I was thinking about the latest news from Apple, that they were partnering with textbook publishers to bring cheaper textbooks directly to the iPad while at the same time releasing an application for anyone to publish iBooks for the Apple Bookstore.

Perhaps I am being cynical, but it’s always appeared to me that the main business model of a textbook publisher is to slightly tweak versions of a textbook, altering page numbers and quiz questions in order to force students to buy newer editions instead of used ones. Perhaps the industry is thinking that iBooks will eliminate the used book market, and they’re probably right. But this could also have some negative (for publishers) side effects as well.

Apple is lowering the distribution costs of textbooks dramatically. Assuming that schools actually pay for a set of iPads for each student, it becomes trivially easy (with the iBook publishing software) to create free textbooks for schools. Who would want to give textbooks away for free? Teachers. There are cases of teachers self-publishing for their own schools, but for this idea to really work, I think teachers would need to collaboratively create a textbook that meets either regional or national standards and release it for free on iBooks. If you don’t believe this will happen, take a look at Khan Academy.

Previous attempts to create free textbooks have been hit or miss. I am not quite sure how popular Wikibooks are in the classroom. The problem is probably that of traction and scale. Previously, no one has created a standard for e-textbook distribution. Apple is doing that with iBooks. The beautiful part is that they’re bootstrapping it with traditional publishers who are probably digging their own grave.

Of course, this could play out in a number of ways. Maybe iBooks will prove to be too costly for most public schools to adopt (I’m guessing this is very likely). If only private schools or schools with a lot of funding can support them, it may not become worthwhile to create free textbooks for all.

What I’d hope to see is a slow adoption of iPads in the classroom using iBooks as textbooks. Once a critical mass of schools is using iBooks, free textbooks will be developed and adopted by certain school districts and spread to others.

I’m glad to see that Apple is trying to “disrupt” (I lose some points here by using a word I hate) the textbook industry, and it’s awesome that they’re partnering with that industry to do it. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this plays out, hopefully for the benefit of our education system.

Anyway, I did a quick naive implementation of polling about every hour or so. Apparently the feed parser I’m using is pretty inefficient because it’s eating up a lot of resources (relatively speaking) on App Engine. I remembered that the http protocol is pretty smart, and there’s a way to figure out if stuff has changed since the last time you grabbed it.

Google’s urlfetch doesn’t seem to support conditional GETs (someone tell me if I am wrong). I looked around and found a few tutorials on how to accomplish this in Python using urllib2. The tutorials weren’t exactly what I wanted, so I had to change a few things here or there. Here’s a snippet of code that I’m using:

import urllib2
feed = Feed.get() #my feed object has a etag, last_modified and url property
req = urllib2.Request(url)
if feed.etag:
    req.add_header("If-None-Match", feed.etag)
if feed.last_modified:
    req.add_header("If-Modified-Since", feed.last_modified)
try:
    url_handle = urllib2.urlopen(req)
    content = url_handle.read()
    headers = url_handle.info()
    feed.etag = headers.getheader("ETag")
    feed.last_modified = headers.getheader("Last-Modified")
    feed.put()
except Exception, e:
    logging.info(e) #just says 304 didn't change
    return
dostuffwith(content)

This handles my use case, which is doing work if the feed is new, and ignoring it if it hasn’t been modified. I could probably wrap this into a function that returned false if it the file hadn’t changed, and the content if it was new… Probably will do that next.

I submitted a panel proposal to SXSW again this year entitled “Quitters Always Prosper: The Iterative Career Process.” Here’s the proposal as seen on the official panel picker:

Quitters Always Prosper: The Iterative Career Process

You just graduated from college and started your first real job. But it isn’t what you thought it was. Somehow, somewhere along the way, you made an error in judgment, or your company flat out lied to you about your job. What do you do?

Hear from a panel of young professionals who were in this same position and quit before they hit the one -year mark. They’ve since moved on to greener pastures and have found their true calling, or are at least a step closer. They are part of a larger movement who believe in an iterative career path.

Disillusioned employees: share your pain and ask the panel how and why they made their decision to quit. Learn the warning signs of a bad fit during the interview process and in the first few days on the job. Know that you aren’t alone, and there’s something you can do about it.

Employers: learn how to decrease new employee turnaround. Discover the best incentives to retain great talent. Learn when and when not to hire.

When the going gets tough, quit!

Questions Answered:

1. What are the warning signs before I accept a job that it is not a good fit?
2. What alternatives are there for reconciliation before sending in my resignation?
3. What should I do before quitting (e.g. securing a new job, etc)?
4. How do I explain my short stay to a potential new employer?
5. What should I learn from my bad experience, and how should I apply it to the next job?

