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?
Hey Alan.
I give much kudos to that idea, it’s actually pretty good. I know there was one company who’d get 100 people to contribute a poem, then published a book of contributed poems. This book would retail for £9.99 – but then the 100 ‘poets’ and their family and friends would all buy some books – because it had their story in them. It’s a bitch of a business model – if it isn’t open and honest to begin with.
I think the advantage to your model is that people can contribute and gain from it without knowing they’re being taken for a ride. I know many stories that my dad used to tell me (and still tells my younger brothers) – and how great it would be to get them recorded and put live on the site.
I’m going to have a bit of spare ‘Computer time’ soon, with the move to India and all. (I’m sure I’ll be even busier – but ‘Computer Time’ will be mostly non-work). If you want someone to help you kick this idea back into live I would love to help. Put a charitable cause behind it and the idea will boom. One thing I’ve noticed as a bit of a paradigm with viral marketing, is that most is entirely non-egocentric. It’s random, or selfless.
Hopefully this idea can succeed – shame I didn’t hear about it first time round.
A charitable angle would work fine for me, after all it isn’t as if I would be losing any income by doing that. Having an easy way to buy the book is an important part of the site though, because that is why the publishers like the idea and are willing to give the copyright permissions. Thus it has to be a bit commercial and linked to an online store with a huge catalog of titles. It could of course be attempting to raise money for a charity in some way rather than to get me some beer money.
From my perspective, the biggest hurdle to get some “traction” is still the technicalities of actually recording the family’s story time.
At BETT we saw a digital pen thingy that recorded in – apparently – MP3 format and had a USB interface.
It needs something, small, cheap and easy to use to make the process of capturing the recording as unobtrusive as possible and then getting the recording onto the website.
For us “geeky types” who have PCs scattered throughout their home and CAT 5 or WiFi everywhere it isn’t a big deal – but we are in the minority.
Replying to myself – this was the cheapest I could find with a quick search. http://www.uket.co.uk/digital-voice-recorders/new-model-ultradisk-1gb-digital-voice-recorder-mp3/prod_113.html
It’s too expensive. Needs to be less that £20 but with the royalties for MP3 recording that is probably out of the question. If there was a OGG recorder that might work and we can always transcode on the server.
The blue one we saw at BETT didn’t actually do what we want. It records to nasty raw stuff and is hard to get at. The yellow one over in the big hall looked much more promising.
This thing, which was on stand P1 http://www.tts-group.co.uk/Product.aspx?cref=TTSPR1081690&rid=269&cid=24
That’s certainly better. I wonder if there is a Chinese manufacturer somewhere.
There’s a particularly BAD website that seems to be something to do with the brand name here: http://www.easi-speak.org.uk/easi_speak/Easi_speak_prices.html flogging them for £100 for 5.
If you look around on Alibaba http://www.alibaba.com/sellinglead-gs/219214385/Sell_Voice_recorder_mp3_pen.html about halfway down the page. I’m sure there’s an affordable device somewhere.
Also, can you add the “email me if there’s a new comment” plugin so I don’t have to check back?
dear alan i have question that is not related to this blog its with my webbook i have had a portable hard drive for about six month now and it has worked fine with the webbook for all that time i have just got back from holiday where i took both items with me and now the webbook seems to have some problems with the external hdd when i connect it the window opens in nautilus but soon as i try to go into other folders it seems to freeze everything in nautilus and for some reason the light on the hdd just seems to be flashing constantly like its taking forever to read i thought i would leave it for a while and one hour later nothings has changed i tried the hdd on other computers all xp and it worked fine have u got any ideas on what i could do (i am a newbie to Linux)
ps i haven’t made separate partitions on this hdd it seemed to work fine on both OS in the past
Hi Alan,
Just a few lines to wish you a Happy Easter and to express the hope that you will continue with this blog, which is very much appreciated by webbook users.
I haven’t posted any comments or queries on it for a while, but I still visit it, and it is reassuring to know that YOU are still committed to the Ubuntu webbook.
