My article on how to gift Kindle ebooks, nook books and Apple App Store apps has been puslihed on the JoSara Media web site.

You can use the following shortcuts to get to each separate guide (with screenshots):

Kindle eBook
Nook eBook
Apple App Store App

The implosion today of two buildings (CCA 7 and 8) on the former Compaq campus comes nearly ten years to the day after the business implosion of Compaq through its acquisition by HP. Like Compaq, CCA7 and CCA8 on the Houston campus, now owned by the local community college, had been deemed too expensive to renovate; the choice was made to blow them up and rebuild.

This parallels not only HP’s recent “blowing up” of its tablet and (profitable) PC business, but the final disposition of the great COMPAQ Computer Corporation, a company that I proudly worked at for fifteen years. Compaq in the beginning was an incredibly innovative company in portable computers and servers…but in the later years was one Steve Jobs shy of a full Apple cart.

It is easy to envy Apple, now one of (if not the, depending on market closings) the highest valued companies in the world, and in the enviable position of charging and receiving premium prices on almost all of their products. The history of Apple is well known, and its story and that of Compaq can be seen as mirror images…until Apple’s turning point, when Jobs returned, grown up and ready with innovation, differentiation and a long term plan.

In between the leadership of John Sculley and Steve Jobs’ return as interim CEO in 1997, Apple faced similar crossroads to Compaq’s at the same time. Obviously over-simplified, in 1998 Compaq chose to follow the kings of the day, and emulate IBM by acquiring services (and people and debt)-heavy Digital Equipment Corporation; while Apple chose a gambler’s path of innovation, a path to no longer try to compete on the speeds and feeds of cpu/memory/disk with the PC vendors of the day, but to create a content consumer/content creator vision, to innovate and differentiate.

In 1997, Compaq’s revenues were approx. $25 billion, and income was approx. $2 billion.

In 1997, Apple’s revenues were approx. $7 billion, and income was a LOSS of approx. $1 billion.

Three years after Compaq acquired Digital Equipment Corporation, HP acquired Compaq, a controversial acquisition according to HP’s board (mixed if with a bit of Deutsche Bank conflict of interest scandal). The services division of the combined Compaq and DEC was not meshing, and was not proving as “accretive” as had been hoped in the original merger documents. CEO Eckhard Pfeifer was let go in 1999, and by 2001 Compaq’s meteoric time in the technosphere flamed out.

Four years after naming Jobs interim CEO, Apple released the iPod..then the iTunes store…then the iPhone…then the iPad.

Could those paths have been switched? If Compaq had not purchased Digital, would it still exist? There were many variables, and I’ll leave the possible scenarios to the academics, to future business school case studies. As a man I admired said, “you can’t un-honk a honked horn.”

Like many people, I found my fifteen years working at Compaq an incredible experience. I met the love of my life while working there. After we were married, she would look out the windows in the break room at CCA8 and see our daughter waiting for the school bus in front of our house in Lakewood Forest. With the demise of those buildings, and the presumed demise of the last vestiges of Compaq with the pre-announced sale of the PC business, we choose to think back fondly on those days , the great people we worked with… and whimsically wonder what could have been.

As a lover of books and technology, I’ve spent a lot of time the past few years investigating how to combine them. The proliferation of tablet computing, and the need/availability for interaction, have pushed us to a point where a book can be more. Terms like enhanced eBook, interactive eBook and others have been bandied about; but whatever the term, adding multimedia to a print book turns it into something more.

We also recently have been working with non-profit organizations, such as my friends at the Texas State Historical Assoication, helping them to take their unique and valuable content (most of it in print format, or even out-of-print) and get it into a digitized, interactive medium…into a format that will continue to promote their goals of education, research, preservation and membership.

I stumbled across the work of some fine people utilizing HTML5 to build enhanced eBooks (the Baker Framework, and the Laker Compendium. With the current ePub standard, there is no standard support for adding multimedia; Amazon’s Kindle format provides some, but only on certain platforms.