As many of you know, I quit my job at Microsoft after about 6 months. There were a lot of reasons why, and it boils down to the fact that it just wasn’t a good fit. I’ve noticed a disproportionate number of my cohort from grad school who also left their first jobs after graduating within one year. I thought it would be interesting to do a panel on the subject and try to get to the bottom of this phenomenon.

I think It’s of interest not only to people who aren’t happy at their jobs, but also employers who struggle with retention rates, especially among younger employees. I think it’ll be an interesting panel. While I moderated a SXSW panel at this year’s conference, I was thinking that I could either moderate again (it’s very fun and stressful) or be a panelist, since I’ve experienced it myself.

I’d really appreciate it if you could take the time to vote for my proposal, leave a comment, and spread the word! As with my last panel, I think the subject is something that people think about, but often do not talk about. If we can get a room of like-minded people together, I’m confident that people can be inspired to make tough decisions and get more out of life!

SXSW just posted their audio recording of the Student Startups panel that I moderated! Here it is in embedded form, or you can download it, too!

Oh man, I sound super nervous (I was). Please let me know what you thought of the panel if you didn’t get a chance to attend and you’re hearing it now for the first time!

Thanks again to my panelists, Ben, Ellen and Marc! They did a terrific job!

I got back from SXSW 2010 a few days ago, and I thought I would write a post about what it was like to moderate a panel while it’s fresh in my mind. As you may know, my panel submission, “Student Startups: Entrepreneurship in the University” was selected to be a real panel at SXSW 2010! From the time that I knew it was accepted, I sprung into action and got my panelists together. Ellen from Alight Learning, Ben from Olark (formerly Hab.la) and Rishi from Underground Printing.

While I did my research beforehand (I was a student entrepreneur myself, to begin with), I felt the need to cram some preparation a few days before the panel, too. I guess I should have gotten everything ready before the conference started, but I also wanted to get proper feedback from my panelists.

One way I prepared to moderate was by reading a few blog posts on the subject that were linked to from the Speaker FAQ. Most agree that one should not over-prepare the panelists. You want the discussion to happen during the panel itself and not before. In the hour before the panel, inside the green room, I had to sort of referee the panelists to avoid discussing too much. Most also agree that the moderator needs to do the most homework. I had to come up with the focus of my panel, questions to ask to reach that focus, and I had to be prepared to follow up with more questions depending on where the conversation went (which included asking questions to get the discussion back on track if it was going off on a tangent).

At first the panel was going to be about details: where to get money, what kind of corporate structure to use, etc. When I started thinking about the potential panel attendee, I realized that these questions would probably be really boring and unnecessary. I tried to frame my panel from the viewpoint of a college undergrad who just wants to get something started. I hoped that by the end of the panel, at least one person in the room would decide to give startups a try, or at least be excited enough by the idea to do more research into it.

My biggest worries were that no one would come, or that too many people would come. I also worried that people would be mean on the backchannel (as I have witnessed during other panels). I worried that I would not have enough questions to ask and that there would be a bunch of dead silence. Luckily, none of these things happened. The audience was a good size, I treated the audience with respect from the beginning and asked them to do the same on our hashtag, and my panelists were really interesting and led me to ask other followup questions. I don’t think there was much filler content at all.

Probably the only truly stressful part of the process was when Rishi called me the day before the panel and told me he couldn’t make it, by no fault of his own. I had to find a replacement panelist within less than 24 hours! Luckily, I am an entrepreneur at heart and rose to the challenge. I went to the trade show floor and started asking the startup-looking companies if their founder was there, and if so, if he/she had started a company while in school. I got incredibly lucky the first time I asked, at Tungle.me‘s booth. I ended up meeting Marc Gingras, a really awesome guy who ended up working out perfectly. Marc rounded out the panel as the guy who started a company during the dotcom boom. He also has experience being a VC and doing other startups after his first. I really can’t thank Marc enough for spending his time sitting on my panel and helping it become a great success.

My basic strategy during the panel was to break the ice by asking the audience to participate a bit first. I stole this from the App-Vertising panel I saw a few days before. I asked who in the audience were students, investors, entrepreneurs or educators. Next, I had my panel introduce themselves and then I introduced myself. I started with an easy question: “I am a student who wants to get into startups, what should I do?” From there I listened to the panelists and tried to anticipate where the discussion was heading. I had a few points I wanted to hit, so if I heard something that related to another topic, I segued into it. For example, I might’ve said “Ben, you mentioned finding your co-founders at a student group, did anyone else have a similar experience? If not, where did you find your co-founders?”

The backchannel on Twitter also provided a good source of questions. I’m really glad that people asked them because it kept the conversation relevant to what people wanted to know and it gave me a chance to save my questions for a more relevant time to ask them.

