Comment Re:Surprised it was available (Score 1) 143
Don't give up on that 501(c)3, though - avoid those single points of failure, where you can.
Hey, the 90's called -- they want their "Ask Slashdot" question back!
That's so 14 days ago
Klaxon (http://code.google.com/p/klaxon/) is a must have. It's an on-call app for text message receiving. You can separate out your on-call texts from personal ones and set separate alarms and everything. It's fantastic.
That would be pretty sweet...
Text includes words 'emergency' 'urgent' 'system' 'down' -> (Zzzz)
Text includes words 'down' 'hours' 'hardware' 'failure' -> (Zzzz)
Text includes words 'panic' 'weeping' 'wailing' 'praying' -> (Zzzz)
Text includes words 'payroll' 'not' 'running' -> (WAKEY! WAKEY!)
For differentiating between "personal" and "oncall" pages, I use handcent... then set the "on call" pages to play my Strong Bad "The System is down" ringtone.
Downside? I can't watch strongbad without my jacking up my blood pressure.
The resolution number was actually S.J.Res.6, and the vote on the motion to proceed to consideration of it failed on a not quite party line vote 54-46 just now. DOA in the Senate.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/10/142213971/senate-halts-gop-bid-to-repeal-net-neutrality-rules [npr.org]
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/idUS211494328220111110
Amazon is a shelf. You put your shit on the shelf and they show it to the public and handles the cash register and the accounting.
Amazon has zero experience or value to add as a publisher.
Anyone who's read books published by authors without the benefit of a professional team of editors at a publishing house knows that such books have interesting ideas but read like crappy books, or read well but have crappy ideas, or are just crappy through and through.
The rise of Amazon as a publisher should be much less scary to publishers than the rise of another actual publishing house.
Publishers who panic just because authors are moving to Amazon are failing to recognize that in the end they will survive because they add value and Amazon does not, and there will be some segment of the reading public and the writing community who value what they add.
Amazon isn't a shelf, it's a marketplace: they connect suppliers with consumers. Right now, they're trying to connect authors with readers; but a rational evolution of that marketplace would be to also connect authors with editors, authors with artists, and authors with marketers. The amazon platform for suggesting purchases you might like should be adaptable to suggestion artists that might fit your writing style, editors who fit your genre, etc. Their rating system could be adapted to provide ways to evaluate potential editors and select based on the value proposition that an editor of a particular level of experience and specialization brings to the table.
If amazon envisions such an evolution and acts on it effectively, publishers have a LOT to be afraid of.
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson
