Hugh McGuire » misc

Book: A Fu\turist’s Manifesto

Hugh — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:46:04 +0000

I co-edited this book!

Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto

A new book about the future of publishing, built on the PressBooks platform, a new way to make books.

Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto: Essays from the bleeding edge of publishing (buy ebook / read free online), a handbook for publishers of the future, has been released by O’Reilly Media. It was built on the new, simple book production platform, PressBooks.com. Edited by PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire, and long-time publishing thinker and doer, Brian O’Leary, it contains essays from leading practitioners in the trenches of books & technology, including Liza Daly, Craig Mod, and Laura Dawson.

More info

We are pleased to announce the first published book produced using the PressBooks book production platform, suitably titled: “Book: A Furturist’s Manifesto (Part 1) … Essays from the bleeding edge of publishing.” The book is published by O’Reilly Media, and edited by PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire, and long-time publishing thinker and practitioner, Brian O’Leary.

Says the book’s co-editor, Brian O’Leary: “We wanted to bring together resources that would be immediately useful to publishers and future publishers as they make decisions in their everyday life about how to approach the making of books. It’s a kind of handbook you’d want to give someone who is starting a publishing house today.” Adds Hugh McGuire, “We really wanted to get beyond the abstract, and take a look at some things that are happening right now, some real technologies and real projects that are shaping publishing. It’s meant to be practical and applicable right now, as publishers prepare themselves for the digital future.”

This release is Part 1, with Parts 2 and 3 to be available in the coming months (those who buy now will get Parts 2 and 3 for free as they come out). Essays in the book are written by a collection of thought leaders and practitioners on the “bleeding edge of publishing,” including:

* Introduction (Hugh McGuire)

* Context, not Container (Brian O’Leary)

* Distribution Everywhere (Andrew Savikas)

* What We Can Do with Books (Liza Daly)

* What We Talk About When We Talk About Metadata (Laura Dawson)

* Analyzing the Business Case for DRM (Kirk Biglione)

* Tools of the Digital Workflow (Brian O’Leary)

* Designing Books in the Digital Age (Craig Mod)

The entire book production process — authoring, editorial, copyediting, and proofreading, as well as ebook production (and typesetting and print production to follow), took place on PressBooks.com, a new publishing workflow tool, built for anyone publishing books and other long-form structured documents.

Says Joe Wikert, Publisher of O’Reilly Media: “We were really excited about testing out a new, easy-to-use platform for making books. And the subject matter is perfect: We are practicing what we preach, writing about the future of publishing while experimenting with new ways of approaching production and customer interaction.”

* You can buy the book here.

* Or read it online (for free), at book.pressbooks.com.

* You can find out more about PressBooks here.

For more information, please contact Hugh McGuire:
hugh@pressbooks.com
+1.514.464.2047

Another table

Hugh — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 20:16:07 +0000

Table 1: Research questions and variables

Research Questions	Variables
Employment outcomes	* Significance of computer-skills training * Significance of other employment-related training and services * Individual computer-skill level before and after training * Trainees’ perception of the importance of training to improve employment status * Regional and sector dynamics * Demographic factors: age, gender, and education
Wage differential (for those employed after the training)	* Individual level of computer skills after the training * Frequency of computer use at current job * Sector dynamics * Perception of living wage before and after the training * Skills required for the job * Demographic factors: age, gender, and education
Aspirational outcomes	* Changes in perception of the importance computer skills to improve employment status * Effects of the training on self-esteem (self-reported) * Satisfaction with current job (if employed) * Individual’s perception of additional training/education needs * Plans to pursue additional computer training

Enter Description

Testing Tables

Hugh — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:37:10 +0000

Hugh's Lunches

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Firday	Saturday	Caturday	Dogerday	Budgieday	Sunday
Appetizer	salad	french fries	escargot	eggs	lamb	bisque	green eggs & ham	alpo	seeds	porridge
Main	ham sandwich	snassage	tripe soup	sea cucumber	rice & beans	bisque	curry	hot dogs	sushi	tacos
Drink	Apple juice (half-price)		carrot juice	water	battery acid	koolaid	that stinkin' root beer	duff	wild turkey	mojitos
Calories	14	1400	37	337	1990	14	99	9000000000	5	6

A description of Hugh's Lunches

I’ve Been Busy

Hugh — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 23:27:07 +0000

I’ve been a bit busy lately. Sorry I haven’t posted here in a while. I think Beatrice might have something to do with it:

Hi. I'm Beatrice. You can call me Kiki, though. My parents do.

al’s horse

Hugh — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 19:28:04 +0000

http://hughmcguire.net

Good Links – Weekly: August 14

Hugh — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:03:27 +0000

This weeks’ Good Links wherein Mitch (w / t) Alistair (w / t) and I choose links for each other.

Top Secret America – The Washington Post

Alistair for Hugh: Put on your tinfoil hats: they really are out to get you! This Washington Post piece on Top Secret America includes an interactive exploration of the off-the-books US military spending, showing how much money goes where. Not only is it entertaining fodder for conspiracy theorists, but it’s a great demonstration of how journalism can work well in the digital age: this isn’t something that can be easily vacuumed up via an RSS feed and repurposed by someone else. This is part of a 2-year investigative project by the Post, nicely wrapped in interactive applications and videos.

