )

I think there are enough nascent efforts that just need some support and people to shout about them in bullhorns.

Before I go on, I want to say I’m very glad you’re opening a gallery in this neighborhood. The Orange/Michigan/SoDo/Conway area really needs some more culture and nightlife.

I think one problem our scene has is that people decide to start something new without really taking the time to become involved with all the other events that are out there.

The problem with starting YET ANOTHER new thing is that in order for these large events to be successful, they require more than one person to be involved. A micro-scene. At this point, so many people have started their own scenes, they are all spread too thin.

The only way to make sure people aren’t spread too thin, without any of these events dying off, is to add new people into the system. One great way to get new people involved is by having events that are so large and well-established that the word of mouth brings in all kinds of new people, particularly the haters and out-of-towners Colleen mentioned in her original post.

::phew:: Sorry about that. I think you hit on a sore spot.

I’m really looking forward to coming to your gallery. I’ll be out of town for the opening, but I’m not far away. I am pretty close by.

Too harsh?

I would just really like if there were fewer people saying “I’m starting” or “I just started” or “can you help me with”; I’d rather hear “we’ve been doing” or “can you give us some help with?”.

It’s not to say I’ve never wanted to start something new, or big, or complicated, or naive, but I just hope my comments can make more than a few people pause and think about exactly what it is they’re committing to.

In March, Urban Think! closed its doors after 8 years. A few years ago, their education and children’s programs spawned the Urban Think! Foundation and Page 15, their first project. Now a new project is beginning, dubbed Urban Re-Think for now. I have been involved with several preliminary meetings with Julia young, the executive director of Page 15, and Darren McDaniel, the former Programming Director for the Downtown Media Arts Center. There are many other people involved, such as the Urban Think! Foundation’s Board of Directors, and Katie Ball, local pot-stirrer, and star of public radio. I’m sure the list will grow beyond blog-post length before long.

Right now, we have reached a point where we want to reach out to you, the Orlando community, and find out what you’d like to get out of a community center in the heart of Downtown. There are lots of benefits to the location and the involvement of the people who have been brought in so far, and it can only get better.

For myself, I’m looking to gain a place to work, hold meetings, events, provide training, meet my creative peers and role-models, and continue to support the community in any way I can. If we had a clubhouse, a place where we could feel safe, and where we had control, I think we could build something really amazing.

I’ve got all kinds of fun ideas, but before this becomes Ryan’s own personal Urban Think!, I’d like to point you to our survey. Please check it out, and take a few minutes to tell us about you, your creative pursuits, and how this community center might help you reach your goals, and take away a few of the road blocks we all face.

Take the Survey

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

TEDxPuget Sound, Sep 2009
More about Simon Sinek

Some posts about this year’s BlogOrlando:

• Christa’s Day at BarCampOrlando
• My video from the pillow fight, Pillowlando
• Krissi at BarCampOrlando
• Keith at BarCampOrlando
• BarCampOrlando on the Linux Souls blog
• Jim’s BarCamp Orlando photoset
• Searching Flickr for “barcamporlando”

BarCampOrlando 2010 by JRNoded

Download New Media Producers Meetup
 
Length: 3:13

The original meetup post and facebook event are around, but I took some great notes during the New Media Producers meetup using iEtherPad.

Also, I planned to show a YouTube video I recorded with a public media veteran and documentary filmmaker from St. Paul, MN, Barry Madore. However, it was way too noisy in Stardust. I like the idea of priming people’s brains with a short talk or story, but you’ll just have to check it out here:

Barry on the Tube

This blog post is audio. Essentially, I wonder if our skills of storytelling will go away if we’re able to link to everything. Instead of “you should have been there”, will it be more like “I’ve got to find this link for you”.

I’d love your comments.

Testable Credentials

How do you get people to believe your ideas? Well, there’s something we can learn from really sleazy ideas that catch on. For years, Snapple struggled to fight rumors that it supported the KKK.
…
This crazy rumor challenged people to “see for themselves.” See, look, there’s a K on it. Its credibility derived from something that people could test for themselves. My brother and I call this a “testable credential.” Notice what’s going on here conceptually—when we think about making ideas credible, we usually think about the source. The Surgeon General says something, and we believe it, because he’s a credible authority. But when you use a testable credential, you’re basically outsourcing the credibility of your idea to the audience. It’s like a “try before you buy” concept for ideas.

