Brent P. Newhall's Blog
Tech – May 2008

28 May 08 – Self-Publishing on the Kindle

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I published my Kindle Fan Guide several months ago, to quite some success. I've sold almost 300 copies so far.

I learned a lot during the process of publishing it. I had to log in to Amazon's Digital Text Platform, though fortuately anyone can log in using an existing Amazon account. I then selected the option to upload a new book.

Kindle books have to be uploaded in HTML format. This turned out to be tricky, as I wrote the Guide in OpenDocument format in a word processor (NeoOffice). My word processor could certainly save as HTML, but the Digital Text Platform only accepts a certain subset of HTML.

So, I had to save the Guide as HTML, then go in and fix the HTML by hand using a text editor. Then I uploaded it. Fortunately, the Digital Text Platform lets you preview your work; fortunate, because the book didn't look right at all. So I had to go back and tweak the HTML about a dozen times before it looked right.

Then I finished the process. However, Amazon's systems take up to 24 hours to synchronize, so I had to wait until that was done. But when it was, I had a Kindle book ready to go.

As it stands, it might be easier to save the book as plain text, then add a few HTML elements for chapter breaks and such. But at least publishing on the Kindle is a relatively straightforward process. If you want to self-publish, the Kindle's a fully reasonable choice.

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21 May 08 – Accepting PayPal Payments

As I prepare to bring my teaching website, Your Online Life, online, I've been fiddling with PayPal. I plan to use it to accept credit card payments, and I got lost within their documentation. But I managed to pull together what I need, and here's what I found.

First, log in to PayPal, then click on the link to your Profile, then click on Website Payment Preferences. Type in a Return URL—this is the page on your site that PayPal will send the user back to after they've paid. Turn on Payment Data Transfer and save. The page will refresh with an Identity Token.

Now for some HTML. On the page where the user will pay for the item, enter something like this:

Obviously, change YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS and ITEM_NAME to your PayPal email address, and the name of the item your client will be buying. This will display a big "Buy Now!" PayPal button.

Now, go to the return page, the one that PayPal will redirect to. PayPal will send a transaction ID to this page, as an HTTP GET variable, named "tx". Grab "tx". Then post the following back to PayPal:

Plug in the value for "tx" in TRANSACTION_ID, and hardcode your identity token in the "at" field.

You should get back something like this:

SUCCESS
first_name=Jane+Doe
last_name=Smith
payment_status=Completed
payer_email=janedoesmith%40hotmail.com
payment_gross=5.00
mc_currency=USD
custom=Purchasing+cool+poster

A bit complicated, but it works.

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8 May 08 – 8 May 08

Twitter, Twhirl, and FriendFeed

I've been using these three technologies for about a week now, and I definitely have enough experience with them to say that I'm hooked. Not massively so, but I'm using them.

Twitter is basically a group IM client in a website. You join, and add all your friends on the service. You and your friends' posts are all displayed together, chronologically, just like IMs. But it's a semi-permanent record; you can glance down the list, see someone's note, and quickly reply. And all your friends see your reply and can join in.

But Twitter's a website. Twhirl packages that up into a desktop IM client (Windows and Mac). Twhirl works exactly like an IM client. So you can have an ongoing conversation with your friends, over the course of days.

Now consider FriendFeed, which aggregates all your friends' Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us, YouTube, etc. messages, along with the ability to vote and comment on each entry. It's like a mini-forum for everyone's activity.

So Twhirl gives you a 24-hour chat channel with all your friends, and FriendFeed gives you a 24-hour forum with all your friends. For free.

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3 May 08 – In Defense of Facebook

A recent chart posted by cnet shows that Facebook apps are primarily used "just for fun." And there have been a number of blog posts lately (particularly The problem with Facebook) which trash Facebook, saying that the site is effectively pointless and not worth any money.

Allow me to step forward in defense of Facebook.

I know people who spend a lot of time on Facebook. Who use those silly little apps. And who are looking at the ads.

Granted, the apps haven't figured out how to make money yet. Same was true of the web circa 1995; lots of websites, most of them look-at-my-cat pages, and almost nobody was making money yet. It took a little time.

This is like complaining that Penny Arcade is useless and worthless because of its silly humor. Doesn't matter; it can still make money.

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