theunbook.com

The uncatalogue

Here is a list of all unbooks we’re aware of at the moment. If you’re aware of an unbook and don’t see it here please let us know!

Business Model Innovation by Yves Pigneur and Alex Osterwalder: A manual for entrepreneurs and business executives on business model innovation. Members pay to gain access to a community and the book creation process, and also get a 50% discount on the final book.

The Browser and the Book, v.1 by Dave Gray: The book as a form factor has been around for about 2,000 years, since Julius Caesar first decided to fold up a scroll, accordion-style, and mark the pages for later reference. In 1455, Aldus Manutius was the first to publish the portable paperback, and it has remained relatively unchanged since. Why has the book survived so long? What makes the the book continue to be relevant and useful? Books are inherently “browsable.” What lessons from the book can be applied to the web browser and other digital technologies? How might digital technologies alter or enhance the way that we interact with books as physical objects? What do the book and browser interfaces have in common? What is the future of the book? Of the browser?

The City is Here for You to Use is an unbook by Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. This work is still in progress, with the input of a reader community and a Feyerabendian table of contents which describes the book’s thematic structure. The title refers to “a city that responds to the behavior of its users in something close to real time, and in turn begins to shape that behavior.” Pre-order the book.

Designing Social Interfaces by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone: This book [captures] user-experience best practices and emerging social web customs for web 2.0 practitioners: “We decided to share the patterns … and … to get community feedback. We think that hearing a variety of opinions about these topics will make the material stronger and more representative of what’s happening in social interfaces.”

The Fifth Principle of Dialogue by John G. Bell: “Introduces a new theory and model of dialogue as a transformative process of communication that consists of an enabling dialogical space, an archetypal model of dialogic process, and having specific characteristics of emerging dialogue.”

FLOSS Manuals is a collection of manuals that explain how to install and use a range of free and open source software. The manuals are friendly and simple, and they are intended to encourage people to explore the wide range of free, open source alternatives to expensive and restrictively licensed software. At FLOSS Manuals you can find manuals for free and open source software like office applications, as well as web editing and browsing, and tools for playing, making, streaming and sharing audio and video.

Give this Book Away by The Movement: We asked the internet the question: “What could you have lived without today?” and created the 1st issue of the book by taking some of the responses sourced
and creating a gift-cheque book; It’s a book that you give away along with stuff you can live without. People can contribute to the next book and/or buy a
copy of the first one here.

The Graphic Designer’s Handbook for Social Change: “A work written by a thousand authors, edited by ten-thousand editors, promoted by a hundred-thousand promoters, read by millions, in the hopes we might leave a better place for the billions who are poised to inherit our footprint. The more questions, the more conversations, the more possibilities for betterment of the future, and the more Spread the Word is able to deliver on its mandate: To involve more designers in a dialogue on sustainability and social change.”

The Ideaday book: Envisioned to serve as “a 2009 almanac for [The Ideaday] group” and also to “provide insight into the ways ideas are born, and why / how some sprout and grow immediately, others die a premature death, while some only seem to die young, but in fact tend to blossom later, when the circumstances are right.”

Thomas Gideon: Based on a series of audio segments from The Command Line Podcast, exploring the craft of programming through personal experiences as a professional developer and a lifelong enthusiast.

Learning Log: A didactic novel about Knowledge Management. Version 0.5 by Barbara Fillip: The plot follows a KM Manager through a year’s worth of efforts to expand the reach and impact of Knowledge Management practices across an organization. It is not about the process of establishing a KM Office or promoting a specific approach to KM (although obviously, the plot, discussion activities and resource all reflect my own thinking about KM).

Learnscaping 1.32, by Jay Cross: Most of us agree on where we’re headed: to ecologies where work and learning are one and the same, where people help one another build competency and master new crafts, where members of self-sustaining communities of professionals participate because they take pride in maintaining their standards and doing a great job, and where everyone strives to be all she can be. Open, participative, bottom-up, networked, flexible, responsive: that’s what we’re after.

Marks and Meaning, version 0.5, by Dave Gray:Warning: DON’T BUY THIS BOOK if you are uncomfortable with unfinished work! This is version 0.5 and much of the content is still in a vague and formative stage. Marks and Meaning is a work in progress; an evolving exploration of visual language, visual thinking and visual work practices by the founder and Chairman of XPLANE, the visual thinking company. An unfinished work, it’s a hybrid: part sketchbook, part textbook, part workbook, and continuously updated by the author, based on feedback and conversations with readers. Marks and Meaning was first published in July of 2008. This is version 0.5, last updated in April 2009. Community blog here.

Open-faced Mushroom Blastocyst – A Novella, by Adam Rothstein. Fungus is a delicious food, but it makes a confusing way of life. We’re lucky most eschatology is written in books, rather than in the heated course of the blood vessels in our stomachs. OFMB is an experiment in “version” publishing–the idea is that the work is finished, but leaves open the possibility of change in future editions, hopefully with the support and remarks of readers. You are being invited to enjoy the text, and pass on any comments or criticism you might have, to improve the text and presentation in the future.

Project Shrink, Linear Edition, by Bas de Baar is a linear presentation of de Baar’s blog postings on the human side of software development processes and project management. It is a work in progress, intended to make his ideas more accessible. New postings will be added. Old material will be edited.

A Strategy of Constant Change, by Steven Devijver: The thesis of this book is that people create change – that change exists only in the minds of people – and that to properly deal with change people have to be put in the driver’s seat. Period. To corporations this sounds like heresy, and is exactly what is being avoided. Regardless, organizations that explore the principles of constant change and play with them will succeed at rates desired by and far, far out of reach of corporations.

The Woork handbook, by Antonio Lupetti is a free eBook about CSS, HTML, Ajax, web programming, Mootools, Scriptaculous and other topics about web design.

4 Comments to 'The uncatalogue'

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1. Alan Smith said,
   February 20th, 2009 at 8:20 am

   This is an awesome list for anyone looking how to un-write un-books.

   Two More initiatives:

   The Graphic Designers Handbook for Social Change.
   http://book.spreadtheword.org/
   “Spread the Word is a cause-based design camp. Changing the world is hard work, but when the benefits are so obvious and the need so crucial it’s hard not to answer the call. Here you’ll find the contents of our un-book project. Hopefully you can add some words, edit some grammar, or attach some images.”

   How to create The Movement
   by The Movement.
   http://book.thmvmnt.com
   An unbook project capturing the birth of a co-created global organization. Very young project playing with the process of unbooking.

2. Alan Smith said,
   February 20th, 2009 at 8:34 am

   sorry that’s
   book.thmvmnt.net

3. Dave Gray said,
   February 20th, 2009 at 10:02 am

   Went to book.thmvmnt.net but there was nothing there.

   ?

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