It’s the proceedings of a successful conference that I ran with Kurt Richardson in the summer of 2010. Yes, I know—it takes time.

No, it is not.

It’s the result of a successful conference that we ran, under the same title, in Southampton, England last summer.

Take “The Internet? Bah!”, published by Newsweek in 1995. Two gems:

• “Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.”
• “So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?”

Yeah. OK. I know. It happens to us all.

Why? Well, as more people get e-book readers (and that obviously includes smartphones) they’re likely to turn to content that works on those devices. Speaking personally, I’m much more likely to casually read longer content (articles/books) if I can store it on my device (e.g. iPhone/iPad/Kindle) and read it at a convenient time. If the article is in PDF, it had better be something that I need to read as it’s not accomodating my lifestyle—but dictating terms.

Another benefit, as an author, is that e-book devices can store so many articles that, once your article gets on there, it’s likely to remain for a while. That should increase the chances of it being read—especially if it’s reference material.

PDF just doesn’t work well on these devices — especially smartphones. We’ve sort of come to accept PDF as the default e-book format, as we’ve used it like that on the web for so long. However, PDF is designed for printing—which makes perfect sense when the choices open to users are vertical monitor or paper. HTML for the device (monitor) and PDF for printed content.

However, the whole point about e-book devices is that we no longer have to print articles/books. So, why use PDF? HTML (the technology underlying some of the major e-book formats) is a better tool for the job of presenting content on a diverse range of electronic devices.

So, I’ll probably produce all my articles in an e-book friendly format—XHTML/CSS—moving forward. It’s the future.

He was an avid user of social media and had all sorts of free accounts set up to do things like locate stories based on keywords and tweet the links. He also published an automated “newspaper” (feed aggregation) using the Paper.li service.

So…thing is…I still regularly receive information from him—complete with his account picture—and there’s the occassional useful link. So, in one sense, he’s transcended death (…or “ascended to the cloud”, as one of my more technical readers suggested…). I notice that his Twitter followers are still growing…

As all of these services as free, I guess his influence could continue indefinitely—unless his keywords are extremely contemporary.

As I type this I’m hard at work creating some automated content about ancient Egypt, classical music and Nokia…

After struggling to find out if I’d be able to travel, it finally dawned on me that I should try Twitter. Yes, I know—why didn’t I think of it sooner… Anyway, it was a revelation.

Live, on-the-scene reports of what was happening. Announcements heard, trains spotted, trains board, speed of travel…it was all there. It was my first personal experience of using social media in a (mild) crisis—and I have to say that it was pretty impressive. Especially when compared with the comprehensive failure of Southeastern”s own communication channels.

I was a bit of a skeptic when it came to this kind of use of social media. Turns out I was wrong. Hate it when that happens…

Update

I just purchased the excellent UK Train Times iPhone app which shows the live progress of the trains. Not sure how accurate it was when the snow was falling—but I may find out soon, as more snow is forecast!

Can’t believe I was still asking for paper timetables as recently as last month. I’m clearly some kind of dinosaur. Although, with the load on the cellular network in London, I’ll keep it as a backup.

Sticker shock at the upgrade price for my current GUI-based build tool pushed me to take a detailed look at MSBuild—Microsoft’s build platform. I’d been meaning to look at at it anyway, and this was the push I need. It seems to be the standard in the .NET world—helped, no doubt, by the fact that it’s installed as part of the .NET framework and that Visual Studio’s (and WiX’s) project files are MSBuild scripts. For me, the fact that the Mono project’s xbuild tool uses MSBuild scripts is another tick in MSBuild’s box.

MSBuild scripts are XML files. Many developers (myself included) find it faster to work with text files rather than GUI-based tools. It’s also easier to get assistance on developer forums when you can just cut-and-paste your script.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I was able to get up to speed with MSBuild. I converted two of my most complex build scripts within a few hours.

The biggest challenge in working with MSBuild is that the information you need to get up and running is scattered across various sources. Because of this, I highly recommend that you purchase Using MSBuild and Team Foundation Build—it’s basically the missing MSBuild manual. If you want to do it the hard way then Wikipedia has a good set of references.

MSBuild scripts are collections of targets that contain one or more tasks. The tasks are the “actions” of the script. You can write you own custom tasks (a pretty trivial process), but you’ll definitely want to install two popular MSBuild task libraries:

• MSBuild Community Tasks Project
• MSBuild Extension Pack

Also, you may find the free MSBuild Explorer useful when examining MSBuild files.

If you’re a .NET developer, and have yet to try MSBuild, give it a go. It’s relatively painless. And, if you don’t have a one-touch build process in place at all—are you mad?!

One of the areas where the iPad has really changed my behaviour is in the consumption of news. I was previously an intermittent user of RSS feeds. However, I now pretty much consume “topical content” exclusively through iPad apps like The Early Edition (see below). A subscription to The Economist is my sole remaining concession to print.

Using The Early Edition makes it difficult not to agree that traditional newspapers are in trouble. I now have a daily “newspaper” that is tailored specifically to my interests. No cricket scores crowding out the MotoGP standings. No technology articles that begin “The CPU—the ‘brain’ of the computer…” Basically, no fluff.

When reading today’s newspapers, it’s impossible not to be struck by how much of their content is op-ed and filler (e.g. feature articles). It also seems as if they spend days analyzing the potential consequence of a newsworthy event, a day reporting on the facts of the event and then a few more days analyzing the actual consequences of the event.

Well, there’s a lot of blank pages to fill, I guess.

We live in an age where everyone (genuinely) describes themselves as busy. So, who’s got time for a daily newspaper? Maybe a skim through “Metro” on the train home. Maybe. Colleagues increasingly mention that they buy a paper through habit, but don’t really read it.

In my RSS derived paper, I also get personal news—posts from clients’ project boards, friends’ blogs, etc. I’m pretty sure The Times won’t be up for that. Maybe I’ll drop them a line while they’re in a conciliatory mood…

A recent episode of “The Daily Show” had one of their presenters visit the New York Times. While there, they asked the editor, “What’s black and white and read all over?” The answer, unfortunately for the editor, wasn’t his guess of “A newspaper.”—it was his balance sheet.

So what can the papers do to retain/regain readers? Is there anything they can do? Or is it just too late?

For sure, it’s difficult to compete with hundreds of thousands of obsessive specialists. I don’t buy the argument that the newspapers are the guardians of quality and truth—the industry has already undermined itself in this respect.

One area where I think blogs are generally weak is in photojournalism. It’s probably no coincidence that the Guardian’s Eyewitness “photo of the day” iPad app is a big success. Blogs tend to rely on stock images…or copyright infringement. Photojournalism is an area that the newspapers, surprisingly, seem to have let slide.

Another weakness of blogs is in the editing. There’s scope for a publishing service that polishes the rough diamonds in the blogosphere.
Whatever the newspapers decide to do, it’ll need to be radical. I just can’t see people paying long-term for someone else’s vision of what they should be reading—not when they finally have their eyes opened to the alternatives.

• Emergent Publications
• Amazon (US)
• Amazon (UK)

Feels like it’s been forever since we started it. Really helps you appreciate the immediacy of blogging!

But, then again, holding some “dead tree” in your hand has a quality of its own. I’ll probably have another go…sometime.