The long tail approach was made popular by Chris Anderson. According to a post on O'Reilly Radar, Rael Dornfest used the long tail to similarly explain what he dubbed as the long snout by saying:
"...there's an analogous phenomenon on the front end of product creation..."
O'Reilly one of the most prominenant publishers of technology related references is going to capitailize on staying on top of 'the long snout' by releasing some of the most recent references as they progress and calling them Rough Cuts. Some of the first titles sound great:
I feel something is better then nothing when it comes to a reference so I think that O'Reilly's rough drafts or Rough Cuts are going to prove helpful.
For other perspectives from the blogosphere on O'Reilly's Rough Cuts check out these posts on MacHELP, BlogZoot and theAdmin.org.