Innovating Once Again

About nine months ago, Tom Evslin sent me the draft of the first chapter of a book he’d started writing as soon as he left ITXC, the company he founded and I invested in during "the first Internet bubble and rubble" as he calls it.

I am not going to say anything about the book or the first chapter, other than the fact that it was quite entertaining and very much a product of the world Tom and I had been living in for the past ten years.

For those that don’t know, Tom was one of the first successful Macintosh software developers, sold his company to Microsoft, oversaw the development of the first versions Back Office, Outlook, and Exchange, went to AT&T where he got them into the Internet and invented flat rate pricing for dial-up internet accesss, and then finally to ITXC where he invented commercial grade VOIP.

So it’s not surprising that Tom isn’t going to stop innovating now that he’s moved on from technology into writing books.

As Tom describes in this must read post, he is going to self publish this book, but not in the traditional self publishing way.  He’s going way beyond that.  He’s going to serialize the book in beta version in a blog form.  He’s going to build a web site for the fictional company.  He’s turning this into a multimedia extravaganza all by himself with the help of some rented servers in the sky.

I can’t wait to watch this unfold.  As I said at the top, the story is really good and very entertaining.  If you lived through "the first Internet bubble and rubble", its your story too in many ways.

So go visit Tom’s blog, sign up for his feed or Bloglet email and get ready for the launch of Books 2.0.