It's been a solid week of writing on the new Joomla! Bible title. I've hit the magic 25% mark this week and am pulling out all the stops in hopes of making the 50% mark around the end of the month. These early chapters are the easiest of the bunch and the ones I am most familiar with. The biggest struggle right now is balancing out the writing with my other responsibilities at water&stone. Maybe there will be a day when I can exclusively write, but that day is not today.
The release date of the Ubuntu Visual Blueprint is getting close -- 19 April. I hope to obtain a sample chapter in PDF format this week. I will post that here and on Scribd to give you a feel for what that book is like.
About a week ago, one of the EyeForTravel crew interviewed me and asked my views about user generated content and the importance of social media in the travel industry. They're running the article now on the Travel Distribution News website.
The article is part of the lead up to EyeForTravel's 2009 Travel Distrbution Summit in Singapore later this month. I'll be participating in a panel discussion at the show. The panel concerns user generated content and is tentatively scheduled to include representatives from Travelocity and TripAdvisor. I will also be doing workshops on open source content management systems and reprising last year's workshop on search marketing trends and techniques.
Today is a big day for me -- I finally take the wraps off my new site and I also have the green light from my publisher to announce the new book!
First, the site: The designers at water&stone came up with this Drupal theme for me. I'd moved my site to Drupal at about the same time I released the Drupal 5 Themes book, but frankly wasn't making the most of it. It's a complex system and I just didn't have the time to give it the attention it deserved. Now, almost two years later, I feel a lot more comfortable with it and have grown to love it, frankly. I am, therefore, thrilled to have a site that not only shows Drupal looking good but also takes advantage of at least some of the functionality that Drupal does so well. (I'll post here in the next day or so about the rebuild, but suffice it to say for now that I am really happy to have this system in place.)
Second, as to the book. I've signed with Wiley & Co. to do another title for them. This is the third time we've worked together. They are expanding the coverage of their famous Bible series to include select open source content management systems and I am fortunate to be working on the first title-- the Joomla! Bible. This book should be good news for all interested in Joomla! As you may know from Wiley's other Bible publications, the series strives for a comprehensive and thorough treatment of each topic. Expect this new book to arrive in bookstores in late Q3 or early Q4 and to weigh in on the hefty side of things. More details to come as I get them.
I hope you enjoy the site! (Check out the Feed Roundup!)
Drupal has released two new security updates. Drupal 6.10 is out now and is a recommended upgrade. The Drupal 5 family has also been patched with the release of 5.16.
The Drupal Team states: "Drupal 6.10 and 5.16, maintenance releases fixing problems reported using the bug tracking system, as well as a critical security vulnerability, are now available for download."
There are no new features in the release, nonetheless, upgrading your existing Drupal 5 and 6 sites is strongly recommended.
Wiley has informed of the release date for my Ubuntu Desktop book -- looks like it will be on the shelves April 19. It's now available from Amazon.
I'm still running the 8.10 release on several machines in the office and we're quite happy with it. Could this be the release that breaks things open for the Linux Desktop? Might well be the case. It's certainly the first Linux desktop distro I am willing to recommend to friends and clients. If you haven't looked at it yet you should.
