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Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Suffering from chronic idiocy since 1977

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First Publication

We are pleased to announce the avail­abil­ity of our first eBook, in PDF for­mat, enti­tled “Bud­get Design: Increase Profit by Improv­ing Process.” We post­poned launch sev­eral times due to our busy sched­ules — but Dan e-mailed me last night to announce that the web site was live and that down­load­ing can start as of now. Many thanks to Dave Shea for adding his stamp of approval by way of con­tribut­ing the foreword.

The best part? We offer it free for 7 days! Yup. Free. So get it for free while you can. After 7 days we will charge $9. That’s still a bar­gain. The pay­ment phase will be an exper­i­ment of sorts, to see what kind of inter­est there is in this sort of pub­li­ca­tion. Please let us know what you think. Leave a com­ment here or send us a message.

As for me, I’m some­where in Europe wait­ing to catch a flight to Greece. Vaca­tion indeed. Dan e-mailed me that he was catch­ing a flight too (nice tim­ing, eh?) so I decided to find a moment to write up this entry. See you all again in 10 days.

This item was posted by dhilhorst on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

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25 comments on “First Publication”

  1. Posted by Josh S on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    Wow, that is one beau­ti­ful site. I’m very impressed!

    Can’t wait to read the e-book.

  2. Posted by Blake on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    I will put this on my week­end read­ing list. Love the site design, Clean clear and to the point. I would like a link to see a larger image of the news­gater and pos­si­ble a link to the product.

    Are they ducks or geese on the logo?

  3. Posted by Sean King on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    Awe­some eBook. I espe­cially like how you clearly illus­trated recy­cling in all facets of web design (graphic and markup). How­ever, I’m not sure you gave the con­tent piece enough of its due.

    I know this eBook is focused on the low-budget realm (hell, my inter­nal work is in the no-budget realm), but isn’t qual­ity con­tent impor­tant at every level? How do you ensure that you are using cor­rect, qual­ity con­tent? And then, how do you fit it into a speed­ier devel­op­ment process?

    Sorry to be a pill, but this is typ­i­cally where all of my projects bog down, whether it’s inter­nal or exter­nal (but espe­cially inter­nal to my com­pany). Maybe your next eBook can detail how you han­dle the prob­lems of get­ting, proof­ing, edit­ing con­tent for the web in a lim­ited design cycle?

  4. Posted by John Nunemaker on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed your ebook. I found it very ben­e­fi­cial becuase I am think­ing of start­ing my own web design busi­ness some­time in the next year. Beau­ti­ful orga­ni­za­tion of your mes­sage. Thanks a bunch!

  5. Posted by Elaine Nelson on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    have only skimmed so far, but excel­lent ebook…however, the font is way too small and light — almost impos­si­ble to read on a b&w printer, and not much bet­ter on our color printer, either.

    I agree with Sean; I’d love to see some­thing focused on bud­get content. :)

    Thanks for shar­ing this with us!

  6. Posted by Rob Cameron on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    Yep, great read! Hate to be a nerd, but in the fore­ward Dave says “To say that Dan and Didier are tal­ented is to say Ice­land is cold.” I thought that Green­land was actu­ally the cold one and that Ice­land was the warmer one? In which case, that sen­tance means the com­plete oppo­site of what he intended it to. Unless he already knew that fact … ;)

  7. Posted by Rob Cameron on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    I’m totally kid­ding by the way, you guys are awesome. :)

  8. Posted by KillAllDash9 on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    Hmmm… I tried to dowload it, but when I click on the link you just sent me (1 hour ago) it says the down­load link has already expired. :-(

  9. Posted by Gilbert Lee on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    Same here. It hasn’t been 24 hours. Something’s wrong over there.

  10. Posted by Ken Pratt on Friday, May 28th, 2004.

    I have the “Sorry, the requested down­load has expired.” error on a fresh link as well…

  11. Posted by Michelle on Saturday, May 29th, 2004.

    Also expe­ri­enced the “down­load has expired” error despite the fact that I signed up less than an hour ago. Would appre­ci­ate a new link when the prob­lem has been fixed. Many thanks!

  12. Posted by Didier Hilhorst on Saturday, May 29th, 2004.

    Impor­tant note

    I’m not sure why the down­load expires before the indi­cated 24 hours, that cer­tainly should not be the case. Dan will hope­fully address tech­ni­cal issues as of Mon­day when he gets back. Unfor­tu­nately I can not be of much help sit­ting here at some airport.

    We apol­o­gize to all those that are hav­ing trou­ble with the down­load of the eBook. We will how­ever make sure that all those that have tried to down­load the eBook within the 7 days will receive a free copy no mat­ter what. Please let us know your trou­bles and for­ward the down­load mes­sage to us.

