Our cat Ozzie has mixed feelings about the snow.
But today, when the boys found him playing in the tunnel they made in their snow fort, they decided to make some tunnels for Ozzie.
Now he’s popping up all over the front yard…
(also available on YouTube if you want to embed the file)
It’s been a wild couple of days here in Vancouver.
For starters, we already had about 15 cm of snow on the ground, then got another dump on Christmas Eve – somewhere around 20 or 30 cm depending on what part of town you live in.
MB and I were on Cypress Mountain first thing Christmas Eve – the powder was up to my knees and super light so we had a riot. After 5 runs I was exhausted and we headed home, then off to the Playhouse to see a matinee of the Drowsy Chaperone.
While out shoveling the driveway, we managed to catch some video of our neighbour’s way of dealing with the snow…
(the video is also on YouTube if you want to link or embed that version)
By early evening there was even more snow on the ground, and while out buying milk in Edgemont Village I passed a couple on a snowmobile driving down the middle of Sunset Boulevard – a sight you won’t see too often in North Vancouver.
Christmas Eve is pretty quiet at our house – we were all curled up watching a movie when the power went out around 10:00 pm . By Christmas morning the power was still off so I fired up my Y2K generator (who’s laughing now !) and we got the fridge and freezer powered up. And of course the coffee maker.
With the indoor temperature about the same as the temperature outside, it wasn’t hard to convince the kids to gear up and play in the snow. I did a run to the closest gas station with power and fueled up the genny.
By 10:30 Christmas morning the grid was back up – so time for a little blogging and another pot of coffee.
This will be one Christmas etched in our memories for a while.
Merry Christmas everyone.
(click any pics for larger versions)
It’s snowing again tonight in Vancouver, with a snowfall warning for the south coast and a few other parts of BC. In fact, there’s a weather warning of some kind for almost all parts of BC tonight and tomorrow.
And though this is a big country, we all share one thing in common.
A quick check with the Environment Canada web site gives you a good picture of what Winter in Canada means for all Canadians…
Snow in BC,
It’s white with snow all over the lower mainland, and that makes for a lovely break from the grey.
After a morning of snowboarding I started going through some photos I took in Sydney a few years ago.
Maybe because my sailboat Madsu is tucked away out of the water and undercover for the winter, two photos jumped out at me.
A couple of examples of the ultimate in waterfront living…
Click the pics for larger versions, if you can stand it…
It’s one thing to haul up that nice little runabout.
But get a load of this ketch.
Gotta love those Sydneysiders.
Both of these were taken in November 2002.
Garnet and I got up early so we could head up to Cypress this morning for the opening of the riding season.
Guest Services and lift ticketing is now at the new lodge, and it’s a fantastic facility. For one thing it’s more centrally located to the lifts, and the ticketing area is under-cover & huge compared to the old guest services building.
The wind was blowing and the snow falling this morning, it was surprisingly cold – but first day on the mountain it really doesn’t matter.
Not many of the runs are open yet – check the Cypress Mountain web site for info – they were selling lift tickets at a reduced rate today.
This was the perfect day to find out how the new Michelin X-Ice snow tires are going to perform. The road was slippery and with fresh snow falling it was a great test for the Yaris.
Verdict = way better than I had expected.
Tire technology just gets better and better and the Yaris is now a snow-hugging-machine – makes heading up on a cold snowy morning way less stressful.
Happy Riding! Oh, and check out Garnet’s answer to the cold…
My first stop of the morning pretty much set the tone for the day. I’m telling you – if you have to buy tires for your car or truck or whatever, you should do yourself a favour and get them at Tireland in North Vancouver.
I don’t work for them, don’t even know them personally. I have had outstanding service there before, and these days, that counts for everything.
With the write-off of our Jeep, we’re counting on our fabulous red Yaris to do double duty – the mighty little Toyota is going to be spending many a weekend driving up (and hopefully down) the Cypress Bowl road and we expect nothing but the best performance. I’m going to miss the comfort of 4 wheel drive, but in the absence of the four-by, I want some decent tires underfoot.
So off I went to pick up some brand new Michelin X-ICE XI2 tires – and lucky to get ’em too.
