This post caught my eye, because I’ve been assuming that e-book adoption has been accelerating to the point where print books are as irrelevant as music CD’s. Tim more than suggests that print is still a viable, profitable option for writers:

For established and successful authors, like Seth Godin or Jim Collins, self-publishing in print or digital is a supremely viable option. Jim Collins self-published his last print book, How the Mighty Fall, and was featured on the cover of BusinessWeek magazine to help push it up the bestseller ranks. Seth could do the same.

Why is this possible?

Because they have incredible reputations that were built, in part, on top of the traditional publishing machine. The Big Six and their close cousins are in real trouble. Some of them might adapt (which will include massive lay-offs), but most will not. In the next few short years, there will also be many interesting publishing alternatives for aspiring authors.

But, all that said, there is still real value in having the rare stamp of approval that a “traditional” publisher provides. I don’t think this will change much in the next 12 months, perhaps even 24 months.

Now, a handful of first-time, self-published authors hit the New York Times list, that’s an entirely different story…

Whole thing here.

My first impression with the Nexus One was the display is amazing. The graphics are bright and crisp. The extra resolution over the iPhone is definitely noticable. The speed as great too. Upgrading from a G1, i was impressed with how fast everything ran. I was up and running on the new phone after less than a half hour. But I don’t want this to be about specs, so I’m going to just talk about some reasons I really love this phone.

Google Integration

If you use Gmail or Gmail Apps a lot, you will love how smooth the integration is with Google’s mail. There really isn’t much to say. I have four gmail accounts setup, all syncing and letting me know when I have mail. Only your main calendar syncs directly, but there are ways to work around that. Google Voice works well for calls, and ok for SMS messages. Some people I know have complained about the Google Voice SMS integration but I don’t use it enough to really know. Google Maps, Google Buzz, Google Reader, etc, all work great.

Corporate Integration

My G1 didn’t have native Exchange support, so I had to use a third party app. I ended up using NitroDesk’s Touchdown software. I’ve seen this app really grow over the last year, from a really basic mail only viewer, to a fully integrated productivity app. One feature I’m really getting used to, is having my mail read back to me. It’s pretty neat.

Android 2.1 has native Exchange integration, but I’ve heard some complaints about it. I would recommend Touchdown to everyone. I have an iPod Touch which I hooked up to our company’s exchange server, and I can tell you Touchdown blows it away.

Battery Life

The first couple days when I was playing with every gizmo on the phone, batter life sucked. Once I settled down in my normal daily routine, the battery life was fine. It runs all day just fine. There are third party batteries already that increase your battery life as well.

Google Maps Navigation

It plain rocks. I’m waiting for the car dock’s to come out to have the full on GPS experience. I’m hoping the dock will allow me to use my bluetooth headset to use as a phone as well as audio. Listening to podcasts with 1 year while I drive would *rock*.

Camera

I’m not a big camera person, but the camera on this phone works nice and I’ve been happy with the speed and clarity of taking pictures. When the weather gets better and I take some trips later this year I expect it will work out pretty good.

App Store

Apple likes to point out how many apps they have in their store and it is indeed impressive. However, I’m of the opinion that most people will use 10 apps for 90% of the time, and that the functionality of these 10 apps is duplicated in the Android Market. Because the app store is open, eventually they will probably be pretty equivalent when you look at the short tail of apps sold.

Intangibles

I wanted to have integration with my company’s Cisco vpn, but this isn’t one of the vpn types supported by Android 2.1. So I took the plunge and put on the Cyanogen Mod on my phone. Yes, I violated my warranty, but it was definitely worth it. I found a vpnc client for the phone, and *viola*, I have Cisco vpn capability over WiFi/3G/Edge. I also have full shell access so it really feels like a real little netbook. When I use my iPod Touch, I feel like I’m back using a PalmOS era OS. Multi-tasking isn’t the end all be all, but I can download a podcast, while I’m calling my wife, while I have GTalk running.

For me, and I know this isn’t the same for everyone, I like the ability to change things about my phone, I like having an open app market, and I like being able to download the source code to my phone and make changes (and I have some on the way). Not everyone likes or wants that much freedom. Maybe there are some rough edges on Android, though I think many complaints are simply due to what people are used to. I’ve used both the iPhone and the Nexus One and I think I have a good feel for both.

