Written on May 30, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
About a month ago, long-time friend Deirdré (@DeirdreS on Twitter) suggested I try Sun Microsystems’ VirtualBox application, after I’d complained about the necessity to buy yet another copy of Parallels to put on my home webserver. Since it’s opensource software, and I’m a fan of Sun anyway (having used Solaris when I worked at Cadence Design Systems some years back), I got it and ran it on the Mac Mini I use at home. I then downloaded and installed the OpenSolaris operating system, which worked beautifully. As soon as I have time to figure it out, I’ll install a Project Wonderland server there, which is why I wanted a VM system on the server in the first place.
However, now I’ve gotten a little crazy. I heard in a podcast that MicroSoft has a free beta release of Windows 7 that will run until June 2010, and since I’d just bought another 2.5″ external hard disk drive and had plenty of storage space, I decided to see what it’s like. Well, this is what it’s like to run Windows 7 in a Sun Microsystems VM on Mac OS X:
Now, is that geeky, or what?
Posted in MacOS X, Open Source, OpenSolaris, Virtual Machines, Windows 7 | Comment Now!
Written on May 23, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
I’ve been delving into the underpinnings of several web technologies lately, including one that’s been added to this site. If you scroll down below the Google ads in the right sidebar on this page, you will now find “Kat’s Tweets” — the last 5 posts I’ve made to my Twitter account. That took a bit of digging to make it work.
First, I had to choose a WordPress “widget” to use. There are at least 20 in the WordPress website, and who knows how many more elsewhere on the Web. I settled on Twitter Widget Pro by Aaron D. Campbell, but after installing it I got a fatal error message, so I went to the author’s blog and read the comments about this app. Aaron is good at replying, and sure enough, several other people had the same problem. The solution was to use PHP 5.2+, but according to the readout on my site’s control panel, I was using the latest and greatest… So, it was off to the Knowledgebase on my webhost’s support site. Ah ha! Even though the latest version was shown to be available, the default was to use PHP 4.x! So, I had to rummage around and find the place to make it default to version 5. That done, the widget worked like a charm (aside from being a little slow updating).
So, now that I know what I’m doing, it’s time to add this widget to another blog I’m working on, one for a new ePublishing venture. Oops, sorry, we’re not ready to launch that site yet, so I can’t give you a link, but rest assured that when it is time, I’ll post about it here, and on Twitter and other places as well.
But that leads me to another topic. Since I started a new Twitter account for the new venture, now I’m in the market for a Twitter client that will not only allow all three of us involved to post to its account, but will also let me easily manage multiple accounts I’m using. It could get messy, especially since I’m involved in yet another ePublishing venture and will want an account for that one, too. I found something that looks promising, CoTweet, but it is still in private beta so it could be a while before I can try it. Since the new Twitter accounts aren’t active yet, though, I can afford to wait.
Twitter and WordPress are not the only online communications tools out there, of course. You may have noticed another addition to this site, a collection of icons at the end of each blog posting. This widget was (thank goodness!) very straightfoward to install. It’s called Sociable. The configuration page for that widget offers a plethora of linked icons for an enormous array of social networks, including of course Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as well as email and your printer. As dynamic as social networking tools are, though, new ones are always popping up. No problem! Sociable allows you to create your own icons and link them to sites you choose. It doesn’t get much more flexible than that.
At the same time all this is going on, I’ve been working with a new volunteer at the International Spaceflight Museum who is taking over our exhibit sponsorship auctions on eBay. Our original “auctioneer”, Opal Lei (Second Life name), bowed out after working very hard to not only set up the auctions, but also scripted signs in Second Life that display the sponsor’s name and automatically reset when the sponsorship expires. She also wrote up very clear instructions for her successor, making it not just easier, but possible, for someone to follow her footsteps without going completely crazy trying to figure it all out. She even did an inventory of all our exhibits, which she put in a wiki! Those early auctions kept the museum solvent for months, but since they ended we’ve struggled to pay the bills. So finding a replacement auctioneer has been a true blessing. I just hope we can get his first round of auctions rolling in time to avoid losing the islands, since the rent is due next week. If you’re interested in helping, either by sponsoring an exhibit or simply donating, please visit our website for more info on how to do that. We have a PayPal donor button as well as info on the auctions and even a Google spreadsheet that shows our current (sorry) state of financial affairs.