There’s a real shortage of winter tires this year, due to a bunch of different circumstances, including a new law requiring ground grips in the province of Quebec.
As I’ve done before, I called Paul at Tireland on the North Shore yesterday, and he managed to find a set of Michelins for me – the only reason they had any is that we’ve got 14 inch tires on the Yaris instead of the more popular 15’s. But the great thing is Paul searched his stock and what he could get brought in, and had a couple of other recommendations for me, with a lot of information about the pros and cons of each tire and how they could be expected to perform.
The little red car is now equipped with some great winter tires – I had a wonderful start to me day even though I dropped a fair bit of money (hey, interest rates are the lowest they’ve been in 50 years). They thing is, I got amazing service, they took my car in on time and had it out on time, and still gave me a bit of a discount.
Now if we could only get some snow…’cause the local mountains are looking pretty bare.
It’s time to use some glass-half-full logic on this one, ’cause everyone’s talking about it.
Here are, Ten Great Things About Prorogation:
Finding some beauty in the rain today.
Just had to step out my front door and see things with a slightly different lens.
Even on a drag grey day, the colours are there, you just have to find them.
The latest radio ratings came out this week, and CBC Radio One is congratulating itself for one of its best ratings periods ever.
On closer look though, it seems that, like every other radio station in the world, there’s a fair bit of selective fun with numbers going on.
Here’s the headline from CBC’s official blog:
CBC Radio cleaned up in the latest audience measurement report released by BBM.
In radio they call it the book, and it was an outstanding showing
(You can get also get an overview of the ratings, nation wide, at Broadcaster magazine.)
In Toronto, CBC is high-fiving for becoming “number one” for the first time ever.
CBLAFM are the call letters of Toronto’s CBC flagship – and it scored a 9.4 share in this round or ratings.
BBM defines share as “total hours tuned to that station expressed as a percentage of total hours tuned to all radio” in the market.
That’s great of course, but there are some in the broadcast industry who think very little of share. Mostly because if your listeners keep their radio tuned for long period of times, your share will be higher, even though a competitor may have more listeners.
Most commercial stations look at reach – defined by BBM as “estimated number of different people, within…the market area, who tuned to that station for at least a quarter hour during the week”
In other words, how many people are actually listening.
Within CBC, making Toronto local radio a winner is a huge deal – and for any of my former colleagues who are celebrating this weekend, good on you.
But when you look at CBL’s reach, whether in the central market (i.e. the city) or full coverage (the entire broadcast range), it’s far from number one.
In full coverage reach, CBL comes in 3rd in the 17 stations identify by BBM
And in the central area of Toronto, CBL does less well. With 696,100 listeners, they’re in 5th place.
In Vancouver, it’s a slightly different story, and very different numbers.
Unlike Toronto, CBC Vancouver won’t be using share to claim number one spot – that’s because in share they’re second, well behind CKNW.
What does make Vancouver CBC number one is a great technical infrastructure. Their full coverage reach is an awesome 612,400 listeners, thanks to excellent transmitter coverage across the lower mainland. This is miles ahead of their closest competitor – and their closest full coverage reach competitor isn’t news/talk station CKNW, but CFBTFM – better known to you as The Beat.
When it comes to the Vancouver central area however, the numbers go quite differently, with CBC well behind CKNW, CFBTFM, CHQM and are on par with CKZZ.
In Vancouver central, CBC Radio One is actually 4th.
What does it all mean ?
Externally, nothing really.
CBC Radio doesn’t currently sell advertising so they can claim #1 all they want, but when the radio sales teams from private stations hit the street to sell, CBC isn’t even on their chart.
Internally – it means everything, particularly as CBC eyes the current government cuts with apprehension.
You just had to listen to Heritage Minister James Moore interviewed on CBC Vancouver this week to hear how big a concern it is for CBC. Speaking to him about the government’s financial plan, on no other question did they push him for an answer except for one – will CBC be getting cut. When minister Moore didn’t answer the question directly, they went on to ask it 2 more times.