The Nexus One and, hence, Android is a great phone platform. They allow me to work, play, and communicate almost anywhere, and I expect to enjoy both for the foreseeable future.

My first solution was to bring a Linksys WAP54G into the office to act as a second wireless access point. That did stabilize the connection, but it still wasn’t perfect. Plus, Kelly’s computer contains our music collection and sharing over wifi wasn’t always that quick. So, recently I acquired two Linksys WRT65GL wireless routers to attempt to build an isle of wire computers in my house. The builtin firmware didn’t cut it though. I did a couple quick Google searches, and found my way to OpenWRT.org and wiki.OpenWRT.org. The directions were simple as hell, and within a few mins I had flashed my routers with the Kamikaze 8.09 firmware.

The configuration was simple enough. Give each router an ip other than 192.168.1.1 and put it into bridge mode. Setup the wireless security and set the router to be a wireless client. Reboot, and viola! I created a wired isle inside my office and a second one in my hobby room/podcasting studio. I have an older iMac that can’t easily have a wifi card added to it, but now I can just wire it in.

Links that helped:

http://www.openwrt.org
http://wiki.openwrt.org
http://oldwiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs

However, the Browser Wars were not kind of Netscape, and by the late 90′s even I had switched to Internet Explorer. By then, Netscape 4.x was a bloated mess that I remember crashing about every five minutes no matter what I did. It became unusable, and I, like so many grudgingly moved to IE.

What seemed like a desperation move (and it really was), Netscape was bought by AOL and soon open sourced the browser, creating the Mozilla Foundation. Years later, I was still using IE as the project had nothing had come of it. I did use Netscape a little here and there, but it never really worked right. Finally came Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox in 2002 and we finally had a modern browser to use. IE was forced to update to catch up to Firefox, and we’re all better for it.

Netscape has long been left behind, and no one I know really uses it. I can’t remember when I last actually used a Netscape branded browser. Though its spirit lives on in Mozilla and Firefox, it still stings a little to see Netscape come to the end.

During the holiday season, I was given an iPod 1GB shuffle (pictured above), my first iPod. I’ve not been a big fan of the majority of the iPod product line. I think they tend to be overpriced, have clunky interfaces, and I’m not a big fan of iTunes either. For the money, if you’re looking for storage and a good price, Creative and iriver are probably better bets. I also have an Apacer shuffle like ripoff that I’ve been using for a couple years, which at the time seemed like a good deal.

So, now I have an iPod. When I opened it up, i was surprised how damn small it is. It’s small enough that I would worry about losing it. The docking station is a little inconvenient because you can’t use a normal USB cable at all to connect or charge it, but to keep the unit simple I see why they did it the way they did. The first thing I tried was installing iTunes, version 7.5. What a failure that was. No matter how many times I installed, uninstalled, reinstalled, iTunes would never come up. What I finally ended up doing, was just using an older version (7.2) that installed and worked. I’m afraid to upgrade now, in case it doesn’t work and I screw up my library trying to downgrade later. It’s running, though, and that’s all I can ask for.

I don’t actually like using iTunes though, so in reality, I’m using Winamp to manage my songs and transfers. I find it less clunky than iTunes. Using the actual iPod is easy. The buttons make sense, the battery life is great (> 12 hours), and it’s nice to just clip it on and go. When checking the prices, I found that they can be bought for anywhere from $70.00 to $80.00, which seems completely reasonable for the form factor, battery life, and easy of use. The tiny size is definitely a premium feature worth paying for.

So, I still don’t think I would buy a regular iPod, but I am a fan of the small shuffles. I’m enjoying mine, listening to podcasts, music, and audio books for hours and hours on a tiny device.

To me this illustrates how powerful and fast the market is. While our politicians are blathering on in Washington about the “evils” of outsourcing cheap labor, the market, at least in the high tech sectors, is already solving the problem. Silicon Valley has been creating wealth and jobs in this country with outsourced labor, and India, a poor country for the most part, has a new and growing 40 billion dollar industry. Everybody wins.