chrisbray.co.uk

A few weeks ago, we noted that the Denver, CO-based design company Aten Design Group was holding a funeral for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), the much-hated browser. The funeral took place last night. It wasn’t without controversy as there were protestors, and even a bouquet of flowers sent by Microsoft. But overall, it looks like it was a classy ceremony.

The blog Nonprofits and Web 2.0 was on hand and has posted several videos (a few of which I’ll embed below). There’s also a huge set of pictures in this Flickr album. As we noted originally, despite the funeral, IE6 is likely to live on for a few years as many sites are likely to still support it for the foreseeable future (though YouTube turns off support next week). And don’t forget all those pour souls in corporate jobs who are forced to use the browser because their IT departments won’t allow them to upgrade.

Microsoft itself is trying to get users to upgrade from IE6 (to their updated IE8), and the flowers that they sent to the funeral speak to that. The card sent with the flowers read: “Thanks for the good times, IE6. See you all @ MIX, where we’ll show a little piece of IE heaven. The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft“

[photos: flickr/atendesigngroup]

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Fan of digital station 6 Music cuts together BBC director general's Newsnight interview and The Thick of It

Just when BBC director general Mark Thompson thought his Newsnight encounter with Jeremy Paxman couldn't get any worse ... it does. A BBC 6 Music fan has combined the best bits of Thommo's interview, such as they were, with clips from Armando Iannucci's The Thick Of It. So not only has he got Paxo biting his proverbial, he's got Malcolm Tucker giving him both barrels from home. With The Thick Of It an example of BBC comedy at its best, we're sure Thommo will be delighted. Let's hope he enjoyed it more than Adam Buxton's joke on Channel 4 News, eh?

• 6 Music
• Mark Thompson
• BBC
• Radio industry

Monkey
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Monkey15462258148444786306

Uh oh.

On at least a few occasions, Android developers have mentioned to me that the multi-touch sensors on certain Android handsets — especially the Nexus One — seemed a bit.. flaky. I’d had nothing but solid experiences while dabbling with multi-touch in all of the apps I could find that support it, so I chalked it up as a coding error on the developer’s part until something a bit more solid came forward.

Well, something a bit more solid has just come forward.

When an exciting radio station like BBC 6 Music can be scrapped to save £9m, surely the £115m spent on BBC3 deserves closer scrutiny

Understandably, the headlines have been focused on BBC 6 Music and Asian Network getting the axe, and plans to cut budgets for online services and imported programmes. But the BBC's strategic review also included something perhaps even more surprising: BBC3 is to escape cuts.

Here's what the review has to say about the digital channel.

"BBC Three has built a reputation for innovation and originality through programmes like Gavin and Stacey, Being Human, Blood, Sweat and Takeaways and The Autistic Me. It reaches over 11 million people a week and brings unique audiences to the BBC. It has learned how to be bold and challenging with programmes that engage young audiences while remaining true to the BBC's values of high quality and distinctiveness. BBC Three's role as a test-bed for the talent and formats of the future, and as a means of engaging younger audiences with content which meets the BBC's five content priorities, will become even more important in the years after switchover. It must maintain its current commitment to investment in original comedy and drama and continue its drive to ensure that its factual output is not just relevant and accessible to its audience but genuinely thought-provoking and valuable."

BBC3 does tend to get something of a hard time from its critics – possibly, in part, because the programming it broadcasts isn't aimed at them. And it has been used as a testing ground for some of the BBC's recent successes, Gavin and Stacey among them, although arguably, these breakthrough shows would have been discovered and nurtured even if BBC3 did not exist – it's not as if the BBC was unable to develop new shows before BBC3 was invented.

Most recently BBC3's credentials for relevant, good quality drama have been boosted by Being Human, which finished its second series on Sunday with an audience of one million. But don't forget, the series was only commissioned because of a campaign by fans; BBC3 had originally preferred to give the slot to (the terrible) Phoo Action. Last night, comedy pilot This Is Jinsy showed promise. Tomorrow the channel has a special First-time Voters Question Time, hosted by Dermot O'Leary – which might perhaps go some way towards making up for Hotter Than My Daughter, a programme which serves no purpose I can fathom, save humiliating everyone involved.

