Adventures in OCR

As you know, ICE, WIND AND FIRE is going through the scanner at this time (see my previous post about why, and how), and the book will be back out in paperback and ebook form, in time for its own Twentieth Anniversary...

So, the IWF experience is all about OCR.

Now, the OCR process is actually easy; and the software today is virtually foolproof, so long as you scan an a high-enough dpi for the system to know what it's looking at...

The problem is in the hardware.

Hands up, all those people who paid $300 for a scanner in 2002, and having paid that much, don't really want to consign it to the bin?

Now, hands up, all those people who were running Win98 back in those days; and since then they've wandered through XP Home, XP Pro, Service Packs 1, 2, 3, Vista, Service Packs 1 and ... the dreaded SP2.

I have a computer that NASA would have drooled over. This Quad Core, with is 4x 2.4G processors and its 6G of Ram, and its unlimited storage space, would have run Project Apollo and sent Voyager to the planets -- at the same time.

And all it took to knock this paragon of cybernetics flat on its can was --

Vista, Service Pack 2. God alone knows what happened, but as soon as the "update" went through the system forced a re-start for the third time in a row, the computer went haywire. Wouldn't stay online. Wouldn't run the big, complex applications properly. The browser would lock up, and kill the whole thing. Restart (which takes 15 minutes or more). Over and over.

To top it off, Microsoft's security system had, in its infinite wisdom, decided that Lenovo's automatic update facility was a spam generator, and demanded that it be shut off ... so Leonovo was not even able to fix the problem on the fly.

After a week of cussing, bitching and getting very little done, I yelled from Dave from DreamCraft, who went into the system and worked magic on it. Turns out, Vista Service Pack 2 is so bad, Lenovo had to issue a patch to put right the damage; but with the auto-updates turned off at Microsquash's insistence, you had to go to Lenovo and *get* the patch...

Which got the computer back up on its four processors, so I could start to look at the OCR job.

Which brings me back to the point where I started ... if you can remember that far back.

My scanner is a few years old. It worked perfectly under XP Service Pack 1, and even 2. SP3? Nope. Vista? Wellll ... it's sudden death up to a point. To get scans, you have to reinitialize the scanner after every scan.

So here's the routine for the OCR work on ICE, WIND AND FIRE:

Start TOP OCR
Place Page 1 on the scanner
Acquire ... scan ...
20 seconds to get the page into text...
select all and copy;
paste into the open Word document...
UNPLUG the USB cable to the scanner!
Plug it back in.
Twiddle thumbs for 30 seconds...
Star TOP OCR
Place Page 2 on the scanner
Acquire ... scan ...


And by far the most critical part of the process is not the scanning or remembering to turn the page. It's UNPLUG the USB cable, then plug it back in, give it half a minute to reinitialize the scanner, and *then* start the software and acquire the scanner.

Because if you don't, the scanner crashes; it crashes the software; and sometimes the whole thing won't come back up without a reboot on the computer.

Repeat process 242 times.

But it beats the hell out of typing! And I have nothing bit good things to say about a little program called TOP OCR, which is free, and phenomenally accurate. I'm absolutely delighted to give them a plug here. http://www.topocr.com/ ... they do a range of software, too. Imagine being able to capture text with your digital camera, or your phone --! What won't they think of next?

So ... ICE, WIND AND FIRE is going through the scanner, and the process is simple. It's just a little bizarre.

Cheers,
Mel

Keegan's Week: "proper" gay books. Uh huh.

I fielded a weird question the other day -- and the worst part of it was, the person was absolutely serious, and intended at least half of it as a sincere compliment. "Your work is so wonderfully written," she said, "why don't you write proper books?"

And I went blank. Utterly. For about ten seconds. You might have thought I was having a "senior moment," but in fact the processor was whirring, trying to make sense if the question, only to land back at the hurdle --

What the bloody hell is a "proper" book?

Of course, what she meant was, why don't I write heterosexual books? Or, to slightly rephrase the question so it'll make sense to the rest of us, "Your work is so wonderfully written, why do you write gay books instead of proper ones?"

Deep breath, now. Be calm. Count to ten. In Klingon.

Well ... who in the [expletive deleted] says that gay books aren't proper books? The next thing these people will be saying is, John Barrowman isn't a "proper" singer or actor. And Tchaikovsky wasn't a "proper" composer, and T.E. Lawrence wasn't a "proper" army officer, and Nijinsky wasn't a "proper" dancer. Or that gay people are not "proper" people. And I'm Not. Going. To. Go. There. Period.

Be happy: have a nice day, yes?

In fact, the properness of gay books is increasing greatly -- not exponentially, but nicely. It turns out that 10% of the male half of the population is gay anyway; and about another 15% on the male side of the fence is ac/dc by inclination, which makes 25% of the part of the population that shaves and dreams of power tools would enjoy a gay narrative ... and about 25% of folks on the female side of the fence like to read gay books, for boatloads of reasons. Some are themselves gay; some are straight enough to fancy the hell out of beautiful guys; some get a kick out of the homoerotic; some love a romance but don't like guy/gal romance, because it almost always seems like the gal is getting s/exploited. Some are "modern age" enough to see as far as the romance, and genuinely don't believe gender matters.

That's 25% of the population as a whole, folks.

So, for every million literate people who read, there's 250,000 who would enjoy a gay book, in the highly unlikely event they were ever in a position to see one, and have the opportunity to actuallt buy it.

That's eight times the population of Fairbanks, Alaska. It's about equivalent to the entire population of South Australia that lives outside the metropolitan area. It's about 8.5% of the entire population of New Zealand (I think; if I'm wrong on this one, it won't be by much -- and feel free to give me a kick).

In a country like Australia with something like 20 - 24 million souls, depending on who you talk to, and who's being counted into the complement, you probably have something in the order of about 16 million literate adults, and about 12 million who actually read --

So, three million Aussies would enjoy a gay narrative, if they were allowed to make the reading choice, at the store, or wherever they get their books.

But if you walk into a bookstore down here and look for gay books, you'll soon start to wonder if anyone's publishing them at all. And the reason is that every bookstore down here is an outlet for a chain. It's B&N, it Dymocks, it's A&N, it's the book department in Kmart or WalMart or Target or Myer, or whatever.

No gay books. Why? Because gay books do not sell enough copies, per title, to attract the attention of the distributor. Each individual title might sell 400 right across this country, IF they were shelved with the generosity or impunity with which het books are shelved. But they're not shelved with such catholic generosity...

Why? Many reasons. Management is terribly aware of minors and the elderly, who form a significant part of their customer base; they're equally aware of the religious minority, for whom the "god" books are shelved alongside yoga, holistic food and Relaxation for Uptight Dummies.

Not wanting to offend anyone, Management literally hides the gay books: top shelves, bottom shelves, dark corners, out of reach, out of sight. And -- what a surprise! -- the books sell poorly.

Gay books are seldom advertised on magazine pages or in windows where the average reader would see them. Same reason for not putting a nice, big ad in the window down at Dymocks. And as per magazine advertising --

Do you know what an ad in a major literary magazine costs?!! An ad to run in one issue would put about $2 on the checkout price of each copy of a gay title! Not going to happen, people. (Few mainstream, print media book reviewers will review a gay book ... saaaame reason. Minors, the elderly, and the God Squad.)

So ... gay books don't sell bigtime, and another reason for this is that they're double-marginalized. They're already in the "gay" category at any online bookstore. Then, they're ... what? Gay-SF, or gay-fantasy, or thriller, or western, or historical, or romance, or erotica, or ...

Uh huh. Double-marginalized. So you have someone saying, "Gee, I'd love a new gay book, but I don't want SF, and I've read enough breeches-rippers (the gay equivalent of the bodice-ripper) to last me a lifetime. Uh ... I don't like westerns. I'm not in the mood for a murder mystery..."

Double jeopardy. The gay writer has two hurdles to get over, not one, and if each hurdle is a "filter," then gay books get filtered twice, before any sale is made.

Meaning, a hell of a lot of gay books are sold, but not that many of any individual title.