The other issue for CBC surrounds CBC Radio Two. With massive changes to the schedule last fall, the ratings are not looking good. So having a great story to tell about CBC Radio One will go a long way to deflecting the heat on Radio Two’s poor performance.
—-
The full BBM highlights are online and summary level information is a free PDF dowload, so have a look and make your own charts and graphs to show how your station in #1, in something.
I’ve got a couple of other charts you can take a look at. Like those above, click for a larger version.
One thing about tough economic times, you’ve really got to open your mind to new and different opportunities.
Fortunately, tough economic times tend to surface loads of off-the-beaten-track jobs, just there for the taking. What ever would we do without the internet…
When Times Get Tough, The Rich Call the Butler
Forget about trying to become a millionaire – learn how to serve one.
If you’re Canadian, apparently your butlering skills are highly in demand with the world’s rich and elite.
The web site is a bit short on detail and long on hyperbole, but a career as a butler, serving the rich and famous, might be just for you.
Makes deciding on what to wear in the morning a piece of cake.
When Times Get Tough, More People are Walking
And those people need shoes.
Shoe Warehouse heads its Craigslist ad with “Looming Recession Got You Thinking?”.
Your answer might be “Sure, but not about shoes”.
But remember – tough times means opening yourself up to new opportunities. But be warned, one of the main job requirements is “MUST be able to take direction and complete tasks within a specified time frame”.
Hmmm. I always thought that’s what JOB meant ?
When Times Get Tough, Head to the Bar
If I had known I could buy a pub for less than the price of a house in Vancouver, I’d have so been there.
Who knew ? I think I’d be great behind one of those long hardwood bars, drawing a nice dark ale for the locals and maybe leading in a few great Canadian drinking songs.
Those of you who know me, know how right this would be.
When Times Get Tough, Aim for a Unique Job
Baby Associate, Diener, or any one of these 37 occupations.
When Times Get Tough, You Can Always Count on Bad News
CTV just laid off over a hundred people, but CBC’s hiring.
Not only that, they’re looking to fill a fresh new vacancy. After just over a year in the job, John Cruikshank is leaving as head of news. He’s been appointed publisher of the Toronto Star starting Jan 1.
If managing a bunch of hard-core journalists and bossing Peter Mansbridge around doesn’t do it for you, there are 42 other jobs open at CBC as of today, so take your pick.
Twitter has run up against the great Canadian mobile phone reality. Even something as simple as text messaging is messed up here.
GigaOm has the skinny – basically Twitter can’t afford the Canadian carriers’ text costs – so while you’ll still be able to send your messages to Twitter – no more outbound from Twitter to Canadian mobile device…
Unexpected changes in our billing have forced us into a difficult situation with our Canadian SMS service. We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.) As a result, effective today we are no longer delivering outbound SMS over our Canadian shortcode (21212). The ability to update Twitter over SMS will still be supported over 21212. But we know that this is only part of the experience and we want to make Twitter work in the way folks want … regardless of where they live. There is a realistic, scalable SMS solution for Canada (and the rest of the world.) We’re working on that and will post more details on the Twitter blog as we make progress
more at GigaOm
For us Canadians, this takes away one of Twitter’s most powerful aspects – live-in-situ updates – whether that’s at a party, conference or just a sunny day at the beach. We’ll still be able to Twitter about it with our phone, but the only ones who’ll receive them will have to be on a browser.
Which begs the question.
If a Tweet falls in the Canadian Forest – does anybody hear ?
How energy efficient is your game console ? Not very.
The short story is this.
If you’ve got a video game console in your house, and you leave it on, you’re wasting energy.
The exception – the Nintendo Wii.
A new report by the National Resources Defense Council surfaces some pretty interesting data – and a clear message (note that figures are for US only):
Through the incorporation of more user-friendly power management features, we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation’s electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year. In this November 2008 issue paper, NRDC provides recommendations for users, video game console manufacturers, component suppliers and the software companies that design games for improving the efficiency of video game consoles already in homes as well as future generations of machines yet to hit the shelves.
The full report is available as a PDF from the NRDC web site.
Here’s an example of some of the data they present, and there’s one thing very clear from this chart. You can do something right now, without having to wait for anyone – just turn the darned thing off.
