Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Feb 23
The Exquisite Beauty of an Ebook as a Living, Breathing Document
Books have always changed over time, of course. There have always been "second editions", "third editions", etc. There have been different printings by different publishers - or differences between a hard-cover and paperback version. There have been translations... and other various different versions of books.
But those were historically very discrete "BIG DEALS". I mean... whoa... there was enough interest to create a second edition? or a 3rd? or a 4th? Wow!
They involved great amounts of time, effort and perhaps most importantly money to go through the whole production process again to great the new "edition" of the book. It was not an easy process.
Ebooks fundamentally change all of that.
Last night I was working late into the night on an update to my "Migrating Applications to IPv6" book and thought about how bizarrely different ebooks are.
Consider this:
- I originally wrote the book in May 2011 prior to World IPv6 Day on June 8, 2011. The original book refers to that event as coming up in the future.
- Last night I updated the book to discuss some of the lessons learned from World IPv6 Day in 2011 and to also talk about the upcoming World IPv6 Launch on June 6, 2012. I expect this update to go out in a week or two.
- In July (or anytime after June 6), I can then update the book to talk about World IPv6 Launch in the past tense and talk about anything learned out of that experience.
The "book" is no longer fixed to a specific point in time.
Again, sure, this has always been true with creating new "editions" of a book, but this is where ebooks make this so... trivial.
As an author, here is the full extent of my update process:
- I update the text of the book on my local computer. Have someone proofread it, check it, etc.
- I commit the changes to O'Reilly's Subversion repository for my book. (Yes, O'Reilly is a geeky kind of publisher that lets authors work via SVN repos.)
- I send an email to my production editor with bullet points of changes.
- Assuming he's fine with the changes, he triggers a process that creates the appropriate ebook files and puts them up on O'Reilly's distribution site, Amazon, etc.
- Readers who purchased the book directly from O'Reilly get an email saying that they can download the updated version. I can blog about it, promote it. Anyone who buys the new version will at this point have the updated text.
Boom. That's it!
Simple. Easy. Done.
Now, granted, O'Reilly has done a bunch of "magic" to make that step #4 "just work" from the author's point of view... but it doesn't matter to me. The point is that I can write my updates, commit the changes, ping my editor and... ta da... a new version is out there!
It's that last step that is really the differentiator for ebooks. Notifying the reader that a new version is available.
Because, of course, the precise version of a book or an ebook is fixed to a specific point in time. When you download it to your computer or ereader, you have the version of the ebook as it exists now at this moment in time.
Without a notification/update system, you may never know that there are changes and updates that you can download.
But with such a system, the "book" becomes so much more... it is now a living, breathing document that will change and evolve over time. Perhaps slowly... or not at all if an author doesn't create updates... but then perhaps VERY rapidly under changing circumstances.
The book that you read today may be completely different than that exact same book that you look at again in a month.
It changes the notion of the "permanence" of books... you have the capacity to enter into more of a "relationship" with the book and the author. You have the chance to see it grow and evolve. Or not.
As an author I actually find it incredibly exciting. A chance to keep a book always up-to-date. A chance to evolve the book based on reader feedback. A chance to change the "book". Sure, there is a bit of a responsibility to your readers as you enter into a relationship like this where updates may come to be expected - and some authors will not want to enter into that relationship. They may want to simply throw the book out there and be done with it.
But for those of us who do want to treat the book as a living, breathing document, that is the exquisite beauty of an "ebook" (with an update/notification system).
The "book" is alive.
Image credit: drooo on Flickr
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Feb 22
IPv6 Statistics – Lars Eggert’s IPv6 Deployment Trends
Lars Eggert tracks deployment trends for IPv6, DNSSEC, SIP, XMPP and a few other protocols at:
In his “experiment,” Lars is tracking the top 500 sites from Alexa.com both overall and for individual countries, and then performing a variety of tests on them to determine IPv6 accessibility. As he writes (our emphasis):
This experiment attempts to answer the following question: If an average user had a working installation of IPv6 on their machine, how useful would it be to them? What percentage of the services and sites the average user regularly accesses are IPv6-enabled? In other words, the experiment attempts to quantify the usefulness of IPv6 to the average end user, given the current deployment of IPv6 in the Internet.
The experiment does not track how many users or hosts use IPv6 in the current Internet. It also does not track how many sites have configurations of IPv6 that are not accessible by average users from the Internet.
If you go on down the page, Lars includes some interesting IPv6 trend data going back to when he started collecting the data in October 2007. Lars also includes statistics on DNSSEC deployment as well as that of a few other protocols.
Feb 22
LACNIC Report On Success of IPv6 Week
How did IPv6 Week (Feb 6-12) turn out in Latin America and the Caribbean?
The folks over at LACNIC recently posted a note indicating that over 200 websites participated in the IPv6 Week activities. LACNIC also organized two webinars and presented at the Campus Party Brasil event that week. They still have an IPv6 Week contest going on through March 1 that will see someone taking home a new iPad 2 and someone attending the next LACNIC event.
As we get ever closer to World IPv6 Launch, it’s great to see activities like this going on and we definitely congratulate LACNIC and all the associated groups and organizations for their successful event!
Feb 22
CIRA / .CA Launches DNSSEC Info Center and Draft DNSSEC Practice Statement
DNSSEC is coming soon to the .CA domain! The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) recently announced a draft of their “DNSSEC Practice Statement” (DPS) that provides details around how they will be deploying and managing DNSSEC for the .CA domain. They are seeking comment on the DPS – and are also launching a “DNSSEC Knowledge Center” at:
The draft DPS is available on that site as is a useful DNSSEC FAQ.