These sorts of things go over very well in conversations at bars, and they challenge our knowledge of trivia. For example, someone recently claimed to me that Ghirardeli Chocolate was owned by Kraft. Before the rise of internet-connected phones, I would take their word for it and try to remember to look it up later. However, even if I didn’t, I’d probably still spread that meme until I could prove otherwise.

Now, every bet can be settled with Wikipedia and IMDB on your phone – particularly if these sites were to provide an off-line version of their database. I know there are several ways to get Wikipedia’s English database onto smartphones, even if it takes up a few gigabytes of space.

What will be the next behavior that is outmoded by the wide availability of inexpensive portable internet-connected devices? Maybe my friends and family will stop calling me because they’re pretty sure I’m “In front of my computer”.

My response could be: “Of course I am, I picked up my phone!”

Also, if anyone out there is looking for the mailing list for New Media Orlando, jump on there and join the discussion.

Hear what I mean:
Crapface 09 – That was like ESPN!

I’ll admit I have a lot of fun recording and keeping up with the DrupalEasy Podcast, but our goals are SO different from that of a laid-back, wine-induced, pop culture free-play verbal romp.

I’m now trying to get a group of people excited about producing local independent media so we can publish it on Orlando Scene TV, but the goals and the tone there will be equally different from DrupalEasy or Crapface. I miss sitting on the couch and broadcasting to 3 people. Let’s bring it back.

In response to my eBook reader review, I got some discussion. One comment in particular drew me to want to write a longer post.
Adam McKercher (I went to school with him) wrote a comment:

I don’t know how you [...] keep up with all the “If Only” aspects of computer culture, the vastness and need for improvement, and constant revision is what ultimately lead me to change majors.

I have to say, being in a business like this requires you to be able to look through a telescope, binoculars, bifocals and a magnifying glass, sometimes in the same sentence. Keeping yourself sane while doing so is… an exercise in the power of the human brain. I’m actually hoping to do less “microscope” level work in the future. I really like following trends and making recommendations based on my knowledge of some sort of understanding of the eco-system.

At the same time, when I talk about following trends, it’s difficult to draw a hard line between watching trends and keeping up with the Joneses. If you pay too much attention to what everyone else is doing, it will end up influencing your medium-term decisions, and most critically, your day-to-day work.

A former manager of mine had this illness: the “me-too” illness. My coworkers and I started calling it “chasing the bunny”, like a greyhound on the racetrack. We would be hard at work on something that we were told to do the previous week, and then we would get these mixed messages from our manager. Once we learned to ignore it, things were OK, we were able to focus on work. However, now we were used to ignoring our manager. This tells me that chasing the bunny is not a good management style. The environment we had was not agile enough to be able to make these changes in direction very easily.

I guess a really easy way to avoid this is to have a great mission statement for your business or product, and create a very clear vision – the place you want to reach in 3, 5 or even 25 years. If you know where you’re headed, you won’t be prone to rubbernecking at your competition while you should be keeping your eyes on the road.

This idea is not completely mine (at least not lately). I’ve been reading a killer book on a recommendation from Mike. The subtitle of this book is “How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant”. Basically, their advice tells you to look at the competition, and “zag” where they “zig”. Instead of directly competing, try removing from your product three things that they claim are important, and add a few things that they’re not even thinking about.

In the case of 37 Signals’ Basecamp, they may have just taken out those three things and stopped. I’d love to see the 4-square Strategy Canvas for any 37 Signals product. Maybe I’ll have to blog about this one later.

The book itself was written in 2004, so their case studies are a bit dated – similar to how reading The Long Tail (which was written pre-YouTube), kind of feels like it’s missing the boat on the biggest long-tail product of the decade.