(originally posted to VanGoGreen)
The email in-box is a great guide to the state of the world.
A quick glance through the subject lines of the morning mail is proving to be an accurate gauge to the psyche of the nation, or at least accurate enough to rival the augurs of the ancient Romans.
On one hand, the Christmas gift idea flood has begun, with new ideas on how to spend money arriving almost hourly.
These cheery greetings come from companies I’ve bought from in the past, and dozens I haven’t.
They’re seductive and appealing, providing countless reasons to buy buy buy, and spend spend spend; all on things I don’t really need.
Isn’t it great ?
It’s like an in-box on Alprazolam.
But along with those cheery missives come the not so cheery missiles.
Stark reality.
Barging its way into my plastic subsidized world
From one of my local news stations:
CKNW Breaking News…
Another dark day on the markets; TSX down 766 points, Dow Jones down 445.
Sent 1:32pm
And from Canaccord Capital, a reminder that:
It seems there are lots of stores that are closing due to the “recession” and the fact that people are not shopping. If you have any “gift cards” from these stores, make sure you use them, or you will lose them
The above, followed by a depressing list of major retailers going broke or closing outlets.
Of course, there’s more trouble for big media, now admitting, finally, tough times ahead…
CTV Inc. will lay off some employees, freeze hiring and cut spending to cope with “sharp decreases” in advertising as the television industry braces for a deep slump.
And this from Ipsos (the polling folks)
Year Over Year Online Spending Drops 13% in Q3 2008
Past Three Months Spending Also Down 15%
Dudes, don’t you realize all this reality is bumming us out ?
I mean, I can only take so much reality – what about you ?
In the word’s of Detective John Kimble in Kindergarden Cop: SCHTOP IT!
Thankfully, at least in my in-box, reality is losing out to Happy Thoughts.
Things like: free shipping, 0% down, and gift cards (while they last) from friendly retailers (while they last).
To which I say: “Keep ’em coming boys, and hey mailbox – pass the bottle would ya?”
The answer is simple.
Cruising with Madsu on a typical BC summer day.
It’s possible it gets better than this, but I doubt it
A little reminder of what to expect (again) in just a few months. And really just an excuse for me to futz with Final Cut Studio 2 which arrived this week.
Hard times are hitting the media – sort of.
Canwest is laying off 560 employees across Canada – five percent of its staff.
Instead of pink slips, CBC’s giving out performance bonuses to execs.
The optics: bad. The timing: execrable.
South of the border, they’re moaning about layoffs in the publishing sector, including Al Gore’s Current TV.
Meanwhile, North of the border, Al Gore’s Current TV is expanding.
Imagine:
Just like us bloggers, mainstream media seems happy to publish whatever crosses their desk, no questions asked.
How else do you explain a March 2008 prediction of little change to BC’s hot housing market over the next 2 years, and the October 2008 story predicting a drop in house prices of 18 percent over the next two years.
BTW: I have a bridge on offer if you’re interested.
According to a CBC story, a candidate in the municipal election in Victoria is complaining there are too many people running for office.
A Victoria mayoral candidate says the large number of candidates running for council is turning the race into an unmanageable circus.
As if to underscore the point, one candidate turned up at a recent all-candidates meeting wearing a clown’s nose and hollering at voters.
Dean Fortin says with 35 people vying for eight seats on council, and eight candidates for mayor, all-candidates meetings have become difficult.
Dude.
It’s called democracy.
And given the track record of ‘legit’ candidates, I’d be careful about pointing fingers.
Sheesh
I’ve been pretty smug about my low carbon recreational footprint. My little sailboat Madsu does have an auxiliary outboard motor, but it’s only on for a short period of time while I motor in and out of the docks at Horseshoe Bay.
The rest of the time, Madsu is under sail.
I do have the need for electricity aboard – power for my running lights, GPS, cabin lights, marine radio and of course my stereo. For that I have small solar charger that keeps my two 12 volt batteries perfectly topped up – in the last 2 years I’ve not once had to plug in to the grid to recharge.
So, when I saw a story in Treehugger about a BC community using sailboats to lower their food carbon footprint, I was hooked on the idea.
