When I lived in San Francisco, I was just down the street from the amazing Borderlands Books, who would take orders for my books with inscriptions. I’d stop in a couple times a week and sign the special orders and they’d ship ’em out. Since moving to London, though, this deal has been a little harder to pull off — a 9,000 mile commute to the shop makes this not very practical.

However, I’ve got the next-best thing: a bookstore in Canada and a store in the UK that are taking special orders for my books with signature and inscription requests, who will ship them out once they’re signed. I’m doing the Toronto signing on July 11 and I’ll be meeting up with the UK seller in late July. Place your orders before then if you want signed copies!

Canadian Store

I’m doing a book-launch for my next novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town at Toronto’s BakkaPhoenix on July 11, and the good folks there have graciously agreed to take orders for signed and inscribed copies of any or all of my books. Simply contact them before the 11th of July with your order and I’ll sign it when I swing by the store — they’ll ship out the signed articles shortly thereafter.

Here are the shipping rates:

All shipping rates in $CDN and do not include the cost of the books:

Canada: 1 book $8, 2 books $10, 3 books $12
USA: 1 book $10, 2 books $13, 3 books $15
UK/Europe: 1 book $16, 2 books $21, 3 books $25
Australia: 1 book $22, 2 books $28, 3 books $30.

For larger orders, or destinations not listed, please email them directly.

Here’s all the contact info:

BakkaPhoenix Books
697 Queen St West
Toronto ON
Canada M6J 1E5
inquiries@bakkaphoenixbooks.com
+1.416.963.9993

UK Store

For Europeans — or those who are too late to order with Bakka — your best bet is Iain Emsley’s Aust Gate, in Oxford. Ian’s offering free second-class shipping in the UK, and very reasonable rates to the rest of the world:

UK – First class: £2.00
Europe – Printed Matter Air: £3.00
Rest of the World – Printed Matter Air: £4.00

The Aust Gate
13 Yew Close
Greater Leys,
Oxford OX4 7UX
United Kingdom
+44(0)1865 787948
orders@austgate.co.uk

In a couple hours, I’m leaving for Reboot, Denmark’s annual, spectacular technology conference. This year’s line-up of speakers is nothing less than stellar:

Douglas Bowman, Stopdesign;
Lee Bryant, Headshift;
Paula Le Dieu, BBC;
Jason Calacanis, Weblogs Inc.;
Ben Cerveny, Interaction designer and author;
James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore of OpenSauceLive;
Régine Debatty, we make money not art;
Cory Doctorow, EFF / Boing Boing;
Anders Bertram Eibye, The Danish Design School;
Jyri Engeström, Aula, blog: zengestrom.com;
Jason Fried, 37signals;
Ben Hammersley, International Man of Mystery;
Thomas Harttung, Aarstiderne;
Chris Heathcote, Nokia;

Michael Heilemann, BinaryBonsai/Kubrick;
David Heinemeier Hansson, Rails/Instiki/Basecamp;
David Helgason, OverTheEdge;
Matt Jones, Nokia;
Stefan Kellner, plazes;
Hugh Macleod, gapingvoid;
Loic Le Meur, Sixapart;
Matthias Müller-Prove, mprove / Sun Microsystems;
Ulla-Maaria Mutanen, Hobbyprincess;
Dragos Novac, Krogos Software;
Tor Nørretranders, Author;
Nicolai Peitersen, Philosopher, Kesera;
Felix Petersen, plazes;
Scott Rafer, Feedster;
Martin Roell, roell.net;
Doc Searls, weblog;
Nils Schneider, The iPodLinux Project;
Robert Scoble, Microsoft;
Malthe Sigurdsson, Skype;
Mikkel Holm Sørensen, Ph.D., design philosopher;
Michael Thomsen, former research director, LEGO/Interactive Institute;
Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia;
Matt Webb, weblog, Mind Hacks;
Harald Welte, gnumonks/gpl-violationsgnumonks;
David Weinberger, weblog;
Peter Lindberg, Oops (weblog)

Says co-organizer Nikolaj Nyholm, “we’re sold out, but we’ll have
some for sale at the door as we’re sure to have some no-pays and unused
sponsor tickets.”

(Thanks, Nikolaj!)

Many people have written to me with the news of Roadcasting, a technology that is very similar to the gimmick in my novel Eastern Standard Tribe wherein cars stuck in traffic form ad-hoc peer-to-peer networks, sharing music among themselves (in truth, this idea came from my pal and former business partner, John Henson). It’s pretty cool to see stuff like this approaching reality, I tell you what.

It is a system, currently in prototype state, that allows anyone to have their own radio station, broadcasted among wirelessly capable devices, some in cars, in an ad-hoc wireless network. The system can become aware of individual preferences and is able to choose songs and podcasts that people want to hear, on their own devices and car stereos and in devices and car stereos around them.

Roadcasting provides a set of methods to transform radio into a community-driven interactive medium. Using collaborative filtering technologies, it enables rich passive and interactive experiences for ‘DJs’ and listeners in a way that has not previously been possible. Roadcasting matches you to radio stations that play the content that you want to hear.

Peter sez, “Here’s Phillip Torrone reading ‘Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom‘ on a Sony Librié. The Librié is the first device that uses the incredibly cool e-ink technology co-developed by Philips and Sony; according the a few scattered reports, it’s like reading actual paper. The Librié, being a Sony device, comes with the dumbest DRM ever: a library of 400 titles that evaporate off of your device in 60 days. Not no more! Here’s a wiki on the Librié that has some software you can use to create Librié books from ASCII files.”

(Thanks, Peter!)

Last night, I gave a talk on the American Broadcast Flag and the coming European Broadcast Flag at London’s eCademy meeting. It’s online now as a streaming (ugh!) Windows Media (ugh! ugh!) file — fast work!

Update: Andrew Rodland has posted the video as downloadable AVI and WMV in torrent form. Thanks, Andrew!

On Wednesday, I gave a talk at the London campus of Florida State University on the American Broadcast Flag and the coming European Broadcast Flag. A friend of Alfie’s brought down a couple of camcorders and filmed the whole thing and now it’s up as a pair of streaming Quicktimes.

(Thanks, Alfie!)

Part 1, Part 2

I’m giving a talk at London’s Ecademy next Wednesday night. I’ll be talking about America’s Broadcast Flag, an unsavory piece of work that would have given Hollywood’s would-be device czars a veto over the design of PCs and digital TVs. We had a crushing victory over the forces of darkness, but the evil Flag isn’t dead yet — and what’s worse, it’s going to come to Europe soon, in the guise of the DVB CPCM system for restricting television at home.

When: Wednesday, 1 June – 6:00pm to 10:00pm
Where: Marriott Hotel Marble Arch, 134 George Street, London,
Agenda:
6.00 – 7.30 Ecademist Networking (in the bar)
7.30 – 7.45 Ecademy Announcements
7.45 – 8.30 Talks
8.30 – 10.00 Ecademist Networking (in the bar)