Robert Scoble

I'm shaking at Shaker's launch (they won Techcrunch Disrupt a year ago). Just opening to public in a minute or two: http://www.atshaker.com I'm joining from a plane headed toward SFO.

Hmm, Shel Israel and I are thinking of writing a book. I needed a sign from the Universe that we should do just that. Who is sitting in front of me? Atif Rafiq, general manager, Kindle Direct Publishing at Amazon.

We had a lengthy conversation about the tech industry and especially everything that will change when Google's Project Glass (those wearable computers) come out and we move from a conversational age to a contextual age.

One thing that really has me excited is that we can publish an ebook.

See, the old way of publishing is you'd need to talk a committee at a book publisher into publishing your words. Last time we did that, when we wrote Naked Conversations together, we got paid a nice advance and ended up with about $2 a book (it sold about 45,000 copies so far, which is pretty nice for a book).

Guy Kawasaki told me about the new model, though. Sell an ebook for $3 or so, and keep the $2 without having to talk a committee into publishing it. Plus, you can do something even more fun. Atif told me about http://www.wattpad.com/ which lets new authors push a chapter or two out, see if it gets any excitement.

This is the new "lean book" methodology that Eric Ries brought to the startup world. Heck, don't start a startup until you know there will be at least a few people who want what you are doing, right? Why not do the same with books?

Anyway, you can follow Atif on Twitter at http://twitter.com/atifatif

Shel, let's talk more about what I learned tomorrow when I get off this plane. Speaking of which, it still is a miracle that I can type to the world from 35,000 feet. Thanks Gogo Inflight!

I used to rant a lot, but found that it might be good for traffic, but not for my sanity. Why? Because they cause such a blowback that you have to emotionally be ready for all that.

That said, this industry has gotten too focused on the PR stuff and not on the usage stuff. I've been thinking about why to restart my blog and if I do that's what I'll focus on.

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This iPad app is a mind-blowing new way to view video. Thanks Techstars and http://conditionone.com More cool companies coming next Thursday at NYC demo day. Here are some photos I shot there as startups are putting final touches on their launch plans.

This morning I visited TechStars New York and GigaOm did a nice write up of our conversation.

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