At the same time, if you’re any good at abstraction, you can take the case studies in these books, extrapolate a bit, and come up with a decent picture of what the author(s) might have said, had they gotten an extra 6 or 7 years to write the book. Maybe that’s the best argument ever to create “living” books, like the Complete Guide to Google Wave. When you’re writing about something that changes almost daily, how do you reach the point when you can say, “this is the most complete picture of this concept”. I read earlier this week about a fancy kind of publication called a Monograph. What a very old-world concept. Very pretentious. Very wrong.

How much do you follow trends, and consciously let those trends effect your work? Would you rather just stop reading raw, real-time messages, and only consume “dead tree” media, allowing time for the message to slowly drip into your train of thought? Do you have a system for absorbing this stuff at all?

(psst: I’ve heard good things about the Kindle, though I have not extensively used one myself. [affiliate link])

EDIT: If you’re looking to create ePUB files, check out the beautiful and open source Sigil.

I’m learning to develop for iPhone, so I found two books from Pragmatic Programmers, Cocoa Programming Quick Start and iPhone SDK Development.

Following this, you’ll get a screenshot of each reader, and a bit about why I would / wouldn’t use it.

Here’s Preview:

Preview

After having gone through the other apps in this list, Preview is actually not too bad for reading technical books, but not my first choice.

I had heard Andy Ihnatko talking about Stanza. I think he likes it to synch books between his iPhone and his laptop. I’m pretty sure you can also buy books wirelessly from your iPhone inside this app.

stanza

The problem here is that this app is designed for reading story books – tons and tons of text, no fancy formatting. In fact, this app strips out all of the formatting and fonts, to the point that it makes no sense for tech manuals.

I saw Tofu on another site reviewing Mac eBook readers.

Tofu

In the description, there was a line “Tofu is different”. In fact, Tofu works almost exactly like Stanza (at least for my purposes). While Tofu did keep more of the fonts and formatting, Tofu still wants to break the layout that the original publishers created, which makes this the wrong choice for programming books.

Then I discovered my saving grace: Skim – and it’s open source!

Skim

It may be because it is created by programmers scratching their own itches, or maybe because it is not geared specifically for mobile devices or story books, but something just felt right about Skim. I really like the ability to highlight text and leave notes. Everything you highlight now becomes a bookmark you can jump back to for future reference. This seems like an app I’ll keep open while I’m coding to go back and refer to examples and explanations. More or less, exactly what I was looking for.

It also has pretty good search functions – when it finds a word you’re looking for, it circles it in red. You also have tools to manually circle text, draw a box, underline or strike through text, or draw arrows to help you annotate graphics.

There is a full screen mode and a presentation mode, as well as a neat feature called the reading bar – basically, a line-by-line bookmark to let you remember where you left off.

I’ve said the most about Skim because that’s my pick. It’s free, Mac-only, and open source.

A final note: I also tried an application called eReader Pro. This seemed to be tied to an online bookstore, and had zero support for PDF. Any tech book I’ve seen comes as a PDF, so steer clear of this one if you’re a programmer.

While I was at the museum I also purchased a Diana F+ Camera by Lomography and proceeded to incorrectly load the film – I’m pretty sure my first sixteen photos on Lomo will be ruined, but we’ll see.

I am finally getting to hang out at Proctors after having built them a new site last spring. It’s cool to actually see this space “IRL”.

Now I should get back to work fixing their Drupal TV displays. I only have a few minutes before I go meet everyone from the theatre.

Click here to register and get more info about DrupalCamp

Drupal has a very active community that will gather at DrupalCamp Florida on February 20 and 21st, where new and seasoned users learn about and share their knowledge of Drupal. The event is an opportunity to get an overview of Drupal and the developer and user community in Florida.

We will be having an event after all the learning to get some grub, drinks, relax, and get to know each other better.

If you’re interested in this event, please comment below and let me know!

Download a 10 minute podcast about the 2010 Florida DrupalCamp and our Coding for a Cause non-profit benefit

I was overjoyed that this crappy video I shot was getting used in something so professional and awesome.

Then I realised that we can bring that feeling to dozens and dozens of people every time we release a half-hour show, and a whole bunch of pieces clicked together in my head.

In order to really have the community feel like they own this thing, we have to make a pointed effort to include their contributions in every single episode, and make a call for entries loud and clear.