While mentioning the ISM and communications, I would be remiss to not also mention a new book by a friend of mine, Kimberly Rufer-Bach, The Second Life Grid: The Official Guide to Communication, Collaboration, and Community Engagement
. She interviewed me for a case study on how the ISM uses a wide variety of Web tools to manage our world-wide distributed nonprofit organization, and according to another friend, Dave Taylor, the ISM was featured very prominently in the book, perhaps getting the most space of any of the case studies she includes. I’ll find out for sure next week when my copy arrives.
Got all that? Good. I’ll stop writing now and get back to work. Thank you for your attention.
Posted in blogs, ePublishing, Facebook, LinkedIn, PHP, SecondLife, Software, Twitter, WordPress | Comment Now!
Written on May 7, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
No, the University of Missouri (“Mizzou”) really doesn’t have anything to do with hydrogen peroxide, but when I phoned my parents just now to tell them I’ve been accepted into the graduate program there (in the School of Journalism), Dad said they were already celebrating another milestone. It seems he (on behalf of a client) had just obtained the first permit ever issued by the state of Florida to build a hydrogen peroxide-augmented water treatment plant. So, on my first day as a new journalism student, I have a scoop!
The degree I’m embarking on is taught entirely online, so I’m sure I will encounter many new aspects of educational technology to write about here. And while the Mizzou J-school is very Apple-centric, maybe this week’s announcement of the new Kindle DX by Amazon.com portends things to come in the realm of e-textbooks, too. I’ve already used Kindle for iPhone to buy one of the required textbooks for my first class, and bought another one using Stanza on the iPhone, so in LOLcats parlance, “Wired? I is.”
Posted in eBooks, Education, iPhone, Journalism, Online | Comment Now!
Written on April 25, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
It struck me just now, reading a book on my iPhone called We the Media, by Dan Gilmore, which is about blogging among other things, that I’m actively practicing what he discusses in his book. While driving down Interstate Highway 40E toward Oklahoma City, I’m reading an ebook on my phone, watching the GPS “breadcrumb trail” in one window on my laptop, and now writing a blog entry in another window, which is connected to the internet via our mobile router/modem and the cellphone system. A few moments ago, when we crossed the Texas-Oklahoma state line, I had sent a Tweet to my friends and family informing them of our location, from the same iPhone where I’m reading about using the internet for connectivity. Earlier I’d checked the weather from my iPhone, and just now looked at current conditions in our present location (Elk City, OK) — uh, oh, under a tornado watch. Well, that’s a sampling of how technology and new media keep us aware of our environment when we’re on the road, locally and metaphorically. Gotta go turn on the weather radio. ‘Bye for now!
Posted in blogs, eBooks, iPhone, Mobility, Twitter, wireless | Comment Now!
Written on April 19, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
This weekend we’re attending something grandly called The Rally, a gathering of several thousand RVers and wanna-be RVers. Superficially, living and traveling in a recreational vehicle (RV) sounds like something from a by-gone, more wasteful age — a large RV might get only five or six miles per gallon of gas — but many “full timers” or people who actually live in their RVs most if not all the time are very conscious of their carbon footprints, and want do their part to minimize their enviromental impact.
Before I get too far into this subject, I need to post a bias alert: My husband and I live and travel in our largish RV (38-feet long) eight or nine months of the year. This lifestyle is the root of one possible interpretation of the title for this blog, “New Media on the Go”. We use new media quite literally “on the go”.
So, to get back to The Rally, one of the main attractions of this event is its tradeshow aspect. There are hundreds of vendors represented here, indoors and out. One of the first booths I stopped to see belongs to a company called Protonex. Their product is something that uses technology I didn’t know was available commercially yet, but which most of us have heard about: fuel cells. The device they are showing at The Rally is a 12-volt, 20-amp generator that runs on methanol. About the size of a microwave oven, it is much smaller than the conventional gas-operated generator that came with our RV, and it is much quieter. The unit in their booth includes a cooling fan, which may have been creating most of the sound it emits. I had to step close to it to hear it at all. There was no obnoxious smell, no noticable exhaust fumes. In fact, they were running it indoors, so it must not have dangerous emissions (or they have an exhaust vent that wasn’t apparent from the front of the booth).
According to their website, “Methanol is an alcohol and is typically produced from natural gas. It has a long, stable shelf life and produces ultra low emissions when used in Protonex systems.” The site says their devices will run on other fuels as well, but this is the one they foresee using in the RV market. More about that in a future article.
