NabaTech

Is ePublishing the Future of Computer Books?

Recently Joe Wikert wrote about tinkering with the publishing model and I wondered if we could publish a printed book with an online companion. That generated quite a bit of discussion. It seems that some pioneers have already forged ahead and started providing books online. As for an online companion, providing the online information (with routine updates) for free can be a hook for the printed book and it sounds like the author should take the initiative. I think the printed book with companion online content is only an intermediate step towards something else that’d be the future computer book. The problem is that I don’t know the specifics of that future, but could ePublishing play a role?

There are already some examples of ePublishing—for example, there is Adam Engst’s Take Control eBooks covering Mac OS X,  Mac applications, and hardware. It’s definitely a niche market. He prices the 70- to 100-page PDF books between $5 to $10 The PDF eBooks are designed to be read online and they are not copy-protected. A 2004 Wired article says the model is working well for Engst and he pays his authors 50 percent royalty. Engst does have the 50,000 subscribers of his TidBits magazine as a built-in audience for his eBooks.

Would a similar ePublishing model work for other niche computer books? Could established print publishers adopt a model similar to Adam Engst’s? It’s hard to tell.

By the way, I noticed several ePublishing books on Amazon, but guess what, they are all print books—why aren’t these books practicing what they preach? Or is it because people aren’t buying eBooks yet?

Enterprise Architecture—Part #2: The Parts That Make Up the Whole

I advocate a view of Enterprise Architecture (EA) where the EA of a company is essentially composed of other EAs—a divide and conquer approach that’s standard practice in engineering and computer science (think of systems and subsystems or programs and modules). You start by thinking of an enterprise as an undertaking—some common business activities and then the EA of those common sets of activities. 

Consider a company X that has, say, three divisions—A, B, and C—focusing on different core business (see the figure). All the divisions hire, train, manage employees, so that’s the “human resources” enterprise across the company. The divisions pay employees, keep track of money earned and spent, so those activities would be the “financial management” enterprise. The divisions manage relationships with its customers; that’s the “customer relationship” enterprise. These are then examples of the common enterprises across the company. On the other hand, each division has its own core “enterprise”—things it does uniquely. These would be each division’s unique core “enterprise”. The EA of the entire company consists of the EAs of the common and core enterprises and their integration. After such a decomposition, you can focus on developing the individual EAs and integrating them. That's the interesting part.

Tags: enterprise architecture EA architecture IT

This is Not Your Daughter's Blog

The saying goes: "this is not your father's <fill in the blanks>." When it comes to today's blogs, I think the saying goes the other way around—"this is not your daughter's blog." I have been trying to coax my daughter Ivy to start a blog and use it as a forum for her daily writing about art and film and anything else that interests her. She already writes me email messages with her thoughts on a movie she has seen or a museum she visited. All she has to do is write those same thoughts in a blog. I told her a blog could be the daily column she always wanted—a place of her own where she could write about anything she wants. Her reaction has been somewhat lukewarm. She feels that she knows blogs, knows where and how she could start one, but doesn't see why they are useful. My hypothesis is that the blogs she knows are not the ones I know. My daughter's world of blogs is the world of daily journals. There is still plenty of daily journal blogs, but we also have blogs that focus on thoughtful discourse about specific topics. Then there are ones that aim to provide the latest breaking news, ones that provide political opinions, and ones that promote themselves, and so on. It takes all kinds and we have all kinds in the blogosphere.

The best part about blogging today is that you can make your blog whatever your heart desires. It could be your daily writing exercise. It could be a place to capture your thoughts about whatever interests you at that moment. It could be for promoting yourself, polishing your image, gathering an audience for your words of wisdom, but then again, it could be just for your own satisfaction. Writing for my own satisfaction is what I want from my blog. I started my blog thinking how I would write about technology and get lots of people to subscribe and read my blog, but now I feel content just to write—write about anything that interests me and any subject about which I have something thoughtful to say. Of course, if someone stumbles upon my blog and finds it interesting, I hope they'd stop by to read just as I have done in my meanderings through the blogosphere.  Happy blogging!

Future of Computer Books: Print plus Online Companion?