This isn’t about UGC. This is about something more real than that. Each community member has an equal chance of creating something that makes the final product better.

Then, they will want to call their mom and their friends and tell them “turn on channel 1, watch my video on this show!”

If I can call my mom, then we have succeeded.

When there are moms calling other moms, we have reached the tipping point.

If all those moms and their kids give us a few bucks, we can quit our jobs and make this full-time. We can rent a coworking space, train new filmmakers, buy them equipment, build a network and live the dream.

From Yahoo News:

The recession has squeezed advertising further, forcing broadcasters to accelerate their push for new revenue to pay for programming.

That will play out in living rooms across the country. The changes could mean higher cable or satellite TV bills, as the networks and local stations squeeze more fees from pay-TV providers such as Comcast and DirecTV for the right to show broadcast TV channels in their lineups. The networks might even ditch free broadcast signals in the next few years.

I say this can be a good thing for Local Producers looking to grab ad dollars from retailers in their area, and find ways to connect with their local community and economy. The hyper-local video shows we are producing in the dark now will have a hungry audience looking for content.

However, I don’t think that we can be successful unless internet gets a lot more ubiquitous – we either need more competition, or more over-the-air access to the network, or both. Where is all the WiMax we were promised?

Once we get the WiMax, then why doesn’t it come bundled with content, similar to Verizon FiOS? They would do well to throw in a set-top box like a Roku or the upcoming Boxee device with a 2-year contract, and maybe some bonus subscriptions thrown in there.

A small chunk of the ad revenue is being recouped online, where the networks sell episodes for a few dollars each or run ads alongside shows on sites such as Hulu. Media economist Jack Myers projects online video advertising will grow into a $2 billion business by 2012, from just $350 million to $400 million in 2009.

But that is not significant enough to make up for the lost ad revenue on the airwaves. Advertisers spent $34 billion on broadcast commercials in 2008, down by $2.4 billion from two years earlier, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising.

Crybabies! Figure out how to operate lean and mean, trim the fat, and stop paying people who think they know what’s best for their audience – why not try asking us for a change?

If all they’re going to do is keep making reality TV, I’ll be happy that it’s not getting sent over the airwaves – I don’t want to see any more of that crap. I don’t care if they do have Ben Folds now, it’s stupid, mindless and childish.

But tell us how you really feel…

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

One of my favorite parts is when he talks about feeling as though you have “completed” reading the magazine. He says it from the editorial point of view, but for me it has to do with my habits (or you could call it OCD). When I’m reading email or feeds, I get driven by the number, as in the number of remaining articles to be read, or the number of comments to approve, the number of plugins to update, the number of emails to delete. It gives me a sense of how far I’ve gotten, and it’s a powerful motivator for someone like me.

It’s also cool that the spine is e-paper. That and the “heating up” rubbing gesture are two of my favorite parts about this video.

Really, these concept videos are so damn flashy – even though this one is trying to be minimalist. I get frustrated, because I know that actually seeing this device is still several years away, if it ever gets made. I still think of the Optimus Keyboard, which is now finally released 4-5 years later, and with a $2000 price tag. On the other hand, it’s pretty awesome.

Even if we never see this device in the wild, hopefully the good design and user experience will make its way into other applications and devices in the next few years.

This morning I grabbed Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 (download), and it’s got some interesting fun features. First of all, HTML 5 Videos can go full-screen. This is a big step towards in-browser video. Another huge improvement is support for CSS3 fonts, particularly the new WOFF format.

There are also some cool new CSS and DOM features, like crisp vs smooth image scaling (the only way to see the result is to have 3.6 installed) – then there is something very cool I would love to see someone play with – accelerometer support! I assume this will be most useful when they start rolling out mobile browsers, but it currently works on Mac OSX.

I’ve also been helping to test some extensions by just doing basic reporting with the Addon Compatibility Reporter. Really, the best part here is that it will let you use Extensions that are not properly flagged, so I get to work around one of the most frustrating beta-testing features, which is that you lose some of those useful tools! I’m glad they have a way to keep my essential addons around.

Go Try it out!

