Last summer, Roger asked me to read the manuscript for the 25th anniversary updated edition of A WHACK. The book, which was just released, is a must read for anyone interested in boosting creativity. Available on Amazon here.

A soon-to-be launched application developed by Microsoft and The New York Times offers enhanced options for consuming electronic NYT media. The reader can be used online or off, and automatically resizes content to best fit readers’ preferences. For tablet PC’s, there’s an option to highlight text on-screen, and add notes (much like Google Notebook), and email or file (and organize) notes! For more information, and to sign up for an invitation to try the beta, click here. [Thanks, Richard MacManus]

Blurb is a populist publishing company that works with leading book printers to create bookstore-quality books, so you can have your creation (ie novel, or blog, or collection of amazing vacation photographs) published in a hardcover book for posterity. Simply download Blurb’s publishing program, input and layout your creation, and VOILA: you are an author! Pricing starts at $30 for an 8-by-10-inch full-color hardcover volume with dust jacket and up to 40 pages.

In the blogosphere, there is much buzz about Tom Evslin’s novel: Hackoff.com: An Historical Mystery set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble. Tom Evslin, a serial entrepreneur and inventor, is self-publishing the novel. His extraordinarily innovative method for promoting and self-publishing the book could threaten the hegemony of big media publishing gatekeepers.

The novel first appeared on the web at Hackoff.com, in a variety of formats. The chapters have been posted in blog format; consumers can subscribe to the RSS feed to automatically receive chapter updates. Consumers can also elect to download chapters in PDF form. Another innovative form: Tom had real venture capitalists and business executives narrate the book for downloadable chapter podcasts. The fictional company in Hackoff.com also has its own website, which heightens the realism of the novel experience.

Tom’s strategy is to give consumers the content for free with the hope it generates buzz, and increases sales of the hardcover, a calculated gamble for sure, but a strategy I anticipate will payoff for Tom, given the quality of his novel. An additional benefit of the web marketing strategy is that Tom has been pre-selling books on Amazon, so he can better estimate how many books should be printed.