July 2011 archive

Jul 28

One Simple Reason O’Reilly ROCKS as an Ebook Publisher

Like many technical folks, I've long been a fan of O'Reilly books, having purchased my first "animal" book sometime back in the late 1980's, but as we collectively make the transition to the world of ebooks, I've discovered one simple reason O'Reilly truly rocks as a publisher:

http://oreilly.com/e/

That's it! Enter that one little URL into the browser on your tablet, mobile phone or e-reader and after you login... ta da... there are all the O'Reilly ebooks you have purchased! No need to sync to a program on your laptop or desktop ... just straight downloads to your device to open in whatever program you use - iBooks, Kindle, Stanza, whatever...

Here's how it looks on my iPad:

Oreillyebooks ipad

As you can see, books are available in whatever formats they were produced in... so you can grab ePub for iBooks or Stanza, Mobi for Kindle, or just a straight-up PDF for use in other apps. You aren't limited to one format, either, as you can download all of the formats if you want. O'Reilly has also taken the step to deliver their downloads DRM-free, so you can use them on any device.

Oreillyebooks iphoneThe image on the right shows the same screen on my iPhone. The URL will naturally work on a laptop or desktop, too, but the beauty of it is that the URL is so trivial to enter into a mobile device. About as small a URL as you can get.

The great thing about ebooks is, of course, that you always get the latest version of whatever the author has uploaded. And O'Reilly routinely alerts you via email whenever there are new updates for you to download.

That one simple URL makes it so easy to obtain whatever books you purchase and whatever updates there are.

In full disclosure, I now am an "O'Reilly author" with my latest book, "Migrating Applications to IPv6", but that is just recent (last month) and I started purchasing O'Reilly ebooks quite some time ago for my iPad.

The whole world of ebooks is undergoing an amazing amount of innovation right now... and it's great to see publishers like O'Reilly trying out new ideas to see what works. And in my mind, having an easy-to-access portal to all your ebooks at a super-simple URL is a great idea!

Thanks, O'Reilly, for making it so simple to get to your ebooks!

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Jul 27

I am NOT Speaking at OSCON Friday About IPv6

Oscon LogoSadly, I will not be speaking about migrating applications to IPv6 on this Friday, July 29, at OSCON 2011 up in Portland, Oregon. Instead, my colleague Adam Kalsey will be presenting the talk on my behalf. (Adam is also speaking about managing open source releases of a cloud platform.)

As I wrote in the beginning of the book, it was my proposal to OSCON (which was accepted and scheduled) that prompted O’Reilly editor Mike Loukides to contact me about writing what become the book “Migrating Applications to IPv6“.

In a cruel twist of fate, though, I am now unable to attend OSCON and give the very presentation that prompted the book. Shortly after signing the contract to write the ebook a few months ago, my wife was diagnosed with very early stage breast cancer. While she has now “survived” this bout of cancer, she is still in recovery from the operation, is still in pain and still has a limited range of motion and ability to lift objects. Most importantly, she still can’t really lift our 2-year-old daughter… and, as anyone who has had a 2-year-old can attest, they frequently need lifting! So this year my place needs to be here with her…

While I’m sure Adam will give a great session on Friday and while I may be doing a follow-up webinar with O’Reilly, I would have loved to be out at the über-geekfest that is OSCON! For those who are there, I hope you have a great conference – and perhaps I’ll see you there next year!

P.S. And I am greatly appreciative to Adam for covering my presentation!

Jul 25

Interested in Reviewing “Migrating Applications to IPv6”? Looking For Reviewers…

Are you wondering about what might be involved with making an application work with IPv6? Do you develop apps and haven’t given much thought to IPv6, but are thinking maybe you should? Or are you an advocate for IPv6 looking to understand what books are out there?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, would you be interested in reviewing my latest book, “Migrating Applications to IPv6“, published by O’Reilly in June 2011?

I have two reasons for asking:

  1. The reality of today’s book marketplace is that reviews sell books. People do make purchasing decisions based on reading the reviews that people write. Right now there’s only 1 review of my book on O’Reilly’s site and none on Amazon.com. I’d love to see a few more out there on those sites… I’d also love to see some independent reviews on blog sites.
  2. The other reality is – I would like feedback! I’ve had some great comments from some friends who work with IPv6, but I’d like to get more feedback. Is the book appropriate for the target market? Is there anything more you’d like to see in the book? Were there sections that you felt could have had more text?