Then we have the exact polar opposites, like Orlando Event TV – this and several other shows produced locally are really trying to show everyone what it really means to be a citizen of this community, and they are all about the transparency. When you watch this video of Mark Baratelli in Winter Park, for example, the voice is completely different than the nightly news. He is much more watchable than a talking head in a TV studio.

I had a similar dream not too long ago, and that manifested itself as Orlando Scene TV and a bunch of other sites, like Orlando Video. The honest truth here is that I was not able to keep the momentum going for long periods of time. Producing video and being an unstoppable advocate for your product take a lot of time, energy, and the cooperation of a passionate community. Then there’s a question of money – how can I pay my rent, etc. if all I’m ever doing is recording people’s rock shows and theatre performances. It just never added up for me.

Then a little while ago I realized that the only way to really get a local indie TV project off the ground would be to distribute the workload as much as possible.

What does this look like? Well, now that I have the idea from The Art of Community to come up with a list of teams and their responsibilities, I see the teams as follows:

Let me be clear about a few things:

Audience

The role of the audience here is to let us know that we are giving them something they want, and to give us some ideas to keep moving this machine forward. Kickstarter (or something like it) could be a powerful force here: we can hold certain great ideas for ransom unless there is a certain amount of community support. The audience laid out here is really a fraction of the audience, the most passionate 2%. I also think this group will be web-savvy enough to have their own web sites or popular facebook profiles (hundreds of friends), and they will want to use these channels to help us promote our cause.

Tech Leads

Aside from pushing buttons, I also put these people in the role of “product designers”. If Jony Ive has a lot to do with the success of Apple products, then we should be able to assign a few people in our community a similar amount of responsibility. These people are very highly skilled, and may only contribute once every few years, when we redesign the title graphics and the website, or they may help us create fliers, blog badges an mini-sites on a more frequent basis. These are also the User Experience designers – in charge of the overall way in which people interact with the product.

Producers

Here, a producer is anyone who makes something. That means hosts, script or show notes writers, video editors, etc. A production team could be all of one person, or it could be as large as 5 or 6. It really depends on the skills of everyone involved and the scope of the particular project. A large goal here would be to make sure that anyone who counts as a producer could technically do everything by him- or herself if needed, but it’s really a question of time. Like I said before, this is the repetitive and time-hogging part, even if we can streamline the whole process.

The other key is to make sure that everyone owns his or her work, not only from an intellectual property perspective, but in a support fashion as well – if someone has a question about the restaurant you reviewed, you should be the one to get the notification and reply. In this way, people may start to develop a “beat” or even “channels” of information, and it could make sense to give certain producers their own sites. Pulling a line from The Starfish and the Spider, the producers give little more than spiritual guidance to the community. He can suggest large projects or hair-brained schemes, but he will be on his own unless they get a decent number of other community members to support and participate. These ideas can even come from the Audience, but as they don’t often produce content, an audience member will have to find a champion for her great idea.

The last piece of this puzzle for me is the equipment. We only need a few REALLY expensive tools – many people already own a computer, and video editing tools are freely available. Coming by decent video cameras is what used to be difficult, until recently. If you really want to spend some green, go ahead and get a Flip or a Kodak – even most consumer still cameras have pretty nice video capabilities. However, this still costs anywhere from $100 – $350, and that is a large financial barrier right now.

What if we could make the cost of entry $30?
That’s such a small amount, we could probably raise a few hundred dollars from our community and outfit an entire army with these cheap video tools in no time at all!

I heard about the Coby CAM3000 Mini Digital Camcorder on a podcast I regularly listen to, The Daily Giz Wiz. As far as I know, this is the absolutely least expensive (yet decent) tool for capturing video made by a well-known manufacturer. I plan on picking one up just to field test it – it’s so affordable, why not?

The other part of my plan here is to get some training and best practices in the heads of these videobloggers before they get out in the wild. We already have some community spaces and LOTS of events happening, so the material is always out there. We could pair up one new guy with an experienced producer and mentor them in the basics. Make sure they know not to film in too much or too little light, how to get some decent sound, introduce them to some basic video editing, and how to post videos. This might take one long day or a few evenings out, but there will be a certain point when a new producer will just have to get out on her own and start learning by doing.

