Sep
20
Create Space from Amazon Wants LuLu’s Business
Filed Under Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc. | Leave a Comment
Well, I always knew they would and they’ve finally done it. Amazon has really stepped up to duplicate our friends at Lulu - it’s called Create Space and they’re going head to head. I created an account and it felt like I was on LuLu.com with different colors. DVDs, CDs, books and near identical offerings as LuLu.
Unlike LuLu, they’re even offering the ISBN numbers and submission services for free.
SelfPublishing.com has a good article analyzing the move. The article is focused on Author House buying iUniverse, but that news isn’t nearly as interesting as his discussion on Amazon’s move. Author House is just the link between the old world and the new, and, as far as I can see, their subsidy publishing business model has a limited shelf-life and reach. The do-it-yourself model will overshadow subsidy publishing as tools become better and the authors more technically savvy. I’m interested in seeing how Lulu approaches this new challenge coming from Amazon.
The weakness I see in the Create Space site is the lack of community tools for content creators to help each other. This is one of LuLu’s strengths. I suspect that Amazon considers the showcase a traffic driver to the website and that the rest of the community will be built around their books in their Amazon.com store. Still, there is a need for the community to help in the creation process when it’s expected to be do-it-yourself. That or the company needs to charge for doing the service like Author House does.
Amazon, generally, does well with their products…it’ll be fun to see how this self publishing space plays out.
Sep
19
I think I’ve come across the most innovative idea I’ve seen in a long time…doing something good while eliminating SPAM.
reCAPTCHA is a project of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and is stopping my comment SPAM while digitizing books that will be available at the Internet Archive. Very, very cool. I wish I would have thought of it. 
I sent them an email to ask who will own the digital indexes they are creating of these books. I suspect it won’t matter as long as it’s freely available on the Internet Archive.
I’m positive there will be many more “enhance the world” ideas that come out of the Internet age.
UPDATED: The folks gave me back a response within an hour.
| from |  |
reCAPTCHA Support <support@recaptcha.net> | ||||||
| to | |
Neal Harmon | ||||||
| date | Sep 19, 2007 11:02 AM | |||||||
| subject | Re: Rights | |||||||
Hi,
When we put books through the reCAPTCHA process, we make the results available under the same terms as the original version of the work in question.
- Hide quoted text -
On 9/19/07, Neal Harmon wrote:
So,
I’m curious because the information didn’t seem readily available on your website. Who owns the text and indexes after people decipher them? Will they be owned and openly available at the Internet Archive?
– Neal
Jul
10
Credit Card Fees - Where do they come from?
Filed Under Education and Love for Learning, Entrepreneurship | 1 Comment
As a merchant and a customer, the credit card industry has been a difficult one for me to understand, but as a merchant, a necessary evil, and as a customer, a convenient and safe way to purchase. I recently read a clear explanation of where credit card fees come from by Braintree Financial. Thanks for the write up!
May
18
Why I Switched from Handwritten to an Online Personal Journal
Filed Under Family Publishing | Leave a Comment
Keeping and reviewing my personal journal has always reminded me of miracles that have occurred in my life. It also helps me reflect on my day or week and make a course correction when I find myself off-track. It means a great deal to me and is the last THING I’d ever want to loose or have destroyed.
As the mainstream Internet began to get off the ground in the mid nineties, I felt very nervous about storing personal information on the web, especially my journal. Although I’ve kept a blog for over three years, and my personal information represents the first half of results for “Neal Harmon” in Google, Yahoo and MSN, I’ve been reticent to keep my personal journal online for the following reasons:
- I hate reading on the computer (I can’t wait for Iliad or Sony Reader to support a web-browser. I’ve been waiting for years for somebody to create a screen that doesn’t emit light.)
- Privacy. What if the government successfully forced FamilyLearn to release journaling information? (not that I have anything to hide…it’s just my journal is personal) Of course we’d fight it, but it could happen.
- My journal goes everywhere with me and doesn’t require batteries.
I’m not alone. As Jeffrey conducted a survey for pyxlin with almost 600 students at BYU and folks over at Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, we discovered that 48 percent of these folks still write their personal journals by hand.
However, I realized that hand-written journals have the following significant downsides:
- They can be destroyed or lost very easily (37 percent of our survey said it has happened to them).
- No search. It’s hard to find the journal entry when I “proposed,” thumbing through multiple journals and hundreds of pages.
- It’s tough to make a copy to pass on to my kids.
- I chew on pens pretty bad every time I get my hands on one.
- It takes sooo much longer to write by hand than type.
- I can’t include photos very easily.
- I’m not sure my posterity would be able to find a translator for my chicken scratches.
About a year ago, for me, the benefits of the online version began to out-weigh the costs and I began keeping my personal journal online. Particularly because our company’s test product, pyxlin, allows me to do everything I love about the web (search, redundant protection, photos, etc), while cuddling up to a book when I’m sharing the proposal journal entry again with my wife (it allows you to print a beautiful hardbound book).