Another thing that's killing gay book sales, at least in this country, is that books are so expensive. Small printruns make for expensive books, and few people can afford to buy many, when the damned things are $32 and upwards. A lot of readers are landing at the book exchanges, where you can trade something you've read and pay $2 to the store, and get something you haven't read before --

Guess what doesn't often get traded? Right. Gay books are seldom traded (for which the reasons are many), so you probably won't be able to pick up a new one at the book exchange ... and even if you could, the publisher and the writer wouldn't know a thing about it.

Here is where it gets mildly interesting. A few years ago, when readers were still in the habit of sending a few words of feedback, I used to hear that someone had picked up one of my books at a book exchange in, say, Madrid or Munich or Manchester -- Europe, where gay books are treated with a lot more generosity by booksellers. Secondhand dealers in Europe will trade in gay books, where many (most?) of our local dealers are still not quite "there" yet -- inordinately concerned about the minors and elders and religious bods ... which is no bad, thing, in reality. Taking care of kids, and not giving cardiac episodes to others is a laudable goal in itself.

Fact is, the Internet is a far better place to do business. The people who find you deliberately came a-hunting. One seldom has to deal with folks who arrived on a gay page by accident.

There's also a "book swap" subculture out there, where books are changing hands in every direction...

And a writer has to wonder how many sales he or she has actually achieved. Say, 5,000 or 10,000 when the book was new (depending on the printrun -- and they're all over the place, there's no "norm"), plus an extra 1,000 or 2,000 per reprint ... and then, the swaps, the trades, the book exchanges -- for decades.

So, actual "sales" might be way ahead of anything the publisher knows about. Think about that. Nice. I mean, we don't earn royalties on the swaps and trades, but it's so nice to know that new people are buying the old books.

The last thing that makes it tough for gay writers is the sheer volume of the competition. It's astonishing. There are so many gay titles being published these days -- it's a a lit-fest. Heaven on a stick for anyone who has an ebook reader gizmo -- most of these books are available digitally, thank heavens. Makes them reachable for Aussies and Kiwis, because there's no shipping to pay. Postage across the Pacific. Yee-ouch!

Speaking of ebooks and gizmos, I'm still looking for just the right deal on a bit of hardware to do the job, and my hunt has brought me to this quarry:

The Acer Aspire One netbook. It's at least as functional as even the most advanced dedicated ebook reader, with a color crystal brite screen, and a keyboard that some reviewers say is a joy to use ... and it's less than half the price of a good, dedicated ebook reader. On sale, you can get the thing for A$350, which is just about right for my budget. So my fingers are itching to reach for the credit cards... 8" screen, weighs under a kilo, like handling a hardcover book. Boots up in 8 seconds, loads a browser in another 10, wireless, 2 card readers, 3 USB ports and VGA out. And you have GOT to like that. Yes, I know, the battery life is about 2.5 hours, running the browser and modem with the screen at 60% brightness. Now, turn the screen down to 30% and run just the Mobipocket reader on the local system -- no connectivity, no graphics. Ebook reader. Check. Should go about 4 hours between recharges, even with the silly little 3-cell battery that ships with the machine; and that'll do fine.

Still on the subject of ebooks -- I've been busy in the last week, making more available at Smashwords:


$10.95, for iPhone, Mobipocket, Palm Pilot, and more...


$10.95, for iPhone, Mobipocket, Palm Pilot, and more...

...so, there you are. Proper books for your proper ebook reader. Proper gay books, at that. Somebody try telling John Barrowman that he isn't a "proper singer," and his albums are not "proper" albums, because when he sings a lovesong, he's singing about a guy he adores not a gal. I'm not saying JB would bestow a black eye; but if he did, I do believe Scott and Mel would be standing there shaking hands, patting backs and saying, "Well done, mate."

I mean -- seriously!

Cheers,
MK

Patience, Keegan, patience! (My kingdom for a bloody ebook gizmo ... revisited)

Okay, Keegan, be patient. Hold your horses. It's already the end of February ... it's going to be 2010 before you can turn around and spit: you DON'T want to spend a grand on something that's going to be virtually obsolete before it's paid for itself --

Like an ebook screenreader (fingers itch to make grab for credit card and order something like Bebook or Omnia). Because look what's coming out next year:

It's called epaper. It's from a company called Plastic Logic, and get a load of this:

...and here's the a-b-c right off the company's own webpage:
"Our foray into the market will begin in the second half of 2009 with pilots, and trials with key partners. We expect to accelerate the momentum of our sales in 2010.

Differentiated by a stunning form factor (the size of 8.5 x 11-inch paper), the Plastic Logic reader features a big readable display. Yet it's thinner than a pad of paper, lighter than many business periodicals, and offers a high-quality reading experience - better than alternatives of paper or other electronic readers on the market today.

The Plastic Logic reader supports a full range of business document formats, such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and Adobe PDFs, as well as newspapers, periodicals and books. It has an easy gesture-based user interface and powerful software tools that will help business users to organize and manage their information. Users can connect to their information either wired or wirelessly and store thousands of documents on the device. The reader incorporates E Ink technology for great readability and features low power consumption and long battery life.
http://www.plasticlogic.com/product.html

How much the thing will cost is another question, of course. These guys have to know they're up against Kindle (about US$350) and what have you, so if the Plastic Logic thingamajig cost about US$550, that's about as high as they would dare go; you can get the iPhone from Walmart for about US$100 just now, and the Omnia is tickling US$200, reducing in price all the time.

Also, it's a new, proprietary technology: "Traditional displays consist of millions of transistors that are etched onto silicon using photolithographic techniques. Plastic Logic displays use polymer (plastic) transistors that are sprayed and painted onto a sheet of plastic and an E Ink sheet (the same technology used in the Kindle)."
http://www.examiner.com/x-1652-Gadgets-Examiner~y2009m2d26-Move-over-Kindle-a-plastic-ereader-is-coming

So long as they don't price it way out the consumer's reach ... and if they wise up and make them in colors instead of the funeral-shroud white plastic as the Henry Ford option ("You can have any color you like, as long as it's black") I, for one, will be at the head of the queue with the magic plastic in hand. I just want a black one.

In fact ... Nostrakeeganus, he going to make prediction. He see price war coming. He see big, big undercutting fight, where Plastic Logic tries to kill Kindle, and Kindle then Plastic Logic gang up and try to kill Sony, and then all three gang up on Apple and beat the iPhone's brains out.

Frankly ... I've waited this long to get an ebook reader, I can suffer a little longer. 2010 sounds just right as the Great Purchase Date; wt which point it'll be all about who's got the best price for the best service. But I have to admit --

The lure of having a full-sized screen is powerful. It also places formatting, nice design, illustration and all, squarely back into the hands of publishers, rather than having to drop out everything except the italic, boldface and justification! For instance, Legends might be ebooked complete with the full suite of artwork.

One wonders if the Plastic Logic device will offer a color display version?

Speaking of Legends, Chapter Ten concluded today ...

Cheers,
MK

Blogger tantrums again

Blogger tantrums, indeed ... not Keegan having a tantrum, but the Blogger engine itself, in concert with none other than the star performer, Internet Explorer itself, which can be a real, genuine diva when she wants to be. Blogger and IE have just sung an aria that should win prizes.

Users who surf with Internet Explorer must have thought The World According to Mel had gone down yesterday. Opera, Firefox and Chrome displayed it perfectly, but there was something about one picture (a brochure shot of the iRex iLiad ebook reader) that must have been corrupt...

Did it crash the post and leave the blog behind, online and functional in IE?

Noooooo. It crashed the whole blog. If you tried to load The World According to Mel in IE, you got a strange little message, "Operation Aborted," and then the killer screen, "Windows cannot display the webpage."

O...kay. First thing I did was try the blog in the three other browsers I have, and whaddaya know? It worked. So it was just something about Internet Explorer jacking around when trying to handshake with Blogger. And so began a wonderful, 90-minute odyssey into the enthralling world of code.

I hate code. I seriously hate code. I tried everything you can imagine, and a lot you can't, and finally rebuilt he post paragraph by paragraph. It was fine (you guessed) until I got to the picture. Then, when the picture was pasted back in --

"Operation Aborted."

Which narrowed the whole thing down to one image. After that it was a simple chore to replace the picture, republish, and than go and sit in a corner gibbering for a few minutes. We call it recovery time.

