With the launch of iBooks, Apple has now entered the book publishing market. They didn’t announce any subscription models (but really, who doesn’t think they’re around the corner?). But they have 5 major book publishers on board who are supplying content to the iPad.

To me, the most interesting question is: what is the barrier to entry into the iBooks store?

One of the ways iTunes has really revolutionized the content game is in how it has leveled the playing field for content producers. Complete amateurs can submit podcasts for distribution. One-man operations can develop software that sits “on the shelf” right next to the biggest developers out there. From what I hear, submitting music for purchase on iTunes is also not nearly the ordeal that old-school music distribution used to be.

So – what will it be like with iBooks? Is there going to be some avenue for small-time writers to submit their works for sale/distribution? How hard will that be? Would there be some kind of editorial review process? (That’d probably be the biggest sticking point, or point of controversy).

There could be a whole new world of self publishing created, almost over night. I’d love to read it.

Really?

It’s funny how cyclical all of this is. The rumor mill leading up to the iPad was a perfect echo of the buzz that preceded the iPhone. And the initial reaction has been just as articulate (“No unicorns? FAiL!1!”).

The OS criticisms are following a pattern as well. The lament du jour, the lack of multitasking, sounds like another complaint of the past – the whole copy & paste fiasco.

For years (or so it seemed), every pundit was kvetching about how the iPhone didn’t have copy & paste. I too, bemoaned it’s omission. Then a funny thing happened.

We got copy & paste.

I suspect my reaction was shared by a lot of people: “Yay! Finally! That’s neat – it works great. Neato. Woo hoo.” Then I proceeded to use it four times since.

Apple probably thinks the same thing will happen with multitasking and third party apps. Remember – multitasking does exist, but only with certain Apple native apps – like listening to your iPod music while doing almost anything else.

Will multitasking be useful in the iPhone or iPad form factor? I think its practicality will be limited. That much is evident in that most pundits all tend to use the same example – “What if I want to use Pandora and ___ “. They all use this example because the easiest multitasking scenario to grasp is listening to music while you do something else. Which you can already do, you just have to do it Apple’s way. I’m not knocking Pandora – it’s a great service and a great App – but not enough to rewrite an OS over.

I buy Apple’s argument that they haven’t been able to get multitasking to work without battery life loss. When they looked at their options – they went with maintaining good functionality and living with the absence of more.

Is it an omission, and do I hope to see it addressed? Absolutely. I just don’t think it’s as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

The short version: it’s a big iPod Touch, with a 3G option.

The long version: it’s a big iPod Touch, with a 3G option, a lot more possibilities and a killer price.

There seems to be a lot of negative reaction in the tech media. A lot of “disappointed”, “let down”, “meh” reactions. Some people are never happy.

Of COURSE it wouldn’t live up to every wild rumor and speculation. There have been rumors on this churning for years – and it’s been fever pitch for about 3 months now. If it did everything the rumors said it would do, it would have to shoot unicorns out of it’s 30 pin port in order to really be a surprise.

What irks me most, though, is while this was predominantly a hardware announcement, the biggest complaints all tend to be software or content related.

• There’s no multi-tasking. Yet. That’s a software issue that can (and to some degree will, I’m sure) be addressed in future OS updates. And it could possibly be backwards-compatible with old iPhones. It could quite reasonably argued that Apple’s insistence on one-task-at-a time has been a wise move. One need only read up on the Palm Pre’s battery life for verification. Would multi-tasking have been nice to have today? Sure. Will the experience be hurt – not as much as if it were implemented poorly.

• No subscription content. Again – yet. I’m sure some deals are in the works. I’m surprised as anyone that this was absent. But the possibility is obviously there. In fact, all of the infrastructure is already in place. The deals just have to happen.

• No camera. Okay, it’s an obvious hardware omission. I’m thinking we’ll see this in rev 2 – the curious inclusion of a microphone points to it. However, if it had a camera built in, it would be nowhere near $499 to start. If I’m Apple, and I was looking at $499 sans camera, and a $699ish starting price with a camera, I don’t think it would be a hard decision to make.

So, what did work?

• As an artsy-type, the single thing that blew my mind was the Brushes demo. I can’t WAIT to get my mitts on that on the iPad. Talk about a permanent sketchbook. I’m positively giddy about that.

• The ebooks look pretty slick. Unfortunately, this is the kind of thing you just need to spend time with to gauge whether or not it will be a pleasant reading experience.

• Video playback looks really nice, too. It’ll be much nicer to watch a movie on a plane than on an iPhone.

This will be continued to be hashed and re-hashed for the next 60 days, I’m sure. I can’t wait to hold one in my had.

I hear from the guy standing next to me on the Metro that his cousin saw the device in a dream and that it shoots unicorns out the front. Then I remembered that I should probably keep my headphones in.

I think that one of the most compelling nuggets of information floating around is that Apple has made content deals with book publishers like HarperCollins. The obvious application is that the tablet would be a device for e-books. $8.99 – here’s that novel you never read in 11th grade.

What I think would be more compelling is a premium fee for all of the books in a given imprint. $199 and you can read all of the romance books you can stomach. Seriously, though – what if there is a whole series of technical reference books that could suddenly have at your fingertips? Browser-based versions of just such a service exist; but the UX leaves a lot to be desired.

