Scott Schram's Blog

January 2006 Archives

O'Reilly offers pre-publication access to manuscripts

O'Reilly has introduced a new service called "Rough Cuts" that gives pre-publication access to books as they are being written.

It's an opportunity for early adopters to use the material and offer feedback to the author and editor.

The books are priced reasonably for online access, with an option to purchase the print version when it is released.

Of the initial four titles, "Ajax Hacks: Rough Cuts Version" is probably the most interesting to Java programmers. The other titles released at this time are "Flickr Hacks", "Ruby Cookbook", "Ruby on Rails: Up and Running".

Check out the new service at: O'Reilly Rough Cuts.

(Disclosure: O'Reilly manages java.net, but I'm not financially associated with them.)

Bellsouth "Tiered" Internet service doomed

boston.com reports that "AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers' own Internet services would be transmitted faster and more efficiently than those of their competitors."

There's no way Bellsouth's tiered speeds is gonna work for them long term.

The reason is, whatever content they offer at high speeds will not be the content subscribers want to view.

I'll give you an example:

I met some people on the net who perform puppet shows, and broadcast shows to each other on streaming video 3 times a week. 2 hours a weeknight, and FOUR hours on Sunday.

There are people all over the internet doing activities in millions of niches like this.

If Bellsouth degrades that service, those people will view it as an outage, and seek service elsewhere. They will switch to the provider with the fastest low tier.

The power of the FIRST CHOICE is here, and anyone who bundles a bunch of things you don't want is doomed.

Java developer, you can be sure java.net, apache.org and your other favorite sites won't be in the top tier.

In this MP3, Economics of the Long Tail Chris Anderson of Wired talks about the power of the first choice.

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