I haven’t gotten the official feedback on the panel yet, but I think that it was overall a success. Very few people left in the during the panel and many people were nice enough to come up and talk to me and the panelists afterward. I wish I could have talked to every single person to see if the panel was helpful, but I think they had to run to the keynote right after (and so did we)! I really hope that the panel inspired some people to take a chance and become an entrepreneur. I think that if one person became more inspired after hearing the panel, our mission was definitely accomplished.

While the process was a bit stressful and required a fair amount of work, I’d love to either moderate or participate in a panel again, someday. I’ve got to start thinking of panel ideas for SXSW 2011!

[Photo credit: Chris Norred]

The first celebrity of South By came fairly early. While leaving the Windows Phone party on Friday night, I ran into my old friend Pete Cashmore. I can call him my old friend because we used to be in that 9rules thing together and he wrote about Notecentric and MapsKrieg on his Mashable blog. I chatted him up a bit to see if he remembered me (he either did or was being nice). And he was pretty nice, too! He told me about the Mashable party at Buffalo Billiards (that I didn’t actually get a chance to go to). Then I had to run off because there was a free taco truck nearby and Pete was trying to get into the Speakeasy anyway.

That same night I also spotted Scobleizer, but I didn’t talk to him because I was looking for additional Korean tacos and I already met him last year. I also met some Jonas Brothers but later found out they were just cardboard cutouts.

The next night, at the Frog Design opening party, I was waiting in line and met a cool guy named Mike D’Amico. The line was for a photo booth. I guess we’re both pretty narcissistic. Anyway, some gals ran up to mike and started talking to him. They seemed strangely familiar. I thought they were maybe in a TV show or small-time movie actors. Once they started handing Threadless buttons to me I realized the magnitude of the situation.

They were Threadless t-shirt models!!! Kristen and Colleen were both really nice. I took a picture with them, Threadless style, though I didn’t have a Threadless shirt on at the time. We exchanged business cards and I promised them I’d wear my Three Keyboard Cat Moon shirt the next day.

Sunday was a slow day for celebrity sightings but that was probably due to the fact that I was busy preparing for my panel the next day. Monday turned out to be a good day, both for my panel (more on that in a later post!) and for celebrity sightings!

My friends Sameer and Maureen and I were heading to the 20×2 party but found the foursquare party along the way. The line was huge but somehow we became VIPs by drinking some Vitamin Water and having out pictures taken. The party had a bunch of tables with t-shirts and schwag lined up. I got a Brizzly, Foursquare and something else (some kind of iPhone app company) shirt. While at the foursquare table I saw that iJustine girl. I talked with her for a second and got a picture with her. She seemed nice enough, but kinda had other things to do besides talk to me. She probably needed to go stream her life or something, whatevs!

danah boyd was also at the party but someone was chatting her up relentlessly. Sameer got her to say “Hi” (he’s met her before) but she had to run to the VIP area or something. She also seemed nice but kinda busy.

Later that night, Sameer and I were in the line for the Mens room and ran into the CEO of Twitter, Evan Williams! He was wearing the same dress shirt/sweater combo as during his keynote earlier in the day. Sameer asked for his business card and Ev nicely obliged. We didn’t get a picture. That might’ve been a bit too odd, given we were waiting for the bathroom. I heard that Ashton Kutcher was also at the party but I didn’t head up to the VIP area to check him out.

Overall it was a very good year for celebrity sightings at SXSW. I really wanted to meet Cashmore last year, so it’s great I finally got to talk with him a bit this time. Next year I hope to run into even more famous celebrities like Guy Kawasaki or Leo Laporte! See you soon, SXSW 2011!

Meaghan was really nice because she had originally sent me two blue cards and a yellow. I told her that I had intended to frame them as a set of three and she printed a red one and sent it to me for free. It was really good of her to do that.

I think the reason I like Letterpress is that it leaves a very tangible impression. The object itself is a representation of something that’s not quite 2d, but not quite 3d either. In an age of all things digital, when it’s so easy to reproduce something by printing it out on an inkjet or laser printer, it’s nice to have something that’s a bit more difficult to recreate. Sure, someone could scan the card and print it out, but there would be something lost in the translation from a physical object with physical properties to a digital representation back to a physical object.

I like that the printer works by smashing into the paper. It creates something that’s different every time. I like that you can touch the card and feel its texture. I like that you can see it from different angles in the light, and how it changes a bit. In the example above, I really like the colors.

So far my hobby consists of collecting letterpress’ed stuff. I’d really like to take a letterpress printing class some time. It seems like it’d be a good way to balance my love of new technology with some older-fashioned tech.

I brought home a bundle of joy yesterday. No, I did not adopt a child or animal. But I do have a new pet: the iRobot Roomba 530 vacuum-cleaning robot!