Those who smoke probably chainsmoke; those who inhale coffee by the mugful are probably vibrating with a caffeine high. Since I neither smoke nor drink coffee (can't -- I get a reaction to it) I just recite a mantra of sorts...

There was a young William called Gates --
"Bill" to his billionaire mates --
The PC's inventor;
And THIS bold dissenter
Wonders how he'd like to swallow the bloody thing sideways for breakfast.
(And I know it doesn't rhyme; and the last line keeps changing. Anatomically.)

Well ... not really ... but I know you know what I mean.

Anyway: the blog is functional again, and/but keep this in mind:

If you're a blogger and your blog suddenly disables itself with Internet Explorer putting up a weird little message, "Operation Aborted," I'll give you 500:1 odds, you'll trace the problem to a corrupt image. Ditch it, import a fresh out, and ...

Your oars will be back in the water like magic.

Last note: Chapter Eight has concluded at Legends...

Now I'm going to go and have a nice cup of tea and drool in private for a while.

TTFN,
MK

My kingdom for an ebook gizmo

The most fabulously interesting thing that comes out of today is that Chapter Eight is up at Legends ... which shows you what a flat, impossible calm the day is! I wish I could give you a link to my recent posts at Digital Kosmos, but work has me nailed down ... haven't been able to post there in a couple of days. When I finally get the chance, I'll probably do several at once -- it could be the weekend before I get to it.

Right now, I'm looking at ebook readers, and the ebooks themselves. I'm actually wondering if I ought to get a mate in the US to get me a Kindle, even though the wireless subsciption service isn't available in Aus. The Kindle takes SDs cards, you see ... and it reads most ebooks, though they're still working on its ability to read PDFs. Rats. It's the Kindle's inability to read PDFs that stops me asking family in the States to just get one for me and mail it, because PDFs have the functionality I want in en ebook. TXT, RFT and DOC files just don't.

I spent a considerable time looking at the iLiad, though it's an enormous price -- over a thousand dollars, when mail ordered into this country, complete with the exchange rate, shipping and insurance. I was, and am, extremely tempted. Here, I'm going to defer to an expert and iLiad enthusiast with whom I've been corresponding, and who gave me the full report, plus permission to share it here.

I'm going to hand over to Val right here:

The ebook reader was a long/hard decision making for me - and generally I make those decisions quickly. I 'looked' (internet) for over a year and flip-flopped between the Iliad, Booken Cybook, Sony, a tablet notebook, and something else. Here are some of the things that I thought were important before I bought and what I think now:

• screen size - I thought bigger was better and spend a lot of time comparing size x to y and trying to draw comparisons with physical books. What I found in reality was that the difference in screen size between the Iliad and the others probably was not as important as I thought it would be - but I have to be careful in saying that because the way that the reader zooms is really important. With pdfs on the iliad you can use the stylus to window a zoom level so you can get rid of all the margins. You can also put the pages on continuous flow (no annoying part pages but you do get the top/bottom margin) and rotate.
  
  screen quality/resolution - thought it was really important and still do! The Iliad screen is easier to read than many physical books. Really nice! One review (at RegHardware) suggested that the iLiad had a better screen resolution that some other devices.
  
  page turn speed - thought it was important and still do - the iliad is reasonable on this and some review I read before buying suggested that the IlIad was good on this point. A page of pdf text pages faster than a page of Mobipocket text. When reading with Mobipocket I kinda get used to requesting the next page a few seconds before I want it. If it took too long I'd get irritated fast.
  
  WiFi etc - thought it might be useful but have never used it and probably never will. I'll also probably never use it as an mp3 player.
  
  formats - I thought that PDF and Mobipocket would be enough but there are some books only available in other formats that I would have liked to have.
  
  Things I'd like to be different/am surprised by:
  
  there are too many buttons that can accidentally get pushed by a restless thumb etc - bloody annoying - why are they there - the stylus is perfectly fine for doing everything expect paging!
  
  the battery life is as promised by the manufacturer but I am still amazed by how short it is.
  
  DRM - I HATE DRM! I don't share files, music or books, if they are good enough to take up space on my hard drive then the musician/author deserves my support so they can make more of the stuff I want to read/listen to. Protected pdf (Digital Editions) does not work on the Iliad. Mobipocket is OK too (but watch out for how the retailer manages passwords etc and don't forget who you bought them from and don't change your email address - I have a couple of books that I cannot read although I have paid for them).
  
  I do worry about how robust it is and dropping it etc.
  
  In summary - I now prefer to read stuff on the Iliad than on physical book unless it is a very high quality physical book (and not too heavy either).
  
  

There you have it: the iLiad review you've been hunting all over the Internet for -- or, at least I was, being on the prowl, looking for the best gizmo for the best price. Thanks, Val! I appreciate the input, and I'll tell you -- if I had the grand going spare, I'd be mailordering the iLiad right now!

The Kindle is about half the price, as it would arrive in my hands from a mate in the States, but since the wireless network doesn't work here, and it doesn't read PDFs or Mobipocket, or LIT ... welllll, I'm still thinking about it. Thinking seriously -- thinking a lot! -- but still thinking.

There, I must stop and get some last-minute work done before knocking-off time.

Cheers,
MK

Stone cold dead in die marketplace ... or, almost!

Baldly stated, my hard drive went belly-up this morning. There's a sinking feeling in the pit of the belly, a wave of nausea that hits you. You feel light headed and a little bit giddy. Your thoughts scatter upon the four winds ... you make a nice STRONG cup of tea and take the advice of the person who is telling you to breathe more than once a minute or so.

Slowly, you start to think again, and you get on the other computer (the old clunker that was replaced by this supposed miracle of modern technology) and hit the tech forums to see if the same problems have clobbered anyone else lately. To your malicious joy (and with a certain relief) you discover, the problem is common. It's very common.

The symptom: the bloody computer won't start up. It just sits there and glares at you, with its power button winking green and nothing else happening. Oh, joy.

The cause: either a virus or hardware failure.

Thank gods, goddesses, elementals, spirits, pixies and anything else out there that's been watching out for me lately: I back everything up slavishly, and it's only a few weeks since I got a terabyte external harddrive. The fact I'm all backed up and ready to go means that all I need now is an operating system disk, and we can put a new hard drive in this little monster.

Fortunately, the hard drives are pretty cheap, and you can get a fully legal, still shrink-wrapped Windows XP SP3 for A$110 + postage, from several dealers on eBay in Melbourne. I checked, after my blood pressure had started to revert to something with a semblance of normality. (What's normal anyway?)

I don't think I've cooked this computer in the heat, but I do work it very hard. Maybe I work it harder than it wants to run? Maybe I should get a more powerful one? Perhaps. But this little bugger is only a couple of years old, and to tell you the truth, I've bought so many computers in the last 20 years, I honestly don't want another one --

Especially since any new computer you get from the store these days comes loaded with Vista. Sounds of retching, barfing and puking. Keegan no like Vista. Keegan rather put new hard drive in old machine and stay with XP.

So ... it's been a fun day in which not much has been done other than hand-wringing, hair-tearing and so forth. I'd love to tell you that I wrote 4,000 words of LEGENDS ... but I didn't. I'd be thrilled to tell you I plotted out the last two novels in the HELLGATE series ... but I didn't do that either. I would be overjoyed to report that I finished the two short stories I've been working on, but --

You get the picture.

You may laugh, but it's traumatic. It's completely on a par with falling over the dog's leash while walking in the park, and doing a face-plant straight into the geraniums, four feet in front of the most delectable hunk you've seen in several years. Or being at a fancy restaurant and sinking at least 16 of your 32 teeth straight into a Thai pepper, which makes you turn red as a postbox and weep copiously ... which is not at all how you'd intended to impress your date (the aforementioned hunk, who plucked you out of the geraniums and stuck several bandaids on your chin, which was bleeding copiously in reaction to the collision with the standpipe that had been hiding away in there).

Keegan is still alive, no thanks to the weather, Western Digital, or Dell.

And I can report that the LEGENDS template is fixed, up and running. I got the first chapter pasted into it before the apocalypse struck, and when I have about ten or so posts up, there will a newsletter, and -- the experiment begins!