We won’t just “give” out these cameras – they will have to be earned. If we apply some sort of a value to the camera – say, 10 points, and videos another – say 1 point for a video shorter than 3 minutes, 2 points for a video 4 minutes or longer of a reasonable quality – later when we can offer better equipment – the Kodak Zi8, or the Flip Mino HD, or perhaps even other stuff to barter for. I also have this thought right now that if we have any advertising revenue to share, it will be based on your continued contribution of at least X points in a 1-3 month period – we would probably need a way to make sure that we always have fresh content coming in, so we need to assign deadlines to keep people from getting lazy. As soon as this machine loses a certain amount of momentum, it might as well not be running at all.

That’s as far as I’m going to wander into this thought experiment for now. I don’t have a great picture of how other organizations do it, and this is just something I’ve been stewing on for a few months when I really get the chance to think about it, which is not very often at all. I’d love to take a look at how NowPublic and a whole bunch of other public media entities handle this. There are lots of questions unanswered here, but I’ve been struggling to really write down and communicate this idea to a large group for a while now.

If you’d like to talk more, I think we should wake up the PodCamp Orlando mailing list. I’m going to send this same text out there to see if we get any bites. Please blog about this, tweet it, point to the list page, get everyone who might be interested involved in the discussion.

Tonight is a Florida Creatives Happy Hour, and Friday is MOOM. We should be having a Likemind on December 4th, and another Happy Hour on December 21st. If you’d like to talk in person, these days are really good ones to engage me and others who are interested in making Orlando more awesome.

Update: We now have a project planning site – if you want to get an invite, leave a comment below, and make sure you fill in the email field.

This was actually a large part of my daily responsibilities while working for Popular Science. We spent a lot of time working on a site for the annual Best of What’s New promotion (the email for this year’s BoWN just went out), as well as some micro-sites for a sports promotion, and the B2B part of BoWN.

Drupal’s multi-site capabilites, combined with things like Themes, Internationalization, Installation Profiles (or Features), and finally management products like Aegir, can really make rolling out a few dozen Drupal sites just as easy as rolling out just one site. We’ve actually had talks about this at some recent Florida Drupal User Group meetings.

Um… where has the time gone? So many things have been happening lately, I feel like if I were to tell them all here, I’d pass another 2 weeks just re-counting all of them.

After the New Media Think and Drink, (go listen to the audio, and the audio of the 2nd half), I was excited about Community Building and Social Media Consulting even more than I have been in a long time. Also, the Digital Media Banner Center asked me to contribute to their New and Emerging Industries Task Force, which is basically trying to find jobs for journalists who have been laid off recently. I was very excited and honored to be a part of something constructive and forward-thinking. Needless to say, they were able to (once again) gather a group of smart, talented and well-experienced people and get them to talk about changing the world. I love that kind of stuff.

We have been doing lots of awesome DrupalEasy stuff lately – we have great podcasts with book authors and our patented “bookaway” contests, where you get Drupal books just for listening and commenting. I also got the chance to FLY up do to some Drupal Training in North Carolina. It was the first time that someone (specifically, Tomas and Jerry) actually FLEW to come hear me speak. I was proud.

I had a great time and got to try some wonderful craft beers at the Flying Saucer in Raleigh. I also learned that Raleigh has a Drupal User Group, but a bit too late. They actually had their meeting the same night I was headed home. Maybe next time!

The new house is treating me very well, the cats, Mariah and I are all settling in just fine, but Fozzie (my cat) has to stay in his cage, because he’s still trying to heal his leg, and he gets in too many fights with Litmus and Loki (Mariah’s cats), who are much older and set in their ways. He really likes chasing them around the house and is constantly getting hit in the face while trying to mount the large cat tree in the living room.

It’s also really nice working here. I have been “working from home” for most of the past 6 years, but only in this house have I ever had a dedicated room as an office, and an atmosphere that was so conducive to working and collaborating with others. I think getting this house will be one of the things I look back on as being very good for my work and creative lives, in addition to the benefits everyone else gets from owning a house. We already had one big party here, back on Talk Like a Pirate Day, and a few weeks ago, we tested out the Party Patio, the BBQ grill, and the fire pit.

