Diane's Discoveries

Blurb goes low-cost publishing route

Here is a capsule of an article about a terrific idea for all of you amateur and/or semi-professional photographers who would like to publish a book of your photos.

By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

Eileen Gittins' original goal: to self-publish a book of her own photography for close friends.
But there were obstacles. She didn't like the standard photo albums from companies such as MyPublisher and Shutterfly. And she wanted to add a lot of text to her book. Yet, most traditional self-publishing companies required a minimum order of 500 books and upfront fees of thousands of dollars.
So Gittins last May started San-Francisco-based Blurb to fulfill her own need — low-cost self-publishing, courtesy of digital technology.

Blurb now has fans among architects, real estate agents, photographers, cookbook authors, museum archivists and others who have used it to print bookstore-quality editions. It takes orders for thousands of books daily, up from hundreds just a few months ago.
A basic hardcover Blurb book is adorned with a full-color, glossy dust cover that looks like it belongs in a bookstore, not on a standard $29.95 homemade project.
"We live and die on … quality," says Gittins. "That's what's really gotten people's attention."

Most Blurb customers (Gittins calls them Blurbarians) order books of 100 to 120 pages, and the cost is $37.95. A similar book from Shutterfly or the Kodak EasyShare Gallery would cost upwards of $100.
Gittins says Blurb makes money on every book, and can afford the lower prices thanks to automation.
Blurb's Booksmart software is a free, fully functional layout program. Designing your book — if you are so inspired — can take many hours. But once it's finished and uploaded to Blurb, there's very little human interaction. "We're the cleanest business (that) printing has ever seen," Gittins says. "There are no proofs, just finished books."

For the complete article go to: Blurb goes low-cost publishing route - USATODAY.com.

Pictures worth more than a thousand words...

I presently use Flickr for my online photo storage, but if you're looking for an alternative website to upload your photos, check this article in USAToday by Jefferson Graham: Pictures worth more than a thousand words on upgraded photo sites - USATODAY.com.

Would you pay $40 to $60 a year to ensure that all your digital photographs are safely backed up online and that you can access them from anywhere?
What if you could also share these pictures on the Internet, without bugging your friends to buy prints, in a beautiful display?
That's the offer from SmugMug and Phanfare, two photo sites with significant new upgrades. If the only photo-sharing you're familiar with is via Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Snapfish or another mainstream service whose aim is to sell you lots of products, these sites are definitely worth a look.

Wired News: IPhone: Calling the Future

My thanks to Richard Wanderman Richard's Notes for the Wired News article. Following is a brief link to the article: Wired News: IPhone: Calling the Future.

The iPhone then is not just a phone, or a combo MP3-video player, but rather a portable computer. And, like a magician, Jobs has performed a sleight of hand in which the computer itself seems to disappear, just as the word has disappeared from Apple's corporate name, leaving only its function behind.

"I think this is a very big deal," says Silicon Valley technology forecaster Paul Saffo. "Cyberspace was a wonderful thing, but the only place you could enter cyberspace from was your desktop. We've had some brain damaged ways of accessing it from the places where we actually live our lives, but until now, they've all been compromised. If the iPhone works as advertised, it's a no compromises node, and that's a huge deal."

"This isn't the next computer," Saffo continues. "This is the next home for the mind. Computers have had a nice long run, and laptops will always play at least some role. But the center of gravity is now slowly shifting from the desk to the device in your pocket."

To be sure, the computer hasn't literally disappeared with the advent of the iPhone, and it likely never will. It'll just continue to get smaller and more powerful. How small and how powerful is now the subject of furious debate among software developers who really want to know: Is the iPhone in essence a slimmed down Mac?

The answer for now quite clearly is no. One of the salient features of a genuine computing platform is the ability to run third party applications, and currently the betting money says Apple won't be opening its mobile platform to outsiders, at least for the foreseeable future.

High school trades books for laptops

Here's some more ammunition for you to take to your school district. You can link to the whole article and print it out: Inside Bay Area - Business News.

Associated Press VAIL, Ariz.— Students at Empire High School here started class this year with no textbooks — but it wasn't because of a funding crisis.

Instead, the school issued iBooks — laptop computers by Apple Computer Inc. — to each of its 340 students, becoming one of the first U.S. public schools to shun printed textbooks.

School officials believe the electronic materials will get students more engaged in learning. Empire High, which opened for the first time this year, was designed specifically to have a textbook-free environment.

"We've always been pretty aggressive in use of technology and we have a history of taking risks," said Calvin Baker, superintendent of the Vail Unified School District, which has 7,000 students outside of Tucson.

Schools typically overlay computers onto their instruction "like frosting on the cake," Baker said. "We decided that the real opportunity was to make the laptops the key ingredient of the cake. ... to truly change the way that schools operated."

Two years ago, about 600 school districts nationwide had pilot projects to provide laptops for each student — a figure that's likely doubled since then, said Mark Schneiderman, director of federal education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association in Washington.

But most still issue textbooks — for now.

"Because most schools are not starting from scratch ... most districts are using a blended approach now and will phase out their printed textbooks," he said.