The only remaining risk for me is the government and I’ve decided they be bored by my journals. If you keep a journal by hand, they’ll have to supoena you and enter your home to get it. That is if you’re spouse, or sibling or anybody else in your family doesn’t stumble upon it first.
During our testing phase, you’d have a hardtime tearing me away from pyxlin. It’s become part of my life. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too as soon as you’re ready to make the switch from hand-written.
Apr
22
U.S. Marketing Genius Behind Toothpick - Charles Forster
Filed Under Education and Love for Learning, Entrepreneurship | Leave a Comment
I’ve always loved Dick Eastman’s newsletter and I invited him to dinner last Thursday when I was in Boston. He took me to the Union Oyster House, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the U.S.
Besides great food and a great evening, I learned from Dick and from a document at the restaurant that Charles Forster from Maine was the first U.S. citizen to manufacture toothpicks. To jumpstart business, he hired Harvard Law Students to eat at the Union Oyster House (the “in” place to eat in Boston) and ask for a toothpick. When the restaurant admitted they didn’t have toothpicks, the Harvard boys were instructed to make a scene about it. After 5 or 6 Harvard boys complaining about the lack of toothpicks, the Union Oyster House placed an order. Apparently, when the oldest restaurant in town carried toothpicks, the rest of the restaurants in Boston followed suite. From Boston, toothpicks spread throughout the country. Nice marketing idea.
Apr
22
I fulfilled a life-long dream of boarding the U.S.S. Constitution. I built a scale model of the ship when I was young and I’ve always wanted to visit it. The Navy launches the ship about 8 times per year. They have a raffle for those who get to launch with her. I’m going to enter the raffle until I get to ride that beautiful ship.
Interesting facts given by the tour guide:
- 500+ crew.
- 9-11 sailors needed for operating each gun.
- 44 guns.
- Originally called the U.S.F. (United States Frigate) because of the number of guns on the ship.
- All ships today are U.S.S. (United States Ship) because there are so many different sizes and combinations of guns today.
- Oldest commissioned Naval vessel in the world.
- Had 33 engagements during its day. Never lost one.
- Rudder weighs 5,000 pounds.
- Masts have been replaced 4 times.
- The ship was originally commissioned to protect young America’s merchant fleet which found itself unprotected by the Royal fleet following the Revolutionary War.
I can’t believe I didn’t have a camera when I was there. It gives me an excuse to go back.
Apr
17
Seth Godin Speaking in Utah
Filed Under Education and Love for Learning, Entrepreneurship | Leave a Comment
I’d like to hear Seth Godin speak in Utah. If entrepreneurship or marketing or sales interests you, I’d recommend participating in this. $50 means you hear Seth speak, have a book and four books to give as gifts. Not a bad deal. Good idea Seth.
Mar
28
Light-based Internet?
Filed Under Technology | Leave a Comment
I’ve often commented to others… “doesn’t it seem strange that we have bandwidth limits? Surely there will be an invention in the future that makes bandwidth a non-issue.” Paul said to me, “maybe that will happen when things become light-based rather than electron based.”
IBM claims that has happened. The full name of the chipset is the “160Gb/s, 16-channel, full-duplex, single-chip CMOS optical transceiver.”
This means 1 second instead of 30 minutes to download an HD video.
Jan
27
Thanks Prayatna for pointing out GalleyCat’s article. I know the publishing industry is undergoing fundamental changes right now and this article states that A major U.S. distributor Advanced Marketing Services is filing chapter 11 bankruptcy with over 132 million in debts to the largest U.S. publishers.
Jan
23
The Business Development Corporation of Provo holds a monthly Xcelerator Forum for local entrepreneurs. The discussion today proved useful and fascinating. During the discussions, Mark listed the gotchas that many entreprenuers overlook:
- Illegal public offerrings. Don’t have your friends or others pass around email saying that you’re trying to raise money.
- 83B Election with the IRS. If you have stockholders whose stock vests over coming years, the stockholder must file an 83B Election with the IRS within 30 days of the contract (not of when the stock vests). Otherwise, that stockholder could get nailed with taxes as a company grows. Not fun. This topic generated a lot of questions and discussion. I was glad to learn that we had handled things properly with our stockholders. Here’s a form that will create the 83B Election document for you.
- Giving an unregistered finder a commission on an offerring.
All the panelists seemed competent in their fields of expertise:
Panelists:
Mark Bonham–Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati– He called himself a Securities Lawyer. Has a lot of experience in Silicon Valley.
http://www.wsgr.com/WSGR/DBIndex.aspx?SectionName=attorneys/BIOS/416.htm
Jon C. Christiansen–TechLaw Ventures — Calls himself an IP lawyer that doesn’t do patents. Tip from Jon: post a visible policy in the company that states, “we respect the intellectual property of others.” To watch your back if your employees screw up with illegal downloads or something.
http://techlawventures.com/
Brent J. Hawkins–Bennett Tueller Johnson & Deere, P.C. — I didn’t catch what Brent’s speciality is because the conversation got too intense after Mark and Jon got started.
http://www.btjd.com/attorneys/hawkins_brent.html
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