Now I have to go and take a couple of aspirin and sit in front of the a/c.

Love that a/c. It's been 40C again today, and you need a blanket while sitting in front of it. Nice.

Cheers,
MK

Invisible Webpage Redux

Okay -- website-wise we're still not back up. You're still going to pull up an annoying extinct domain advertising thing every time you try to reach Mel Keegan OnLine or DreamCraft itself ... and yes, it's already BEEN FIXED ... but there's a third-party registry agency which takes 48 hours to cycle its business. We won't reappear till something along the lines of the old monster, InterNic, finishes cycling.

Has anyone out there been on the Internet for long enough to have gone through the process of registering domains ten or twelve years ago? What a question. DreamCraft has been around that long, and when they registered the domain for the first time, it was done through the old monster which in those days ruled cyberspace with a rod of iron. In that far off era, there was ONE place you could go to buy a domain, and they were extremely expensive! These days we're spoiled: $5 domains, and you can buy them down at the magazine shop.

That's all well and good, but for domains which were registered back in the Paleolithic era, the rules turn out to be different. (You learn something new every day -- stay with me here, just a moment longer.) Those domains still fall under the influence of the creaking old registry agency which has been holding them, and their "parking pages," for longer than a decade. It's fine and dandy, if the domain never lapses (ie., you have the credit card number hiccup we experienced a few days ago). But if the domain has lapsed for some reason --

The fun begins. And you have to manually shift the domain and its parking page to a new, modern, up-to-date server. All this time, for registry purposes, DreamCraft has been "parked" in a Lower Jurassic formation, where the computers are fossilized and the dinosaurs are so sheeted in cobwebs, they can't see where they're going.

DreamCraft is now on its way to Tucows. But apparently the process can take 24 - 48 hours. The new system is automatic and instantaneous; the Lower Jurassic system functions at the pace of an arthritic, myopic, dyspeptic sauropod.

And the worst part of all this is, nobody -- either at DreamCraft or iPower -- can do anything to make it go faster. Running in circles, screaming and bashing your head against the walls doesn't help.

I know. I've tried.

So -- patience turns out to be even more of a virtue than we'd previously thought! In any case, we're still waiting on the proof copy of THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE ... if it doesn't get here next week, I shall need to be tranquilized. And the proof copy of DANGEROUS MOONLIGHT has only just begun its epic journey to Australia. Rats.

So, let's get off onto happier subjects.

A new blog is launching, and I'm playing tag-team with a group of people you've probably come to know from this blog and DreamCraft itself. This one is a photo blog, and for the first time in years I get to flex my muscles as a photographer rather than a writer:

It's been a long time since I was able to cut loose and think like a photographer -- which is to say, worry about the text later, or even leave that to someone else entirely. Digital Kosmos will be a lot of fun. We're still working on it, there will certainly be changes before it's "launched," but you can help yourself to the sneak preview here: http://photographyfan.blogspot.com/

There's a dozen or so posts (images with 100-250 word captions) online at this point, and we'll launch it when we have thirty or forty "up." But it's already very nice ... and the novelty factor for Keegan is immense. (The Jade quoted in the blog's header-bar is my cover artist; you all know Dave -- as in Alaskan Dave Downunder, whose antics have become infamous). Doctor Mike, you'll be meeting for the first time at Digital Kosmos. The impending PhD is in archaeology. Indiana Jones territory.

Last note for today: folks don't seem to mind the inclusion of Infolinks; I managed to redesign them, so they don't jump out of the page so obnoxiously ... and for what it's worth, they actually get a heck of a lot more clicks than the Google ads. Please do let me know what you think of them! Trying to keep the bills paid is one thing -- getting right up readers' noses is something else!

Ciao for now,
MK

The Case of the Disappearing Website

Don't sweat: the webpage will be back online in a couple of hours -- we're down for technical reasons at iPower. Not the machinery ... something much more fundamental.

A few months ago, someone's gold credit card was updated to platinum, and someone forgot to update all accounts. And one of the accounts which was forgotten was The Important One. The big one. The one without which everything else goes down. Uh huh.

Blame CitiBank. It's all their fault for changing the number when the updated the card. Why can't they just leave the number the same?

Anyway, we've "only" been offline for about eight hours (during the night, our time ... people were asleep, which was why no one notice the problem), and will be back online inside the next two hours. The problem was easily fixed with the new credit card number, and we're just waiting for the system to cycle and update, which it does about every hour or two. Bear with us. For the moment, we're showing up as an expired domain, but looks are deceiving: we're already back, the system just needs to update.

A while ago I was actually blogging about this: I must be psychic. I actually said this -- I've just pasted it over verbatim; and you just caught a glimpse of Nostrakeeganus at work:

I have a major website, yet this blog looks like being a permanent thing. Why would I blog, when I have a major website? Simply stated, it's a hell of a lot easier to blog. They're free to set up; you don't have to worry about registering domain names and then re-re-resubscribing to keep your domain name (forget it for a few weeks when re-up time comes around, and it's gone, and your search engine presence with it);
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/blogito-ergo-sum-revisited.html

...right now, thank gods for blogs! Because if you don't have one, and your website goes down, you're sunk. Screwed. Whatever.

Marvelous way to start one's day off, right? Yep -- this is suppose to be my day off. I'm going to TRY to seize the day, but I already have the feeling I've been seized by it.

Hopefully, I'll get the chance to blog again later, and with any luck at all the website will have popped back into reality before I go out.

Cheers,
MK

More free software ... and the toolbars you can live without

I was going to have a minor rant today, in a post entitled "the cost of free software," and then DreamCraft's resident guru ambled by and said, "Why don't you turn it off?" And, to add insult to injury, got rid of the offending toolbar in three (count them: THREE) mouse clicks.

Well, rabbits. I've been putting up with their pestilential toolbars for about six months ... my browser window has been getting progressively smaller and smaller as the fantastic free addons installed their bloody little toolbars which, when they start to accumulate, aren't so little any longer.

Ahem.

Apparently you can turn them off. If I were the kind of person to shove emoticons up your nose as you read, you'd be gagging on one right now. It would be chuckling in glee on the one hand and blushing slightly in momentary, transitory, more or less insignificant ... embarrassment.

Okay: go ahead and get the addons I'm about to recommend here, because momentarily I shall disclose all ... ie., how to get rid of the aforementioned bloody little toolbars that clog up your browser window like the cybernetic equivalent of arterial plaque.

I've just stumbled over two beauties: both free, and both better than stuff that costs an arm and a leg. We'll start with the PDF reader. Are you sick and tired of the length of time it takes to load Acrobat Reader, the commercials you have to turn off, the constant whining about updates you don't want ... and the sheer amount of your computer's brain this prog commandeers?! If you answered yes to any or all of the above, you're ready for this:

Foxit. Go here: http://www.download.com/Foxit-Reader/3000-2079_4-10313206.html

It's a trendy, nifty, slick PDF viewer with every feature you'd get from Adobe, and a whole lot LESS of the hype, the marketing, the "overhead" that crashes your computer, and ... the angst inspired by the above. There are loads of Foxit versions and addons to buy, but the reader itself is free. If you get into making, converting and adapting PDFs, obviously you want more, in which case go here: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/products/ ... and even though you'll have to pay some money, it's about 5% of the price you could expect to pay for Adobe products.

I took this for a test drive this morning, and was delighted -- except for the bloody little toolbar it installed in my browser. Hence the mini-rant, and the gleeful chuckles as the DreamCraft guru clicked me out of that particular wood ... like this:

[The following paragraph is for the cybernetically handicapped. If you and your computer speak the same language, enjoy the same sports and are cultivating romance, feel free to skip ahead]

Forget about searching the copious menus of the Foxit toolbar for some way, any way, to turn the damned thing off from within its own mechanism -- you're wasting your time here. You RIGHT click on the gray area to the right of all these accumulating toolbars, and you get a popup menu. Then, you take the trouble to notice something that always blew by me. There's a listing for UNLOCK TOOLBAR. Uh huh. Click to unlock it ... click to un-select all the things you don't want plugging up your browser window ... they vanish one by one ... and then LOCK the toolbar again.

