The Future Of Publishing – The Book is Dead; Long Live the Book

Is the traditional publishing model dead?

I’ve touched on this topic before (for example,  Amazon becoming a publisher; Amazon really stepping up publication efforts; ebook growth; blogcasting), but three recent events bring it back to the forefront. First was a conversation with someone at a TCN panel talk I gave last week who had just self-published her own book, second was a conversation with a friend who had just published a book with a traditional publisher and third was an interesting piece just published by Matthew Ingram at GigaOM about the value of publishers.

At the panel last week I was discussing intellectual property issues in the start-up context, and one of the participants was focused on IP questions around a book she had just published. The questions were straight-forward, but what was interesting was that when asked who her publisher was, she said that she had self-published.

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Telephoto Lens for Your iPhone 4S

Add-on lenses for cellphone cameras have been around for a while.  And most of them are crap.  But I stumbled onto a great little kit that is very nicely made, and, when combined with the out-standing new camera on the iPhone 4S, takes such great photographs, that I had to share.

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10 Best Things About Apple’s iOS 5 [Updated]

[Originally Published on July 10; Updated on October 3].  In honor of Apple’s big iPhone announcement tomorrow, I thought it was worth republishing this list of the best things about Apple’s iOS 5.  It will be awesome.  Most of the focus will be on the new hardware, but the fact is that it is really the software that will make a bigger difference to most people.  There is something for everyone to look forward to amongst the 200+ new features headed our way.  Here’s the list of the top 10 things I am most psyched about:

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