Everyday we get requests from people who want to build an eBook with Vook immediately. Everyday we look at what we’re building, what our users want and expect, and what we’ve committed to delivering. Our engineering team is working night and day (which isn’t hyperbole, I’ve interrupted them at 2 AM on our conference line in the past)—and the rest of us are constantly using and testing Vook, making sure it meets our standards.

On Thanksgiving, I’m not grateful for the elements we can control – our commitment, our resourcefulness, our smarts – I’m grateful for that harder to hit factor: What people want and what we’re building seem perfectly aligned.

I’m judging that interest by how many people sign up every day for our beta – and anecdotally by how many people have emailed me on Thanksgiving asking if they can use the platform while they have time off.

And we will ship to our beta users very soon. But today I wanted to share a segment of a clip I found on the Next Web’s Shareables site—a video of Steve Jobs brainstorming with the team at NeXT in the 80s about when they’re going to release their product.

Steve Jobs and NeXT UPDATE: You’ll want to start watching at the 8:00 minute mark for the relevant section.

The part I’m focused on starts 8:00 minutes into the video, during a brainstorm/debate/conversation between Steve and the team members, ranging from Product to Tech to Business. I’m not highlighting this clip to swoon over Job’s exceptionalism—but because it clearly shows how product innovation, consumer demands and the abilities of technology interact with and react to each other.

My favorite part? When Steve, slightly exasperated, says, “I can’t change the world.” Many people would consider that ironic – but I think Steve’s right. This clip shows it’s commitment,  intensity, and smart people pushing each other that make a difference.

Steve might have said, “I can’t change the world – but my company can.” And that’s the truth.

When I heard that Steve Jobs had died, I happened to be with the same friend with whom I watched the World Trade Towers collapse from a rooftop in Chelsea on September 11^th, 2001. Yesterday was October 5^th, 2011—ten years and a few weeks later. Both events made everything else happening seem trite.

At Vook, we often say, “No one did a better job showing off how our company could light up content than Steve Jobs holding up the iPad.”

Vook took off thanks to to the world of ereading and enhanced books that Apple helped make possible. Today, I’m writing this post on a MacBook Pro surrounded by colleagues using Apple computers to make software that produces books you can read on Apple devices. I’m texting with my iPhone, following the news on my iPad. From the engineering department, I can hear “Jobs,” “Macintosh,” “My first mac. . .”  We’re all here, working together, because we want to create something exceptional.

To the Jobs family, we extend our deepest condolences. To Apple, we express our gratitude. To the memory of Steve Jobs and in the spirit of books and literature and reading, we’ll live and work by your example, which could twist even the grimmest existentialism to something brighter:

Try. Succeed. Try again. Succeed Better.