No prizes will be awarded for observation! I never even saw the "unlock toolbar" thing. I'd be prepared to swear it wasn't even there until somebody who knew what it was looked for it. Then it spontaneously appeared. Anyway: Foxit Reader comes on high recommendation, and you don't even have to put up with its toolbar.

The other freebie that's impressing me greatly is Notepad++, which is the souped-up programmer's version of the Windows Notepad. This will save your life when you start to muck about with the "css" gibberish which makes the Blogger templates do what they do. Get into the code for these pages to make they do something special, and you see this:

And that stuff goes on for page after page. Notepad++ makes it halfway possible to wrangle this gibberish by numbering every line -- which your browser won't do, even though it will display an xml file. Also, like your browser, Notepad++ color-codes certain kinds of gibberish, which helps sort out the categories. I like the numbered lines a lot. It's the first time I've seen them since I messed about with Basic back in the early 1980s.

So, if you're thinking about trying to have a fiddle with the css gibberish behind your blog page, get Notepad++ to give you a bit of an advantage. Go here: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/download.php

Ciao for now,
MK

The long Trek out of homophobia ain't over yet, apparently

Welcome to 2009 ... and business as usual. The new harddrive is on and working, even as I type this: the gizmos are backing up about 100GB of stored stuff into a corner of the Tb space. Nice. Gives one the illusion of being in control (the truth being very different).

I was wandering around on the Internet a couple of days ago, following links to and from who knows where, and came upon this, at After Elton: http://www.afterelton.com/blog/michaeljensen/star-trek-fan-boys-react-set-phasers-to-whine ... after all these bloody years, you just don't believe it can still be going on ... homophobia among Trek fans. Still. Now. Forty years down the track. Incredible, isn't it?

What goes on, you ask? Well, there's a semi-pro fourth season of the original series (with Kirk, Spock, et al), in front of the cameras. Strictly non-profit, which is why Paramount turns the provebial blind eyes and deaf ears. But it's good enough that a couple of the original actors (Takei and Koenig) have been in episodes, and David Gerrold -- out gay screenwriter to whom we can credit some of the best Trek shows, including the iconic Trouble with Tribbles -- has reworked an old script into something new -- and, from where I'm sitting, terrific -- for the current show.

The story so far (in a thimble) is that Gene Roddenberry planned a spinoff show with Kirk, Spock et all, called Star Trek: Phase II. It was nothing to do with the Next Generation, and would have been shot in something like the eary 1970s. One of the episodes developed for that show was "Blood and Fire" by David Gerrold. The show was never made, but when the semi-pro crew got going with Phase II, the producer (who also plays the part of James T Kirk in the show) had the presence of mind to contact Gerrold and ask if there was any chance of the old episode being reworked and ... filmed.

Intrigued? So was I. Now, to be perfectly candid, I haven't yet see any of the Phase II shows. The last Trek I watched was about half of Voyager, before work and travel got in the way -- I still haven't seen most of it. I also missed three-fourths of DS9 for the same reason. I've seen all the movies, and liked almost all of them. I grew up on classic Trek, but have to admit that the jingoism and Hollywood-ness of some of the 1960s-style episodes make them borderline unwatchable to me, now, today. So I'm pretty darned qualified to talk about this and say --

At last! At bloody last, after 40 years, A GAY TREK EPISODE HAS BEEN MADE! It's wonderful that this has been done; it's a tribute to Gerrold, and the producers of the show, and as soon as I have my computers set up properly again, I shall be downloading all these episodes (there are three or four so far, with Gerrold's episode being the third or fourth). But --

Right on cue, at least some of the fans responded to the gay storyline with the same old homophobia we've come to expect from Trek people. The producers, writers and actors might have dragged themselves into the epoch of human rights, but the fans are still saying things like this: "I think the episode would have been better without the gay scene. In fact, I think you could have replaced the Freeman character with a woman, and very little of the drama would be removed. Having the gay scene means, as a father, I’m not sure if my eight-year-old son should watch this episode. He’s seen and enjoyed all the others. I’ve never had to worry about screening anything Star Trek before. ... I also think the gay storyline is the least interesting thing about the episode." And this: "What the hell is with the two guys dry-humping each other?? I’m sorry, but I’ve just lost a TON of respect for the Phase Two guys. Pushing blatant homosexuality in our faces is NOT the kind of Star Trek I want to watch! >:o( Completely uncalled for and not in the spirit of Star Trek. Disgusting!!"
http://www.afterelton.com/blog/michaeljensen/star-trek-fan-boys-react-set-phasers-to-whine

Well ... shucks. Why am I surprised? So long as it's females being turned into sex objects ... for example the Borg lady with the superstructure that comes through the door ten minutes ahead of the rest of her ... it's all fine and dandy; but let a gay couple express affection, and it's "disgusting," is it? Hmmm. I wonder if this qualifies as "the language of hate."


Anyway, if you're interested, go over the the show's own site and check it out. (You can also download for free; the episodes are shared around via P2P. If you don't have a "P2P client," don't even think about paying money for a service. Download Opera: it has P2P client software onboard.)

Here's the new Trek show's own page: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/, and here is the Opera page, to get the browser with the built-in P2P routine: http://www.opera.com/

A quick word to Aussie fans: if you want these shows, or at least the gay episode(s), get in fast, because when "the Great Aussie Firewall" goes up in about two weeks, P2P is probably going to be inaccessible to Australians. The government and critics are calling it a "BitTorrent" lockout, but "BitTorrent" is more than likely a generic term. I should think they mean "P2P" as a whole. In which case, loads of sites are going to go invisible and stay that way, very soon. Now, that's what I call disgusting.

More on the Aussie Internet censorship here: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-is-here-internet-filtering-is.html
and especially here:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/12/save-internet-get-into-petition.html

Ciao for now,
MK

Ebooks in your pocket, along with your music, vids and pics, camera and phone

Some revolutions kick off with a whisper ... and I think I might have just heard one. In the last couple of months I've been lamenting the price of ebook readers such as Palm, Pocket PC, iRex, iLiad, and what have you. They're way too expensive to be attractive to the average reader who's thinking about switching to ebooks as an alternative to paper, to get the cost of a book down from about $25 to about $10 or less. And for this huge pricetag, the ebook reader does one thing: it displays ebooks. Hmmm.

Now, supposing you had a gadget that displayed your ebook, played your videos, and your music, was a calculator, a flashlight, a GPS-map reader, a 5MP camera, and had a slot for a 16GB SD card ... if you had the slightest interest in paying $25/week for the service, it'll also go online, connect to the Internet, get your emails, download anything you fancy ... and, uh, make phonecalls.

Yep, it's a phone. In fact, when it launched a very short while ago, it was nicknamed "the iPhone Killer." http://www.cnet.com.au/mobilephones/0,239025893,339289872,00.htm

In fact, it's Samsung's competition to the iPhone -- the Samsung Omnia. Where the iPhone entered the marketplace at US$500 (A$800 imported into this country, which put it outside the budget of even the most devoted phonoholic), the Samsung made its debut at US$249.99 -- half the price. And the price promptly fell. http://news.cnet.com/verizon-drops-price-on-samsung-omnia/

Right now, you can shop around and get deals on these smart-phones, but -- at least online -- I haven't seen anything divulging what the actual PRICE of the actual PHONE is ... that is, companies will cut you a $100 deal on one -- so long as you sign your life away for a 24 month "plan" allowing you to download stuff by the wheelbarrow-load.

Me? I have no desire whatever to have the Omnia connect to anything online. All I need is the card slot. I can download from my PC all the music, ebooks, pictures and videos I'm ever likely to want, and I have no need for another phone. It would be so useful if someone, somewhere, would quote the actual price of the gadget, as clearly distinct from a "plan" ... and I do believe I'll be chasing this up in the new year, because --

A 5MP camera, video player, MP3 player, ebook reader, map-viewer, calculator and flashlight all rolled into one? Yes, please, where do I get this gift from heaven?! For more info on the Omnia, give this a click: http://www.samsung.com/au/omnia/

Now, to read ebooks on your shining new toy, you need to be running something called Stanza. This is an ebook reader program that's installed and ... does its thing. You download it from a website like this: http://download.lexcycle.com/. Stanza is the program that goes with the iPhone like bacon goes with eggs ... you know there'll be an equivalent that goes with the Omnia; maybe even Stanza itself, if Samsung pays a license fee to Apple.