I’ve wanted a Roomba for a while. It makes perfect sense: it’s a robot, which I love. It’s a vacuum cleaner, which I also really like. It’s also kind of a pet. I have to say that the way it moves around is pretty cute. There are really nice, nuanced touches. Like how it beeps as it backs up when it leaves its docking station. Or how it slows down a bit when it knows it’s gonna hit the wall. And it hits the wall a lot. It also plays a sort of sad sound when it runs out of batteries. The Roomba definitely has a personality.

In addition to just being a cool nerdy object, the Roomba does a pretty decent job. It picked up a bunch of gunk the first time it swept through my apartment. It seemed to prefer the living room, maybe because it was dirtiest? Or maybe because it liked the feel of the shag rug. I’m not sure. The algorithm that determines where the Roomba goes seems non-deterministic. So it ends up doing something different each time, but I think the algorithm also ensures that it hits all the spots a couple of times, and it apparently knows when it’s found some dirt, in which case it goes back for more. There are some really nice details about the design of the robot. It’s circular, which means it can turn with a 0 degree radius. It has a rotating brush thingy that helps it get stuff that’s in a corner. It’s also pretty short, so it fits under my couch and my bed. It’s only gotten stuck like once, and that was an edge case where it used a table leg as a ramp.

So far I am very happy with my Roomba. It’s cute, functional and gives some serious nerd cred. I realize that it’s only a matter of time before my Roomba gains sentience and tries to kill me in my sleep. For now, though, it’s worth saving the trouble of having to vacuum by hand all the time.

Also, I just remembered about the random Super Mario Bros. sprite animations that some Japanese person (sikamako) made using graphics from the old Genesis game, Moonwalker! I had only previously linked to one. So I thought that in tribute of MJ, I’d link to all of them. They’re all really weird:

Super Michael Bros.

I think this is the original one. I don’t remember where I got it. Seems sort of normal enough. Just MJ running through a few Mario stages.

Michael Quest

Michael Quest is a little weirder. Basically he comes in and pwns a bunch of video games. Then some red ninjas come in? Then MJ is revived by Luigi? And he turns into the metal thing from Moonwalker. Yeah, this really makes no sense. Just watch it.

Michael Fantasy

It actually gets weirder. There’s a flashback to Michael Quest (of course). Then the princess rides a gigantic Zangief from SFII to destroy the earth. This is foreshadowed before it actually happens, so then a bunch of random video game characters try and stop it. And of course, Michael Jackson saves the day again.

Michael Forever

I believe this is the last one. I think Michael finds some Dragon Balls, revives some characters, then has to stop Princess Peach again, this time riding a giant E. Honda… There’s a lot of Japanese pop cultural references (like Doraemon, Dragon Ball, etc) and I probably don’t understand all of them. Suffice it to say that MJ is still a badass in this one. Crisis averted.

Sometimes it’s fun to go look at what I wrote, say, two years ago and compare it to how I feel now. Case in point: Twitter. Almost two years ago, I wrote that:

Now, I actually use the Facebook updates now and then, but it seems like people who use Twitter do this to the max. Like they update multiple times a day. Are these people so self-centered that they think everyone needs to know what they’re doing?

…

In Twitter, the ability to update is the entire application itself. To me, Twitter is simply a subset of what Facebook already provides. Why would you ever need both?

This historical post is both illuminating and funny for a number of reasons. Apparently in the past I hardly updated my Facebook status at all. These days I probably do so at least once a day, and usually multiple times a day. I guess that’s just an indicator of how social norms have changed in regards to sharing personal information online: what was thought of as “oversharing” in the past is basically normal now. It’s also funny that I recognized that Twitter was a subset of Facebook. Recently I’ve come to believe that being a subset is actually a feature.

I think Twitter hit critical mass for me somewhere in the last few months. So really, my previous opinions of it being pointless weren’t necessarily incorrect. It just didn’t hold any value for me. Now that the value of Twitter (in my own usage) is improving due to network effects, I use it more often.

I think the appeal of Twitter comes down to this: There is a much better signal-to-noise ratio at this point using Twitter versus Facebook. On Facebook I get updates about everything that everyone I have ever known (and befriended) has ever done! I don’t care about pictures of drunk cheerleaders who I was friends with in undergrad. But Facebook feeds them to me. I really should remove them at some point, but oh well, such is social networking.

For now, Twitter has a much more relevant set of messages. I’ve also noticed that people are much more likely to respond to me via Twitter, versus commenting on a Facebook status. Probably due to the noise/signal thing again. It’s easy for me to simply “unfollow” someone who is not providing me with relevant or funny information. Sadly, the relevance factor of Twitter is probably a temporary quality. Facebook used to have a low S/N ratio until everyone joined it. Twitter may face the same problem if it can grow like Facebook did (lol at scaling).

It’s interesting to look at all of this in the context of history. I used ujournal before I used Xanga before I used livejournal before I used MySpace (ick) before I used Facebook before I used Twitter before I used (fill in the blank)…