I have to admit I’m pretty ignorant about fuel cells, but I plan to research this hitherto blue-sky green tech (blue-green tech?) and report my findings in this blog. Mike McCarthy, Protonex VP for Commercial Business Development, promised me an interview, and along with some independent fact-finding I hope to reduce my own ignorance, and possibly bring you a new datum or two as well. Stay tuned.
Posted in Alternative fuels, Mobility, Power supplies | Comment Now!
Written on March 24, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
Longtime Scilands buddy, Hackshaven Harford, Twittered this week about a new app he’d found called Sparkle IM from Genkii. 
Sparkle is a virtual worlds (VW) client for the iPhone that allows the user to login and communicate via instant messages with friends, and via proximity chat with avatars that are in the same location. Sorry, you probably need to try a VW like Second Life to understand what that’s about and why it is an exciting development. For now, please just accept that being able to connect to Second Life and interact live with others there even when you can’t log in normally is a big deal. For instance, I’ll be able to attend meetings from my iPhone and see what is being said in chat even if I don’t have my computer set up or if I’m in an internet café without my laptop.
Besides Second Life, Sparkle will connect to other grids as well, such as OSGrid or Second Life’s beta grid. Right now, those three are the only VWs available, but I’m sure others will be added as demand warrants. It’s possible to set up any number of accounts for various grids, limited only by the number of avatars you have. In fact, you can even sign up for a new account via Sparkle! Select the approprite service, fill in your account username and password, and there you go.
Choose the account you want to login with from the resulting list, click the “Go!” button, and your friends list appears on the next screen, with those online indicated with highlighted stars beside their names, while offline avatars are shown with dimmed stars. To send an IM to one, you select the name, then click the “IM” button on the next screen. A window with the virtual keyboard appears, and you proceed to communicate.
It seems pretty simple, and it is easy to use, but the implications are really awesome. The only real gripe I have about it is the requirement to use WiFi, but there is probably no way around that. Second Life in particular probably needs more bandwidth than the plain old cellular signal can provide. As it is, people who have very long friends lists (like me) have reported long waits to log in. Genkii’s tech support is working on it, and in fact I’ve had better luck logging in with my main account lately, after the first few attempts when it took several long minutes.
Sparkle IM gets a high rating from me. I’ve been waiting for someone to publish an iPhone app for connecting to Second Life, and this is a good one that works. Thanks, Genkii!
Posted in Avatar, iPhone, OpenSIM, OSGrid, SecondLife, Software, Twitter, Virtual Worlds, WiFi, wireless | Comment Now!
Written on March 19, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
Today I spoke with Clark Sneed, the national sales manager from Dirxion, LLC, a major eBook publisher. I’d contacted them after receiving a link to an online tourism guide they publish, the 2009 Virginia Guide and being very impressed with its quality and beauty. This example really shows some of the multimedia possibilities of eBooks. As well as a plethora of gorgeous photos, there are embedded videos, links to related eBooks and other websites, a search engine and a way to add bookmarks and notes to your own copy that look like little sticky-notes. When you create a note and go to another page, the note becomes a tab at the edge of the book with the page number, that you can click on to go directly back to that page. The navigation menu (Table of Contents and Search) can be hidden behind a tab on the edge of the page, allowing the flip book to expand to almost the full width of the browser window, and clicking on any page will zoom in or out. You turn pages in a very analog-like manner, by clicking on the corner of the page to go forward or back, or you can specify a page number to jump to in the toolbar, or of course use the navigation menu.
part of a page from the 2009 Virginia Guide at Dirxion
Dirxion eBook webpages include space for banner ads or badges, if you like, so it’s possible to generate revenues on top of book sales. Your eBook can be published on CD-ROM as well as (or instead of) the Web, too, so your sales aren’t limited only to those readers with good internet connections. Dirxion doesn’t handle sales — you need your own ecommerce site, or list your eBook with distributors like Ingram and OverDrive, or distributor-retailers such as Lulu or Ebooks.com, but they can encrypt your eBook for security. They do offer some marketing services, including listing your page with major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN in such a way that search results link directly to your eBook page. Also, one of their blogs is all about marketing your eBooks. They offer tracking reports of your site’s traffic and even direct mail or telemarketing services.
