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The Intuitive Life Business Blog
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Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since 1980 and
is recognized globally as an expert on both technical and business
issues. He has been published over a thousand times, launched four Internet-related
startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books and holds both an MBA and MS Ed.
He's a columnist for the Boulder Daily Camera and
Linux Journal and frequently appears
in other publications both online and in print.
Additionally, Dave maintains four weblogs:
The Business Blog at Intuitive.com,
Ask Dave Taylor,
Dave On Film,
and
GoFahterhood.
Based in beautiful Boulder, Colorado, Dave is an award-winning speaker, sought after conference and workshop participant and
frequent guest on radio and podcast programs, as well as active member of
his community and busy single father to three children.
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Maybe this is one reason ebooks aren't rockin?
One of the fundamental problems with ebooks in my eyes is that it isn't discounted when compared to a print edition. If I want to get the ebook edition of a best-selling book like, say, the wonderful The Da Vinci Code, the ebook will be priced identical to the hardback ($26) giving me zero incentive to take the plunge.
What's worse, it's a disservice to the author and a demonstration of the greed and fear publishers have about digital media...
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"Maybe this is one reason ebooks aren't rockin?"
The Smithsonian and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Why is this stuff so hard? Why can't we preserve the wilderness, what little of it we have left, while putting our efforts into improving efficiency and minimizing energy use through means like the CAFE standards? Here's the latest apalling news from Steven Zeitchik of Publisher's Weekly:Seattle Publisher Says Smithsonian Yielded to Republicans on Alaska Book
Polar bears and porcupine caribou are not usually the stuff of political controversy, but you'd never know it from a battle between the Smithsonian and a small Washington State publisher that says the foundation is acceding to Republican pressure in a new exhibit about Alaska wildlife...
Continue Reading "The Smithsonian and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge"
Is it really this hard to parent?
We're spending this week in Orlando, Florida, surrounded by stressed parents and media-saturated children, and, well, it's amazing to see how some moms and dads try to manage their role as parents. Amazing and somewhat depressing.
It seems like a legacy of the parenting experimentations of the twentieth century has left us with two possible ways to parent: as friend, or as drill sergeant. And those are both poor choices and lead to all sorts of problems...
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"Is it really this hard to parent?"
Women can't handle jerky environments?
I'm not making this one up: according to a research team at Carnegie-Mellon University women have a harder time with the spatial navigation required to successfully manage a desktop environment. Microsoft found similar results, when they reported that "Microsoft has found that women tend to be about 20 per cent slower than men when working out where they are in a computer-generated world."
All of this is from New Scientist and it's sure to stir up some controversy...
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"Women can't handle jerky environments?"
Simple but way cool Mac app: Synergy
I don't usually write about simple shareware applications, but I have to say that the Synergy program is remarkably cool for anyone running Mac OS X and into iTunes as a jukebox. Basically, it offers two functions: it adds a back, play/pause and forward button to the menu bar (they're low key, no worries about space) and it adds a translucent "what's playing now" pop-up on your desktop.
The latest version of the program, 0.9.7, adds another neat feature: it can download album covers from Amazon.com so when it displays the next song playing in iTunes, it also includes a small pic of the album cover.
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"Simple but way cool Mac app: Synergy"
Mysterious apps starting in Mac OS X
I'm baffled. I just had to go through a nightmare to get my TiBook (Titanium Powerbook, for those of you not Apple-heads) back to life and somehow it seems to launch background applications that I don't want, and can't track down.
The culprit I'm trying to figure out currently are the Palm Desktop, and the Palm Transport Monitor. The only place that locate shows the Palm Desktop application existing is in the Applications folder, which makes sense, but somehow it's started up each time I log in. How?
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"Mysterious apps starting in Mac OS X"
Fishing in Berkeley?
Still at the hotel in Berkeley, I got up early this morning for a walk and had a chance to explore a facet of Berkeley that never makes the headlines; the waterfront. It's far, far away from the chaos and anarchy of the University area of Berkeley, where the UCB students mingle awkwardly with the street people and hippies out of time.
At 6:30am the sun is just peeking over the foothills, gradually illuminating the top of the San Francisco skyline...
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"Fishing in Berkeley?"
Who shares in the risk/reward of publishing books?
I'm here at the Waterside conference and it's been interesting so far. The keynote was from Tim O'Reilly, well-known open source pundit, visionary and head of O'Reilly & Associates.
Unfortunately, he got lost in the world of "paradigm shifts" and his enthusiasm for the new, the different, and the adoption cycle (without remembering to call it that) and forgot to address what I believe is the fundamental question of this conference...
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"Who shares in the risk/reward of publishing books?"
Riding the Rails to California
Enjoying alternative forms of travel, I'm on the Amtrak California Zephyr from Denver, Colorado to Berkeley, California to attend the annual Waterside writers conference.
I'm still on the train as I type this in, just pulling into Sparks, Nevada (a suburb of Reno, little cousin of Las Vegas, where I'll be at the end of the month). So far, the train ride has been enjoyable and quite interesting. A different class of people ride the train than fly, and that's what makes these trips so fun and different.
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"Riding the Rails to California"
Interesting how book publishers are organized nowadays
Publisher's Weekly, my favorite e-newsletter to quote, has this snippet today, about Simon & Schuster:
"Eloise Flood, the Alloy Online veteran Simon & Schuster brought on to
oversee its children's paperback imprints, will be leaving the company
at week's end. Flood lost her job as paperback publisher in last
month's reorganization of the S&S children's unit and was made
editorial director of Simon Pulse, a role the put in her in charge of
only mass market titles that aren't media tie-ins. An S&S spokesperson
said Flood will be replaced."
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"Interesting how book publishers are organized nowadays"
A new interest appears on my horizon: Tarot
For reasons that are a bit inexplicable to me, I have suddenly decided that it would be interesting and helpful to learn how to read the Tarot. I already have more than a passing familiarity with some elements of the occult and am a certified Reiki practitioner, so I'm not just a meat and potatoes scientific type.
However... what I'm trying to ascertain is how to get started. The concept behind the Tarot is fascinating, and our playing cards have all evolved from Tarot and other divination cards, so even at the level of playing a mean game of cribbage, learning the Tarot will be helpful. :-)
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"A new interest appears on my horizon: Tarot"
When good companies use spam: Xlibris
It seemed like an innocent enough email message filtered out by my spam screening system, but in fact it's heinous:
"I noticed you on Boulder Writers Alliance February 2003 Member Directory and thought you would be interested in publishing your writing. If you have a finished manuscript or you are in the process of writing a book, you can publish it easily and affordably with Xlibris..."
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"When good companies use spam: Xlibris"
The tale of the stray width
Those of you that read this on Windows systems have probably found that the content occasionally lays out a bit oddly, such that the top graphic has a white gap within. Thanks to some help from a couple of CSS wizards, I think I've identifed - and solved - the problem.Continue Reading "The tale of the stray width"
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