Mike Benner

To follow up with my post on keeping your tools healthy, I want to talk about the downsides to them.  Automated Server builds are great, they make setting up servers a painless and mindless task.  But is that a good thing?  What if something goes wrong?  What if they are out of date?  Can you fix it manually?  More importantly can you fix the tool?

You should know the underpinnings of the tools you are using, especially ones built by your team/company and are key to your success.  Does this mean you need to know the complete ins and outs?  No.  But you need to know what is going on.  Take some time when you get a new script and look at the source.  Understand it, and if you can't ask the author or someone that can help.  Not only will you be better for it, you may be able to improve upon it.

Take some time and think about those automated scripts that you are using.  Open them up and review them.  Increase your knowledge and improve your tools.

Apple did it with the iPod and now it appears Amazon is doing it with the Kindle.  Much like MP3 players, Amazon is taking a technology that has been around for awhile and bringing it to the masses.  As, an owner of the Sony Reader, I am happy to see this happening.  While not in the format of my choice, and likely to cause another format war, this is a good thing.  Most magazines are trying their hand at digital distribution, as are many book publishers.  Some have gotten it right, many are getting it wrong.

Take, for example, Servo, Nuts N Volts and Make magazines.  All offer digital subscriptions and all suffer from forcing you into their reader.  This is a shame as the eReaders cannot load these and enable you to take them on the road.  Then you have Fusion Authority, Flex Authority and GroovyMag.  These publishers went with PDF format and while that is better it is not perfect.  I have to commend GroovyMag for working towards the solution.  They are currently working on Kindle and Sony Reader formats which is awesome news.  This is what everyone should be doing.

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