SourceBeat Anyone?
First a few questions. What is the best way to sell technical books? print vs pdf? owership vs leasing? What is a reasonable price? What is the lifetime of a technical book? Is it more than 1 year?
I ask because I have been recently looking at SourceBeat's sales model. I don't know about anyone else, but I think the $29.99 per book per year from SourceBeat seems a bit steep. While I agree 100% that the authors should be compensated for their great work, $30 for something that isn't tangible and its service expires after 1 year seems like a bit much. I much prefer the Manning approach where around $20 and plus the option to purchase the real book for full price less what you paid for the pdf. This offers the consumer the best of both worlds. This gives the reader greater flexibility at a more reasonable cost. Until Sourcebeat charges around $15 per year or moves to a full subscription based service, I will have a hard time purchasing their material. Of course, I say that now :)
Why the rant? Im very interested in Matt Raible's, Spring Live book but for the reasons mentioned above, I'll probably be waiting for Spring in Action from Manning.
Google Desktop Cont.
After fully indexing my drive, I've been using the google desktop for about 24hrs now on my work laptop. I have to say it is quite useful and I believe it has already become one of those must have utilities. I'm still a little curious why it doesn't do pdf documents, but I can live with that in the first beta release. Since OS X 10.4 will offer similar functionality with spotlight, I will now be waiting for it's public release with more anxiousness than before.
Google Desktop
After reading about the Google Desktop, I was immediately disappointed that there was only a release for Windoze. Even though I had no intention of using it on my Mac(Mac searching rocks already), I always see companies in a better light if they support more than just Windoze.
One really cool extension might be corporate shared drives. At every company that I have worked for, there is always a company wide shared drive that contain's massive quantities of documents. Normally, searching this document wasteland would take days, months, or lifetimes. Since I believe this feature would bring great value, I think companies would pay good money for google's search functionality in this environment.
Im indexing my Windoze box as we speak, more details to come.
Happy Birthday Bradley
Today is Bradley's birthday. He is my six year old Pug Dog. Seems like only yesterday I picked him up from the breeder.
Tour De Dad
On Saturday, I attended the SemiAnnual Tour De Dad bike ride. Actually bike ride is a bit strong, it was really a social event where bikes were used as the transportation means. This event was hosted by a friend's(Hans) father, John Gerwitz. Hans referred to this event as a "pub crawl on wheels". I'd have to agree. The focus of this social outing was to expose St Louis County dwellers to the jewel's of St Louis city. This particular gathering focused on Forest Park specifically. Having grown up in the city near Ted Drewes, I am very familiar with many of it's attractions including Forest Park. I had a great time, learned a bit of history about the park, and met some great people.