For more about Stanza, go here: http://arstechnica.com/search.ars?Tag=stanza and here:
http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/how_to_get_books_onto_stanza_iphone

I first heard of Stanza a few months ago when Lulu.com announced that they'd just laid on a new service. For US$25 (A$35 - A$40 depending on how the exchange rate jiggles) they would take your .doc or .rtf and convert it to Stanza.

I wondered, at the time, how popular this would be with people, but I just read an article where one of the Apple gurus estimates they'll sell 40 million iPhones in 2009. The damned things are on sale in Walmart, for godsakes: "Supermarket giant Walmart will start selling Apple's iPhone 3G for $197 as from tomorrow, Sunday 28th, across the majority of their stores in America. The price, which is $2 cheaper than the official retail price, will tie customers into a two year contract with mobile phone network AT&T. The 8GB model will be the same available elsewhere, thereby ending the rumour of a potential, "Walmartised" iPhone; the move comes as Apple wants to increase the number of outlets where its iPhone is sold as it tries to reach 50 million units sold by end of 2009." http://www.itproportal.com/articles/2008/12/27/walmart-sells-apple-iphone-tomorrow/

Now, along comes Samsung with the gadget nicknamed "the iPhone killer," at half the price in its debut week ... and it does a hell of a lot more.

It's a safe bet that by the end of 2009, somewhere between 25 and 100 million users in affluent nations will own one of these things. I'll most likely be one of them -- not that I'll use it as a phone. I just need all the gizmos and the SD card slot.

That means, maybe 60-70 million users who have the hardware to read ebooks.


Not all users are readers. Maybe one in ten of these users will actually like to read! That's maybe seven million readers with the hardware to read an ebook by this time next year.

And one in ten of them will enjoy a good gay book. Target potential marketplace for Keegan-on-gizmo: 700,000.

Now, at US$25 per title to convert a book at Lulu.com, it's going to hurt. I'm looking at dropping another grand, in AUD, to even get to the starting line in this race...

But this story has a happy ending: Smashwords.

This, from Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords:

Smashwords integrates with Stanza, optimized for iPhone
We made a couple important introductions today at Smashwords that I'd like to share with folks here. First, we unveiled integration with Stanza, which means Stanza users can browse and download, directly from within Stanza, our small but growing catalog of multi-format, DRM-free ebooks from indie authors. We also released a new iPhone-optimized version of the site so folks using the iPhone/IPOD Touch's Safari browser can more easily browse and discover books.

When we launched our public beta of Smashwords back in May, MobileReaders gave us some great feedback that we were able to quickly build into the site. We welcome feedback again from those of you who are using the iPhone and Stanza.

For instructions on how to import the Smashwords catalog into Stanza, see: http://blog.smashwords.com/2008/11/s...tanza-and.html
Thanks,
Mark
Mark Coker

Founder, Smashwords, Inc. http://www.smashwords.com

And from the perspective of the writer or publisher, here's how it works: you register with Smashwords, open a free account -- and publish titles free. You upload a .doc file, and the company takes care of file conversion, digital fulfilment, billing, tracking, reporting. Their share is 15%. It's the proverbial good deal.

I'm looking into it even as you read this. For indie publishers, 2009 looks like being very different, and it's actually quite exciting.

Stay tuned! The iPhone isn't available via Amazon at this time, but there's an interesting range of smartphones -- worth a look:



Cheers,
MK

Blogito ergo sum -- revisited

Back again -- with about fifteen spare minutes to get in here and give a coherent answer to the same question that's been asked several times in the last week or so ... by different readers. It's a good question, deserving of serious answer.

I have a major website, yet this blog looks like being a permanent thing. Why would I blog, when I have a major website?

Simply stated, it's a hell of a lot easier to blog. They're free to set up; you don't have to worry about registering domain names and then re-re-resubscribing to keep your domain name (forget it for a few weeks when re-up time comes around, and it's gone, and your search engine presence with it); you can "publish" a paragraph, a diatribe, a photo ... the next chapter of a book ... at a click. No need to write code; no FTP to do. Nothing (much) to learn. You don't get outages at companies like Blogger, which belongs to Google. You don't even have to bother registering a blog with the search engines: give them ten days and a few posts, and they come find you -- which is something they don't do for websites! Blogs are indexed by Google & Co. fast. Within ten minutes of hitting the "publish" button, a well-crafted post can be listed on page one of the search results at The Big G. This doesn't happen with webpages. Blog posts are also content-focused, because the overall design of the blog has been laid down with the template. You get to fiddle at whim with the color scheme, without having to write code, and it's easy to upload or link to anything.



Webpages are fine, too, but the code is a right royal pain, even for the people who speak this gibberish like a second language. You have html, javascript, css and ... stuff. Some wonderful treat called "dot syntax." You have php, jsp, shtml, dhtml ... gak. It'd be a full-time job learning this stuff and then writing it, and here's the rub: web surfers these days have come to expect all the bells and whistles associated with "Web 2" sites. Virtually everything you see online these days is an interactive page driven by some kind of engine. Like --

The new one is Joomla!. I kid you not. If you stumble into the code of some of the Wiki type sites, you'll see meta tags like this:

< meta content="Joomla! 1.5 - Open Source Content Management" name="generator" >

Here's more about the language: http://www.joomla.org/, and here's a site that demonstrates Joomal! in operation: http://www.playshakespeare.com/. So...

FaceBook, MySpace, Wikipedia, Blogger, Wordpress, Dreamstime, Shelfari, GoodReads, Amazon, Imdb, Payloadz, Lulu, CreateSpace, ... on and on. These sites are so ubiquitous, we've reached a point where the simple old webpage won't do anymore. The simple, functional old page that we all thought was sooooo kewl, ten years ago, is now a dinosaur: borrrrring.

Yet the bloody things are just as hard to write, even though web surfers scorn them!

The handy alternative to the dilemma is: The Blog.

The only drawback to Blogger that I've ever found is that the templates are incredibly boring, and it's extremely difficult to find third party add-ons that actually work. I searched a log way before I found a studio that has its act in gear: http://www.ourblogtemplates.com/2008/03/browse-all-blogger-templates.html.

Put "Our Blog Templates" on the top of your list, if you're deciding to blog rather than get into websites, yet you can't stay awake for the old blogger templates!

So there's your answer, more or less. I blog because it's easy, quick, and visitors get what they expect to see these days: Web 2, interactivity, the ability to participate. All these things can be done on a webpage ... but writing the code is another question! I'd rather write fiction and leave the coding to other folks who find that stuff amusing.

Cheers,
MK

ebooks: it's all good news ... except the price!

Good news on the ebook front: this headline ran in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago: "Turns out, Sony ebooks sell after all." http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/12/03/turns-out-sony-e-book-readers-sell-after-all/#comment-44447 ... the title tells the story in the ultimate nutshell.

People -- even tech heads -- had been sooooo skeptical about ebook readers. But since the Sony has sold 300,000 in the last 24 months, I would have to say the writing's on the wall. Maybe Sony has sold more than the other manufacturers (of which there are a lot, with Pocket PC previously being the most popular, if ebook download specs as quoted by Amazon are anything to go by), but you can still use the 300k figure as a means to estimate the size of the ebook reading market in the last couple of years.


An astute guess would be 500-600,000, with Sony accounting for around half of everything ... and since these gadgets are (still?) bloody expensive, you can bet your last nickel the whole lot have been sold in the US/Canada, Japan, and some parts of Europe, where the starting price of US$300 / A$450 + shipping won't quite break the budget.

This is better than it used to be. A couple of years ago I looked at these little devices (in Dick Smith's, as I recall), and the starting price was A$998. Ouch. That'd buy a lot of paperbacks!

So, the price is certainly dropping, and affluent readers in affluent parts of the world can afford to get into this. Add the low(er) prices of the ebooks themselves, and it's starting to look more and more attractive.