It is not as though there are no other channels aimed at the same age-range – BBC3 is meant to serve 16 to 34-year-olds, although it tends to be rather more interested in the younger end of that spectrum, as fans of the marvellous, now-axed Pulling will testify. E4 broadcast the excellent Misfits before Christmas (a second series has been commissioned), and the fourth series of Skins, which has arguably redefined teen drama, is currently being aired.

To be fair to BBC3, it shows rather fewer American imports than E4, and therefore features more British talent and has to produce more hours of television. It also perhaps has more of a commitment to factual television (tonight including World's Toughest Driving Tests, and Last Woman Standing – I'll say nothing more). But what it doesn't seem to have is an understanding that just because you're making television for a younger audience, doesn't mean it should be of lesser quality. Accessible should not equal dumbed down. Relevant should not mean mindless (Snog, Marry, Avoid anyone?).

Perhaps I'm being harsh. Perhaps younger viewers really rate BBC3's programmes (although I might stress: I am still within the channel's target age-range). But when a really exciting, interesting radio station like 6 Music is scrapped to save its £9m budget, one can't help but feel that the £115m being spent on BBC3 perhaps deserves closer scrutiny.

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Vicky Frost
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Vicky Frost

First PRMac, and now NBC Universal. I think I’m just going to give up now. There’s no shaming this industry into normal human behavior. I mean, who actually thinks it’s ok to email an entire database with a test message? At least they thanked me at the end.

From: PressRelease@nbcuni.com
Date: February 26, 2010 11:38:47 AM PST
To: [EVERYONE AT TECHCRUNCH, TWICE]
Subject: Please Disregard This Email

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Press Release
818-840-7705
PressRelease@nbcuni.com

Please Disregard This Email

Please disregard this email as we perform a test of our email systems. Thank You

If there's one thing that bugs us about desktop component reviews, it's that they tend to compare the latest hardware against the stuff immediately preceding it. Everyone wants to know what the improvements between generations are, but for many it's also equally useful to know how 2010's freshness compares to their own computers, which might have been bought or built a few years back. For those precious prospective upgraders, Tech Report have put together an extremely thorough benchmarking session which compares the venerable Pentium 4 670 and its silly 3.8GHz clock speed to a pair of new budget parts: the Core i3-530 from Intel and quad-core Athlon II X4 635 from AMD. Naturally, they've also included other contemporary parts like the high-end Core i7s and Phenoms, as well as a Core 2 Quad Q6600 from a couple of years ago to bridge the gap between the ancient 90nm Prescott and the 32nm young pretenders. It's all quite fascinating in the geekiest (and therefore best) of ways, so why not hit that source link and get reading.

Pentium 4 takes on modern CPUs in a benchmarking showdown, suffers ignominious defeat originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Tech Report  | Email this | CommentsVladislav Savov003315159287839212470009635645236361426713134670662713648123143514910928784194671027616508757398987011611219920883135602154840013785548165450976196475505337749314618053597562222764000676300757423841150429061474861552344810872140520309183697147044598956134505891198003604188701075206925351185350905271041780372299282166411407015991973245405115335623718379214411178866410613408871921115568342271589479715687559698378086304063075475925400003800822446191882118905900281889190751764118076131903774940672701196241414550205525408968604572542790320045069907312026562330532951730480291590610894251458415509444112614038773810082720265657444760899428300123601462952756792062151427419405525300445659990007963315104401470036070194366109623380139140149881690243546127734673902359408150557758643029128532567038618391596730817196279850007082352955870724331033915722615129420390995397057928848412411607646314215658182145804104233040580620823033544179901607416146202072730902466067310840338284453911378409540138366535705276416411816244377060850528353091098650239478631398588450218228227920768044750175679212400344784011186145650030172101906682196928262715167166607246804898006310133378514998071855314510969258159763570150231375481304626410966777140584513846514514306747596026205044386405071826969151069515386119095158510219456665617116596116047839158262729370544435305419159196105406662861655438834026601861211350416470901190848472793157807952787658293943451068805526582241738180492107051958249485904810585432288618813139919568614885805160236461644627534427312835982414285156753059216535294543891650779411707901153019910742612410463496347022770864742079559701447979564933342783906273799994268261983150685504463831403550103102571175504977811489354855398698885135350871127744363700609055444060168322401024829822847370089021300552167533356630147691766820017803108506765560021016236099259690910148819750940676316782144793106105075205938105881