I have been wondering why the layout of this blog suddenly changed earlier this year. It was really great when recent comments were prominently displayed in chronological order. That feature has now disappeared along with the photo of the webbook. Any chance of reinstating it?
thanks for the good wishes. Elonex moved and took the server with them, I never really found out what happened to it after that. I had a copy of the data and put it back up on my server, but with a default theme.
Hallo. There doesn’t seem to have been much activity on the Blog of late, but this entry has the most recent post, so I’m posting my query here.
The latest software update seems to fail. I get an error message saying usb-modeswitch cannot be installed, which also holds back the upgrading of two wader components. Needless to say this also means the update alert in the system tray is permanently showing available updates.
Do you know what the problem is?
Paul Farthing
Help! The problem has got more serious. The update now seems to have happened; I have a new icon for mobile broadband in my menu; it all seems to connect to T-mobile; but I have no internet or email access at all. Paul Farthing.
Hi Alan,
The problems Paul is reporting in connection with the latest Wader upgrades have made me nervous, as it was the previous Wader upgrade at the end of October 2008 which seemed to trigger my serious problems with Update Manager, which you eventually solved via live support. (See: http://webbookblog.com/some-updates-and-an-update/#comments)
I’m holding back this time in the hope that you will be able to give some advice not only to Paul, but also to other webbook users. (I’m still using 8.04 Hardy Heron, by the way.)
I currently have 33 updates to install. Of these, I gather it was one or all of the five ‘Other Updates’ at the end of the sequence that caused Paul’s problems. When I clicked on the Details tab for these, it said “a list of changes is not available yet. Try again later”, which is a odd. These are the five updates in question:
ozerocdoff – utility to turn zero CD off on option HSPA devices
Python messaging – a sms encoding/decoding library
usb-modeswitch – a tool to configure recent usb modems
wader-core
wader-gtk
I am wondering what would happen if I unticked the boxes for these five Other Updates and installed the 28 Security Updates and Recommended Updates. Could I opt to install the remaining five later – if and when the potential problem has been resolved – either via Update Manager or via sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade commands?
Postscript re Wader upgrade (released on 16 April)
Those of us who still have 8.04 Hardy Heron installed on their webbook and are only able to access the internet via mobile broadband are TOTALLY reliant on the Wader client. Hence my caution in view of the problems reported by Paul.
As no details about the latest Wader upgrade are provided by Update Manager, I looked on the Wader websites for information. I found this very technical – and to me incomprehensible – article: http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/ via http://public.warp.es/wader/ticket/33
I get the impression that the upgrade is aimed at making the Wader client work with dongles that include a storage device. But will it still work with simple dongles like E169G, the one I am using to access the 3 network? (I’ve never had a problem with it so far!)
I would be interested to know if anyone using Hardy Heron and a simple dongle has installed the latest Wader upgrade and is able to use it…..
I would also very much appreciate your thoughts and advice, Alan!
I will have to install the other updates in the next few days. Is it safe to proceed with the Wader upgrade at the same time?
Off topic but here goes; I have a “live” distro of Knoppix on a usb pen drive I haven’t plugged it into the webook yet as I don’t know what it will do to the existing Ubuntu: my windows laptop intimated that I’d been doing something illegal,immoral or;horror of horrors, not using microsoft when I tried it. However it ran perfectly and it appears not to have done anything (permanent) to the MS system which booted normally after I ignored the dire warnings.
OK I got away with it for that system but it really wouldn’t have mattered as it was an old machine with little on it and I have the original XP disc set. However the webbook is a different kettle of fish and I’m not confident that I could recover.
Since my webook weighs about a tenth as much as my old machine my aching back is voting that it would be better to ask an expert.