I am sure printed books will be around for a long time to come, but should we expect a gradual evolution to other formats or combination of formats? I am thinking about a print format for unchanging or slowly changing information and an online format for more transient information. The paper version would cover things like how a technology works, the description of standard protocols, programming language tutorials, and so on. The online, periodically-updated information would be the latest features of a program, installation steps, screen shots, and so on (perhaps evolving to video content in the future).

How does a publisher accommodate a print book with an online companion? For starters, the publisher applies its existing editorial processes for all content the same way as with any printed book. The publisher markets the printed book through its normal channels. The print copy includes information on how to register online for the book's online companion. For the online content, the publisher sets up the Web presence for the book and the author has to participate by updating information periodically. Ideally, the book's site would have an RSS feed that readers can subscribe to and the author could even run a blog just for that book That way readers can keep abreast of the changes in the book by subscribing to the feed. The online content can be somewhat protected if we include a unique password in each copy of the book and require the user to register using that password. And then every so often, the Web site can prompt for a word from a specific page of the book before the reader can access the online information (this would require the reader to have a print copy nearby).

I don't know if this would work, but I'd sure like to test the waters if my publisher is willing to give it a try!

Tags: self publishing epublishing ebooks books trends

Diet and Exercise: What’s the Program Doc?

All advice about getting into shape boils down to diet and exercise, but the question is how do you find out what specific diet and exercise program would work for you? It's a trial-and-error process, but you can probably get some pointers from what has worked for others. Thanks to my daughter and my wife, I have found a diet and exercise program that seems to work for me. For me the exercise program began when my daughter Ashley started running in the Montgomery County Road Runners Club and wanted me to accompany her. I wanted to be sure that I could finish the 5K run without collapsing, so I decided to practice on the treadmill. I had modest aspirations—run 3 to 5 mile races at less than 10 minutes a mile. Since I found running to be somewhat stressful on the knee joints, I began alternating the treadmill runs with some weights and the elliptical machine. Soon I was routinely running 13 to 15 miles a week at about 9 minute per mile pace.

At the same time I started running on the treadmill, my wife suggested that we try some variations in our normal diet. It wasn’t any specific diet plan. We simply cut back—way back—on the carbohydrates (rice, noodle, bread, cereals) and made up the volume with vegetables (salads or vegetable soups). For protein, we ate more fish, some chicken, lots of tofu ("bean curd") and very little red meat. And I switched from coffee with cream and sugar to black tea. We also ate a good breakfast, which we used to often skip in the bad old days. By the way, just as we were starting on our diet, I saw Nicholas Perricone talk about his diet on PBS—it was in the context of skin care. We did not want to follow his (or, for that matter, anyone's) strict diet regimen, but it seemed many diets had a similar thread of less carb and good proteins such as fish.

With my lower-carb diet and running program, I have had very good results. After about five months, I lost about 40 pounds and dropped six inches off my waist! I have maintained the current weight level (and the waistline) for over 20 months, which is encouraging.  It's hard work, but I plan to keep it up!

What can you do? You have to find your own unique diet/exercise program, but some intense exercising together with a reduced carb diet might be worth trying out. The trick is to find a diet and exercise plan that you can stick with for the long run. How about getting started today?

Tags: healthy living diet exercise low-carb weight loss

La Bohème at University of Maryland College Park

Yesterday my wife and I enjoyed the dress rehearsal of Puccini’s La Bohème at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in the University of Maryland College Park campus. The Center is home to the Theater Department and the School of Music, where our daughter Emily studies violin performance. Emily is in the La Boheme’s orchestra and that’s the reason we went to see the dress rehearsal. The opera’s cast, orchestra, and crew are all students, but the performance was absolutely professional.

Thanks to Emily, we were well prepared to enjoy the opera. Perhaps sensing our ignorance of operas, Emily played a DVD of La Bohème several times at home. I already knew the story, so during the performance, I did not need to look at the English subtitles much. I could follow the story even as they performed in Italian. I could even imagine that I understood Italian—okay, just a word or two here and there like Buona Sera for Good Night :-) The cozy atmosphere of the Kay Theater, the great set design and stage lighting, the various styles of opera singing with gusto, and the perfect orchestral accompaniment, all worked their magic to seduce us into the world of Mimi, Rodolfo, Musetta, Marcello, and their friends in nineteenth century Paris.

