Now that my fingers have uncramped I can tell you a little about the book,
"Leo Laporte's 2003 TechTV Almanac" (2002, Que, ISBN: 078972829X).
My deadline was July 1, but I got it to Que at the end of the day on July 6. Five days might not seem like much, but the schedule is so tight that it was pretty late. My unflappable editor, Rick Kughen, is now burning the midnight oil to get the thing out the door in time to make the all-important September 1 publish date. Thank you, Rick!
I know how he's feeling right now. Doing this in such a compressed amount of time is something like running a marathon. Kathleen captured my feelings perfectly last night at 5:30 when I crossed the finish line...
We'll do a photo shoot in a couple of weeks for the cover and some goofy inside pictures. The cover is going to be a take off on da Vinci's
Vitruvian man with my head and a bunch of different gadgets in the hands.
I am very proud of this year's edition. It's going to be a lot richer than last year's. There's a page for each day of the year.
- Laura did a spectacular job with This Day in History, and every day has an entry. They're totally fascinating in their own right. I couldn't stop reading them.
- There's a short article on each page, many of them by some of TechTV's best guests over the past year including Bert Monroy, Mikkel Aaland, John Navas, Alex Lindsay, Donovan Keith, Kevin Poulsen, and others. There are articles from the Screeen Savers, too, including quite a few of Martin's best Twisted Lists, some knockout articles by Megan, and even a couple by Chris Pirillo. And I had a little to say in there, too. ;-)
- Each and every day also has a download of the day and a tip.
There are more than 500 recommended downloads in the book and several thousand URLs, all of which I checked and validated. I'm going to have to rebuild my computer this week I installed so much stuff on it.
One criticism about the last Almanac was the lack of organization, so this year each week has a theme, Online Security, Windows, Linux, Mac, Auctions, Shopping, Cooking, Pranks, Hardware, Fun Projects, etc. The pages will be tabbed so you can quickly get to the subject you want. The focus is on Windows XP and Mac OS X with some Unix/Linux in there for good measure.
There's also a chapter of stats and graphs, a phone book of resources, and a pretty killer glossary, one of the best tech glossaries I've ever seen, and I can say that because I didn't write it. A very talented freelancer named Mike Miller did the back chapters. All told the book should be nearly 500 pages and much more like an almanac than last year. I think there's something for everyone on nearly every page.
Amazon has already started taking orders for it. I have a direct link at
leoville.com/book and I get a little extra if you buy it through there, thanks to the Amazon associates program. So tell all your friends to go to leoville.com/book ok?
I really appreciate all the support I've received through the message boards and in my email. It helped a lot to know people are looking forward to the book. It also gave me the energy to make every single page just right. I know it's going to be a valuable resource and lots of fun to read. This is the book I've always wanted to write.
I'll be back on The Screen Savers on Monday, July 8, as scheduled. I hope I can remember how to talk again. It's been a gratifying, exhausting, exhilarating five weeks.
Friday, December 31, 1999 at 5:01PM 