For example, in the Henrico County school system near Richmond, Va., students in 23 middle and high schools will be using laptops for the fifth straight year, though teachers still use textbooks, said spokesman Mychael Dickerson.

Many publishers of traditional textbooks are offering digital formats to address the growing use of computers, and that provided some of the material for Empire High's curriculum. Teachers also used subscription services and free Web resources.

Students get the materials over the school's wireless Internet network. The school has a central filtering system that limits what can be downloaded on campus. The system also controls chat room visits and instant messaging that might otherwise distract wired students.

Students can turn in homework online. A Web program checks against Internet sources for plagiarized material and against the work of other students, Baker said. "If you copy from your buddy, it's going to get caught," he said.

20 Cool Tiger Features You Might Not Have Heard About

Thanks to Richards Notes for this news item by Scott Knaster about more Tiger features:

Heard anything about Tiger lately? Unless you've been living behind soundproof Windows for the past few months, you know that Apple has just shipped Mac OS X 10.4, better known as Tiger. And, of course, Apple didn't simply toss Tiger out into a silent void. No doubt you've heard about the major features in Tiger: searching with Spotlight, Dashboard widgets, Safari with RSS, and so on.

But that's not all there is to Tiger. The major features have nuances that haven't gotten much press, and there are a zillion minor tweaks to discuss. My goal in this article is to explore 20 new Tiger tips that you probably haven't heard about before. Even if you've had the opportunity to play with Tiger yourself, I bet you'll discover some new tricks herein.

Link: MacDevCenter.com: 20 Cool Tiger Features You Might Not Have Heard About.

A Guite to Using RSS

Being a Mac user I was pleased to read that Apple has made it even easier to add sites that use RSS feeds which helps tremendously in my reading news from my favorite sites. All is not lost for users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, however, as this article also talks about non-Mac users' accessing RSS sites. The article written by Walter Mossberg is available at: Personal Technology -- Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal..

A Guide to Using RSS, Which Helps You Scan Vast Array of Web Sites

Apple's Pages Is Super

When I was designing and publishing brochures for my TRLD conferences, I used PageMaker; Adobe stopped supporting PM but I kept using it and it served me well until my last conference in 2004. When Apple came out with Pages this year, I was impressed; I haven't used it yet but will whenever I need to publish anything. Read the whole review in the Detroit Free Press

Wendland gaga over Apple's Pages March 23, 2005 - 12:03 EST   Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press says Apple's new Pages application is "clean, crisp, very flexible and so easy to use you don't even need to read the instructions." "After first being blasé about Pages, I am now gaga over it," he says. "The more I use it, the more blown away I am by its elegance. Alas, it only works with Apple computers, but with all the people who have been switching to the Mac platform recently, we need to talk about it."

Source: Wendland gaga over Apple's Pages | MacMinute News.

Something to Think About

I enjoy reading postings at Will Richardson's blog; here are a few comments about presentations at a conference he recently attended:

One exception today was a presentation by Jonathan Finkelstein of Learning Times, ...He showed how New York City schools are using Learning Times to do some awesome professional development.

Another interesting session was given by Milt Dougherty, the superintendent of Little River Schools in Kansas. He gave a pretty empassioned argument for school change...systematic school change. He actually said the phrase "disruptive technology" which, despite the fact that he wasn't talking about blogs and wikis, makes him ok in my book. He talked about how education has it wrong when it comes to keeping time in class fixed while making achievement variable. The idea that achievement should be fixed and that we should honor the variable time it takes for students to reach those achievement goals is really important. I also liked it when he asked whether or not things would change if we removed the technology from our schools. A lot of schools would hardly miss a beat.

I like it when people make me think.

Link: Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web in the Classroom.

The UnGoogle (Yes, Yahoo!)

Here's an interesting article about the direction that Yahoo is taking.

Which Web powerhouse was started by two Stanford geeks as a simple search page with a silly name and became the biggest thing on the Internet? Nope, not them. Try again. The invisible giant turns 10. By Michael S. Malone

Link: Wired 13.03: The UnGoogle (Yes, Yahoo!).

Don't overlook Apple's Mac as threat to Microsoft's dominance

Source: MacDailyNews

Don Tennant finds it striking that the IT visionaries who foresee a decline in Microsoft's dominance due to threats like Linux and Google never mention Apple Computer.

"Long before Linux became a thorn in Microsoft's side, Apple was a full-fledged pain in the company's you-know-what... Microsoft had to deal with the abhorrence of being perceived as a technology follower, playing catch-up to the operating-system strides that Apple was making. That the best technology doesn't always win is a truth of life to which Microsoft owes much of its success, and Apple's technology never really bruised much more than the egos of Microsoft's executives. Still, it's interesting that Apple has become so completely marginalized in some quarters that it's no longer even part of the discussion of a future world order in which Microsoft is seen as less dominant," Tennant writes for Computerworld.

"I'm no IT futurist, but trust me, you need to include Apple in the discussion... The best technology may not always win. But it's not going to go away, either," Tennant writes.

For the complete Computerworld article: Apple: Here to Stay - Computerworld.