Poet Ponders the Digital

An Apple II advertisement from the December 1977 issue of Byte magazine, pages 16 and 17. The second page was described the features of the Apple II. The ad originally ran in May 1977 and was updated that December. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley January 5, 2015 Deadline February 2015 Issue BYTE magazine stopped appearing on newsstands in July 1998. The name lived on for a time as an online publication, without many of its best columnists and without its definitive test lab reports. Finally, in 2009, the real BYTE ceased to exist. Other online publishers revived the name, but it was never the same as the legendary print publication. In November 2014, my favorite online technical resource for Apple power users and developers, OS X Hints, went into archive mode. A month later, on December 16, 2014, Dr. Dobb’s Journal followed BYTE into the virtual sunset after 38 years of publication. In fact, they call it “sunsetting” the publication: Dr. Dobb’s wil...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley February 6, 2012 Deadline March 2012 Issue The Publishing Revolution: Create Your Own E-Book Publish your book this year! Only a few years ago, “vanity presses” used such pitches to appeal to aspiring writers. For a fee, the vanity publishers would convert your manuscript into a reasonably nice book. Vanity publishers are nothing more than print brokers. Using a vanity publisher was expensive, but for some aspiring writers it was their last option. Many writers ended up with boxes of books in their garages and attics. Yet, I am writing this column to tell you that it is time to publish your book. Forget the vanity publishers and the small publishers that pass along many of the costs to writers. Publish your book as an e-book. It will cost you little (or nothing) and if you discover the book is popular, then you can consider an old-fashioned paper and ink book. Even writers with proven track records are leaving the traditional New York publ...

The future is digital, no matter how much we might resist. My wife and I will always be "book" readers. You know, those things that collect a bit of dust, take up space, and weigh a lot. There is and always will be something nice about the tactile act of reading a book. But, I've created ebooks and will publish many more in the years ahead. Lately, small groups have been asking if I would present on how to create an ebook. I can offer whatever training is needed for those interested, but the training isn't that involved. In fact, the new, easy-to-use tools are why so many of my colleagues in book and magazine design are losing their jobs. Too many of my friends and colleagues didn't make the transition to online publishing because the skills differ from those we needed in print. The publishing world is definitely changing. I posted an ebook with a very narrow audience on Amazon and sold over 1000 copies last year. For those of us with decades of experience i...

Brier Dudley's Blog | Kindle so-so for students, UW study concludes | Seattle Times Newspaper Seven months into the study, more than 60 percent of the students had stopped using their Kindle regularly for academic reading -- and these were computer science students, who are presumably more sympathetic to an electronic book. I'm not surprised that an eReader doesn't replace books. Taking notes and highlighting are part of the reading process that a Kindle or other eReader doesn't easily replicate. I recall what a page looks like, from the graphics to the pattern of paragraphs. On an eReader, I can't always locate where a bit of information is. You can't say it is on "Page X" because the pagination changes with font size and other choices a user can change. Many of us would like to imagine eReaders catching on with universities because textbooks are so expensive. The prices of textbooks are outrageous: my last course text was $100 for students and co...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley July 2009 Issue May 30, 2009 Font Fanatic: Putting the Best Face Forward How words look on a page or screen can be as important as what they state. Consider corporate logos and signs you see around town. The lettering conveys everything from how “serious” the message is to associations with specific eras. Personally, I love the clean precision of Art Deco lettering, which brings to mind elegance, the Roaring 20s, and a young Hollywood. However, no matter how much I might like Art Deco, I would not prepare a business letter using the typefaces Broadway, Plaza, or Desdemona. These might look great on Agatha Christie or F. Scott Fitzgerald novel covers, but they are inappropriate for a letter to my university department chair. Having a few hundred fonts installed on your computer does not mean you should try to use them all, especially within the same document. I’ve seen the results of font addiction and they aren’t attractive. I admit to being...