With these converging trends, technologies and paths, I’ve put together an app for the Apple App Store that is an experiment of sorts; a proof point, if you will, that not only can you build an entertaining enhanced eBook, but that utilizing available content that you can use this content as a bridge to sustainable funding for non-profits.

That available content happened when my brother took me on a journey through the Grand Canyon, with some great guys. A once in a lifetime trip - hiking, rafting, and experiencing one of the natural wonders of the world.

With that introduction, I am happy to announce:

Cecil does the GRAND CANYON holding a poptart
For iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch

If you want to reflect back on a trip you made to the Grand Canyon, one of the eight natural wonders of the world, or you just want to imagine one, this app will take you there.

With proceeds benefiting the Grand Canyon Association, this Grand Canyon app follows the author, friends and guides as they:

• hike down Bright Angel Trail;
• raft one hundred miles down the Colorado River;
• hike the so-called “Death March” hike to Thunder River and Surprise Valley;
• visit Havasu;
• brave Lava Falls (and live to tell about it);
• helicopter out from Whitemore Wash.

Containing hi-definition videos, hundreds of photos, maps and the story of the journey, this multimedia application will be sure to remind you of your own trip to the Grand Canyon…or increase your desire to visit.

Many of my friends will derive from the title of this post that I am still under the influence of New Year’s libations. With the demise of Border’s and the rise of eBooks, it would seem that Indie Bookstores are in further jeopardy.

But several factors are giving Indie Bookstores who will take advantage of new offerings and changes a huge competitive advantage.

These factors are:

• Google Books/Editions;
• Amazon’s recent feature mimicry;
• iPads and eReaders;

Google Books, formerly Google Editions, Google’s recently announced foray into selling books, would seem to be a “me too” event. Given the issues that Google ran into with authors and publisher rights with their “copy and provide everything” Google Books strategy, they would seem to be just bulling their way in.

But insightfully, Google eBooks allows for Indie Bookstores to resell these eBooks and make a referral fee from this referral. It also allows the stores to sell a print-and-ebook bundle. This is different in many ways that the Amazon Associates referral program, in that the Google eBooks store becomes the Indie Stores “eBook store”. Bundles with print and eBooks purchased from the same store at a discount are one example of features targetted for Indie Bookstores. (more…)

Many readers and authors do not realize that Amazon’s Kindle solution works on a wide variety of devices. Amazon has a “Kindle everywhere” strategy, and has released versions for iPhone/iPad/iPod, PC, Blackberry, Android and now a beta for the Web (and a forthcoming version for Windows Phone 7). Amazon’s main page for describing their Kindle software offering is here.

Unfortunately, not all capabilities are supported on all devices. This is changing with new releases of the software and updated devices. From my own experiences, the Kindle for iPhone and iPad is the most feature rich (allowing image zoom which is quite useful on iPad, and embedded audio and video via HTML5);  the Kindle for Blackberry seems to be lagging behind, not yet allowing the addition of notes and highlights, nor supporting the advanced features of HTML5 and image zooming. The Android version was a bit of a pain, as I had to flash the software on the Samsung Moment device I was testing; otherwise the Kinlde software would not download from a link or show up in the Android Market.

To see the capabilities of the other devices in the market besides Kindle, see this list.

We’ve been working on multiple eBook projects that require audio, video, enhanced imagery, and synchronization of notes and highlights and have all of these versions for testing. The table below is my own cheat sheet of current versions and capabilities. I’ve left out the obvious features (such as the ability to change the font size, synchronizing last page read across versions, etc.).

If you see an error or area that needs to be updated or have any other feedback, I’d be glad to hear it.

Software by the Kilo was reviewed on the Coffee Time Romance web site. I did try to follow my wife’s instructions to lower the geek factor in my second novel, but never dreamed it would be reviewed on a romance blog, much less get a four out of five coffee cup rating (after a four out of five spider rating from a review on WebbWeaver, four is becoming a good number).