A large part of my last few months was actually dedicated to working with a friend of mine, Kyle, on teaching him Drupal, and updating the website for his podcast, the Student of the Game. That site and Florida Creatives are two of the ideas that have really stuck back from the days when I was doing Liberatr more full-time. Kyle was laid off, and I was trying to introduce him to web site building and freelancing. We got pretty far with the whole idea, but it’s not like you can just flip a switch and change someone’s life, so he’s taken a contract with some place crunching database rows and generating reports. We’ll keep working on it, just a bit slower. That’s fine, because I need to work too.

Speaking of Florida Creatives, we are inching up on the start of the 4th year of Orlando Happy Hours for creative people. Our regular meetup will take place on the 16th at Crooked Bayou, just like it always does. I’ve also been trying to delegate some of the responsibility, like website design. Erik Baldwin is a fantastic designer and a good friend, and he’s been coming up with some designs based on my rudimentary wireframes, and I’ve also been adding new features to the site, like the Communties and Meetups page. I’m not sure how this feature will ultimately present itself, but it’s already better than a flat wiki page with just text and links. There’s nothing stopping anyone from adding new ones, but we’re not exactly advertising the feature just yet.

Also this week, I have been having some problems with an old server I keep around for hosting personal sites and sites for friends, so I started the very large task of moving several gigabytes of files over to Amazon S3. Namely, all the podcasts I recorded a few years back, and everything Kyle produced for the Student of the game in the past 4 seasons of football. As far as I can tell, everything is happily hosted by “the cloud” now, and the end users don’t know the difference.

One more geeky update, and I’ll be through. It’s about Twitter, so feel free to tune out now.

Twitter finally added a feature… something useful, and something that would be hard for a 3rd party to add. It’s called Lists, and I started making some. They’re useful for me, as I’m following 1700 people and my attempts to make the list shorter are really just making me find more people I want to follow, but for a multitude of subjects. One is just plain old technology, which is what my RSS reader used to be for. The next is a collection of the other Twitter accounts I own or manage, and hopefully one day twitter will let me say WHY I made each list one day. The last and most complete right now is my list of Drupal people. I think I’m also going to start one for coworking, but I haven’t really done much with it yet.

I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out, but I feel pretty well vented right now. I really need to get to this blogging thing more often…

Still, you have to write what you know, so Jono’s 4 big examples so far are the Jokosher sound editor, Linux user groups, the LUG Radio Podcast, and the Ubuntu project, of course.

He has a big emphasis on writing things down, which I have to say I haven’t always been the best at in the past – I like to get my hands dirty. However, when the mission, goals, and a plan are written down and shared with everyone, more doors can be opened than if you keep everything in your head.

What do you mean by “making it suck”?

One of the coolest examples from the Art of Community is when Jono is discussing methods for brainstorming. One of the ways he suggests to get people talking and break down mental barriers is by asking them to design an end product with the opposite goals in mind.

From The Art of Community, Chapter 2, p. 55:

The idea is simple: reverse the aims of what you want to achieve.

As an example, imagine you wanted to design a cell phone. Traditionally, you would brainstorm the attributes of a great cell phone. Instead, turn everything on its head. What would make the worst possible cell phone? Maybe it ignores all calls? Or maybe it only accepts calls from telemarketing companies? Maybe the buttons are too small? How about really short battery life?

Awesome idea. I’m stealing that one.

So, what’s something I love, and how can I make it suck? I think Florida Creatives would be a great thought experiment:

