The TeleInterActive Lifestyle

Last week we had a meeting with Emil and Kathy of Colombo's Delicatessen. We're developing some hosting solutions for their web presence. Over the past year, their site has been stagnant as they've developed other aspects of their business.

It was wonderful to see how enthusiastic they are for extending the relationships and atmosphere of their deli onto the web. Of course, one of the fun things of working with someone in the food industry is getting to eat while you work. Kathy broke out some tasty items including some incredible olive oil AND the olives that make up the oil - both of which can now be bought at Colombo's in Pacifica.

Other fun came from the excitement generated by planning out a recipe wiki for Kathy, and associated publish-on-demand monetization opportunities, and from Emil breaking out some Italian music he wants to be available on the site.

Go, eat, tell them we sent you.

That would be me of course. I drove the 9 miles down the Cabrillo Highway to the Ritz of Half Moon Bay to join Robert & Patrick Scoble, Hasan Diwan [another OraAlum - hey, Hasan, are you a member?], Bud Ozborn [Bud, I removed the link I had for you, as I must have gotten it wrong - it goes to a domain sales site - my apologies] and Don MacAskill at NoFoo. Robert was live blogging over his EV-DO card - no WiFi out by the Firepit.

There were many intersting topics of conversation, which Robert has written about. One that hasn't made it onto his blog yet is about Personal Space, Public Space and the control of one's identity and data. This is central to living the TeleInterActive Lifestyle™ and so really grabbed my attention. [Pun intended.] Here are some links from or related to the conversation.

• Purse Lip Square Jaw
• Kim Cameron's Identity Blog
• Marc Canter
• PeopleAggregator
• Structured Blogging
• Identity Woman
• Identity2.0
• Attention Trust

It was a very interesting afternoon. Just what I needed after my earlier frustrations: great geeky conversation, campari and soda, and sushi.

I did not get to blog yesterday but I thought this is an interesting article by SFGate.com: Some AC Transit buses to offer Wi-Fi service Wireless Internet on crossbay routes to S.F., Peninsula

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I guess it is hard to pull out a laptop in crowded bus but it is still a good idea for long bus rides. A smaller form factor like a lifedrive would be convient. Anyway, what I like about it is, it is free Wi-Fi. I know, I don't really ride the bus but maybe I'll try it when the service is up and running. Yup, even for just the experience.

PalmSource, an Access CO, LTD company, has been making several announcements in advance of their PalmSource day at LinuxWorldSF this coming Wednesday, August 16, including:

• the growing momentum of their Access Linux Platform (ALP)
• being named an Orange approved platform
• the ALP developers' network
• and the one getting the most press is about their new open source library for file management using SQLite, libsqlfs

If you're at LinuxWorldSF this week, look for us [we'll be wearing black shirts with the following embroidery...

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We can talk about PalmSource and ALP, open source business intelligence, data warehousing and collaboration, or whatever else comes up. Maybe we'll even publish it as a podcast.

See you at LinuxWorld.

The current self-publishing industry doesn't seem to be addressing the ills facing the publishing industry today, nor emulating traditional publishers' strengths, but, rather, seems to be targeted on producing wonderful-looking bound books for authors or special purposes ranging from photo-albums to corporate communications. This is what I've taken away from C|Net News' great overview from the New York Times on the various aspects of the self-publishing industry, Technology rewrites the book. I learned of this article via Joe Wikert in his post:The New York Times on Self-Publishing.

Joe Wikert writes about the challenges and short-falls of the traditional publishing industry, especially in regards to technical publications. We've written about our own frustrations experiences [as I actually agree with the publishers that the time for this topic as a book is past - it wasn't a year ago, but it is now] in OSBI Book Status.

I don't get the impression that the self-publishing industry, in its current form, is addressing long time-to-market issues, relevancy, incremental publishing & updates, or the apparent need for multiple-format publishing and access through various means, from different locations at different times that we're seeing. The self-publishing industry also seems to abandoning the strengths of the traditional publishers, including editing and peer review.

Perhaps the answer to the technical book publishing woes lies in an integration of online publishing techniques with self-publishing. We're beginning to work on this through the use of blog, wiki and lens for our Open Source Business Intelligence research project. Would you, our readers, consider paying a subscription fee for premium content? Would anyone be interested in having the capability to have that content in multiple formats such as PDF, Motricity eBook and/or bound books? Would you pay a premium above the subscription price to do so? Should we start a new business based on the answers to these questions?

We've started to get answers to some of these questions. And maybe we should.