Nostrakeeganus's tip? Wait a while longer. If this industry is anything like TVs, PCs and plasma screens (and it is), a computer that would once have cost you five grand will soon cost about a fifth of that price. In other words, what started out at a thousand Aussie a couple of years ago will be A$300 in a year or so. Sony and their competitors will very soon have saturated the market that can afford something up around the five hundred buck marker for a palmtop reading device ... and as soon as the market's well and truly overloaded, prices will implode.

One wished the same thing could be said of the price of ebooks themselves! I've been looking more and more at ebooks as the cost of shipping goes berserk. And yes, I do realize that the carbon tax is what's doubled the price of shipping. We tried to send a little packet of three assorted calendars up to Alaska from the Lower 48 yesterday. Three calendars + postage, then run the exchange rate ... was going to be A$110. Nope, not going to pay that. Not that you couldn't -- just that you wouldn't, because similar calendars will be A$5 each as remainders in the after-Christmas sales!

And the same mechanism is at work right through the printed-goods industry. If you have to pay for shipping of the product ... much less the papers, inks, toners and fixatives that have to be shipped to the printshops! ... the cost is going to skyrocket with inflation, recession and the carbon tax. The answer to all this gloom and doom?

Pixels. Electrons. E-goods. Downloads.

So -- here I am looking at ebooks. And I'm at Diesel Ebooks, which is where I usually start because they have a hell of a range, and a pretty reasonable gay list. Also, they're a bookstore, not a publisher, so you're getting a monster range across a wide spectrum, rather than one editor's preference, which is the risk you run when buying from a publisher direct (and I know exactly what I've just said: the same down-side is true of my own backlist. Everything in the world is 'buyer beware,' from your new reading to the house you bought last week).

The sole downside with Diesel is that they don't give you (much) idea of what you're buying. You get a very small sample of the book, and no indication as to how long it is. They give you the file size. Now, a 500k PDF can be a few pages or 400pp -- depends on how the file was formatted, compressed, and so forth. One graphic, and the file size blows out.

So I ended up chasing a couple of these titles right back to the originating publishers, and on one of those pages there was a kind of "pointer." Their short books are 20-25,000 words, and the price for this is about US$4/~A$5.75. Their mid-range "regular" length books are 50-60,000 words, and you pay US$6.50 / ~A$9.50. Their super-length (!) novels are 80,000, and these are US$8 /~ A$12 or so. They don't do anything longer than 80,000 words.

Uh ... huh. My shortest books are about 45,000, priced at US$5. My longest are 205,000, priced at US$9.95.

I'd been wondering, lately, if my ebooks are too expensive. Turns out, I'm actually underpriced for what I deliver ... not because there aren't cheap(er) ebooks out there, but because what you get for the money is precious little more than a short story.

The price of ebooks is set by many factors. The author has bills to pay -- so does the publisher! There's the cost of having an account at Payloadz or wherever (it's not cheap), and then -- what about some advertising? I fully realize that no one is getting rich out of a US$6 for 60,000 word item! But that's getting perilously close to the A$10 mark, for the equivalent of a very, very skinny paperback, which you could read in one sitting.

My own impression is that the price of the hardware is going to have to come down, to make the ebook industry affordable enough, and big enough, for it to rival paper publishing. And then (and this is the part that's really going to smart), the price of the ebooks themselves will have to come down. If ebooks were -- comparatively speaking -- half the price you'd expect to pay for the same reading-value in a paperback, it would be reasonable. This would put a 60,000 word ebook at something like US$3, possibly even US$2.50. Right now, the item is just plain too expensive for what it is. Sure, a US$6 / A$10 pricetag is low by comparison with the A$25 pricetag of a paperback in this country. But for your A$25 you get up to four times as much reading ... and you don't have to spend five hundred bucks buying hardware, nor do you have to look at pixels. (There's no way I, personally, could stare at the PC screen for long enough to read a whole book; I'll become an avid ebook reader when I've got the hardware.)

The ebook industry is currently exploding, it's a fact. There are significant numbers of affluent readers in affluent regions. The plasma screen market also exploded. For a while. But the more contentious the pricing, and the more luxury-oriented the goods, the faster the market will saturate ... and soon the price cutting begins. We've seen this in every sector of electronics. We'll see it in the ebook industry as early as 2009.

And it's not just the hardware which will get cheaper, fast. It's the ebooks themselves. It's going to take a major shake-up. Some publishers apparently seem to believe that their ebooks are worth the same price as the hardcover or paperback! Don't believe me? See this: http://lurvalamode.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/hump-day-bonus-free-ebooks/

Though they don't realize it just yet, such publishers are already up against a juggernaut: free fiction. Yep. Giveaway fiction that is top quality, well written, meticulously edited. The catch? No catch, really. You just have to look at a few commercials here and there, and for once in your life (ack! gasp! the agony!) click a $1 donation button to help the writer/publisher put groceries on the table and keep the lights turned on.

And that, folks, is where I'm going exploring very soon. I'm actually quite excited about this, because the innovation of the digital novel gives me total, complete, perfect freedom, which is something I've never had before. Now -- there is the real magic of the Internet. Come with me, and let's see what happens next!

Cheers,
MK

YouTube vidoes not loading?!

Just a service message here (with a little help from Torchwood):

If your YouTube videos are not loading ... you're seeing a white area where the movie should be -- it's a very safe bet you need to update your Flash player. It's as simple as that.

In fact, if you have your system configured to update automatically, all you're probably need to do is reboot your computer.

To figure out if you need to do this ... if you're seeing this video, you're fine, if you're seeing a white space, give the computer a restart:


[John Barrowman singing Anything Goes on the Torchwood set]

Hope this fixes problems! (And a liberal dose of John fixes most...!)

For more John Barrownman videos and so forth onsite here:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/mel-keegan-show-and-heeeeeers-mel.html
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/07/racehorses-gravions-and-gremlins.html
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/captain-jack-webpages-and-hunks-in.html

Free software: everyone's favorite subject!

Everyone loves a freebie, and if you're reading this ... you're on a computer by default, and since computers only come to life when you kickstart an application, software is the heart and soul of the system. (I'm blogging in a vacuum today, and what's on my mind is software ... so that's where we're going.)

The good thing is, there's a wealth of great software out there, that comes free, with no strings attached. The even better thing is, it's not rubbish: some of the best applications to get the job done are free -- and they're right across the spectrum of software, virtually filling every niche.

I'm not going to look at browsers,because they're free anyway ... IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome. (Watch out for Google Chrome: it's a beta and still has some font problems they need to look at.) Email programs likewise. And Adobe Acrobat is a giveaway. Take these as read. The fun starts when you want to get clever...

All the software on this post is genuinely free (no trial versions, no shareware). And all have been destruction-tested locally, so we can offer recommendations from personal experience. Here goes:

Want to build your own webpages? There are several free authoring programs to save you the high prices of progs like Dreamweaver, and the learning curve of things like Front Page (which is a segment of Microsoft Office and, to many people, something of a compromise). If you just want garden variety web pages without hassle, and an interface that's so simple, a chimpanzee could use it try Kompozer:

http://www.kompozer.net/

(If you want very complex webpages, it'll cost you one way or another, but for entry level work, Kompozer is the way to go. A six year old can use it.)

With the website finished, you'll want to check it out for dead links. The days when you had to do this manually are gone. Xenu Link Sleuth is the way to go:

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

The link sleuth is brilliant ... saves many hours of work, and, again, the interface is so simple.

Now you've got the site done, you need to upload it. That means FTP ... file transfer protocol software. There's a beauty called FTP Commander:

http://internet-soft.com/ftpcomm.htm

This one, we use all the time. DreamCraft recommends it, and so does Keegan. The interface is so simple, it's like moving files around on your own computer.

