design for mankind: best. news. ever.

Thanks, MagCloud, and Mankind Mag's lovely advertisers [to be revealed on Monday] for making my dreams come true! -- design for mankind: best. news. ever.

Wow, to be someone's best. news. ever. is a dream come true. MagCloud couldn't be more proud! I wish my blog had more than 3 readers so I could send some more love back.

MagCloud publisher invitations

For those folks who have requested MagCloud publisher invitations, thanks! Just wanted to let everyone know that we've received a few ;-), and are churning through them as quickly as we can. We're not running a secret MagCloud Idol competition with a panel of judges, so if you haven't heard back yet there is no need to worry that we've deemed you unworthy. We're simply trying to ramp up reliably and predictably; we're accepting invite requests somewhat randomly to try to sample many different types of publishers, with a bias toward first-come, first-get.

For all our new Beta users, publishers and non-publishers, thank you on behalf of the MagCloud team. Never have I seen such supportive bug reports :-). Can't tell you how much that helps as we're stomping the bugs.

If you have an existing account and want to use an invitation to upgrade it to have publisher capabilities: when you click on the accept invitation link, look for the link highlighted below.

POD goes Mag | photostream

POD goes Mag | photostream:

I guess that a lot of people are about to find out that producing issue one is fun. Producing issue two is easier and a bit less fun. Producing issues four and on is plain hard work. But somebody will make a success of it. And good luck to them.

Oh, so true. Giving anyone access to magazine printing and distribution services does not mean anyone can make a living publishing magazines. There was at one time a similar giddiness about AdSense ("wow! I can make money from my blog!") and eBay ("wow! I can make money selling my junk!"). Only a small percentage of people ultimately figure out how to make a living from the new opportunity.

However the rest of us still benefit, though perhaps in more incremental ways, from the more efficient marketplace that results. Personally I can't wait, assuming MagCloud can take hold, to see the opportunities that emerge for independent designers, illustrators, writers, photographers et al. (Pixish provides an early glimpse of that future, I think.)

MagCloud Shipped

MagCloud Shipped, originally uploaded by fraying.

I've printed dozens of prototype mags in-house over the past months, it's been fun. Only about two weeks ago did I order my first issue and have it mailed to me at home.

Totally different experience! Somehow having that sucker come in my mailbox, with postage on it and stuck in a bag, felt very different. Reminded me of the excitement I'd have as a kid waiting for new stickers to show up.

Coming soon...no more!

Coming soon, originally uploaded by aefitzhugh.

MagCloud.com has been launched in conjunction with the humongous Drupa commercial printing show in Dusseldorf, Germany. HP supposedly has 20 presses running on the show floor (!), it is a truly massive event (held every four years, called by some "the printing olympics").

Fortunately we've managed to keep MC a soft launch. Being able to bury it under all the hardware and usual commercial print talk of Drupa is a blessing. In time I hope it will be clear to all that we're breaking more than a few traditions in commercial printing, and changing magazine publishing in dramatic ways. But we've got a ton of work ahead of us still. I hope to share more in the coming weeks, especially about the amazing folks who have enabled us to get this far.

I got my first MC mag in the mail just last week, and despite the dozens of mags I've gotten off the presses as "inside jobs", it was incredibly satisfying to pull a copy out of the mailbox, wrapped in plastic, my name and address on the back. Damn that's sweet.

Microsoft Pro Photo: Geotagging Goes Mainstream

I had to give up on Virgil in 2005 after 4-5 years due to lack of, well, not lack of interest, but lack of will on behalf of HP's product divisions to do anything with it . For a company struggling to differentiate our offerings in digital imaging, particularly digital cameras, you would've thought they'd be all over geotagging and location. Unless you're familiar with Rules of Life in a BigCo, that is :-(.

I've been happy to watch Flickr bring geotagging to the masses, but have remained disappointed at how little they've integrated location into normal Flickr functions like tagging, search and more (and especially disappointed in Y! Trip Planner's inability to exploit it; c'mon, could anything be more obvious?). So at Flickr, location is mostly about pushpins on a map, and you still have to go out of your way to do things like location-based search instead of having them seamlessly integrated into your photo browsing experience.