I was surprised how quickly the time passed by and I think that’s another good way to judge how enjoyable the opera performance was, “time files when you are having fun”, right? Well, we certainly had fun. The opera opens Saturday April 16 and plays four performances through Sunday April 24, 2005 (tickets are $20; $7 for students) I think the audience is in for a treat!

Read the Washington Post's April 18, 2005 review of the performance: Opera Studio's 'Boheme': Almost as Good as It Gets

Computer Book Writing—How Do I Get Started?

Because I have authored quite a few computer books over the years, people often ask me how to get started as an author. I invariably start by explaining that the whole process of writing a book goes one step at a time and the first (and easy) step is to articulate the reason you want to write the book. Is it because it's a subject that other books have not covered in a way you think you could cover? Do you have some unique hands-on experience that you want to present in your book? If other books already cover the subject, why do you think the market needs another book? Publishers would ask these questions, so you might as well start by thinking about why you want to write the book and what would make your book unique. Assuming that you do have a book idea that you think is unique, the next step is to prepare a good outline along with an estimate of how long it would take to write the book. You should go down to second level headings and put down a sentence or two explaining what you want to cover in each section. As you are working on the outline, you should think about which publisher might be interested in considering your proposal. Publishers ask for proposals in a specific format and have specific instructions for prospective authors—so check out publisher’s web site for author guidelines and the proposal submission instructions. You may have to submit a sample of your writing as well. If all goes well, you would be negotiating that book contract and be on your way to writing the book. These are the generic steps (except that I have not mentioned anything about an agent because I have no experience with agents) to get to the point of lining up a publisher for your book.

Next comes the hardest step of all—the actual writing. Computer book writing involves inexorable, day-in day-out tasks of methodically doing your research, collecting and organizing information, repeatedly installing and configuring the same software (the one you plan to cover in your computer book), and writing about all of that. You have to take an introspective look and think carefully whether you have the persistence and perseverance to do all this on a sustained basis for a few months. You have to be sure that the research, the preparation, and the writing won’t become chores to avoid. Instead you have to be able to see them as opportunities for learning. And all along, you have to devote enough time to the writing so that chapters get finished and you can keep the manuscript submission deadlines. Even if you have written articles and reports, writing a book (especially one with five or six hundred pages or even more) can be a daunting task. In the end, I think the biggest challenge of computer book writing is not necessarily selling a book idea to a publisher; it’s the actual writing. If you can handle that part, I am sure you can get your book published, one way or another.

Note: Eric Gunnerson has written a helpful article—So, you want to write a computer book...—that presents his perpesetive as a computer book author and includes a whole lot of comments from fellow authors with links that you can explore.

Timing a Computer Book Release to Match the Software’s Release Date

One of the banes of computer book writing (and publishing) seems to be the ever-changing software version numbers. I as well as my publisher want to keep each book current and cover the latest the greatest features. We also want to time the book’s release as close as possible to the software’s release date. This means that I start writing with a beta version of the software and try to update everything during author review, just before the book goes to print. Unfortunately, both the software release and book production process have lead times and I typically don’t get to try out the “gold master” CD or DVD before my time is up for making changes to the book. I am typically done with everything with the book by the software’s final beta and then between the final beta and release, some more changes get into the software. That’s frustrating to me because the reader may flip through the pages and decide the book is outdated, perhaps on the basis of something like a screenshot or the extent of coverage (or lack thereof) of some feature that’s new to that version of the software.

Of course much of the material in a computer book does not change with every software version—especially for operating systems such as Linux distributions. What changes between releases of a distribution, besides the behind-the-scenes kernel features, are some of the applications (new versions or new applications) and things like the default desktop wallpaper, menus in the GUI, icons, etc. Sometimes the only things that don’t make it to my book are the cosmetic things such as menus and desktop wallpapers—things that don’t really merit an online errata page. Occasionally, I am blindsided by a completely new application in a Linux distribution that gets added at the last minute. I feel bad that the book ends up not matching perfectly with the software version, but maybe it’s better to cover that new application once it matures a bit—in the next revision of the book :-) I wonder if things would be different if we publish eBooks, would that reduce the lead time and let me update the book up to the last minute? Should we commit to printing on paper only those parts of the book that don’t change often and leave the rest for an online version?