@jostlin,
a live knoppix USB really shouldn’t touch the hard drive at all and your windows laptop should have been totally unaware that you had used it. Very odd. I expect the screen would not be detected fully and it would be black or at the wrong resolution. The new openchrome drivers as featured in Ubuntu Jaunty get pretty close, they just get the native resolution wrong and need a hint in a very small xorg.conf. I will post that on Friday when I have tested with the released version of Jaunty.
As for the issues with Wader, yes there have been some updates, including SMS functionatlity, however clearly there are some issues, feel free to report bugs here https://launchpad.net/wader or here http://public.warp.es/wader I will try myself soon, in the mean time update if you are brave, and/or have a backup connectivity plan.
Many thanks Alison & Alan; I think Alison is right in identifying the culprits as the last five (or three at least) updates. I did take the precaution of testing my dongle on my desktop with the Ubuntu 9.04 beta, where the new network manager picked it up superbly and swiftly gave me full access with minimum configuration – maybe that is ultimately the way forward.
The problem with the wader update on the webbook seems to be that Firefox and Thunderbird simply don’t know they are connected, though Wader itself connects (and the SMS facility is a useful one, especially with teenage children!).
Since I bought my webbook on contract, I am obviously anxious not to be paying for a service I cannot access!
Paul F.
Alan: Thanks for the advice.
On the subject of bedtime stories I’m not now in a position to contribute as my girls are now full grown; Maybe if/when the grandchildren arrive. However when they were young I used to tell them sequels once we’d run out of book stories. So we had ‘the further adventures of Noggin the Nog’ (this will date me) and ‘What happened to Cinderella afterwards’. I found it quite easy, given the starting point of characters and settings to make up stories of my own. Weaving in my children’s names here and there worked wonders as well. It was much better than just reading to them from the same old book and you could easily stop and explain things (my children always wanted to know ‘why’) without losing the plot.
There’s probably some officious entity out there who will claim copyright or somesuch but hey! it’s just words to sooth a child to sleep. They’ll remember and one day they’ll have children of their own and maybe there’ll be a revival in the author’s fortunes as an indirect consequence.
@ Alan,
Re Wader upgrade
I have heeded your advice and refrained from installing the recent Wader upgrade. I look forward to hearing your verdict on version 0.3.5….
Regarding the modeswitch issue, I am now more confused than ever, having discovered by chance that Huawei E169G, which I am using with 0.2.3, is also a ‘composite device’ which requires a modeswitch, so the latter is not an innovation at all. (See: http://www.greenhughes.com/content/using-huawei-e169g-usb-mobile-internet-modem-eee)
I posted a query on the Wader Launchpad website yesterday to alert developer Pablo Marti to the fact that the Wader upgrade is causing problems, but I cannot provide him with the information he wants because I have have not installed 0.3.5.
See: https://answers.launchpad.net/wader/+question/68980
Now that Elonex is no longer funding Wader, I fear that upgrades are not being thoroughly tested prior to their release. (Thanks to your efforts, 0.2.3 works very well!)
As a novice, I had even not considered the possibility of doing backups until I read an Intrepid webbook user’s query on an Ubuntu Forum, prompted by the recent Wader upgrade:
How can I undo an automatic update? http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1130815
The design of the Ubuntu OS seems to be based on the (questionable) premise that the latest version of a software package is always the best. There is no system restore feature, no undo button on Update Manager, not even a ‘sudo get downgrade’ command! (I hope that will be rectified in the next LTS.)
I started reading up about the Home user backup and Simple backup packages, but apparently the former isn’t working properly and the latter is quite tricky to use.
Among the six package files for Wader 0.2.3 is one that looks like a compressed archive file, namely wader_0.2.3 orig tar gz, However I don’t know whether that constitutes a backup.
I am intrigued by the mysterious Mobile Connect icon that appears on the desktop when the dongle is inserted before booting up. Right clicking on the icon brings up a menu that includes options to ‘create archive’ or ‘copy [to] disk’. Might it be possible to create a backup of Wader 0.2.3 in that way?