The danger in creating an instant social network around email contacts, as Google Buzz does with Gmail, is that the boundaries between what is private and what is public are not always clear. One issue raised earlier today is that the people you follow and who follow you are made public by default on your profile page, but are based on people who you email the most in private. You can make these lists invisible, but it remains an opt-out process instead of an opt-in one.

It turns out there is another privacy flaw in Google Buzz that can expose private email addresses to everyone who follows you. Google Buzz borrows the @reply convention from Twitter so that if you want to reply to someone or direct a comment to them you simply put the @ sign in front of their name. Google autosuggests names from your contact list as you start typing. Normally, this doesn’t cause any problems if you select the Gmail account or chat name associated with that person’s public profile. It ends up posting their name, and not their email address.

But if you select a name or account that is not public, Buzz will fill in with their private email. For example, I wanted to direct a comment at TechCrunch writer MG Siegler, so I typed in “@mg” and up came three of his different emails. I picked his TechCrunch email, not realizing that his public profile is linked to a different Gmail account. What this means is that the 231 people following me on Buzz can all see MG’s private email address in my comment even if they had no direct connection to him before.  They can now send him unsolicited emails and spam galore.  Now multiply that type of potential exposure by the millions of people already using Buzz, and you can see why it is a hole that should be patched up quickly.

I asked Google to explain how all of this works, and here is their response:

Generally typing someone’s email address autocompletes with that person’s name and therefore their address is not visible to anyone. Only in cases when you don’t have access to a person’s name and there is no name to connect to that email address, the system will show that person’s address instead of their name. This is very rare, and only happens when:

• the person who’s address you’re typing doesn’t have a public profile OR
• they are not Following you and you are not connected via Chat.

The moment you post, it will be very obvious that the email address is publicly visible, and you can always edit and/ or delete that post.

Except that it is not rare.  Many of my contacts, including the ones using Buzz, have multiple email addresses.  When I type their name in Buzz to reply to them, the autosuggest box shows me all the different email addresses I have for them in Gmail, and doesn’t specify which of those are public or private.   When I typed in MG’s name, for instance, I chose the TechCrunch email because that is the one I use the most.  I had no idea that his Gmail address is the one linked to his public profile, and thus the one I should have used to protect his privacy.

In my eyes that is a design flaw.  Google actually expects us to pick up on these things and protect each other’s privacy, rather than the other way around.  What happens when you inadvertently type in someone’s email address?  According to Google:

In this case, a person attempts to type an @reply using a contact’s email address, types out the email address, and then after posting sees the email address plainly displayed in the post. It is expected that after this, most people would understand that the email address will be visible to the viewers of the post. The user can edit or delete the post.

Sorry, but that is expecting too much from the average user, who probably wouldn’t even notice such a tiny detail.  It’s really up to Google to warn users or to make sure that only public names come up in the autocomplete.  How hard can that be? Instead, Google is telling us that it is our problem and we should be more vigilant using their product.

In the overall scheme of things, this is a small and fixable flaw for a feature that 80 percent of people may never even use.  But it is an example of what can go wrong when you inject private contacts into a public stream.  Google needs to be extra careful with details like this one.

CrunchBase InformationGoogle BuzzInformation provided by CrunchBase

(Cross posted on the Google Docs Blog)

We all want important life moments — like graduating from school, getting married or having your first baby — to be perfect. For many couples, your wedding is a chance to celebrate with everyone you care about; it's also the largest, most complicated party you'll ever host. From tracking guest RSVPs, to picking the right florist, DJ and caterer, to coordinating every last detail with your wedding party, it's no surprise that the process can become overwhelming and expensive.

