I’m sitting in my study, tidying up a draft, with Exile on Main Street by the Stones blasting out from the Tannoys and thinking this must be the best rock album ever recorded. Just thought you’d like to know

This is a terrific interview conducted by Robert Scoble with Jean-Marie Hullot, who was once CTO of NeXT and later played significant roles in Apple. The peg for the talk was the launch of Jean-Marie’s remarkable iPhone/iPad App, called Fotopedia Heritage, which is an endless stream of CreativeCommons images of UNESCO World Heritage sites wrapped up in an information stream.

The App itself is amazing (and freely downloadable from the Apps store), but the really significant thing about it is its hint at how our concept of ‘book’ will have to shift to adjust to the possibilities of this new technology. At one stage in the interview, Jean-Marie makes the point that what will determine whether a publisher succeeds in this new medium is whether he/she can master the software. He uses the analogy of Nokia in this context — great maker of hardware, but always an outsourcer of software. Then one day Apple — a master of software — appears on the scene, quickly picks up the easy stuff (the hardware design) and — Bingo! The moral is clear: publishers who think that their only role is to get passive content out the door in readable form aren’t going to cut it in the eBook world.

And while we’re on the subject of eBooks, I see that Apple has released an update to iWork that enables it to output in ePub format.

Actually, this is part of a big and interesting story. Up to now, print publishers have been able to stand by and watch the Net play disruptive havoc with the music and movie industries. Now, it’s their turn to feel the network’s disruptive blast. In that context, author’s agent Andrew ‘the Jackal’ Wylie’s audacious move to strike a deal directly with Amazon for his authors, bypassing their print publishers entirely, has really concentrated minds. As the Guardian observed:

Once upon a time publishers were the only ones who could find authors, edit manuscripts, print books and distribute them, but new technology from desktop computers to the internet has thrown the doors wide open. As marketing departments have gained the ascendancy over editorial, agents have moved centre stage, filtering submissions and polishing manuscripts. With the messy business of ink and trees and Transit vans receding, Wylie’s latest move is simply the logical next step. None of this will worry those publishers who have made a business out of finding the voices others haven’t spotted, but in the week when Amazon claimed that ebook sales passed those of hardbacks the questions are unavoidable: who needs big publishers? Are the interests of writers and readers best served by big publishers, or the Jackal?

And while we’re on the subject, my friend and colleague Michael Dales has a fascinating blog post about his experiments with Kindle and iBooks versions of Scott Pilgrim books.

Lovely Economist obit of Bill Millin, the man who invaded Normandy with bagpipes.

His playing had been planned as part of the operation. On commando training near Fort William he had struck up a friendship with Lord Lovat, the officer in charge of the 1st Special Service Brigade. Not that they had much in common. Mr Millin was short, with a broad cheeky face, the son of a Glasgow policeman; his sharpest childhood memory was of being one of the “poor”, sleeping on deck, on the family’s return in 1925 from Canada to Scotland. Lovat was tall, lanky, outrageously handsome and romantic, with a castle towering above the river at Beauly, near Inverness. He had asked Mr Millin to be his personal piper: not a feudal but a military arrangement. The War Office in London now forbade pipers to play in battle, but Mr Millin and Lord Lovat, as Scots, plotted rebellion. In this “greatest invasion in history”, Lovat wanted pipes to lead the way.

He was ordering now, as they waded up Sword Beach, in that drawly voice of his: “Give us a tune, piper.” Mr Millin thought him a mad bastard. The man beside him, on the point of jumping off, had taken a bullet in the face and gone under. But there was Lovat, strolling through fire quite calmly in his aristocratic way, allegedly wearing a monogrammed white pullover under his jacket and carrying an ancient Winchester rifle, so if he was mad Mr Millin thought he might as well be ridiculous too, and struck up “Hielan’ Laddie”. Lovat approved it with a thumbs-up, and asked for “The Road to the Isles”. Mr Millin inquired, half-joking, whether he should walk up and down in the traditional way of pipers. “Oh, yes. That would be lovely.”

Three times therefore he walked up and down at the edge of the sea. He remembered the sand shaking under his feet from mortar fire and the dead bodies rolling in the surf, against his legs. For the rest of the day, whenever required, he played. He piped the advancing troops along the raised road by the Caen canal, seeing the flashes from the rifle of a sniper about 100 yards ahead, noticing only after a minute or so that everyone behind him had hit the deck in the dust. When Lovat had dispatched the sniper, he struck up again. He led the company down the main street of Bénouville playing “Blue Bonnets over the Border”, refusing to run when the commander of 6 Commando urged him to; pipers walked as they played.

Millin also played at Lovat’s funeral in 1995.

I wrote a small tribute to Frank Kermode for today’s Observer.

Ever since Tuesday, a movie has been running on a continuous loop in my mind. In it, I am driving down Grange Road in Cambridge, passing Selwyn College’s gloomy front range and turning right into Pinehurst, the enclave of classy apartment blocks sometimes known as “life’s departure lounge” because it’s where retired dons go after they’ve downsized. I park outside the most upmarket block and ring the bell. The door opens into a discreetly carpeted foyer and the lift whooshes me upwards. Then it stops and the door opens. And there is Frank, smiling, with pipe in hand and twinkle in eye. “Come in, come in,” he says, and we settle in his booklined sitting-room with the view over Selwyn Gardens to drink, smoke and gossip. And each time this happens, I cannot believe my luck, because I spent a good deal of my earlier life in awe of the man who is now – apparently – treating me as an equal…