• Membership is invite-only. Each event has a $50 entry fee, and you are not allowed to bring anyone new – ever.
• Meetings are now held at a private office with 3 keycards and 2 security checkpoints. meetings are announced one hour ahead of time; If you miss 2 meetings in a row, you are banned for life
• You can contact other members, but only through the web site, and only if you have paid for the last 3 meetings – your website account is locked out otherwise
• All events begin and end by passing a stack of business cards around the room – nobody is allowed to introduce him or herself, and no discussion is allowed to deviate from a pre-selected agenda
• The agenda for each meeting will be determined by a monthly sponsor. Sponsors must take the president of the group out to dinner first and only companies with 1,000 or more employees should apply
• a member should only ever mention his or her day job. Any “moonlighting” or “fun” projects are taboo, and anyone working for a startup will be banned
• 30 minutes at the beginning of each meeting will be dedicated to talking about how bloggers are destroying the news industry, and why every blogger should go to jail for being un-American. Also, anyone caught mentioning open source software, let alone using any free software, will be banned for life.
• the leader of a given group will be considered “dictator for life”, and he will be able to kick people out for dressing the wrong way or bringing up the wrong subject, or making a suggestion of any kind that relates to the group. most of all, anyone offering to give his or her time for free will be banned and will be told he or she will “never work in this town again”. The dictator will distribute all monies as he sees fit, especially if that means buying a new sports car to drive to meetings

Um, you get the idea… Now how would you make your favorite thing suck? The idea here is not to complain about an existing problem or bring up negative points. This is to be the “minus” side of the battery (+|-) or the “south” side of the magnet (N|S). What is so far opposite from the ideal, that any change whatsoever will be a step in the right direction?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

First of all, I must preface that the Drupal Community is without a doubt one of the best open source communities. (meaning: most open, most likely to share code, experience and best practices, most innovative, most forward-thinking, least likely to “chase the bunny”, most likely to be the bunny, and most likely to create tons of venture-backed companies in the next few years)

I mean, the people involved are just amazing. The two DrupalCons I’ve attended were just amazing, and our local Florida DrupalCamp and Florida Drupal user groups are a big part of why I have not jumped ship to Python, Ruby, or other even other PHP-based platforms, and why I have no plans to any time soon.

We had a demo of the penumbrant Drupal 7 at our recent monthly Drupal user group. I am convinced it is THE CMS with more power under the hood (built-in, for free) than anything else… ever. The whole Job Queue API by itself is a reason to build web apps on top of this, and stop thinking of Drupal as a CMS – if you’ve got tons of processing that needs to happen, such as processing thousands of RSS feeds, or creating something very processing-intensive like Feedburner or Flickr, you will need to use multiple servers – a simple Cron job isn’t enough any more.

Then there is the database layer – not that it was the worst before, but there were certain kinds of configurations which used to require hacking core. Now, because of some pretty OOP (yes, Drupal has objects now!), you can override the database layer, and it uses PDO.

One huge change is the addition of a Fields API (AKA adding CCK to core, but it’s more than that). This means that instead of storing simple rows in a database, Drupal 7 exposes data storage to developers and end-users. At the most basic level, fields are used to store the title and body of nodes, categories/tags, images, dates, links, numbers or references to internal objects like nodes and users. This allows you to add extra fields to comments, user accounts and taxonomy terms as well.

Next, we’d have to talk about user interface and workflow improvements. The entire administrative interface now has a default skin – and there is now a compact administrative toolbar at the top of each page, plus a customizable bookmarks area and a configurable dashboard (unlike Wordpress, where you get to read Matt’s blog). The interface is a great sensible default, which is a bit of a departure from where Drupal has been in the last few years.

You’ll actually notice that there will now be a choice when you install Drupal – to use a “Basic” install, or strip everything down to the bare metal. In fact, you don’t even have to turn on node module any more – really. This is part of some hard work by folks who would like to use Drupal’s core as a PHP framework for building entirely custom apps (instead of smelly Zend Framework or the other unmentioned PHP tools that exist). If you look around for #smallcore, you’ll see what I mean.

There is so much more to say… In fact, this presentation by Steve Karsch says more. If you’re a big podcast listener, I’d highly recommend listening to Lullabot’s Drupal Voices. I’ll leave you with this, Drupal Planet and Google to find more.

Download Eco Footprint Special: 350.org
 
Length: 3:04

Gabe LeBlanc of EcoFactory left me this message about the event being held on 10/24/09 to raise awareness about the level of Carbon in the air. More info can be found at http://350.org and http://ecofactory.com

Gabe is offering free beer to the first 350 people to arrive at Orlando Brewing at 3:50 PM on October 24th. Gabe is doing awesome stuff in our community, and I recommend everyone go and support him, or find a similar event in your area.