Steve Jobs: Hot Off the Digital Presses

Steve Jobs, the authorized Walter Isaacson authored biography, officially went on sale October 24 in the US. But by the morning of October 24 in the Philippines, readers in the Philippines were already skimming through the pages of the electronic version, so to speak. The electronic version of the book was available for download on the Amazon Kindle Store ahead of the release of the physical edition. And at $16.99 (PHP 735.14) it was a steal, 51% off the cover price of $35.00 (PHP 1,514.41) for the hardbound book.

So by the time I got home from work that day, I was able to download the book and start reading it. I was expecting to have to suffer through long lines at a Fully Booked or a Powerbooks, just like the typical Harry Potter fan. But in the digital age, the only queues you have to suffer through happen if a server gets overloaded.

Amazon S3 ably hosts the world’s most highly trafficked websites, so their servers held up to the demands of millions of people trooping online to download the book and be the first on their block to read it.

I heard the book was also available on Apple’s own iBooks online bookstore, but Amazon Kindle was a better deal for me because it allows me to read the same book on a number of  mobile devices, from an iPad, to my Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab, a motely collection of Android phones, an iPod, a Windows laptop, and a MacBook Pro running OS X.

It also helps that Amazon.com accepts Philippine credit cards for Kindle downloads with no problem.

Since the book weighs in at 656 pages, the digital edition is much handier as well. (The whole book is just 4.39 MB).  I intend to be reading this over the next few days. The thought of me lugging around a fat, heavy hardcover book around to meetings and airports is not particularly appealing.

It’s only fitting that I ended up reading the Jobs biography as a neat collection of electrons on some digital device rather than a heavy mass of dead tree by-products shipped over here from a distant land.

Leo Laporte’s Finest Couple of Hours

We’re still drowning in Steve Jobs coverage a few days later. Despite all the mainstream coverage (too many examples to cite) about his passing, I think the finest tribute came from people in the tech community, the circles Jobs moved in from the earliest days of founding Apple computer, to the tech journalists and bloggers he both inspired and sparred with .

In the area of video coverage, I would have to hold up this now-historic example from Leo Laporte’s TWIT podcast network as the finest example, rivaling the coverage of the US networks and even all-news outlets like CNN.

Leo Laporte at the TWIT studios (photo from the LA Times)

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Leo Laporte, Tom Merrit and Kevin Marks were doing a live streamed episode of the show “Triangulation” just as news broke on Twitter that Jobs had passed away.

When the Twitter chatter had become too intense to ignore, and mainstream news services had finally confirmed the story, Leo and friends immediately broke away from the regular show to start paying tribute to Jobs’ life and work.

What followed was completely spontaneous, moving, and a marvel to watch, and is a testament to the power of the Internet-empowered to create meaningful content very fast using the tools at their disposal. For the the next two hours, Leo and crew, who were visibly saddened as well, did an outstanding job covering the story and provided information to a stunned audience of tech enthusiasts.

I watched this much later, compiled and edited for YouTube consumption, but I can imagine how much more poignant it was to watch this live on Twit.TV.

While a mainstream news production would have to scramble to assemble footage, quotes, and find guests to make the appropriate tributes, Leo and his TWIT crew, powered by online video sources, search engines, social media, and their own powerful memories of the man, immediately launched into a full-scale tribute in real time, with historic clips, commentaries, and late breaking news – as it broke over the web that is.

Leo has always been the dean of Netcasters, and his TWIT network has blossomed from a show about one man, his friends, and a microphone, to a full blown Internet media powerhouse with production values that rival million dollar broadcast studios.

That evening, Leo wasn’t just everyone’s favorite jocular tech uncle holding forth with his opinions on tech, Leo rose to the occasion and was our community’s Walter Cronkite. In an earlier era of newscasting, Cronkite covered momentous events like the Kennedy Assassination, the Apollo moon landing, and never wavered in his commentary.

And that’s the way it is.

Everyone has a Steve Jobs Story: Here’s Mine

Where were you and what were you doing when you learned that Steve Jobs died? For people who either work in tech or have a great personal interest in it, this is probably on the same level as hearing of the passing of JFK, Martin Luther King, John Lennon, or Ninoy Aquino. As odd as it may sound, it hit you on the same personal level.

It’s unexplainable – he was just a tech CEO. If Larry Ellison of Oracle were to drop dead, it would only be a footnote, but this was majorly different.

Like millions of people around the world today, I learned of the passing of Steve Jobs through Twitter that morning, which nowadays breaks news across the globe faster than CNN.

My reaction was muted. Chette was checking her tweets and told me just as I was on the way out to walk the dog, as I do every morning. “Steve Jobs just died.”

I remember thinking the most mundane thing, like “Well at least he waited till after the iPhone 4S announcement.” I knew the news was of enormous import, but it had not yet sunk in.