iSawToday – The Coolest Thing I Saw Today on the Web

Amazon.com Empowers Anyone to Create Their Own Book

I came across a great article this morning on wired that talks about the growing industry of on-demand publishing. On-demand publishing means that an average person can visit a website, upload their book, artwork, music, or movies and have them distributed and printed to paper or disc at the time an order is placed. Thus making it easier for the masses to publish works of art that would remain otherwise unseen. Take a look at the following sites:

LuLu

Create Space

I would highlight the second choice CreateSpace as it is a product of Amazon.com. This means that once you upload your book it can be found on the world’s largest marketplace right alongside the likes of Martha Stewart.

That’s all fine and dandy but how much does an aspiring writer have to gain(or lose) by publishing his/her works in this fashion? I ran through a test using CreateSpace and found that to sell my black/white 200pg book via Amazon.com it would cost me roughly $18 per book sold. Not terrible if my manuscript is collecting dust in the closet or the ink on my recipe cards is fading.

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I was recently planning a January 08 trip to visit a friend in Phoenix and ended up being plunged into a jungle of travel websites all promising me the best fare, what was I to do?

The Answer: Spend several days searching and monitoring the all too standard travel sites; Hotwire, Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity for the best flight deal to AZ.  In the process I came across several tools that were a great help which I wanted to share with everyone.

1. Farecast – http://www.farecast.com

Farecast allows you to search flights from all of the major aforementioned travel sites but at the same time provides you a handy historical graph of prices for your trip.

Lucky me! I happened to be searching for my ticket around the 6th of December (the low spot on the graph) Farecast correctly predicted that prices were rising (holiday traffic no doubt) and I got in on a great deal; $202 from Milwaukee to Phoenix on Midwest. 

2. Kayak – http://www.kayak.com

Kayak has been around for several years now and has helped me find the best fare on several trips.  That said, there’s very little special about Kayak other than it searches all the major travel sites and airline direct sites to  show you the best fares.  It’s a good site to check out if you’re looking for a ballpark price but I often find myself heading over to :

3. Orbitz – http://www.orbitz.com

Orbitz is just like the other travel sites out there but I find their interface well organized and the process of booking painless.  Furthermore Orbitz offers a grid-view of the search results

this is what I mean when I say organized, it’s easy for me to find flights that match my search and compare the cheapest with preferred airlines (Midwest & Frontier). 

 Added 12/20 – I just read a review from TechCrunc that taked about www.Mobissimo.com as another great site to get travel info, and although my trip is already planned I’ll be sure to try this one next as it looks great.

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In addition to being one of the anchor anthems from Jekyll & Hyde the musical I thought I’d use the passage to announce my stepping off into the land of Mac.  Yes, that’s right the boy who started on a Timex; saving BASIC programs to cassette tapes has just bought his first Mac.  I must admit I’m a bit nervous as I wait for it to arrive how will it work will I regret it? 

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Here’s a video of the mummy of King Tut being removed from his tomb in preparation for display in a Cairo museum.  This is pretty cool actually seeing the remains!

See the mummy of King Tut

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I was happy to read an article in the Oct. 2007 issue of INC magazine today that mentioned my friends over at Maxhire. For those of you that don’t know, Maxhire is a database software for recruiters that makes tracking job candidates and applicants much easier.  In a former life I worked with almost all of the players in this space and personally have always preferred Maxhire for 3 reasons:

- Thin-client; this makes performing simple tasks like logging calls and notes VERY fast. As opposed to a web-browser application which is always somewhat slow….

- Thin-client; besides the speed the thin client means you can still access your database from any computer that has an Internet connection

- Interface; the interface to Maxhire is simple, intuitive, and makes learning the system simple.

Read the story about how Isymmetry reduced costs and improved productivity by using Maxhire

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Check out the video at the site below; especially the very end where the two arms are moving at the same time, CREEPY!

Check it out here

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This story has no relation to technology whatsoever but I thought it was a great read.

Most successful pirate was beautiful and tough..and a woman.
Read the article here

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Two high schoolers in CA have put up this cool site that allows visitors to vote on which movies they’d like to see. Than some generous ‘hunter’ finds and posts the movie to the actual site. You can’t download but rather just view the video ala youtube.
Although this site won’t last very long it lends itself nicely to previewing entire movies and it a great example of a community coming together for the common good… err… well….

Check it Out Here

Just a closing thought, if I were to download a movie I suspect I would likely watch it once and either buy it on DVD if it was great or never watch it again. Taking that into account would one-time full-previews be leveraged into a sales promo for DVDs? Maybe called: Watch it, like it, buy it?

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If you’re like me you may occasionally come down with the desire to just ‘escape’ for the weekend. I’ve always looked for a site
that alerts me specifically when flight+hotel from Milwaukee is at a certain price. Well, I still haven’t found it BUT I did find this very cool site for last minute getaways: LastMinute.com. Does anyone have any experience booking with them?

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” A Minnesota man accused of drunk driving has sued to see the source code of the Intoxilyzer 5000EN machine that busted him, and the state Supreme Court is allowing the request to go forward.”

View the entire article here

What a good idea, in fact I’ve always wondered how Police decide whether to give someone a ticket or  a warning.  Can we see the source code of your magic 8-balls as well?

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