Clark told me Dirxion was the first company to do electronic “flip books” like this, starting back when the four founders were working at AT&T, when they published the phone book on CD-ROM. In 1996 they left AT&T to form this company, and have since then grown to 85 employees and over 3000 eBooks annually. Clark agreed with me that ePublishing is still a growth industry, in spite of general economic trends. The founders are still active in this privately-held company, and they are still hiring.
So, how does a prospective eBook writer get their book published at Dirxion? Technically, it’s quite simple. Just provide camera-ready copy in PDF format, and Dirxion does the rest. They put the finished product, with visual navigation menu and flip page eBook, in a directory on their website, using a subdomain for your name with their domain name, or using your own chosen domain name (virtually hosted, still on their website). They handle all the coding and hosting, so there is no worry about bandwidth overruns on your own website, and your eBook is updated automatically whenever they revise their software. Or, as mentioned earlier, you can get your eBook on CD-ROM. All of this comes at a cost, of course, but I don’t have information on that yet, and naturally pricing depends on the number of pages, platform (Web or CD-ROM), extra services, and so on. Clark said he would get back to me with a rough estimate for the project I’m working on right now, but we are still in the planning stages so don’t even know how many pages we’ll be dealing with. I gave him a ballpark figure, and we will use that in our discussions over which publishing service to use.
eBook publishers need to make sure they retain their copyrights, regardless of who they use to “manufacture” their self-published eBooks, and it is not unreasonable to consider publishing in a number of different formats. When my company published Chris Andrews’ book, The Education of a CD-ROM Publisher: An Insider’s History of Electronic Publishing back in 1998, we did it in five different formats (hardback, paperback, CD-ROM, Website and Palm Pilot versions). Once the content is written and edited, it is frequently not too much extra effort to put it out in different ways for greater audience penetration, especially if you plan for that strategy ahead of time, and use appropriate publishing software that can export in various formats.
I’ll be talking with people from other companies in the epublishing industry, and will write about them here, so bookmark or subscribe to our RSS feed to keep up with the latest research and commentary. If you represent such a company, please feel free to contact me, too.
Posted in blogs, copyright, eBooks, ePublishing, Format, Software | Comment Now!
Written on March 17, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
My friend, Chris Andrews, publisher of a new website called Gutenberg.com, has predicted that 2009 will be, finally, the Year of the eBook. Of course, people have been saying that for years, but maybe this year it’s actually going to come around.
Back in 2002 I worked on an outline for what I thought of as the definitive eBook Book, a tome I hoped would become an ultimate reference for those who wanted to produce and consume electronic written documents. While my lack of savvy as a negotiator (maybe compounded by a print publisher’s natural resistance to the subject matter) resulted in a breakdown in contract discussions, I almost sold the concept to a publisher, too. But that, it turns out, was too early in the lifecycle of this industry, at least for me. Now, however, times have changed.
Amazon’s much-touted new version of their Kindle
ebook reader, the number of viable ebook reader applications for computers and the iPhone (including the new Kindle for iPhone app
, growth in the per capita use of personal computers, technical improvements in display technologies, and the internet as a viable distribution medium for ebooks represent a growing convergence of factors to make Chris Andrew’s prediction come true.
Another factor that hasn’t been mentioned as often as the purely technical ones is the current economic climate. It seems counter-intuitive that an industry and technology that have been struggling for more than a decade to make inroads in consumer buying might suddenly take off when money is tight, but there are several reasons why this might be so.
First, ebooks are cheaper to produce and distribute than print books, and some publishers pass on some of those cost savings in the form of lower prices. Then, people who have lost their jobs have more time to read. (Not a happy thought, but true.) And many people who are suddenly part of the leisure class also have time to write. Not only that, but epublishing is suprisingly easy and inexpensive to do on a rudimentary scale. Oh, it can be complicated, and might require as many technical experts, editors and marketers as traditional print publishing depending on how it’s done, but it is still possible to break into the business on a shoestring, working single-handedly.
So why don’t more out-of-work people write and publish their own ebooks? Look around the Web. They’re doing it! And some are doing a good job of it, too. A lot of ebooks are just a waste of time, of course, but that can be said of traditionally produced print books, too. The point I’m trying to make is that epublishing has reached a point in its maturity as a technology just in time to catch the wave of cultural readiness brought on by economic insecurity. It’s an ill wind that blows no good. Maybe the good that comes out of our present situation will ultimately be a real literary renaissance for the common man (and woman).
