Earned Attention is a new book / eBook out by Klaas Weima that includes interviews with 50 “visionaries” in fields related to interactive marketing, advertising and design including Guy Kawasaki, Joseph Jaffe, Pete Blackshaw, Tim O’Reilly, and Tim Smith of ADG (me).

Earned Attention

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Interesting in that the “book” manifests as a printed volume, an eBook, an iPhone app, a blog and a few other formats that leave you with no excuse not to take a look.

The iPhone and iPad versions of the book include the original podcast interviews. Not sure if they are all in English, but most probably are; I was interviewed while in Amsterdam.… Read the rest

So I’m not a hard-core Quora user – there are certainly many – but of the very few answers I’ve posted to Quora one of them somehow became amongst the top-ten most up-voted answers on the site. Touched a nerve out there I guess.

In an interesting and somewhat anachronistic move, the Quora folks decided to take the top voted answers of the past few years – from their website – and compile them into a rather nice hard bound volume, the so-called “Best of Quora 2010-2012“.

You evidently can’t buy this thing, they only sent them out to the original authors (although I have heard of one or two showing up on eBay).… Read the rest

It’s hard to describe how excited I am about Apple’s announcement this morning regarding iBooks Author and their effort to replace printed textbooks with iPads. As an Apple shareholder, and heavy Apple user as a professional, I think it’s important (hopefully more successful long-term than iAd has been so far), but this announcement resonates on a much deeper level for me.

Almost 20 years ago I wrote a short essay called Allison’s Book which described a young girl going to school with only a tablet in her backpack – not 40 pounds of textbooks – just a small portable device that contained all her textbooks and was networked for things like updates and tests.… Read the rest

A Story

While we all knew it was inevitable, the resignation of Steve Jobs was nonetheless a shock to many of us for whom Apple has been a touchstone for much of our life – both personally and professionally. I kind of grew up with Apple.

John Gruber has posted a number of stories from others that depict aspects of Jobs that most of us have never seen – not the gruff, competitive, design-obsessed, CEO, but the personal, often sensitive, funny, real guy that only a small inner circle know.

I’m not in that inner circle, but I have my Steve Jobs story, and I’ve never thought to write it down until I realized it belonged in the domain of these other stories.… Read the rest

If I’m a “bits” guy – ones and zeros – my Dad is an “atoms” guy.  We both spend pretty much every waking hour making stuff, the only difference is I’m digital and he’s analog.

This is the invite to a recent show he curated at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina.  I can’t keep track of where he is anymore – he teaches all over the country; handmade papermaking and book making.  Which is an interesting occupation this day and age.

Artist, Educator, Mentor and (especially) Rascal all define my father.  He’s hard to keep up with, a brilliant thinker, a brilliant maker, and seems to be very popular with other paper and book types.… Read the rest

Just came across – and bought – this book by Andrew Zuckerman: Wisdom: With Three New Interviews.

The trailer for the book is worth watching.… Read the rest

With the impending release of something book or tablet-like from Apple (next week) I thought it would be interesting to pull the following story from the archives.

Allison’s Book was the first story in a trilogy (never completed) describing the use of new consumer electronic devices in the near future (long past now). This was written I think around 1991-92 and describes events in the distant technological wilds of 1998. Suffice to say, it’s now 2010 and we’re still not there. Keep in mind, this was written just shortly after the Apple Newton appeared and long before things like iCal (2002), the consumer Internet, browsers, the iPod, desktop / mobile synchronization, home networks, etc.… Read the rest