After proposing to the woman of my dreams with 100 red roses, six months ago I started planning my own wedding. My fiancee and I decided to use Google Docs to manage every aspect of our wedding, starting with shared budget, guest list, to-do list and venue-tracking spreadsheets and keeping all our docs in our "Wedding" shared folder. I ended up talking to other couples who planned their weddings using Google Docs and discovered I wasn't alone in thinking that it helped save time and avoid headaches.

Today, I'm happy to share this knowledge in the form of over 20 wedding templates available in the Google Docs template gallery. These tools make it easy to estimate and track your wedding budget, collect addresses for invitations, compare vendors and much more. For example, take a look at the address book template below. Instead of emailing hundreds of guests and copy/pasting hundreds of addresses into a spreadsheet, you can send a Google form and collect addresses in a spreadsheet automatically:


Because these documents, spreadsheets and forms live online in the cloud, you can easily get help by sharing them with your parents or bridal party, and you can access them from the bakery, bridal shop or anywhere around town using your smartphone. Plus, you never have to worry about versions and email attachments, because everything is always up to date.

Having the tools to plan a wedding is a good start, but you also need to know what questions to ask when interviewing vendors and which factors to consider when inviting guests or choosing music. To give you a leg up, we've teamed up with StyleMePretty.com, a popular wedding blog, to add tips from wedding experts to each template. StyleMePretty is also hosting a sweepstakes and asking engaged couples to share their wedding planning experiences. One randomly selected winner will receive free consultation with celebrity event planner Michelle Rago and a $500 gift certificate to Wedding Paper Divas.

We're excited to give more engaged couples tools to make the wedding planning process easier and more fun. To learn more about simplifying wedding planning with Google Docs and Style Me Pretty, check out docs.google.com/wedding.

Posted by Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager, Google Docs

If you’re on Twitter, that means you registered an account with a password that isn’t terribly easy to guess. As you may know, Twitter prevents people from doing just that by indicating that certain passwords such as ‘password’ (cough cough) and ‘123456′ are too obvious to be picked.

It just so happens that Twitter has hard-coded all banned passwords on the sign-up page. All you need to do to retrieve the full list of unwelcome passwords is take a look at the source code of that page.

Do a simple search for ‘twttr.BANNED_PASSWORDS’ and voilà, there they are, all 370 of them.

This isn’t a security issue, of course, and in fact it’s helpful to distribute the list so you can check if your favorite password that you use for other services might not be as fail-proof as you’d like to think. For the full list, simply download this TXT file, but here are a couple:

- password
- testing
- naked
- stupid
- twitter
- 123456
- secret
- please
- beavis
- butthead
- internet
- hooters

What would be interesting to know is if Twitter got this list from somewhere else, or if they actually analyze which passwords were most commonly chosen by its tens of millions of users in the past, rendering them ‘too obvious’. If the latter, that means this list is probably representative of most Web services.

(Thanks to Dario Manoukian for the tip; a quick search turns up a post on The Wundercounter featuring the list too)

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A weary hello from O’Hare Airport in Chicago, Illinois – the world’s coldest and most inhospitable airport, right in the frozen heart of the world’s coldest and most inhospitable city. That a community organizer from this city would dream of becoming President is no surprise. Chicago is, after all, the only place in the world capable of making Washington DC look like a step up.

I’m trapped here in standby limbo: my original connecting flight to Nashville cancelled due to snow – the kind of freak weather condition that no one in Chicago could possibly have predicted for December.

Still, at least I’ve been awake since 4am GMT, and at least my flight left London an hour late because every single passenger had to be patted down by American Airlines staff at the gate, having already passed through the usual madness of security. And at least by “every single passenger” I mean there unfolded a preposterous pantomime where posh white dudes like me were given the most cursorily of rub-downs in order to keep the line moving while those poor saps who fit the terrorist profile – which is to say, anyone who looked a bit brown – were deep-tissue massaged half to death a gaggle of goons in latex gloves. And at least all of that nonsense was utterly pointless because, as any self-respecting terrorist apparently knows, they don’t dare go anywhere near your groin.