What am I going to do about all this? I might just write that book, and maybe even publish it myself as an ebook (which is what the editor at that publisher had suggested I do back in 2002), but in the meantime I’m working on several projects with other writers and editors, to be published electronically. Those activities will not only keep me occupied and maybe even produce a little income eventually, but they will certainly give me yet more good experience to write about in that eBook Book-to-be. And as I do all this research, I’ll be writing about it here, too, so stay tuned!
Posted in eBooks, ePublishing | Comment Now!
Written on March 4, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
By now you’ve probably heard about Amazon’s new Kindle for iPhone app. Yes, of course I downloaded it last night, almost as soon as it was released, but I haven’t bought any ebooks for it yet. I still haven’t read the ebooks I bought last week using a different app, so it may be awhile before I report on it. One thing I did notice in the app description is that ebooks purchased on either Kindle or iPhone will work on the other device registered to the same user. Even bookmarks and annotations will be synchronized across devices if you’re lucky enough to own both. So, apparently Amazon has figured if they can’t beat ‘em, they’ll join ‘em. Good for consumers!
Although I’m slacking off in the ebook-buying department, even as I type this I’m using a different new app to listen to a Tucson National Public Radio station on my iPhone. Public Radio Tuner gives an iPhone user access to over 200 NPR stations over the internet. And no, you do not need the latest 3G iPhone to use it. I still have a 1st generation iPhone, and it’s working beautifully for me over the EDGE network.
Both apps are free from the Apple iTunes App store.
Posted in eBooks, iPhone, wireless | Comment Now!
Written on March 1, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
We have moved to a different RV park, which has a different WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider), one that offers unlimited bandwidth. That’s the way life ought to be! But there’s a catch.
One of the things that frustrated me most about the 360MB/48 hours limitations imposed by NomadISP at Beaudry RV was that I couldn’t download software and updates, much less audio books or podcasts or Adobe Acrobat to work on some ebook projects, I had to order it on CD-ROM instead of getting it immediately via download.
I wanted to start figuring out how to use the new features in version 9, so it was frustrating to have to wait for phyical delivery. Besides, we weren’t even 100% certain we would stay at this resort long enough for it to arrive! I went ahead and ordered it anyway, but after getting here and discovering the WiFi is decent, and that they won’t throttle our bandwidth (or so they advertise), I decided to get the 30-day trial. Well, that is only available for Windows™, and while I do have Parallels Desktop for Mac OS, and it is on the same computer, to the ISP it looks like a second machine, with its own IP and MAC addresses. I was able to log in long enough to update my copy of WinXP Pro to SP2, thank goodness, but when I tried to download the Acrobat 9 trial version, I got an error message saying my username and password weren’t accepted. So, I sent a query to Tengo’s support, explaining my situation, and will wait to see what they say. Meanwhile, though, because Parallels allows me to access a “shared” folder from Windows, I downloaded the installer from the Mac side, and copied it over to the Windows desktop. That worked!
I will not be happy (nor will I do it) if I have to buy yet another “card” to use the local WiFi on each virtual machine. That could really run into money, at $29.95/month per VM! If I absolutely must use the ‘net from a VM, I’ll switch over to our Verizon AirCard, but it is limited, too, and I don’t want to overdo it in case we need that bandwidth later on.
If President Obama really wanted to stimulate American productivity and commerce, he’d consider upgrading the country’s internet infrastructure, perhaps using WiMax, to make sure everyone, everywhere can get online to do what they need to do. Think of all the thousands of ebook and independent music publishers out there who could supplement their faltering personal economies by selling their wares online, if only they could!
Update on Local WISP
4 March 2009 — After I posted this blog, I got a reply from TengoInternet. Apparently I do not have to buy another account to use with my virtual machines. Sometimes switching between them lags slightly, but the same account does work on both MacOS and WinXP (and presumably Linux) on the same hardware. So my rant was unnecessary, but it’s possible that just after informing tech support of what I was doing they flagged my account to allow the strange-looking behavior. I got a reply to my email to tech support, and although they didn’t say so explicitly, I haven’t had any problems with it since then.
Posted in eBooks, ePublishing, Format, MacOS X, Operating System, Software, Virtual Machines, WiFi, WiMax, WindowsXP, wireless | Comment Now!