It’s reallly the story about a community getting together to do something that’s healthy, rewarding, and dare I say, fun.
Almost 200 people agreed to pay 100.00 dollar each for grain grown by farmers using horses instead of tractors. And to reduce the carbon footprint even more – someone came up with the idea of delivering the crop by sailboat…
After the heritage varieties of wheat were grown, harvested and packaged, the grain shipment was loaded at Kuskanook Harbour on the eastern shore of Kootenay Lake. The sailors took one and half days to sail the length of the lake and into its western arm to a private dock in Nelson. CSA members were out in force to help unload the sailboats and collect their zero carbon grain, including red fife wheat, khorasan wheat, hard spring wheat, spelt and oats. (full story here)
Since I’m out sailing in Howe Sound and the Straight of Georgia a few times a week, I’d gladly carry some cargo aboard.
Who knows, maybe my pal James Glave would like some stuff brought over from the mainland to his Eco-Shed on Bowen Island.
So, if if you’ve got a few bags of grain, baked goods or any other stuff you’d like delivered somewhere on the south Coast – let me know.
Madsu’s out of the water now until spring, but I’d by happy to oblige and help lower your food chain impact.
< cross posted to VanGoGreen >
Worried about the global economy ?
Trying to find your way through the uncertainty ?
I have a hot tip for you on where the real growth is, during this, the worst economic crisis in 100 years.
When the sh*t hits the fan, you can do like the late Warren Zevon says and ‘send lawyers, guns, and money’.
Or.
You can do what every right thinking bureaucrat does:
B o o k a M e e t i n g.
Talk about an industry that’s taking off – there’s a veritable orgy of meetings planned. This weekend, there’s the world economic forum meeting in Dubai:
During the three-day Summit, the 700 participants of this interdisciplinary event will engage in interactive workshops and sessions to set priorities for the most compelling ideas for improving the state of the world, from groundbreaking areas of research to new and exciting developments and cross-cutting solutions to address the world’s challenges
Since fall is swiftly moving to winter, any good meeting planner knows the best thing is to have your meeting somewhere warm. Dubai may be hot, but Sao Paulo’s hotter…
Officials from the rich and the emerging countries of the G20 will gather in Sao Paulo this weekend to discuss the global financial crisis, but by the time they sit down, a much smaller meeting that has attracted far less attention may already have set the agenda.
Of course, any good meeting worth its salt is really just a precursor to another meeting. This weekend’s meeting in Dubai ? It’s really just a warm up for the other world economic forum meeting in January:
Against a background of economic uncertainty and global crisis, the World Economic Forum has announced record engagement from business, government and other leaders for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2009 in January. More than 20 heads of state/government, including G8 countries, and close to 1,000 business leaders have already confirmed their participation, demonstrating the need for governments and business to sit together and focus on an agenda to restore sustained economic growth.
Of course, here in North America, we’re looking forward to the big meeting on November 15th called by George Bush (I dare say when you get a request in Outlook for a meeting featuring BUSH you’re sure to respond).
The beauty of this meeting business is that for every great meeting, there’s also a pre-meeting …
US President George W. Bush announced Thursday that he and president-elect Barack Obama would discuss matters like global economic turmoil and the war in Iraq “early next week.”….The meeting will come just days before world leaders converge on Washington for a November 15 summit to address the causes of and remedies to the international economic meltdown, likely the first in a series.
And of course, by the time the meeting is actually held, we’ve already been told what the attendees are going to say when they get there.
In the entertainment business, we call this ‘phoning it in’. In other words, you don’t really need to be there.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he will urge world leaders meeting later this month to make “selective” improvements to financial regulation, to avoid protectionism and use “sensible” fiscal policies to navigate the uncertain global economic waters.
All these meetings make me absolutely giddy with economic spin-off possibilities.
Imagine all the travel, hotel rooms, cabs, room service, printing, lounge singers and hookers who’ll benefit – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
I once worked at a place where we instituted the BlackJack Meeting Rule – no meeting could last more than 21 minutes. It’s one way of keeping meetings to the point and getting to the good stuff, and you can do it on a conference call.