Need to get the website contents ready before building and uploading? You're going to need an imaging program and something like a word processor. Now, most people surrender and resort to Microsoft Office for the WP part of the job; other folks baulk at the pricetag. At $849 from Dick Smith Electronics, which is a discount store ... yurk ... who's going to blame you for not wanting to (or being able to) pay so much? Try Open Office instead:

http://openoffice.org-suite.com/index.asp?aff=101&camp=gg_oo_au&se=google

It's an open-code program ... but by 2008 it's very nature. Meaning, they've got most of the bugs fixed. A few years ago it was somewhat rough -- it needed work! Open Office is getting very slick and smooth now, with a nice interface and a lot less problems. I don't think you'd find any more difficulties with it than with Microsoft itself -- which will gridlock slower systems with monotonous regularity. (Tell me about it.) Open Office will do virtually anything Microsoft Office will do; they are in most ways very comparable now.

Since your word processor is up and running, you need fonts, right? Go here:

http://www.1001freefonts.com/

Fantastic fonts, absolutely free. They have an enormous collection ... buy some if you want to, but you don't have to. The free range is magnificent.

Other website elements? Backgrounds, textures, icons? Try this:

http://www.grsites.com/textures/

Search no further. You just found the lot. Fantastic range and quality -- even sound effects. And, uh, free.

Want an imaging program? The ABSOLUTE BEST is free. Not just the "best free prog." It's the best in the business. They do have a "pro" version for commercial work, but you don't need it unless you're going to lay out a professional magazine, or something along those lines; everything you need and then some is in the free package:

http://www.irfanview.com/

This one comes with the highest possible recommendations. The "filters" which are used to resize images cannot be bettered anywhere; the cropping tools -- same. You can also "swap colors" and enhance the image in numerous ways, plus so much more, there's no sense in even trying to cover it here. Go get it, and spend an hour playing. The interface is very easy, and the program is superb. (Note: it's not a retouching or painting program -- it won't replace PhotoShop for you.)

What about making PDFs? Adobe Acrobat retails for around $450 (you can get web specials and downloads for less, but it's pot luck: give it a shot, see how you go). If you're looking for a great free plug-in to replace the real thing:

http://www.pdf995.com/

This one is perfect. PDF 995 plugs into your printer manager, and it works seamlessly with progs as old as Lotus Word Pro (which is still my own word processor), and with stuff as new as Serif Page Plus 10 -- probably the newer Serifs too, though since we haven't yet updated, we can't make guarantees there. To make a PDF, you just choose "PDF 995" from your printer manager dialog, and assign a file name for it to "print" to. Done.

If you need a painting or retouching program, go for this:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Editors/Pixia.shtml

...however, be ready to learn. The job itself is far from easy, and even Pixia -- which was a huge free favorite in Japan before the English version came out -- has to have more learning involved.

Right now, I'm not going to get into sound and video editors and converters, because that's a whole 'nother range. If you're interested in sound and video, and which applications we recommend, let me know and I'll blog about it!

For now, back to work!

Cheers,
MK

Captain Jack, webpages, and hunks in harm's way

We're having all kinds of fun today. So much fun, we're thinking of hiring a marquee and throwing a garden party, and inviting y'all.

Not.

The "fun" is all about webpage design. Now, design work is relatively easy. Basically, you treat the monitor as a page, and fiddle with elements to achieve the same kind of harmonious balance as you would get on paper ... book covers are a perfect example. Making a full wraparound jacket work, much less the dustjacket for a hardcover, is not the easiest job in the world. Thank gods, Jade at DreamCraft has been doing this for over fifteen years now, and things like the below example just fall into place:

(I still smile when I see this cover, because the painting, "The Jungle Book" was done first -- it was the painting that made the whole story jump into my mind. The hunk turned into Sonny Moran, the tiger just was Indhira, the location was the Tarkine. My brain is weird. I know.)

The beauty of working on paper is, you know ahead of time what size it is. You tell the printer what size to print on, and upon pain of death s/he (or more likely a digital printing robot these days) does exactly what s/he (or it) is told.

Webpages are different. For a start, monitors come in all shapes and sizes, and are never the same color twice. What's pale butter on one screen will come up as the brightest shade of sickly yellow on another; and their brightness settings are such that you can never, predict how images are going to appear. Worse than this, there are so many moitor resolutions today that designing a common page, something which is going to look good on them all, is a job that's assumed the proportions of the the Labors of Hercules.

Right now, we're designing a raft of new pages for the MK OnLine site ... trying to make it easier to get through the jungle to the "point of sale" whatsit; trying to get as close as possible to "one click shopping." And it's not so easy.

The design itself is simple enough ... making it work well, and look good, on anything from a square screen laptop with a 1024 x 768 resolution, to one of the big widescreen doohickies, is something else.

We'd hoped to have the new pilot page up and testable today, but it's still not right. We might get it online later, or it could be tomorrow. Bear with us: we look forward to your feedback. We read everything and listen to criticisms with a completely flexible mind. You'd be surprised how often a design (especially in the fluid pixelic world of the web) has been changed along the lines of visitor comments.

So that's the thrilling work which has us all shackled to the desk today; and not surprisingly, in the midst of boredom and frustration, my mind is wandering...

Wandering back to the last episode of the latest season of Doctor Who (went to air here last Sunday, on ABC 1), which was deliciously crossed with Torchwood and a new show I know absolutely nothing about, but which seems to revolve around the inimical Miss Smith, her kid, the tin dog, and a supercomputer that sounds like a wine waiter.

It was very, very nice to see Captain Jack back: John Barrowman looking great, as always. One could have wished they had devoted more screen-time to the character, but the script called in so many guest stars, there's a limit to what can be given to any single character.

In the limited time he had available, Jack was very effective, and Cheers to all concerned for a great job. You really had to concentrate on this one, though; blink, and you'd lose the plot -- which makes me wonder how this show will go down with critics, esp. in the US, where the third segment of the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy was apparently way to complex to be followed by the poor widdle dears viewing on the free critics' passes.

(Well, if you insist on continually running out of the cinema to take phonecalls, smoke, use the loo because you've drunk buckets of watery coke to wash down your wheelbarrow loads of popcorn ... you can expect to lose the plot of a complex movie; critics shouldn't blame a film for this. However, re: POTC3 ... they did!)

I haven't looked at reviews of the end of the latest DW season yet, but I suspect the less cerebrally gymnastic of the general media critics will be saying the end was incomprehensible -- NOT true. But you did have to know your Doctor Who inside out and upside down (they didn't stop for one second to explain who in the hell Davros is; did you notice that?) ... and you had to stay glued to the screen with both ears open.

Lastly, Americans and other non-British native speakers might have their work cut out for them, following the rapid-fire dialog which is delivered in regional accents -- David Tennant and Catherine Tate, both amazing (how they get their tonsils around that lot beats hell out of me), both very British, and both so fast, one is reminded of the line from Pirates of Penzance: "This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter isn't generally heard -- and if it is, it doesn't matter." Personally? I had no problem with the accents or dialog ... then again, I have almost as much family in the UK as I have in the US, am used to the dialect, and was prepared to give it benefit of my few remaining brain cells! I thoroughly enjoyed the show; and it looked to me like the actors themselves were having a blast.

Lastly, for today, since I haven't given an update on the progress of LORDS OF HARBENDANE for a week or more, it couldn't hurt to do that right now. The book is well along, and we're still looking at a release date of end-October, which is in good time for Christmas.

Galleys are being proofed at this time, and the cover is under design. The cover blurb has not been written yet, but I can give you the book in a semi-coherent nutshell: "Gorgeous Gay Hunks adventuring across a fantasy landscape, with battles, sword fights, horses, shamanic powers, savage tribes, barbarous enemies, a cast of thousands, some sizzling pages (!), a fully-detailed fantasy world which might astonish you, and a (gay) romantic streak at least foot wide." You know me by now!

We should have sample readings online in the next couple of weeks, and you'll be able to download a PDF right off the blog here. Later on, we'll do the full book launch on the blog, just as we did for AQUAMARINE. (Incidentally, many thanks to all who sent feedback on the new edition of that one. We labored long and hard on it, and the good work showed ... we hoped it would!)

And now, it's back to the grind: trying to figure out a way to make the same damned page design look good, and work properly, on screens, and resolutions, that are so different, it's like trying to design a cut of LORDS OF THE RINGS that'll look terrific on your Pocket PC. Oof.

If we do manage to get the new pages online today, I'll post again later -- a recruitment ad for test pilots. Till then (or till tomorrow),

Cheers,
MK