It would be very easy for me to write a reactionary column this week about how technology should have made travel delays like this a thing of the past. About how we have heated soccer pitches, and yet we’re told that heated runways don’t stack up economically. Or how there’s no point in having terrorist watch-lists if people on them are still able to get on flights with bombs sewn into their underwear. I mean, Jesus, we’re days away from the end of the first decade of The Future – 40 years after we put a man on the moon – and yet there are so many areas where technology still lets us down.

But what good would that do me? I’m already stressed – and they say when you’re in a stressful situation you should focus on the positives, not dwell on the negatives.

The fact is, for every major way in which the technology of the last decade has failed to deliver – hoverboards, teleportation – there are half a dozen smaller advances so mindblowingly significant to our day-to-day lives that we already take them for granted.

For a start, the only thing making this six-hour extended layover in the frozen circle of hell even slightly bearable is the fact that I have my laptop, a power-outlet and decent quality wifi. How the hell did we manage before wifi? It was less than ten years ago that hotspots started to appear – considerably less in the case of airports – and yet already the idea of not being able to access the Internet anytime, anywhere is genuinely impossible to imagine. Like trying to recall how we made social plans before mobile phones, or how we identified prospective sexual partners before Bebo.

Whether it be airport wifi on our laptops or oh-just-connect-you-bastard flakiness on the iPhone, the fact that the Internet has become more ubiquitous than electricity in major cities in the past decade is – without any hyperbole whatsoever- a miracle. Sure, it’s destroyed lunch conversation and pub trivia but, in common with anyone who hit their 20s or 30s in the 2000s, I’d happily swap either of those for the ability to book a flight from the back of a cab, or to consult Wikipedia from the toilet.

And, oh, Wikipedia! Sure it’s unreliable as all hell (citation needed) and anything remotely controversial becomes a battleground of edits and bullshit, but there’s still something incredible about legions of unpaid volunteers, hunched in parental basements around the globe, collaborating to produce an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. Like most hacks, I consult Wikipedia at least half a dozen times a day, safe in the knowledge that I’ll be able to find a fact – accurate or not – to support just about any theory my fevered imagination can dream up. A theory that I can write about in a reputable publication and thus, by Wikipedia standards, launder into truth.

And how about Netflix? Or Hulu. Or Pandora. Or Last.fm. Or Spotify. To our kids it will seem as natural as water, but neither you nor I will forget the first time we clicked on the title of a song or a movie, only for it to instantly begin playing with crystal clarity. As I’ve written before, it’s the same feeling you experience when a magician turns water into wine in front of your eyes. With all of our talk of DRM and musicians and directors and – oh yeah – authors losing their livelihood it’s easy to forget how utterly bloody marvelous it is that all human creativity is just sitting in the air, all queued up and waiting for us to press play.

In fact, just sitting here, staring out of the window at the snow, I can think of a dozen more technological advances of the past decade that it would be impossible to imagine the world without. Google. The iPod. Facebook. Skype. YouTube. Online banking. ATM check processing. Celebrity sex tapes. Snopes. GPS mapping for all on cellphones. The Kindle. Trip Advisor.

As if to prove my point, as I finished writing that list, my iPhone started to vibrate in my pocket. It was a friend in San Francisco who had been following my snowbound breakdown on Twitter and had decided to call to cheer me up. At about the same time, another friend – this one in London – instant messaged me with a very inappropriate joke about bombs on planes which also brightened my evening no end. Ten years ago that simply wouldn’t have happened, nor would I be able to distract myself for another few minutes by sending them both a cameraphone photo of all the snow (above).

Indeed, the technology of the past decade may not have helped me escape from Chicago but it has at least given me a mental escape tunnel to prevent me going completely mad. And for that reason alone, I raise a frozen hand in salute the technology of the‘00s and look forward with excitement with what the ‘10s will bring.

I just hope they start with heated fucking runways. Seriously – how hard can it be?

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“So that’s your advice is it? As my agent? On the week my book comes out in paperback, I should produce my own pirated version and give it away free? Why don’t I just punch my publisher in the face? That would be less work.”

