December 4, 2004

scoble book

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Robert Scoble and Shel Israel want to write a book about blogging. Robert wants me to do the drawings. How very cool!

Robert wants to write the whole book on his blog, wants to auction off the rights on EBay- just go read the whole article. I can't do it justice. There's some great ideas in it.

Meanwhile, Seth Godin explains why ChangeThis only allows their content (including "How To Be Creative") on PDF format, not HTML:

You don't hear anyone whining about books. You don't hear about anyone sending long, detailed emails to book publishers explaining why they should abandon printed books and start publishing in HTML.

Anyway, we use PDFs because they're a lot more booklike. They read better. They stick together when you forward them. They print better.

I know they're not in HTML. There are 6 trillion other web pages to choose from if you want that.

"How To Be Creative" was already posted on gapingvoid as HTML before it was up on ChangeThis as a PDF. So happily I didn't have to choose "either/or". Seth, being a book writer, likes paper. I have no problem with that. His website, his rules.

I like paper, too. Drawings etc.

[SPEAKING OF "MEDIA":] Gia wrote something that REALLY got my attention:

Gia lives in London, where she works in the TV industry. She's one of Britain's more respected bloggers.

Anyway, she was telling her TV colleagues on an online TV-professionals forum all about blogs and whatnot, how great they were, how useful they were etc:

...Once newspapers (and then radio and television) came about we, the people, lost all input into the media. Whereas in those coffeehouses people could discuss and debate, these days the media does that for us AND decides what topics are important and what are not.

Blogs have brought that full circle. We now seek out the topics we are interested in AND are part of the debate....

Then this is what killed me. One of the TV people replied:
That was a lovely history lesson but I feel somewhat marred with delusions of grandeur. Can this medium really have a genuine impact on the masses or is it another internet flash in the pan fashion?
Yet one more reason why TV is dying. The people making it still see themselves as a bunch of entitled, we-know-best elites serving "the masses".

"The masses". Heh. What a patronizing dickhead. What a loser. What a complete dinosaur. I meet these kind of people all the time and they're pathetic.

Posted by hugh macleod at December 4, 2004 11:15 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Well, yeah, no one complains about books because the entire process of making books leaves very few options.

Putting something on the web gives a publisher more options pdf, html, flash etc. all are useful and have their place.

the problem with the PDFs on changethis is that they generally suck. they're very pretty, but i don't need a pdf taking over my entire screen thank you. and if i see one i like and want to quote, it's harder to link to.

htlm is just there, all ready to read. if you're trying to change minds, why not do it in the easiest format that will reach the most people, i.e. html. stop trying to impose design standards on your content and let the content soar.

Posted by: Brandon Blatcher at December 4, 2004 2:59 PM

Viva La Revolucion!

Posted by: Piers Fawkes at December 4, 2004 4:57 PM

We all know the truth: Seth Godin hates trees as much as George Bush does! Drill in the national forests! Only provide PDF's! What's next?!

And apparently without a printer you can ChangeFuckAll.

Posted by: daniel at December 4, 2004 7:16 PM

I'm not so keen on PDF's, I'd prefer to see HTML & PDF. But what really gets my goat is that on changethis, I can't download the PDF without opening it in a browser window.

Sure, I get around it by looking at the source code of the page, figuring out the link and downloading it directly, but for dozen or so people I've spoken with, most would prefer a have a choice, to open the PDF in the browswer window, or to download for reading later (they ALL (bar one) also said they'd prefer a HTML version).

I enjoy reading what Seth & Co are upto, but it'd be nice if they made it easier for me.

Posted by: Ben Hamilton at December 6, 2004 2:57 AM