All of this is in preparation for CIRA’s plans to sign the .CA zone in 2012 and to start signing .CA second-level domains in 2013.
It’s great to see this step from CIRA and we encourage all those interested to take a look at their DPS and send in any comments you may have.
If you are interested in learning more about CIRA’s activities, Jacques Latour spoke at our Toronto ION event in November and we published the video where he spoke about what CIRA is doing with both IPv6 and DNSSEC:
Feb 22
Storify Rolls Out New iPad App That Makes It Super Easy To Curate Twitter, Facebook
I may, though, start using Storify a bit more now that they've rolled out an iPad application. Given that the Storify app is free in the iOS App Store, I downloaded it and started playing with it this morning. It's a wonderful example of how the touch interface of a tablet can be such a joy to work with. It's so very simple and natural to drag and drop tweets, photos, etc. to create new stories. Definitely something I'm going to look at using more when I have stories or topics I want to curate into a larger "story" for publishing out to the web.
If you have an iPad, you can download the Storify app and try it out yourself... and if you don't, you can watch the video that shows how it works:
Very cool to see how application designers are continuing to evolve our user interfaces... looking forward to seeing how this all continues...
Feb 21
Internet2 DNSSEC Special Interest Group (SIG) Provides Forum for Research/Education Community
Are you are member of the research or education community interested in connecting with others who are implementing DNSSEC? Or are you interested in monitoring what is happening within the research/education world with regard to DNSSEC? If so, the Internet2 Consortium has a Special Interest Group (SIG) focused on DNSSEC. The SIG has a website with a great amount of information at:
https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/DNSSEC/Internet2+DNSSEC+SIG
As noted there:
This SIG (Special Interest Group) is intended as a collaborative forum for the research and education community, to share information and support each other in deploying DNSSEC – the Domain Name System Security Extension.
The SIG primarily communicates through a mailing list and instructions to subscribe are provided at the top of the group’s web page. The SIG also has monthly conference calls where they provide updates on recent and upcoming activities and initiatives.
If you are within the research or education community and interested in DNSSEC, this group is definitely a great place to connect with peers and collaborate. We definitely encourage you all to check it out and join the work.
Feb 21
O’Reilly Offers Free Ebook: "Publishing with iBooks Author"
Now, I personally have serious issues with iBooks Author with regard to its deviation from the EPUB standard and the legal lock-in that restricts sales to Apple's iBookstore. It also annoys me that books created with the tool will only work on the iPad, even while I understand Apple's strategy.
Having said all that, I've played with iBooks Author and it is a great tool for creating ebooks. Apple has raised the bar on ease-of-use for ebook creation tools and that is definitely a good thing. As my attendance at O'Reilly's Tools of Change conference last week in New York certainly showed to me, we need tools that are easier-to-use for even more people to be able to create ebooks.
My sincere hope is that creators of other ebook authoring tools will take a serious look at what Apple has done with iBooks Author and figure out how to deliver a similar (or better) user experience where the final output can also work on other ebook platforms. The tool vendor who can do that will certainly receive a lot of interest judging from the conversations I've had with people both at TOCCON last week and also in numerous other venues.
So to that end, I commend O'Reilly on releasing this new ebook for free and I do hope people will download it and understand just what Apple has done to make ebook creation so easy... and then use that knowledge to build even better tools!
P.S. In full disclosure, O'Reilly is the publisher of my most recent ebook, but that has nothing to do with why I am writing about them here. (And it was written entirely in DocBook XML, because that's just the kind of author I am... )
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Feb 21
RIPE Labs Reports on IPv4 Address Depletion Per Region
Which regions of the world are depleting their IPv4 addresses the quickest? Our friends over at RIPE Labs published some interesting statistics earlier this month about the growth in IPv4 address allocation per region. The article’s goal is:
With the depletion of the IPv4 free pool in the APNIC region and the imminent IPv4 free pool run out in the RIPE NCC’s service region, it is interesting to look at IPv4 allocation rates per country to see where free pool run out has and will have the most consequences, in terms of curtailing growth of IPv4 address usage. In this article, we try to visualise where “the pressure is on” the most.
To perhaps no surprise, the Asia-Pacific and Latin/South American regions experienced the greatest demand for IPv4 address allocations although in the case of the AP region the “free pool” of IPv4 addresses is now exhausted.
The brief report by Emile Aben provides some very interesting data and useful summaries of the state of IPv4 address usage around the world. Definitely worth a read for those looking to understand where we are with IPv4 address exhaustion.
Feb 20
Inspiring Video: LeVar Burton’s TOC Keynote On The Power Of Stories and Storytelling
One of the highlights of attending O'Reilly's TOCCON last week in New York turned out to be a short but incredibly inspiring keynote presentation by LeVar Burton, who some of us may forever know as "Geordi LaForge" from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and others may know from his 25 years with "Reading Rainbow" or as Kunte Kinte way back in days of "ROOTS". As he is of course a professional actor, his delivery was wonderful to listen to, but even more I enjoyed what he had to say about the power of stories and storytelling. Some key quotes to me:
I am a firm believer in the link between that which we imagine and that which we create.The stories that we tell each other, and have told each other, throughout the history of the development of civilization, are integrally important, are inextricably linked, to how we continue to invent the world in which we live.
That, upon which we focus our attention, is what we manifest in the third dimension.
The stories that we tell each other inform us about who we are, why we're here and where we're going.
You come here to use your imaginations in the service of storytelling.
He spoke, too, about the transition we are in now with publishing and the road ahead.
It was a very inspiring presentation and a great way to start the day... enjoy!
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