the book "How to Read a Book" describes the technique in his conclusion in excellent detail. It is essentially about owning the information you are consuming.
Personally I think this applies to non-fiction works only. At least in my personal reading. My brain doesn't need to store the details of fictional works. It seems like it actively discards "entertainment" items in favor of knowledge I need to pay the mortgage and feed the kids. I am much more deliberate with that information.
Hewitt is dead wrong on his definition of middle men. They are there to facilitate and earn a profit. Nothing to do with lowering cost. They increase cost. Period.
Frankly, I think he's being a bit of a whiner about the whole thing. There are what, 100k apps in the store? If they weren't QCing it would be 1,000,000 and the percentage of shit apps would be MUCH higher than it is now (and it is through the roof right now).
I'm really sad for purely selfish reasons. My 11 year old really enjoyed hackety-hack up to the point that it worked. Likely it won't be finished now, which is a shame because it was a really great tool for introducing kids...
I've actually signed up my first beta customer, which will be a big step towards an actual product. We use the product for our business, but n+1 is challenging. I'm doing it though. I want those 500 customers and the freedom to work on my own IP.
I've generally charged $50 for my "still learning" rate. I need to raise it to $75 soon I think.
On a related note, I started networking lately - going to user group meetings and the like - with a lot of success in regards to my freelancing. I hit groups for topics I am interested in and with good crossover in the fields I know well.
I've had my $400 used Aeron for 10 years at home and it is as good as new. All that time I have seen at least 5 lesser chairs crumble underneath me from normal daily use. Do the math.
Personally I think this applies to non-fiction works only. At least in my personal reading. My brain doesn't need to store the details of fictional works. It seems like it actively discards "entertainment" items in favor of knowledge I need to pay the mortgage and feed the kids. I am much more deliberate with that information.