I'm thrilled to see Microsoft's Pro Photo Tools (Microsoft Pro Photo: Geotagging Goes Mainstream) with a few geotagging features I prototyped in Virgil, and also implementations of things I filed disclosures on. Most notably the idea of using a time-offset controlling slider in combination with a tracklog and geotagged photos to interactively position the photos correctly. One of my disclosures went a bit further to describe what I never showed I could implement: automatically determine the error in your camera's clock setting based on spatial clustering of mapped photos and assumptions about photo-taking behavior vs. movement. The key assumption? How many photos do you take when you are moving? I'll let you figure out the rest :-).

The first version of Virgil was built atop MS MapPoint (800MB desktop version!), then later on their MapPoint web services -- both well before mapping was a thought over at the Googleplex or Y!. MS knew there was value in location, had it locked up really, and fumbled the ball right to Google & Y! by not moving MapPoint forward quickly enough. I'll be glad to see them recover some of the leadership they demonstrated in the past -- but they'll need to stick with it.

Can't wait to download Pro Photo and give it a whirl. Will post a review when I get to it.

Wanted: print magazine publisher wannabes

Do you have high value content you've always wanted to publish in print, but never knew where to start? Do you have a likely distribution in the 100s or 1000s?

I have a limited number of invites to an innovative magazine publishing service in private Beta. Sign up over on MagCloud, and include a brief message about why you think MagCloud will be good for you. Don't know what MagCloud is? Nobody does -- but tell us what you need. There will be a few of you who fortuitously fit our current limited feature set and can start right away in the private Beta. Others will be free to play as soon as we open up for business, which we hope will be Real Soon Now (TM).

ps -- The ideal publisher will have no fear of producing a press ready PDF (but probably should!); MagCloud uses HP Indigo digital presses for awesome full color output.

HAPA rocks

Spent a week in Oahu a while back, and was delighted to hear HAPA playing in lobbies everywhere while there! A friend convinced me to go see them in Santa Cruz a bit over 10 years ago and their live show was f*ing amazing. It ain't their live show by any means (despite the tasty solo Flanagan offers at the start), but here's a good fix: their classic "Haleakala Ku Hanohano" (lyrics).

HAPA lives at http://www.hapa.com/

Revolutionary White Reflectance Standard for Metrology

Colleagues know I can be cynical and skeptical about some of the work coming out of HP Labs. Finally something to be proud of:


Revolutionary White Reflectance Standard for Metrology: "Figure 1. Pressed halon (left) compared to the proposed new white standard (right)."

...

"Once the standard has reached the end of its useful lifetime, it must be disposed of. This is one of the key strengths of this standard in that the disposal is achieved by ingestion. There may be variation in the exact number of standards that can be disposed of at once, but current experiments by the authors show that up to five white standards can easily be disposed of at once while other sources have shown that this number could be as high as seven. This is fairly close to the 51 gram manufacturer recommended serving size. The targets are suitable for use in compost piles or can be given to children."

Creativity and disruptiveness in a borg company

This snippet from a book quoted in an article in the context of the reorganization we are undergoing in HP Labs really hits home:

In their last chapter, the authors concluded: 'Breakthroughs have come from creative teams that were ignored by their organizations, supported only belatedly by their organizations, misunderstood by their organizations, even assaulted by their organizations. Breakthroughs can emerge just as readily from no organization at all.'

I think *every* project I've worked on in HP and HP Labs since 1996 is summed up by that statement :-). It took me a while to come to terms with this, but now it actually energizes me to have a project in that position. If I'm not ignored, supported only belatedly, and not assaulted by my organization, I take it as a sign that I'm not being creative enough. Ironically the article's author, and I take it some in management, think this is a bug and not a feature. It's not for everyone, but it's how I've evolved to exist in a mega-corporation amidst its unrelenting homogenizing forces.