Updates are being tested, but not necessarily on webbook hardware and UK dongles. As we discovered, the UK is a particularly hostile environment for mobile data. Elonex are indeed not funding further development of Wader, we are still discussing payment for the initial development. Right now I am significantly out of pocket on the webbook project. I am maintaining this site on my server in my spare time, which is fairly limited.
OK, I spoke to Pablo, apparently it should work just fine on a hardy based machine with updates installed. I have been testing it on Jaunty with an Orange dongle (the only dongle I have, I had to take out an 18 month contract on it to get one, all the others went back to CPW) There were some issues with the hso driver which I am working out with Pablo, but the Orange dongle does just work out of the box when connecting via the new network manager in Jaunty (as it did in Intrepid). The Wader client is more comprehensive than the default network manager as it shows signal strength, tries a bit harder to stay connected and now does SMS.
I appreciate your situation. Reading these posts I have just tested my dongle again (Huawei E220 on T-mobile) and though it connects, Firefox just gives me the usual error page, “www… could not be found” “the browser could not find the host server”. Thunderbird cannot connect to my mail server either.
Which means that at the moment I am paying £25 a month for a service I cannot access. And somehow I doubt taking the machine back to Carphone Warehouse will get me anywhere, especially since they have now withdrawn the Ubuntu webbooks from their stores. I suspect they would tell me it’s my fault for modifying the software!
Even an idea as to when the next Wader upgrade might be forthcoming would be helpful. Failing that, as Alison has suggested, a way of rolling back the last one.
Again, many thanks for what you do.
Alan,
Thank you for speaking to Pablo.
From what you say about the UK environment, it seems inevitable that any future versions of the Wader mobile broadband client are liable to be problematic. I can live without SMS and a usage monitor, but I simply cannot risk losing my only internet connection.
Wader version 0.2.3, which was tested extensively for use on UK networks and which works perfectly with the (Ubuntu Hardy) webbook, has apparently been withdrawn from the Wader Launchpad repository.
It would be very helpful if you could persuade Pablo (or whoever makes such decisions at Wader) to put version 0.2.3 back into the Wader Launchpad repository and continue to support it as an alternative version, at least for LTS 8.04 Hardy Heron. (This is what I requested in my query on Wader Launchpad.) Then at least it would continue to be available via Synaptic, presumably.
I am also extremely grateful for all the support you have provided to Ubuntu webbook users and for whatever continuing support you are able to provide in your spare time. Unless Mark Shuttleworth and/or Canonical recognise the urgent need to develop a viable support infrastructure for ordinary home users, not just businesses, in the UK and elsewhere, I fear that Ubuntu will remain the preserve of a fairly small number of expert users and that the behemoth Microsoft will emerge triumphant once again.
I am about to test some new packages which may fix the issues both with Hardy, and with the Orange HSO dongle on Jaunty. You can always not upgrade something and there is also something called “apt pinning” which I don’t fully understand but should fix something at a particular version. There are old versions of the source code on the wader trac system, it is possible to build older packages from these to downgrade to other versions, however it is generally preferred to fix any regression bugs in the newer versions than try to do downgrades. I do totally appreciate the point that it is your primary and indeed only internet connection.
Alan, Alison: Just to let you both know I have posted the log files from my webbook requested by Pablo in response to Alison’s questions on the Wader Launchpad page – let’s hope it helps. Paul.
I am posting this from a webbook running Ubuntu Jaunty and connected to the internet via the Orange dongle using Wader 0.3.5.1-2. Apparently the other dongle issue should be fixed too, please can someone (Paul or others) have a go and feedback results.
oh, then again, hang on a bit. The Hardy version hasn’t been updated yet. It should be 0.3.5.2 when it does get built.
OK, it has now been built for Hardy and tested on a liveCD. Give it a go and lets see if it works for you.
Well, it took a couple of reboots before I got rid of some initial error messages; I had to recreate my profile; and it now invokes the Gnome Keyring (which drives me up the wall anyway), but it works! Many thanks to all three of you – Alan, Alison & Pablo. Paul.