Tomorrow! Tomorrow!

...is only a Free Comic Book Day away.

How will you celebrate this geekiest of holidays?

Josh Ritter, Live and Free

I've blogged about Josh Ritter -- a great modern singer/songwriter who both writes killer songs like "The Temptation of Adam," "Rattling Locks," "Harrisburg," and "Girl in the War" and leads a great rocking band to deliver those songs with grace, style, and pure heart-of-rock-and-roll power -- several times before. (He's also that guy who was on Letterman last night, if you need an immediately cultural reference.)

But I know I like to discover music by listening to it on my own terms -- I download a lot of free stuff so it comes up on my iPod and elsewhen, and so I'm not as interested in streaming music that I can't take and live with for a while. And maybe you're like me, too.

Well, now you can grab a big handful of really good Josh Ritter stuff -- the entire live album Live at the Iveagh Gardens -- which recorded a great show at a unique venue in Dublin, where Ritter has a strong, enthusiastic following. This is a double album, folks -- those of you as old as me will know what that means -- with well over an hour and a half of great live music by one of today's smartest and thoughtful artists. And you can get that for free!

But wait! That's not all! (Imagine this in your best smarmy-late-night-infomercial voice.)

The free version of Live at the Iveagh Gardens also includes two songs from his new album, The Beast in Its Tracks, including the lovely first single "Joy to You Baby."

It comes via NoiseTrade, so you know it's all legit. And it probably won't be there forever, so get it now.

Free Matt Hughes!

Free him from the drudgery of having to do anything else but write his books, by causing immense piles of money to head his way from his massive sales!

How can you do this? It's easy -- first, download the sampler of his new book, Hell To Pay. (You may wish to consult reviews of the first two books in that trilogy, The Damned Busters and Costume Not Included. We'll wait while you do.)

Then, thrilled by the wonder that is Matt Hughes, go out and buy all of his books right away! Buy them for all of your friends and family members! Buy them as gifts for that old codger at the golf club! Buy them to hand out at the next Rotary Club meeting! Buy them until Matt Hughes is rightly regarded as one of our best writers, as he so obviously is!

Yes, you can Free Matt Hughes! All you you need to do to begin is download and read!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

To help you get into the festive mood of the season, NoiseTrade have made available one of the great Christmas albums -- Over's the Rhine's 2006 Snow Angels -- absolutely free.

Now, you can leave a tip -- I know I paid for that record when I got it a few years back, and it was well worth it -- but you don't have to; you can get it for absolutely nuttin', if you want.

And I do recommend you check it out -- if you're not sure, listen to "Darlin' (Christmas Is Coming)"  and "Here It Is" for the joyful side and "Snow Angel" and "All I Ever Get for Christmas Is Blue" for the other persuasion. It's a great record, it's perfectly apropos right now, and it's completely free.

Hey -- you can listen to all of the songs right in this here widget, without even clicking off to NoiseTrade. C'mon, I can't coddle you any more than that, can I?

Trillions! Trillions! Trillions!

Most of the projects I work on for my day job never get mentioned here, because they're deeply technical and only of interest to accountants, CIOs, and similarly specialized business folks. But, once in a while, I do have something that's more exciting that that, and this is one of those times.

Yesterday was the official publication date for Trillions, a great book on what pervasive computing will mean for business and society, from three very smart and very savvy technologists/designers/thinkers, Peter Lucas, Joe Ballay, and Mickey McManus. They're all part of MAYA Design, a Pittsburgh firm that does amazing work on interface design and other things I don't even have the terminology to describe. (When I visited them last year to talk about marketing for Trillions, they showed off an amazing system called Visage that they created for DARPA to manage and control manifold real-time dataflows for a battlefield.)

So Trillions is genuinely visionary, and comes from three guys who really know and live this stuff. It's an exciting book to be (a tiny) part of.

I'd like to get more copies of Trillions out there, particularly in the hands of SF folks and influential Internet people. (And who else would be reading this blog?) In the past, I've sent out queries to people I knew on books of less direct interest to the field, but I think I've already outstayed that welcome. So, this time, I won't spam anyone; I'm just looking for inbound interest. I'll be happy to send a copy of Trillions to you if you'll read it and possibly blog/talk/write about it -- I'm not looking for guarantees, just interest. I might be able to swing e-books in some format as well, though it's still much easier to ship blocks of dead tree.

Check out the website, which has a bunch of fascinating videos about what MAYA has done and the topic of the book, and shoot me an e-mail if you're interested in a copy of Trillions.

C'mon! It's the only book at Wiley I've worked on that has a quote from a SF writer! (And probably the only one that ever will!)

"Trillions is bold, unabashed, ingenious, and absolutely fizzing with insights about the new-modern process of blending design, high-tech, and commerce. Always entertaining and mostly right on topic."

 - David Brin