FYI, for more on the HP Labs reorg, read the whole article at: EETimes.com - Commentary: Will eHarmony work for R&D match-making?

HP's new inkjet web press

I must begin by reminding the reader that "web" in this context refers to a roll-fed printing press, not our dear WWW of cyberspace fame :-).

HP Targets Multi-billion Dollar Graphics Arts Market with New Digital Printing Technologies: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance:

New products and technologies are being previewed this week at a Tel Aviv event for customers, partners, press and analysts. Highlights include:

* A high-speed 30-inch (762-mm) inkjet platform for high-volume production of books, transactional/transpromotional mail, direct marketing materials and newspapers.

If it works, this is a real game-changer in commercial printing. More info on the press:

Leveraging its $1.4 billion investment in Scalable Printing Technology, HP introduced the HP Inkjet Web Press (http://www.hp.com/go/inkjetwebpress), a high-speed color digital printing platform that increases productivity and lowers the cost of printing for the high-volume commercial market.

...

Capable of printing in full color on rolls up to 30 inches wide at 400 feet per minute (122 m/min.), the HP Inkjet Web Press is compatible with a wide range of uncoated media to enable efficient printing of book signatures, full broadsheet newspapers and other documents.

400ft/min @ 30" wide -- I want to see the ink delivery system on this puppy! Driving ink at that rate through ridiculously small nozzles, reliably and durably, takes some serious rocket science.

Coding Horror: Douchebaggery

The funniest thing about this fantastic post by Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror: Douchebaggery, is the number of inflammatory comments to it showing a decided inability to recognize irony. Slashdotters can be *so* entertaining.

I'm a longtime fanboy of Jeff, but I'm pissed that he stole, yes STOLE, my oft-used assessment of computing platforms: "They all suck." Of course he has never met me or heard me, but I do say that all the time :-).

Online ads in a socially networked Web

Esther still hasn't gotten HuffPo to expose a feed of only her articles so I can't simply share this on my Google Reader shared items (oh, the pain of having to actually submit my own blog post). Good thing she put out a pointer on her flickr feed. Anyhow, nice article re: online advertising in the emerging social Web world -- and a bit ominous for GOOG, IMO.

While the spotlight in the online world focuses on Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, the long-term news is happening closer to home - where users interact among themselves through the Web and through online social networks. Companies with agendas mutter about user 'privacy' as they jockey to promote or prevent industry consolidation - but the privacy discussion will change from 'protection by the authorities' to self-determination as users learn to take control over their own data online. As they spread their 'presence' online, they are looking not for privacy, but for recognition as individuals, by friends and by vendors.

Get the rest of the story at Esther Dyson: Release 0.9: Don't Cry For Me, MicroHoogle!

Coding Horror: The Trouble with PDFs

Over the past few years I've refrained from posting my own rant, tentatively titled "PDF is the problem, not the solution". I was a bit surprised to see a similar rant coming from one of my favorite developer blogs:

But I have a problem with PDF files (Coding Horror: The Trouble with PDFs)

Jeff Atwood lays out a few of his issues with PDF, and the reader comments include a more extensive and lively discussion of others'. I think most people confuse PDF with a web format, but a few of the commenters have it right: PDF is a print publishing format, but one which is reasonably friendly to web-based distribution. It is not a suitable web publishing format for so many of the reasons listed in Jeff's post and the reader comments, but it is fine as a print format for web distribution.

My rant is actually a bit different from Jeff's, coming from the perspective of commercial digital printing. PDF is a major inhibitor to the development of dynamic, data-driven print because of its static nature. (Regarding "dynamic data", what I mean is a content formatting process equivalent to what happens on virtually every web site today, where each page is generated dynamically and customized to certain context). PDF was not designed to support dynamic data, but that is the future of print publishing. PDF is good at what it does, but the market needs to be re-educated about PDF and the constraints it imposes: it is not an adequate solution to the production of high value customized digital print. Commercial print is stuck in the dark ages, perhaps the only major information-centric industry that has not been transformed by the Web.