As a designer, the related facet of this idea of e-books is how they are designed. Right now, on devices such as the Kindle, e-books are little more than copy/paste jobs. If this is a full color tablet – imagine what layouts could look like. I’m sure typography will be a tricky issue, but not moreso than it is currently on the web. But step by step illustrations would suddenly be much more compelling. Why not embedded video, too?

What could be most intriguing is how much will it affect the way we consume information. I can’t wait to find out.

The ability to save draft posts and edit existing ones is huge. I haven’t had a chance to try to moderate comments with it, yet, so I’ll be interested to see how that works.

The one thing I would like to see, and maybe I’m just missing it, is the ability to take published posts and revert them to drafts. In terms of mobile use, that would be a really nice feature, in the event you have to take something down, but don’t want to delete it.

Update: Never mind. I just found how to do the revert to draft thing. It’s not the most intuitive, but it’s there. I kind of wish there was a post button at the bottom of a post rather then going to a different menu, but I can see why they have it the way they do. Overall, a very solid app with a surprising amount of power.

I just posted this photo to prove that I could. It is of the beautiful Lake Tahoe – I miss it so.

But in terms of design and interaction, I learned something from my new digital scale.

In the past, I’ve had spring-based scales that twirled a dial, and some digital models too, that simply read out a round number of pounds. But this new one, well, it wants to be very precise – down to a 10th of a pound. It re-calibrates with every use. In the world of bathroom scales, it’s pretty high tech.

It’s that last 10th of a pound that causes the most stress. It’s kind of like a little extra twist of the knife – “oh, you’re not even 215 even, pal, you’re actually closer to 216″.

So as a user, the level of stress in dealing with a piece of information is directly related to the exactness of that data. The more decimal points that my weight has, the more bent out of shape I’ll get about it.

If you’re a sales person, you know that precise numbers can impress a potential buyer – it sounds more impressive to say “256 horsepower engine” rather than “mid-200’s horsepower”.

But what if you’re trying to dissuade someone from thinking about a particular number? What comes to mind is a Flash pre-loader. Most of them dutifully count from 1 to 100% to indicate how much of the movie is loaded. Aren’t flash movie load times one of the most annoying aspects of interacting with that medium? Wouldn’t it make more sense to say “just getting started … now we’re cooking … almost there … “?

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

To keep things coherent, a theme is recommended, and mine was “loose”.

I had been feeling very much like I was in a rut in terms of my design work. I felt like all my designs were coming out looking the same, and it was all a little too cold. When I started out on this project, I felt like I just needed to loosen up, which is how I decided on the theme.

After you decide roughly what your book will be about, you want to start gathering materials. If you are like me, and seem to gather magazines like lint, this is a great opportunity to purge them, and get something out of it. I had a great big pile – health, tech, computer, design magazines and a National Geographic or two.

You can also draw on things like old sketch books. I had a number of them lying around, with some stuff that was alright. the really quick pen sketches seemed to fit my theme the most, so I used a number of them.

While you’re gathering materials, you also want to be on the lookout for a ’support’ book. This is the found book that the whole thing will be glued to. What you want to use is one of those children’s books that has pages which are made out of sturdy cardboard. That will hold up well to repeated gluing and abuse.

You can just scope out the kid’s section at a book store and see what’s in the bargain bin. I think my book was $4. It was about Santa Clause, and this was after Christmas. What’s interesting is also trying to incorporate elements from the found book into the final product. I think I had Mrs. Clause on a page opposite a giant robot.

The whole point of the project is to not be precious about anything. It’s an exercise in creative freedom, so don’t sweat the details. Especially in the actual collage assembly. It’s supposed to be messy. Embrace it. If that bothers you, put down some newspaper.

I happened to have PVA glue lying around from some bookbinding projects, so I used that in my book. But Elmer’s school glue would work just as well.

After the pages have some time to dry – and you can do the collage in chunks – you will want to seal the book’s pages. I guess there could be some elaborate and clean method – but this is supposed to be quick and dirty, remember? I honestly used packing tape. I just wrapped each page in bands, and that sealed each page essentially in plastic.

So that’s how a glue book is made! It’s just a variation on the concept of “found books” in bookbinding, but it’s fun. It’s really good for a working designer who needs to do something fun and creative.

The other upside is that at the end, you have a little jewel of inspiration for when you’re looking for an idea. It’s kind of like making your own “Art of Looking Sideways“, only much more portable.

[Note: the photo on the cover was found on Flickr. It's by Kfal!.]

I decided to bring the blog back to life despite obvious neglect for a number of reasons, but the main one is that there is a lot I want to say. The focus will be a little different from before – I’ll still post cartoons as I come up with them, but I’ll be posting other things.

The world of web-design is ever changing – and there are a lot of things to talk about. I’ll be posting articles I come across, and might occasionally be offering an opinion about certain subjects (version targeting in IE8 anyone?). Should be fun!

The quick explanation is this: Java is a programming language that was developed by Sun Mircosystems in the mid-1990’s. It’s cross-platform compatible, so any program written in Java can be used on Windows, Mac or Linux machines. For that reason, it is a popular choice for programs that are built into websites, as the web site owner cannot be sure which operating system their visitors will be using.

In my experience, however, things never seem to work quite the way it was intended. The applications only work about half the time (at least, it seems that way). So this strip was just a play on that.