I brought my Leica carry-around camera with me, and ended up taking little video clips of a lot of the acts that I caught. They’re pretty big files, even after running them through Compressor, so will take a few weeks to upload w/ Vimeo’s bandwidth caps. Sometime soon I’ll probably also post up a mini-review/thoughts of my first SXSW music. In the meantime, here’s the first clip from a short set by Cassettes Won’t Listen:

Cassettes Won’t Listen from lhl on Vimeo.

I probably won’t have time to unwind for a couple more days (see my sched) but a quick update (which should all get their own longer entries eventually)

• ETech was much better than the past couple I’ve been to. I also worked on some cool FireEagle stuff that unfortunately didn’t go live, but once I get back, and have a few days to recover, something should go up.
• A full writeup of SXSWi and SXSW Music (w/ video hopefully)
• Gordon published his good byes. Coincidentally (really), my last is also today.

Late last night I was feeling sort of down about Ohio, and especially in how going negative seem to have really worked for HRC this past week. I decided that I didn’t want to look back and realized I could have done more, so I set up my own personal fundraising campaign, and I will match every dollar contributed with one of my own up to $2,000 ($4,000 total goal).

If you support Obama and want him to be President, consider clicking through and donating, and I’ll match it, whether it’s $5 or $500. I posted the link on Twitter last night and Facebook this morning, and it looks like we’re making progress. Thanks guys!

Bonus link:

• 25-minute interview w/ Lakoff on the campaign

Click through for full awesomeness.

via notcot.org

Cory’s criticism of Harper Collins’s “free download” release of American Gods is spot on. I’m a huge fan of Neil Gaiman, and I read on the screen all day, but the annoying loads, scrolling, and graphic image text format had me bouncing out after a couple pages.

This is a real shame because as Cory and others (Baen especially have been very forward thinking with this) have shown, ebook distribution is a positive thing (Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom had hundreds of thousands of downloads, and ended up selling out multiple hardcover print runs (10K each)). I’ve bought books from John Scalzi (Old Man’s War) and Charlie Stross (Halting State) based on reading the initial chapters. The way that the Kindle does free chapters like this is absolutely the right way to go in terms of encouraging people to buy the book.

In terms of Ebook promotion/distribution, Cory seems to have it down down to a science – create a minisite w/ news blog, collected reviews, author info, and easy “buy me” links. For the downloads, offer it in a plethora of formats, including most notably, plain text, HTML, and PDF, as well as where possible, mobile versions. (BooksInMyPhone does a good job of this; my favorite multi-formatting app is ManyBooks.net).

In the realm of books, it seems like that publishing houses still have a large window of opportunity because of the superiority of the physical distribution medium (paper books) to the alternatives, but as the market declines, and alternatives improve, it seems that book publishers will start facing the same curves as in other markets. Here’s hoping they learn the right lessons about how they can provide value to the parties they serve.

It’s hard to believe, but the last mix that I published on the ol’ blog was almost a year ago. Now that I have some spare time, I’ll be trying both to post more regularly and to make it easier for me to do so, but in the spirit of kicking things off, here we go:

Today was my last day in the office. Schedule for the next couple weeks:

• Mar 2-7: ETech in San Diego
• Mar 7-17: SXSW in Austin
• Post Mar 17: whatever I want

I spent the past couple of nights taking notes. Who doesn’t love photobooths?

adidas Originals LA and HVW8 Presents: 83 ORIGINAL WAYS TO SUCCESSFULLY WASTE YOUR TIME from Jaime Maci­as on Vimeo.