  13. Posted by Sean Devine on Saturday, May 29th, 2004.

    I read the eBook while sit­ting in stop and go traf­fic this hol­i­day week­end. I thought that it was pretty good, and very nicely designed. I enjoyed the “recy­cle” seg­ment and would like to see a fol­low up pub­li­ca­tion focused specif­i­cally on that topic. I also thought that the con­tent sec­tion of the book was way too shal­low. Given how huge of an issue con­tent is, I’d like to see much more space devoted to it.

    Can you let us know if you’re plan­ning on any other books in the near future? Your first pub­li­ca­tion seems like a pref­ace to a series of “budget-design” mini-books.

  14. Posted by Sunny on Sunday, May 30th, 2004.

    I really loved the design and over­all feel of the mini-book. Looks like you have bor­rowed some ele­ments from your port­fo­lio (other sites). Nah…its rot recy­cling! Its branding!

    I really like the sticky notes (or post it notes) idea for doing quick/rough sketches. That one is a keeper. I will be try­ing that out in my next project.

    Thanks again for a won­der­ful piece of lit­er­a­ture, and that too for free. Excel­lent work and keep it up!

  15. Posted by Abdulla on Monday, May 31st, 2004.

    I just want to say thank you, its very use­ful book.

  16. Posted by David on Monday, May 31st, 2004.

    Loved this e-book. Thank you. Too many times in ‘the early days’ did I get car­ried away with a project and move straight into mak­ing it look good … before hav­ing to go back and make a weeks worth of changes that should have been 1 days worth of preparation!

    Thanks again.

  17. Posted by Marko on Monday, May 31st, 2004.

    Nice piece of read­ing! Very easy to fol­low and not over­weighted by some non-understanding-tech-crap. Exam­ples are per­fect! Look­ing for­ward for your next publication.

  18. Posted by NETSNOB on Monday, May 31st, 2004.

    For those who is dying to get a copy, try to sign up with­out using web-based email account like Yahoo Mail.

    Ini­tally I signed up using Yahoo Mail and I have prob­lem down­load­ing. I got “Sorry, the requested down­load has expired”

    Frus­trated, I try using email account of my ISP. It works! Hope this helps

  19. Posted by david g on Tuesday, June 1st, 2004.

    looks like an inter­est­ing read, thanks very much for the efforts.

    one snark, though. you did work for the Gator cor­po­ra­tion? yikes. you may want to read google’s soft­ware prin­ci­ples.

  20. Posted by Dan Rubin on Thursday, June 3rd, 2004.

    Down­load Prob­lems, et al

    I’m finally back in town (my Mon­day return didn’t hap­pen, so I’ve been with­out ‘net access since last Fri­day) and will be work­ing on the down­load issue today and tonight. We tested quite a bit before mak­ing it live (and after mak­ing it live just in case), but ini­tially it appears to be related to cer­tain email addresses, though I’m not sure why… Because of the prob­lems, we will extend the free down­load period (and if we can’t imme­di­ately resolve the down­load issues, we’ll just switch to a direct link to the file for the time being so every­one can get their hands on the PDF).

    Also, to respond to David G’s com­ment: Our client is “News­Ga­tor Tech­nolo­gies”, a com­pany that pro­duces news­reader soft­ware (not the Gator cor­po­ra­tion that is infa­mous for pro­duc­ing spyware).

    Thanks to every­one for your feed­back and your patience!

    –Dan

  21. Posted by Mark Newhouse on Thursday, June 3rd, 2004.

    I also expe­ri­enced the link expired issue, then a few days later I thought I’d try again, and using the same address was able to down­load the file. It’s the same email I used for post­ing this com­ment, if that helps track down the bug. I can give you the ID num­bers, too if that will help — though you prob­a­bly already have those or can find them eas­ily enough.

  22. Posted by Mark Newhouse on Thursday, June 3rd, 2004.

    I for­got to add that I really enjoyed the read as well. Since I am pretty much the lone web designer for our group, many of these tips will come in handy. Thanks for shar­ing your thoughts.

    I will echo Elaine’s sen­ti­ments that the type is too light when printed in grayscale, and although it looks great on screen, the type is a bit small on large monitors.

  23. Posted by Michael W on Tuesday, June 8th, 2004.

    Just fin­ished read­ing, and i found it to be quite infor­ma­tive. Alot of good tips and use­ful information.

    A Job Well done :D

  24. Posted by Jonathan Snook on Wednesday, June 9th, 2004.

    While I haven’t had a chance to read through it, I did have one quick com­ment: why not add book­marks to the PDF? Mak­ing the table of con­tents click­able. It would cer­tainly make for a more usable document. :)

  25. Posted by Dan Rubin on Wednesday, June 9th, 2004.

    Good idea Jonathan, and I cer­tainly agree — I’ll dig into the InDe­sign man­ual again and take a look at how that’s done (though I sup­pose it can be done eas­ily in Acro­bat after export, but what fun is doing some­thing the easy way? ;-)