My agent rocked back in his chair (a chair bought with 15% of my earnings) and laughed. “I didn’t say it was my advice, I just said there’s nothing they can do to stop you.”

Before our meeting had taken its subversive turn, we had been talking about ebooks: a subject that’s on every publisher and agent’s mind this week after the decision by Stephen R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, to make his books available exclusively on the Amazon Kindle. Covey’s move has caused a highly effective shit-storm because he made it in direct defiance of his paymasters at Simon & Schuster who won’t see a penny from the deal.

‘Seven Habits’ was originally contracted back in the pre-ebook days of 1989 and as such Covey claims that the electronic rights remain with him to do with as he wishes. Simon & Schuster, perhaps unsurprisingly given that they sold 136,000 paperback copies of the book this year, disagree – arguing that Covey’s contract precludes him from publishing any ‘competing works’. “Our position is that electronic editions of our backlist titles belong in the Simon & Schuster catalog, and we intend to protect our interests in those publications.” said an S&S spokesman, ineffectively.

It’s no huge coincidence that Covey’s decision came just a few days after Simon & Schuster, along with several other publishers, announced that they were postponing the ebook release of dozens of titles on the basis that Amazon’s $9.99 price point for electronic titles was cannibalizing hardback sales. Hardback sales – especially of popular titles – are one of the cash cows of publishing, costing just a few cents more to produce and distribute than paperbacks but with a far higher cover price. Ebooks on the other hand sell for less than paperbacks but, by and large, pay a larger royalty to authors: somewhere in the region of 25% of the cover price, leaving even less profit for the publisher. The hardcore book buyers who regularly buy hardback books are also the ones most likely to have an e-reader – meaning that delaying ebook releases should result in more hardback sales. Or so goes the publishers’ logic.

The problem is that book sales are not a zero sum game. Your average Kindle owner, on discovering that a new release is not available electronically, is unlikely to set down his expensive gadget and drive down to Borders to buy the hardback. Instead he’ll simply choose a different title from the hundreds of thousands that are available. Hardcore fans of a particular author might still insist on the hardback, but they would anyway given that it’s much harder to get an ebook signed by their hero.

Meantime, as ebooks become an increasingly important distribution channel for books, authors who aren’t convinced by their publisher’s digital strategy won’t hesitate to take matters into their own hands. New authors will simply choose a different publisher, while veterans like Covey will try to exploit loopholes in their existing contracts to maximise ebook returns.

For Covey, the problem with Simon & Schuster’s digital strategy seems to be largely financial. The company that he has chosen to publish his new Kindle edition – Rosetta Books – has made a big play of the fact that they’re paying him a significantly higher royalty on sales than he was previously making on ebooks. Meanwhile Amazon has promised a huge site-wide promotional campaign for the titles. Other authors choose a publisher because their digital strategy reflects their principles. Cory Doctorow publishes many of his books with Tor Books because they agree to allow him to give away the electronic versions of his books, on the day of publication, without DRM protection. By contrast, when Apple refused to distribute the audio book of his ‘Makers‘ anthology in the iTunes store without DRM, Doctorow walked away from the deal rather than compromise his principles.

I can’t fault my publisher on money: Weidenfeld & Nicolson has paid me not one, but two generous advances to write books about myself, and I’m certain I’ve cost them the same again in lawyers’ fees thanks to the legal threats I seem to attract prior to publication. I earn a decent royalty on ebook sales in the UK and Europe and, because I still own the US rights to my books, I was free to produce my own Kindle edition – limited to US customers – and take 100% of the profits. Equally, I can’t fault W&N on supporting my principles: largely because I don’t have any.

No, the reason I found myself in my agent’s office earlier this week bitching about my publisher’s digital strategy was something even stronger than money and principle: my monstrous ego.

Since moving to the US and starting to write for TechCrunch, I now have more people reading my words each week in North America than I do in the UK. Every week I delight in annoying commenters by promoting my war-of-the-worlds-winning book, to the point where people seem genuinely upset when I miss an opportunity to do so. And yet barely a day goes by without someone telling me they tried to find my book in the US, only to be disappointed that – due to publishing’s ridiculous obsession with territories – it’s only available outside North America. “It’s available on the Kindle” I say. “Pft” they reply, “I don’t have a Kindle”. In most cases I end up emailing them a PDF – a distribution model that doesn’t really scale.