Tags: self publishing epublishing ebooks books trends

Enterprise Architecture—Part #1: Is it one enterprise or many enterprises?

Sometimes the hype over an idea begins to distract from the basic intent and benefit of the idea. Enterprise architecture—the parts of an enterprise and how they fit together—is certainly a much talked about topic in the IT community, especially at government agencies. In case you are not tuned to this subject, enterprise architecture helps a business align its IT with its business needs. The idea is to take a holistic look at the enterprise, starting with the business goals and activities, then the information needs, and finally, arrive at IT solutions (applications and infrastructure) that work harmoniously to support the business. There are plenty of frameworks, methods, and software tools to help businesses create, document, and use enterprise architecture. Sounds good so far, right? Trouble is sometimes there seems to be confusion over what the “enterprise” really is. The typical approach is to think of an entire business organization as the “enterprise.” But what if a business is a huge conglomerate or, in the case of government, a huge agency like a country’s defense department? Would it make sense to define an enterprise architecture of such a behemoth? I think not.

In my opinion, it’s better to think of “enterprise” as a specific “business undertaking”—set of related business activities aimed at some common goal. If you think of enterprise this way, a typical business—large or small—would include a number of “enterprises” within its organization. Some of these enterprises would be common to most businesses such as human resource management, financial management, customer relationship management, etc. And there would be one or more other enterprises—undertakings—that would be unique to that business (the “core enterprises” of that business). With this view of a multi-enterprise business, the common “enterprises” could, in fact, be standardized and each could have a standard enterprise architecture. There are already commercial IT solutions for these types of enterprises (for example, ERP systems); perhaps what they lack are standard enterprise architectures. The business would then focus its energies on developing the enterprise architecture for each of its core enterprises. The IT systems supporting the business would be a combination of the commercial IT solutions (for common enterprises) and the business-specific IT (for the core enterprises). There is still the issue of integration of the architectures of these separate enterprises, but we already have the technical solutions such as service oriented architecture (SOA) to tackle that problem. The first step is coming to terms with this multi-enterprise—where enterprise means an undertaking—view of a business.

Tags: enterprise architecture EA architecture IT

A BitTorrent User’s Perspective on P2P Technology

In the course of covering various Linux distributions in my books, I often use BitTorrent to download releases of Fedora Core—the successor to Red Hat Linux. I find that BitTorrent is much easier on high-speed Internet connection than FTP downloads from a server (BitTorrent does not hog the whole pipe; FTP does). With BitTorrent, I get a slow and steady download, along with an even slower upload to others and all the while I can continue using Internet access for other things. Unlike FTP transfers, which often hangs for me, BitTorrent transfers always succeeds, even if it takes long. Then, even after my download finishes, I leave BitTorrent running for a day or two, just so others can get a feed from my system. All in all, BitTorrent is definitely the way to go when you have to distribute files to lots of people.  Of course, there is a legal issue when those huge files happen to be MP3 or MPEG files with restricted rights of distribution, but it seems there are plenty of valid file sharing needs for which P2P technology like BitTorrent is a perfect fit.

As for some other legitimate uses of BitTorrent, how about all those drivers and software updates that you typically get from the support page at a company’s web site. Well, those could be distributed efficiently via BitTorrent. And looks like there are even more examples of BitTorrent already being put to legitimate use:

• A recent Wired.com article (Rockers Flex BitTorrent's Muscle) mentions that a rock group is releasing its music video for free using BitTorrent- - nothing wrong with that, right?
  
• NASA—the U.S. space agency—offers BitTorrent download of a software package called WorldWind (“zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth” says the description).

Sure looks like P2P technologies like BitTorrent are here to stay, doesn’t it?

Tags: P2P IT trends