I Wrote the Foreword to A Really Good (Free) Book

12 Comments 09.02.10

Last month I wrote the foreword to a new book called The Shift: The Evolving Market, Players and Business Models in a 2.0 World and it’s now available – for free! It’s essentially a marketing vehicle for the very large telecommunication infrastructure provider Alcatel-Lucent, but it’s marketing 2.0 of the best kind: the book makes almost zero mention of the company at all. It just talks about how changes in society and mobile internet devices are combining in such a way that network service providers should offer application programming interfaces to a wider developer community. It’s a really good real, actually.

My foreword isn’t my best writing, but I was proud to have been given the opportunity. I wrote a better article, one I’m quite proud of in fact, this week about an acquisition the company made: Acquisition Aims to Change History for Mobile Apps & Data.

I recommend reading the book if you’re into thinking about these kinds of topics. You can read selections online and if you want, the company will send you a free paper copy in exchange for your contact info. They may or may not call you, I’m guessing, to discuss whether you’d like to buy a big telephony infrastructure middleware software package. :) Or they may want to talk to you if you’re a developer. Either way, it’s no big whoop and it’s certainly worth it to do all the learning you’ll get from the book. It’s fun.

You can check out the book and its corresponding online community here.

I want to make sure you know about NTEN - the Nonprofit Technology Network.

NTEN helps nonprofits learn to use the web effectively.


  • http://favit.com/marfi Martin

    Congrats!

  • Paula

    Strange (ironic, even?) that it’s not being offered as an e-book. If it were, I’d be much more interested, but the “business” paper books just stack up around here.

  • Marshall

    Paula, I must confess that I read it as a PDF on my iPad and really enjoyed it. When the paper copies arrived they sat on my desk looking funny.

  • Andrew

    As an editor of a major internet publication, how do you misspell “foreword” so many times?

    I’m sure you’re a good writer but I’m a bit confused.

  • Marshall

    Andrew, many people have accused me of misspelling forward. But if you look it up (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=define:forward&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1 ) and then look up your proposed spelling, you’ll see that foreward is actually a common misspelling of the world forward. In other words, I am right this time and you are wrong. That’s unusual when it comes to spelling. But you can take your snide attitude and shove it, in this case. :)

  • http://ectimes.com/?p=25295 Verizon Storms the App Castle: Launches Wave of Location, Push Notification & Messaging APIs | ECtimes.com

    [...] response. (Note that Alcatel is also a long-term sponsor of ReadWriteWeb, and I wrote the Forward to the company's recent book about Application Enablement. Again, I have no idea if Alcatel is involved with or competing with [...]

  • http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/HoIn6fLiEH0/verizon_location_apis.php Verizon Storms the App Castle: Launches Wave of Location, Push Notification & Messaging APIs

    [...] response. (Note that Alcatel is also a long-term sponsor of ReadWriteWeb, and I wrote the Forward to the company's recent book about Application Enablement. Again, I have no idea if Alcatel is involved with or competing with [...]

  • http://kuple.org/hive/?p=38592 the hive » Verizon Storms the App Castle: Launches Wave of Location, Push Notification & Messaging APIs

    [...] response. (Note that Alcatel is also a long-term sponsor of ReadWriteWeb, and I wrote the Forward to the company’s recent book about Application Enablement. Again, I have no idea if Alcatel is involved with or competing with [...]

  • http://techaggregator.com/2010/09/verizon-storms-the-app-castle-launches-wave-of-location-push-notification-messaging-apis/ Verizon Storms the App Castle: Launches Wave of Location, Push Notification & Messaging APIs | TechAggregator.com

    [...] response. (Note that Alcatel is also a long-term sponsor of ReadWriteWeb, and I wrote the Forward to the company's recent book about Application Enablement. Again, I have no idea if Alcatel is involved with or competing with [...]

  • http://mychina.ws/technology/verizon%e7%9a%84%e9%a3%8e%e6%9a%b4%e4%b8%8e%e5%ba%94%e7%94%a8%e5%9f%8e%e5%a0%a1%ef%bc%9a%e6%8e%a8%e5%87%ba%e6%b3%a2%e7%9a%84%e4%bd%8d%e7%bd%ae%ef%bc%8c%e6%8e%a8%e9%80%81%e Verizon的风暴与应用城堡：推出波的位置，推送通知和消息传递API « My China – 我的中国

    [...] 该博客Duvander编辑，ProgrammableWeb，恰好是供应商所拥有的阿尔卡特朗讯，一个重要的电话中间件现在集中精力的大量应用启用所谓的 ，或者承运人的API类似于Verizon的似乎是产品。我们问过，如果阿尔卡特已参与了Verizon公司今天宣布，但尚未收到答复。 （请注意，阿尔卡特也是一个长期赞助读写网长期，和我写的是转发的该公司的近作关于应用程序实施。同样，我不知道如果阿尔卡特参与或与此Verizon的新闻竞争。） [...]

  • griffinorama

    Marshall, came across this from your tweet stream and just need to say that what you wrote is a Foreword (with an o), like Andrew says. Not a “foreward” (with an a) which is a mispelling of forward (also a) which is a direction, not a written note at the beginning of a written work.

  • Marshall

    Damn, ok Griffinorama – you convinced me. Editing now.