The logical solution would be to publish the PDF on my site. The print version of the book has been available for 18 months now – it’s had plenty of time on bookstore shelves and with the publication of the paperback in the UK and no US publisher on the horizon, any future sales are just part of the long tail. There’s already a pirated version available on Limewire – that’s where I got the PDF from in the first place – and the more time that passes, the easier it will be to find an unauthorised digital copy.

By releasing the ebook myself for free at this stage of its life, it would do very little damage to sales but will get my words into the hands of a whole new US audience: readers who might then seek out other things I’ve written or pay me to write new things, or buy the properly-formatted Kindle edition with clickable footnotes – or any of the other myriad benefits that Doctorow cites for wanting to give his books away free.

But that’s where W&N’s digital strategy lets me down. The company has the rights to all digital sales of the book outside North America and their parent, Hachette Livre, has decreed that they will not allow any ebooks to be distributed for free, or without DRM.  If I make the ebook of Bringing Nothing available for free in the US then there’s nothing to stop foreign readers downloading it, which would breach W&N’s contractual rights. As I explained to my agent, owning the US rights to the ebook is pointless if I can’t do anything with them without pissing off my publisher.

It was that point that he made his brilliant suggestion. The kind of suggestion that makes all those 15%s worthwhile…

“Why don’t you do it anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re allowed to publish it in the US, so why don’t you just do it? If some people in the UK or Australia download it, then so what? It’s not your fault; it’s W&N’s fault for not having a global ebook strategy. And anyway, they should be delighted at the publicity.”

They really should. So what if a few people outside the US download the free version? If they haven’t bought the book by now they almost certainly weren’t going to. And who knows, if they like the ebook they might be encouraged to buy a hard copy either for themselves or as a gift for a friend. They’re certainly more likely to pre-order the next book – which is what really matters to W&N at this point. The only question was how W&N’s legal department would feel about my agent’s advice.

“I didn’t say it was my advice, I just said there’s nothing they can do to stop you.”

Semantics. I emailed my publicist to ask her, hypothetically, what would happen if I somehow convinced a US-based publication to allow me to give away the ebook of Bringing Nothing – strictly to North American readers, of course – but with no real way to stop anyone else in the world downloading it. Her reply – after speaking to the lawyers – was brilliant: “The consensus seems to be that we can’t exactly stop you. But I’ve been asked to remind you that Hachette policy is not to offer free ebooks and all our ebooks are DRM protected. So there you are. Reminded.” Just another reason why I love my publicist.

All that remained was for me to somehow convince a sufficiently popular US site to act as a patsy for my dastardly, egotistical plan. I sent an email to TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, setting out my case and asking if TC could be that site. I was expecting it to be a tough sell, and I was right.

“YES!” she argued.

And so here we go. The entire ebook of Bringing Nothing To The Party – True Confessions of a New Media Whore: my egotistical Christmas gift to you, and your reward for enduring my weekly attempts to convince you to buy it.

The main PDF download is here, there’s an HTML version (with linked footnotes) here and an entirely impractical DocStoc version below. The ultimate TL;DR.

It’s published under a Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial) License, so by all means re-distribute it however you see fit, as long as you link back either here or to PaulCarr.com. Also, if you do repost it anywhere, make sure you let me know the link either in the comments or on Twitter so I can say thank you. As an added incentive, I have ten copies of the paperback edition sitting on my desk and this time next week I’ll choose ten random re-posters and send each a specially customised copy.

Finally it’s worth saying that, for all of my ego, the book is actually quite a hard thing for me to give away: its 275 pages tell the story of a very strange few years of my life – years that cost me my career, my reputation, the love of my life, and very nearly my freedom. In other words, it’s a real feel-good Christmas romp.

I really hope you like it.

(Update: a few Sony Reader users have reported font problems with the PDF. Aaron Quigley has created a revised version using different fonts, which is available here)

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