Of course, that would suck for the world economy.
So leaders of the world – keep sending those meeting requests, and let’s see if we can’t juice up the world economy the good old fashioned way – with rubber chicken dinners and endless PowerPoint presentations.
This happens. A lot.
Vancouver’s housing market may be softening, but the urban clearcut is alive and well.
Even here in super green North Vancouver.
It goes like this.
They’re typically 30 or 40 year old houses – a 3 bedroom bungalow or rancher that served its family perfectly well. Here in North Vancouver they’re usually sitting on a pretty big lot – often with mature trees on either side and in the back.
The house gets sold and the new owners want to build something big – usually the maximum size allowed – so the house goes and so do the trees.
I took this photo this afternoon. A few days ago there was a house on this lot, and a lot of trees. Its easy to see how many from the pile of timber stacked out front. In the background you can see the trees on the neighbour’s property.
No doubt the new owners will do their best to pave the remaining natural surfaces
Sad.
A couple of weeks ago I made what I thought was an innocuous remark about river otters at the marina and the various ways boat owners have chosen to keep them off their vessels.
River Otters use their scat and urine to mark their territory, and once they find a spot they ‘like’, they return over and over. If your the lucky owner of a boat that’s become their favourite spot – good luck.
Here’s the thing.
They’re cute as hell, but their leave-behind, while I’m sure aromatic to another Otter, is down right smelly. Our friend Mandy on Saltspring says if they get in your boat, about the only way to get rid of the smell is to sell it.
With a sailboat, the issue is less problematic than an open powerboat.
Unless you leave a hatch open.
Which I never do.
Except for earlier this week.
When I did.
Leave the hatch open.
Stupidly.
Ironically, the day I left the hatch open was the day I went down to the boat to wash the otter goo from the foredeck.
Oops.
Normally, leaving the hatch open would mean a nice fresh air smell down below.
Except.
Our local otters discovered my mistake and used otter SMS to let their peeps know it was time to party.
Compared to the cold fiberglass non-slip fore deck, things are downright luxurious below decks. At least from an otter’s perspective (or a cold sailor’s).
Those crazy kids left quite a mess, the smell was quite unbelievable. I spent a couple of hours pulling everything out of the boat, washing it down, and scrubbing down the boat. EB finds it amusing that I can spend hours scrubbing the boat but rarely do the same with our kitchen or bathroom floor but that’s for another post.
Even then it smelled mighty ripe.
A nice day out on the water to air things out seemed appropriate.
What little breeze there was didn’t do a lot to dissipate the smell, so I’ve hauled everything ‘marked’ by my otter pals home for a heavy duty scrubbing, using organic orange peel concentrate and whatever else I can get my hands on.
So far the results are 50-50.
My foul-weather gear is smelling pretty good actually – the 4 settee cushions a lot less so.
Thankfully the boat’s only in the water for another week then will be parked beside the house where I can apply any number of smell-reducing-organic-concoctions in hopes of bringing Madsu back to her odiferous self.
Never before have I longed for that musty smell of a closed up sailboat.
Publishers should be thinking a lot more seriously about electronic books and how to leap ahead of their competitors.
Sony’s eBook has only been available in Canada for a few months, and it’s far from the perfect product, but it provides a glimpse into what’s coming.
Playing with the eBook Reader reminds me of the first MP3 players I used in the 90’s. At the time, people scoffed at the idea that the small players would replace their CD collection. People scoffed at the idea of an online music store where songs would be downloaded. And we all know how that turned out.
The shift to electronic books could easily follow the same pattern, assuming the hardware meets our needs. The Sony eBook is close – more on the problems later.
First – the good.
I love the eBook reader. It’s sleek, easy to use, and the screen technology is far better than anything I’ve seen before. Partly this is due to the high resolution of the e-ink technology – it’s more than twice the resolution of your typical computer screen – so text is crisp. Since the screen technology doesn’t depend on back lighting (like your laptop) it looks totally flat, so the effect is much closer to the look of paper than a digital screen.
The Sony eBook also displays images (in black and white), plays MP3’s and allows you to load up Word documents and PDF files, along with their own e-book format and other open electronic book formats.