Dynamic commercial digital print is a huge market opportunity, so you can bet this problem will be solved. But I'd also bet that today's PDF will only be a footnote in the solution.

Book or magazine?

Fray Busted Demo, originally uploaded by fraying.

I'm not sure printed publications are going to be so easy to classify as either book or magazine in the future. Derek's Fray is an example.

This demo was produced on an HP Indigo 5000 commercial digital press:

Finding Everywhere

Finding Everywhere, originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics.

The cold reality of the newsstand. I bet there will always be newsstands, but as mags become more niche, there is obviously a challenge with the format. There isn't enough physical space to represent even a small fraction of the marketplace of magazines. We need some newsstand innovation.

Putting the touchy-feely into Web 2.0

A few quotes I like from Christina Wodtke today:

"In other words, Web 2.0 is made of people."

"...you begin to see how social networks can be as effective in solving retrieval problems as data networks (i.e. taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, etc.)"

"I notice how terrified we in the technology business are of the human aspects of our work. This theme will come up later, as we look at the question "does technology matter to virtual community building", but for now let's note it's hard to use "peace" and "love" these days without irony and a certain amount of distancing. Are we so scared of aspirational emotions? If we are going to talk about social systems, we are going to have to face the fact that terms like Love and Caring and Friendship are probably going to come up, so stop giggling."

Put these together over at: "What is Community Anyway?" from IA? EH.

HP Labs as "hit factory"?

HP Labs has been working its way through a fairly major reorganization the past few months, and the PR machinery is using that to raise some visibility in the press. This Fortune article has a nice quote that sums up my feelings pretty well:

"Along the way, there are many things that could go wrong. Chuck Geschke, who left Xerox PARC with his friend John Warnock and 25 years ago co-founded Adobe Systems, notes that no one has yet cracked the unique code for making advanced research consistently pay off. “There must be something special, because not everyone’s able to do it as well as they anticipate,” Geschke says. And perhaps there is no perfect formula at all. “You have to accept the fact that if you’re really pushing the envelope, some of what you do won’t work out.”"

FORTUNE: Big Tech Turning an idea farm into a hit factory

I think Geschke pulled his punches and really should have said "because nobody ever does it as well as they hope to." But his skepticism, like mine, is clear.

Any very large company like HP has evolved countless systems to protect against risk, and there are countless employees who carry out that mission. HP is now a $100B company, and if you divvy that up that means there are theoretically >1000 (!) $100M businesses in themselves, each of which will try to defend itself from any perceived threats. If a disruptive incubation cannot steer clear of all of these, in addition to the corporate-wide functions (legal, finance, etc) that represent them all, that project is doomed. Thus the odds of success for incubations in a BigCo would appear to be tiny. In my mind this is the biggest difference between a BigCo incubation vs. a small independent startup. The BigCo may think it gives autonomy to the incubation, but in practice it never does.

I've been involved with several incubations in my years at HP, most of them in HP Labs, and the main impediment to success has always been other parts of HP, not external competitors. Unless a makeover like this includes a dramatic revamp of how the disruptive activities interface with those countless existing functions inside the BigCo, you will likely end up with the same end result: a lot of frustration all around.

Call me skeptical, but I've always wanted to make this work inside HP, and intend to keep trying :-).

Wagazi � Google is heading into the business of magazines

Jonas at Wagazi comments on the Google patent application that has been making the rounds this past week:

While it seems a bit unclear what exactly Google is aiming at with this patent I’m interested in whether or not they will present a software that will make it easier and cheaper for independent magazine publishers to reach out to a bigger audience. Like Blogger or Wordpress did for bloggers. I’m not sure whether this will work with ordinary print magazines but more likely it could be a hit within digital magazines.

Wagazi � Google is heading into the business of magazines

It's not clear what "this" is that you are not sure will work with ordinary print magazines, but rest assured that something like "this" will. The world of digital commercial printing is just starting to take off, and the printed magazine world is in for a rebirth.

Inundation

So I'm just 14 hours into this day and my work email has received 93 messages already. It is not even spam, as much as I would like to call some of it that.