What They Know – The Wall Street Journal

Alistair for Mitch: As the world agonizes over privacy and anonymity, triggered in part by Google’s CEO’s assertions that we should just get used to no longer being anonymous, the Wall Street Journal put together a great illustration of the most prevalent invasion of privacy, tracking cookies. Cookies are a much-maligned scapegoat for cyber-crime; without them, we wouldn’t have the dynamic web we enjoy today. But when cookies are used to share information across sites, they can be put to all kinds of nefarious uses. This interactive app puts tracking in plain sight. The surprise leader? Dictionary.com, which puts 159 cookies, 23 flash components, 41 beacons, and 11 first-party cookies – 168 of which don’t let visitors opt out – into your web browser. Really? Why do I need over 200 cookies to find out what paranoid means, anyway?

Why Parents Hate Parenting – The Last Psychiatrist

Hugh for Alistair: There’s been much talk about happiness and parenthood of late, with more studies showing that kids (supposedly) make you unhappy. I’ve come across the Last Psychiatrist blog a few times in the past couple of weeks, and each time come away thinking: reading time well spent. Here he cuts apart the premises upon which the happy/unhappy parent paradigm is built. Conclusion: ego overload.”

Fresh Air Remembers Historian Tony Judt – NPR.

Hugh for Mitch: Mitch recently had to cancel a lunch with me because of a funeral. I’ve had two close friends (one real life, one online) die of cancer in the past three months. Death is a fact of our existence that we aren’t good at coping with in Western culture. This is an interview with Tony Judt, the prolific British/Amercian historian, from a few months back, when he was suffering a quick decline from Lou Gehrig’s disease, an affliction to which he succumbed this week. It’s funny, and smart and moving.

The Data Bubble – Doc Seals Weblog.

Mitch for Alistair: It’s sort of freaky that Alistair’s recommended link for me was The Wall Street Journal‘s look at cookies and online privacy, considering I had this Blog post from Doc Searls (co-author of the magnificent business book, The Cluetrain Manifesto) pegged for him. While Doc does his usual role of breaking through the chaff really well, it’s his own thoughts on the subject (and the amazing comments within the Blog post) that really makes this piece shine. Regardless of which side of the fence you’re on about this topic, this Blog post made me love Blogs and everything the Internet has done for society even more because of the open conversation.

Books of the world, stand up and be counted! All 129,864,880 of you – Inside Google Books.

Mitch for Hugh: This story will either make you marvel at technology or leave you shaking your head and paranoid about the coming singularity. In this Blog post from the Google Books people, they attempt to define what, exactly, a ‘book’ is (a topic near and dear to Hugh’s heart – if you’ve ever listened to our audio Podcast, Media Hacks), how to count/track the amount of books and – on top of that – how many books Google believes have been in the world (and – if you know anything about Google – it’s an exact number). A pretty fascinating read about books, publishing and the future.

Links – Tony Judt and Parenting

Hugh — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:44:08 +0000

Weekly links.

Remembering Tony Judt,
NPR
* audio
* transcript

Hugh for Mitch: Mitch recently had to cancel a lunch with me because of a funeral. I’ve had two close friends (one real life, one online) die of cancer in the past three months. Death is a fact of our existence that we aren’t good at coping with in Western culture. This is an interview with Tony Judt, the prolific British/Amercian historian, from a few months back, when he was suffering a quick decline from Lou Gehrig’s disease, an affliction to which he succumbed this week. It’s funny, and smart and moving.

Why Parents Hate Parenting
The Last Psychiatrist
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/07/why_parents_hate_parenting.html

Hugh for Alistair: There’s been much talk about happiness and parenthood of late, with more studies showing that kids (supposedly) make you unhappy. I’ve come across the Last Psychiatrist blog a few times in the past couple of weeks, and each time come away thinking: reading time well spent. Here he cuts apart the premises upon which the happy/unhappy parent paradigm is built. Conclusion: ego overload.

Advertisements in Books

Hugh — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:14:31 +0000

Over on a publishing email list there has been some chatter today about advertising in ebooks.

While I’m not crazy about being sold washing detergent with my War and Peace, I see no reason not to have ads in some ebooks, and I would rate the odds of it happening at 100% …

As with online book reviews that link to an online retailer (with affiliate fees), there is no reason an ebook about, say, rugby shouldn’t link to somewhere where I can buy tickets for the World Cup. If it’s a proper ebook – I mean, not just a book I can read on a digital device, but a proper ebook that is cloud-based and dynamically updated – then the link/interaction will point to 2011 tickets today, and in 4 years it will point to 2015 World Cup tickets. If I am reading about knitting I may well want to buy needles, and there’s no reason an ebook that makes me want to buy knitting needles shouldn’t help me do that (and make some money for the publisher, as well as the needle-maker, in the mean time).

As my friend Alistair Croll says: Buying a book is an expression of serious interest in a certain topic, and there is all sorts of valuable business to be done when people have expressed clear interest in a topic.

Certainly the level of engagement, and value of the average eyeball reading a book far outweighs the value of an average eyeball on a webpage. Digital books will and should allow any number of commercially valuable interactions – not just display ads. Or perhaps not display ads at all.

Doing this in a way that does not distract from the book itself will be the trick, but good design, and the powerful nature of new reading platforms means that doing this right is easily imaginable. If I can toggle night-reading on my Kobo for iPad, I can toggle ads.So ads needn’t distract from reading – they could be just another layer to which a book is connected.

Test Image

Hugh — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:10:12 +0000

Barcelona Streetcar, 1908

Hugh — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 14:07:48 +0000

NOTE: best to turn of the sentimental music.

(via http://twitter.com/ebertchicago)