I’ve loaded about 70 books into my reader and I’ve barely touched the internal memory. This version of the reader has 2 slots for Sony memory sticks, so there’s really no limit to the amount of content you can carry around.
I found that I quickly adjusted to the form factor. The placement of the ‘next page’ buttons line up with where you normally hold a book, and there’s a bookmark function to hold your place.
Essentially, the reading experience is different, but not in a negative way. The feel of the book obviously isn’t there, but it functions pretty much like a book, and that’s what makes its potential so powerful.
Riding the bus, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, or hanging out on a park bench – this device is ideal. Like an mp3 player, it’s light and easy to carry – so I’m more likely to have it with me than I might a big heavy book. And considering that I can haul around hundreds of books, it’s hands down a much better option.
Opportunities
I can see a lot of major advantages in terms of publishing.
Timeliness
Reference and technical books, particularly those about software, are largely out of date by the time they’re published. With an electronic book, updates and changes could be made as often as required, and just a download away. It’s a natural for serialization. And dare I say it – a daily newspaper ?
Presentations
While I can haul out my laptop for a quick one-on-one presentation with a potential client, the size of the eBook is more easier to deal with, and I can literally stand in the elevator and walk through a presentation on the way up. Keep in mind that the screen only displayed in black and white (actually, 4 shades of grey) so I do repurpose my presentations to make them look good on the screen, but you can also just load up any PDF, Word doc, JPG or Gif image, and the eBook will simply display colour as monochrome images.
eBook and Podcasts
Given that Sony’s included an MP3 player right in the eBook, it seems natural to bundle books with author podcasts, as well as serialized “books on MP3” packages that could be used for promotion.
Trees
Books use paper. eBooks use bytes. Need I say more ? Shipping ? Fogetaboutit.
Here’s where I think things need to improve
Software. Sony makes great consumer entertainment products but its software is often horrid. Given that they have a great model with the iTunes store, there’s really no excuse for the state of Sony eBook store. The software is also the interface for loading books onto the eBook reader. It needs a major over-haul in look & feel as well as functionality.
Connectivity. Hard to beleive, but Sony’s software is PC only. Given the nature of the eBook reader, the Apple crowd should be a prime target market. But unless they’re running their MacBook in dual boot mode, they’re out of luck.
Tether. Connectivity to the computer is via a USB cable. I’m assuming the reason there’s no Bluetooth or other wireless connectivity is space, but I’d dearly love to be able to move data back and forth without having to find the cable and plug in. This is a challenge Apple still hasn’t solved with the iPod so I supposed I shouldn’t be so demanding. All I know is that as long as the device has to hook up to my computer, it’s potential is limited.
Price. The 505 model is 300.00 Canadian, which seems expensive given the price of things like iPods, game consoles and and digital cameras. The goal here is to get people using the device so they’ll buy books. Consumers don’t like paying for technology development and a price point that’s too high will keep the adoption rate low.
The newly released 700 models has some nice new features including touch scrolling, but at 400.00 it’s just way too expensive. Amazon’s competitor, the wireless Kindle, is 359.00 USD
Why publishers need to pay attention
The book isn’t going away any time soon, but things are going to change dramatically. Electronic books open up some new possibilities for existing publishing models, and throw the doors wide open to new models.
Is it possible that within a few years the biggest book seller might be a hardware manufacturer ? There’s a reason Amazon created it’s own electronic book reader.
Why not publish dailies in ebook form, so that I can grab up update on my way out the door and read it on the bus ?
Sony’s eBook reader already supports RSS feeds – with a wireless connection there’s no reason I couldn’t be walking through the mall, train station or even at transit bus shelter and downloading the latest update to the periodicals and books I’ve subscribed to.
The e-paper will get better. The connectivity will improve. The price will come down. There’ll be other models and competitors. All those things bode well for publishers – IF they get with it and start to explore what’s possible.
Links:
Get this article for your Sony eBook reader (open BBeb format)
Sony eBook reader at SonyStyle.ca
Amazon’s Kindle
(this article has been cross posted at RobertOuimet.com )