webbookblog

Those of you who have bookmarked www.webbookblog.com rather than just webbookblog.com may have stumbled across an interesting site this afternoon. Normally the www. address is added as an alias, however I made a bit of a typo and set up www.webbookbog.com as the alias. All fixed now, but it does lead me on to introduce you to the default site of this server which is www.astoryforbedtime.com this is/was the first business venture of the Alans. It is a site for parents to share MP3 recordings of bedtime stories,  you can download a bunch of them and stick them on a CD or MP3 player for your kids to listen to and you can upload your own, there is even a podcast and I think it may be on the iTunes store still. Kind of like an  audio YouTube for bedtime stories with a bit better quality control and moderation. The idea was that we got copyright permission from the publishers to freely distribute non-professional audio books (we did get it for all the books on the site, the publishers were really cool actually). We got our money by being Amazon affiliates, so if parents listen to the recording and want to get the book with all the pictures and flaps and holes to poke fingers through then they click to buy it and we get a few pennies. So we have a pretty good idea, a reasonable technical implementation, even a business model (which is an optional extra for most web 2.0 projects). All this adds up to an Epic Fail, which was a bit of a surprise. So far in the Amazon account we have accrued a total commission of £10.95, based on 48 sales worth £198.69 to Amazon. When we get to £50 Amazon will send us the money. More importantly than the money I don’t think we had any recordings contributed by people we didn’t already know.

There are a few reasons behind this. One is money. We didn’t have money to throw at marketing it (and still don’t), some things grow virally, others get cash thrown at them, we were hoping viral would work, but it didn’t get to the snowballing point. Another problem is the technology. It isn’t that easy to record stuff and edit it. We did some great instructions for Audacity (which is the most popular page on the website) the software is pretty good but still takes a bit of effort and doesn’t solve the very basic problem that you don’t tend to read bedtime stories in a room containing a computer. The situation is changing a bit, we launched the site in March 2006 and things have moved on somewhat with the rise of things like the webbook. I still would quite like a Flash based recording thingie which would allow people to just press a big red record button, start talking and press again when they are done. Doing that was a bit hard technically (or I didn’t try hard enough) but it would make contributing a recording a bit easier. The final problem is that I am not sure it is structured to build a community enough, but I am not sure quite what to do about that one.

I think it is still a good idea, the technology just needs a bit of a dust off and it needs someone who is probably not really a geek like me, who understands viral marketing (or has loads of cash) to pick it up and run with it as a community and business. Any ideas?

I have been doing a few other interesting projects recently, they are non-webbook related but they are very Ubuntu related so I thought

I would talk about them here.

Today The Open Learning Centre is launching a new range of server appliances, the first one we are launching runs the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment. This is a server for schools or anyone delivering any form of education. It manages student profiles, courses, assessments, scores, homework and all that kind of stuff. Works great for online training or as a complement to classroom based learning.

This isn’t a normal retail purchase though, and it won’t be delivered in the post. Every Libertus server is hand delivered and installed on site by us, we get it up and running and connected to the network. The rest of the day we spend giving training on how to use and administer the server, and explaining why Software Freedom is really cool.

We also offer a remote backup option (backups being a topical topic for the webbook blog) and hardware replacement. If you break your Libertus we send you a new one, with your most recent backup already restored on it so you just plug it in and carry on working.

The Libertus range will include a bunch of appliances, this is just the start. We are kind of building on the experience of the webbook and making sure that all the hardware is fully supported by the operating system, being totally unambiguous in all the marketing that this is running Ubuntu Linux, and getting training and documentation right.

There is one thing that you may be able to help me with (apart from tell all your friends and schools that you know). I have been told by a few people that I just must get on Twitter to let everyone know about this wonderful new server. OK I have a Twitter account called alanbelltolc,I also have an identi.ca account alanbell. Great. Now what? How is everyone supposed to know I am there? What am I supposed to say in 140 characters?

So someone at Elonex turned off the server again, I think they are moving to new premises so it might be something to do with that. I am not sure if/when anyone will turn it back on, but I think this site serves a useful purpose so I have put a restore of the articles and comments one of our servers which tends to stay up.I will try and get the pictures and theme back at some stage, also if you have registered then you might need to register again, or I might be able to transfer the accounts or something. Any suggestions for a new theme, or a new direction for the site, now is a great time to make them.