From the review:

Software by the Kilo is a neat story that flows like a roller coaster. With an exciting plot and a multi-cast of characters, this story is anything but dull; Larry Ketchersid creates a fast-paced good read. He not only creatively fashions unforgettable main characters but secondary ones, too. I really enjoyed the character of Jason and how he dealt with the problem of carrying his laptop, trying to find internet access, and even his composure in some of the toughest situations. I can understand why he was the level-headed person of the twosome in this venture project. This story will definitely keep one on their toes.

My friends at SFSignal.com invited me to interview Michael Hanlon about his new book Eternity: our next billion years. Michael is the science editor for the Daily Mail in the UK. His book goes against the current doomsday grain and looks through a future where us humans are still hanging around. It is split into three parts: near future (new few centuries), mid-future (few thousand years) and far-future (the point where the Earth will actually die, a billion years hence). The chapters are mostly science essays, but there is some sprinkling of speculative fiction in the later chaps.

Michael’s book covers a wide range of topics including how the geo-political landscape may change in the next few years, what languages we might be speaking, how drought, famine and over-population will affect the world, the singularity, things that he doesn’t think will happen, things that would change the course of history if they did happen, and others.

After the break is an excerpt: (more…)

As a child living in Indian Harbor Beach, Florida, I was able to watch many of the Apollo launches from the roof of my parents house. Apollo 11 and the first moon landing, the pinnacle of the space race with the Soviets, is obviously a milestone for mankind. And Buzz Aldrin was there, recording it and his life after in this memoir (which we got signed, at his appearance at the Houston Museum of Natural Science). The book is logically four parts: Apollo 11, Aldrin’s downward spiral afterward, his recovery with his new wife Lois, and what he has been doing since.

The first three chapters record Aldrin’s thoughts and actions through the journey to, walk on, and return from the moon as a part of the historic Apollo 11 mission with Armstrong and Collins. Those first 58 pages are excellent, a terrific description of an event millions watched, but from the perspective of the second (but most visible)  man to step on the moon. (more…)

Granted, my PC needs to be replaced (it is my trusty Sony Vaio that has been around the world with me for years)…but it was dragging, in some not-so-small part due to the number of IM/chat programs loaded on it. They all served a purpose, or different constituency:

• Skype for international friends in Italy, London, Thailand and beyond;
• Facebook chat for my kids and family;
• SameTime to talk with partners (including IBM);
• AIM to talk with other partners (including Cisco through a AIM/WebEx interface);

At work, we’d been using Skype for development collaboration and support. But Skype lately has been sluggish and hanging; yes, I know it is free, but it was time to find something that worked better. My developers wanted to use jabber, but I needed to keep contact with the systems listed above.

Enter PIDGIN. I’d done some testing on it before, when we were integrating our secure transport/delivery mechanism into various platforms. I did not know if it would tackle all of these networks. (more…)

While we can argue whether Twitter is a “new social media” or not, one great thing about it is the Amazon MP3 twitter feed.

Amazon certainly seems to be trying to put a dent into iTunes dominance. Not only are they offering DRM free MP3’s, but their Amazon downloader puts the songs right in your iTunes (if you so choose).

You do not have to be a Twit or even a Twitter user to see the daily deals. Just go to http://twitter.com/amazonmp3 each day.

The daily deals are extraordinary. This month alone I have downloaded:

• on 3/3 (the day the album came out) U2’s No Line on the Horizon for $3.99;
• yesterday, John Coltrane’s The Ultimate Blue Train for $1.99;
• today, Diana Ross & the Supremes’ 18-song Definitive Collection. Everyday price: $7.99 Today’s price: $1.99

Yes, an eclectic mix, but they feature different albums everyday. I’m going to ignore the feed for a few days before I personally re-stumulate the economy.