Tim O'Reilly
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media Inc., thought by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, the Web 2.0 Summit, Strata: The Business of Data, and many others. O'Reilly's Make: magazine and Maker Faire has been compared to the West Coast Computer Faire, which launched the personal computer revolution. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is also a partner at O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, O'Reilly's early stage venture firm, and is on the board of Safari Books Online.
Publishers Beware: Amazon has you in their sights
While I was wrong the other day about Google's AppEngine being a lock-in play (see the comments on that post), I don't think I'm wrong that Amazon has serious plans for vertical integration of the publishing industry. Having got retailers on the ropes, they now are aiming at publishers. From a Publisher's Weekly article entitled As Amazon soars, bookstores creep:…
Kathy Sierra: Creating Passionate Users at TOC
We'd hoped to get Kathy Sierra at our Tools of Change for Publishing conference, but had to settle for a video. I interviewed Kathy a couple of months ago about her approach to creating passionate users via the "I rule" moment, what publishers of all stripes (as well as anyone making presentations) can learn from her ideas about storyboarding…
Amazon Using Computer Bestseller List to Push Kindle Content?
In an interesting, but not entirely unexpected development, Amazon may be using its Computer bestseller list to drive early adopter traffic to the Kindle. I was a bit surprised when I checked the computer bestseller list this morning to discover that it is now topped by the Amazon Daily, an Amazon newsletter that has nothing to do with computer…
Which Neil Gaiman Title Would You Like to See Online?
A hidden gem for Radar readers in the HarperCollins announcement that I blogged earlier is the fact that Neil Gaiman is asking his fans which of his books should he make available for free online. According to HarperCollins Group President Brian Murray, Gaiman had already received more than 10,000 votes as of last night, less than 24 hours after…
Community Pricing for Books
The more I look at the TOC Conference program, the more I see creative sessions on social media. Right now, I'm in a session from Logos Bible Software talking about their creative pre-publication publishing model. Logos puts out electronic editions of religious and scholarly reference works, converting the works from the original. Basically, they study their costs, and figure…
Publishing as a social medium
I'm at our Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York this morning, listening to Doug Rushkoff saying "The internet is not interactive media. It's interpersonal media," and explaining why the 50s went from a pack of gum with a baseball card to a pack of baseball cards with a stick of gum. "Baseball cards were a more…
Wikipedia: A community of editors or a community of authors?
Having a bit more time than usual over the holidays, I caught up on various types of reading, including following old links. One of the pieces I came across that I can't believe I missed when it was first published back in 2006 is Aaron Swartz's Who Writes Wikipedia? This piece is a must-read for anyone who cares about…
Bad Math Among eBook Enthusiasts
The Amazon Kindle has excited a lot of comment from people who have long wanted portable electronic access to books. Amazon has put together a lot of the pieces that makes this holy grail seem reachable, even if not yet truly achieved. But in reading the commentary of some of the enthusiastic boosters of eBooks, I'm struck by just how…
Steven Levy on Amazon's Kindle
Amazon's Kindle is due out tomorrow, and Steven Levy has a long and thoughtful article in Newsweek about the device, entitled The Future of Reading. It summarizes the device's attributes nicely, but the best part of the article is the account of Steve's conversations with Jeff Bezos and others who are trying to build devices that emulate and extend the…