The beautiful thing about this book is that O’Reilly is focused on it being a living, breathing eBook. I can add more text or sections to it at any time and that new content will then be made available to anyone who has purchased the eBook. (eBook owners get email notifications through O’Reilly’s store mechanism… which works really well in my experience! You can also just login to O’Reilly’s site and see what books have new versions waiting for you to download.)

So in my mind I would like to see this book be an ongoing compilation of “best practices” around migrating applications to IPv6. I already have some ideas for additions… but I’d like to hear from others.

If you are interested in reviewing the book, please drop me an email and include in your message the email address you use at members.oreilly.com (and if you don’t have an account you can sign up for free). I will then pass your info along to O’Reilly and they will drop a copy of the eBook in your O’Reilly account. You can then download the book in the format of your choice: ePub, Mobi (Kindle) or PDF.

All I would ask is that in return you post an honest review of the book somewhere on the web… O’Reilly’s site… Amazon… your blog… some other site. Note that I’m not just asking for glowing reviews… sure, I love those and they help… but if you don’t like the book or think it has issues, I want to hear that feedback, too! At this point my main interest is in seeing some more reviews out there.

Thanks for the consideration!

Jul 25

Fascinating Chart of Growth of Google+ Relative to Facebook and Twitter

Fascinating chart on the growth of Google+ relative to Facebook and Twitter, courtesy of Leon Håland:

Growthofgoogleplus 1

Now, of course, being the newcomer Google+ benefits from already having Facebook and Twitter out there to spread the news about Google+ ... and to spread the links to Google+ material.

Google also has the massive directory of users of Google services... from Gmail to Google Docs and everything in between.

So on one level it's no surprise to see the phenomenal growth... still, it's quite impressive by any measure.

P.S. And of course I am on Google+...

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Jul 20

Mac OS X Lion is now in the App Store – are you upgrading?

It’s here! Now available in the App Store…

Macosx lion

Are you upgrading today? I’m going to wait a bit on my corporate MacBook Pro to make sure all the apps we use are compatible with Lion… but I’m thinking my home iMac is definitely getting the treatment today… 🙂

How about you?

P.S. TheNextWeb folks came out with a nice summary of what’s new in Lion.

Jul 19

Code.DanYork.com Now Running WordPress 3.2.1

In addition to being where I write about programming and other developer topics, this site is also where I test out new WordPress releases before installing them on other sites like the Voxeo blog portal or the Voice of VOIPSA site.  This site runs on a WordPress Multi-Site installation, although there aren’t many sites here (another one is my new IPv6 book).

This past week I installed WordPress 3.2 (followed by the 3.2.1 bug fix) and I have to say I am quite impressed with the back-end changes described in the announcement.  Some of them are just minor little nuances… the changes in the typography, even…   it just feels snappier and faster.  If you run a blog on top of WordPress, I have to say that 3.2 is definitely worth a look… I’m loving it!

Jul 13

The FCC … on Github??? and releasing a WordPress plugin???

FCC logoI love being surprised… did you know that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is making code available as open source over on Github? And that FCC staffers have released a WordPress plugin?

I discovered this via a tweet from someone that brought me to the “Official FCC Blog” and the July 6th post, “Contributing Code Back: FCC.gov’s Open-Source Feedback Loop,” that outlines many of the contributions they have been making.

As a long-time open source advocate, I’m thrilled to see the FCC doing this. It’s great to see them on Github – and it’s great to see them giving back to the WordPress ecosystem.

And I love that they end the post asking readers to fork their code and contribute changes back!

Great to see – and kudos to the FCC “new media” team for getting involved in this way.

Jul 11

Slides: Impact of IPv6 on Telecommunications Applications

At the recent Emerging Communications (eComm) Confernce 2011 I spoke about “How IPv6 Will Kill Telecom – And What We Need To Do About It“. It wasn’t all about applications – I also got into the impact of IPv6 on telecom protocols – but still I thought that some of you may find my slides of interest. I do include several examples of issues facing applications:

At some point a video of the session will be online and I will provide a link here when that is available.

Jul 06

What’s Wrong With This IPv4 Application?

See any problem with entering IPv6 addresses using this user interface? Probably not going to work to well, is it? 🙂

Iphone ipv4

This is just the network config interface of an IP phone I had on my desk. While some of you from the VoIP world might recognize the vendor, the truth is that most IP phone vendors’ apps have similar interfaces. These are the type of user interfaces I discuss in Chapter 1 of the book and that will be one of the biggest challenges for app developers. In the case of IP phones, the challenge is even greater because it is running on an embedded device using typically a special-purpose operating system.

Where do you have user interfaces like this lurking in your applications?