Can your book do this?
15 March, 2007
As the sun rose somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, the dark fading away, and the cold of over a month starting to thaw, on the west coast of North America it is still dark and John M. McIntosh has only a deep and tired yawn as thanks and a simple form of celebration marking the release of Sophie RC3*.
It is fitting that midnight should toll during this new release. The clock chimes to mark the occasion of new timeline commands; the ability to play movies connected and controlled by time itself, when time itself rests to zero for a new day. A new day indeed: the future of electronic books.
Sophie is free and open source software built on Squeak. You can get your own copy of Sophie and start creating your own electronic books now. Check out this new video of what Sophie can do.
Could you use Sophie to write really cool new electronic books? Sure. How about develop a new interactive brochure for your company? Yeah! How about delivering real engaging content to your potential voter base? Hmmm…
How would you use Sophie?
(*available soon watch for RC3)
Minding Your Business With Smalltalk (Part 1 of 4)
27 February, 2007
There has been a lot of talk about the future of Smalltalk. There are number of Object Oriented Languages that are candidates for replacing Smalltalk. Why has Smalltalk lasted so long? Why do business software suppliers still choose Smalltalk? Who are the people that still bet on the future of Smalltalk and how do they manage to succeed. Read the rest of this entry »
Future Book, the Sophie Revolution
16 February, 2007
Sophie is out!! Sophie is open-source Squeak Smalltalk based software for authoring extreemly creative new eBooks. Sophie is licensed under a version of the new BSD license.
What is Sophie?
Sophie is a program for creating digital multimedia books. Sophie will let you make books that are impossible in print, with video and audio tracks, automatic actions, and shared feedback.
The word book can be widely interpreted: your book can resemble a regular book, with text and pictures, or it can be a book comprised completely of videos, or audio clips and images in a slideshow, or all of the above. Sophie books can even include other books, link out to the web, and allow reader interaction.
Sounds great! Get the Sophie Early Release Candidate 1 Now!
Check out these other useful links: http://www.futureofthebook.org/content/Mellon.pdf
https://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/oopsla-there-it-is-oopsla-2006/
The second one is a video that demos Sophie. The demo starts at: 23:32.
The Sophie Team
Sophie is a project of the Institute for the Future of the Book. It relies on the talent and collaboration of people around the world.
- Germany: Impara, under the leadership of Michael Rueger and Bernd Eckardt
- US: Nick Matelan, Steve Riggins, Bob Stein, Dan Visel, Jesse Wilbur
- Canada: John McIntosh, Tim Rowledge
- Bulgaria: Astea
Principal funding for Sophie is provided by Research in Information Technology Program of the the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support comes from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.
Taking the Beat of Cadence
29 January, 2007
Gilad Bracha is a legend in Object Oriented Programming. He is the Co-Author of the Java Language Specification and one of the major contributors to Strongtalk which has just been released by Sun under an Open Source License.
Gilad is forming a team at Cadence and is raising eye brows with his latest hires. Eliot Miranda and Vassili Bykov recently left Cincom to join Gilad at Cadence . Eliot is well-known known as a Master of Smalltalk Development. Vassili Bykov was the lead tool builder of VisualWorks. We can’t help wondering about the team of Gilad, Eliot, and Vassili. I spoke with Gilad about Cadence, Smalltalk, and Open Source. Read the rest of this entry »
OOPSLA there it is! oopsla 2006
20 December, 2006
See Craig’s Spoon update, inforamtion on Sophie and more!
