| CARVIEW |
Read20: July 2008
App Mashes Up Digital Text on Facebook Platform
Peter Brantley
July 31, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen 
Digital Texts 2.0 is an interesting application for Facebook that lets you group and share digital material. It's intriguing to see cutting edge development occurring in this space. From the Digital Texts 2.0 about page:
Digital Texts 2.0 was undertaken by Dr. Stéfan Sinclair as an initiative to experiment with applying the principles of Web 2.0 to the realm of electronic texts. We intend to preserve and expose all of the existing qualities of digital texts (rich hypertextual associations, refined encoding practices, analytic affordances, etc.), while enhancing them with additional characteristics provided by Web 2.0 and social networking. Thus, it is a preliminary attempt to better understand the phenomenon of social networking and how it might be adapted to benefit the ways in which humanities scholars interact with electronic texts.
Related Stories:
Photography Up, Photojournalists Down
Peter Brantley
July 30, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
In a Columbia Journalism Review essay, Alissa Quart looks at the future of photojournalism, which is not unlike that of journalists now that everyone has a camera in their hands:
While professional photographers are suffering, news photography and photography of all kinds is flourishing. Citizens around the world can cheaply photograph and distribute images of their own countries and cities, places like Dhaka and Freetown. Citizen journalism projects like Rising Voices teach photography in Africa and elsewhere. Local image-makers challenge both the valor and necessity of the American or European photographer shooting in a foreign clime, a model that has a certain amount of voyeuristic baggage, as the critic W. J. T. Mitchell has written -- a dynamic where a "damaged, victimized, and powerless individual" is "taken" by a photographer who is a "relatively privileged observer, often acting as the 'eye of power.' " Instead, we will have amateur photographers -- some lucky people at the right awful place at the right awful time (Nigerians who are at the next explosion of a pipeline, say). And I hope that innately gifted photographers will emerge as well -- a Chinese Kratochvil, a Nigerian Gilles Peress.
Related Stories:
Build Sites Around Authors and Subjects, Not Publisher Brands
Peter Brantley
July 30, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Michael Cairns at PersonaNonData expresses a desire to see publishers include a more comprehensive picture of authors and works:
Publishers are best placed to build author-centric and subject/theme-oriented websites -- not sites oriented around a "brand" that isn't relevant, but those that focus attention on segments of the business that remain relevant to consumers. Envision the Spiritual segment at a site supported by Harpercollins which has a unique, appropriate and relevant focus far apart from the current 'corporate' approach. All segments are valid candidates for more of a silo approach to marketing publishers' products. And I would go further in recommending that publishers consider marketing within these silos all titles available, rather than just those produced by the publisher. What better way to condense a market segment and become a destination site for Self-Help, Spirituality, Mysteries, Computer and any number of other book-publishing segments. Consumers aren't dumb. Amazon's main attraction is that all the titles in any one segment are available in one place. As long as publishers continue to ignore this fact, they will under-serve the market and under-perform given the investment in their sites.
Related Stories:
Mobile Frenzy Feeds Mobile Carriers
Peter Brantley
July 25, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
During the "2018: Life on the Net" panel at the Fortune Brainstorm: Tech conference, Joichi Ito noted that money sometimes follows money in a not necessarily thoughtful manner. One example is in mobile, where the mobile frenzy is in actuality pumping very significant amounts of money into the carriers' pockets. It's an important point to remember. Here's the clip from Silicon Valley Watcher:
And here is some supporting food for thought from mocoNews:
Matt Murphy, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers and head of their "iFund" investment pool for the iPhone, said early results from the App Store prove the potential growth opportunity. In just 10 days more applications were downloaded for the iPhone than what a carrier will typically see in a month from wallpaper and ringtone sales, he said.
Related Stories:
Rethinking Libraries and Museums as "Living" Structures
Mac Slocum
July 23, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
The Living Library project flips the reader-book dynamic on its head by allowing library patrons to "check out" human beings, and then engage in a civil dialogue. Nina Simon from Museum 2.0 extends the Living Library structure to a reimagining of museums:
How could visitors' stereotypes about museum behavior and the kinds of activities available in museums be exploited to provide a radically different experience? In the same way the Living Library is organized around the frame of librarians, catalogues, books, and the action of checking things out, a theoretical Living Museum could be organized around exhibits, artifacts, docents, and the action of looking at things or moving through spaces. Imagine a museum in which Artifacts of a war are veterans, family members, and former enemy combatants. Or an exhibit on immigration in which you could check out Legal and Alien Artifacts for discussion based on labels identifying their provenance and status. A museum tour in which a docent "tours" you to a variety of volunteer artists who talk about how they create their work.
Related Stories:
Opportunity Turns the Tables on Piracy
Peter Brantley
July 18, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
The Economist examines the underlying business opportunities created by piracy:
Piracy can also be a source of innovation, if someone takes a product and then modifies it in a popular way. In music unofficial remixes can boost sales of the original work. And in a recent book, "The Pirate's Dilemma", Matt Mason gives the example of Nigo, a Japanese designer who took Air Force 1 trainers made by Nike, removed the famous "swoosh" logo, applied his own designs and then sold the resulting shoes in limited editions at $300 a pair under his own label, A Bathing Ape. Instead of suing Nigo, Nike realised that he had spotted a gap in the market. It took a stake in his firm and also launched its own premium "remixes" of its trainers. Mr Mason argues that "the best way to profit from pirates is to copy them."
That this silver lining exists should not obscure the cloud. Most of the time, companies will decide to combat piracy of their products by sending in the lawyers with all guns blazing. And most of the time that is the right thing to do. But before they rush into action companies should check to see if there is a way for them to turn piracy to their advantage.
Related Stories:
Survey of Book Industry Reaction to New iPhone and App Store
Mac Slocum
July 17, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Kassia Krozser struck a nerve earlier this week with criticism of the publishing industry's slow approach to the new iPhone and the just-opened App Store. From Booksquare:
Call me crazy, but I'd expect an industry that salivates over moving 150,000 units to be all over the potential for reaching seven million "mobile is the future" customers. Are you not out there, listening to readers, gauging their interest? They want, you have, and you're still hiding the goods. I get this isn't the largest market you have, but is that an excuse to sit on the sidelines?
Sara Lloyd doesn't see long-term value in this current burst of iPhone excitement. From thedigitalist:
... apart from a few digital PR points scored against competing publishers, there doesn't seem to me to be any huge value in first mover advantage here for publishers, unless we want to make the decision to become software developers. The perception is that the App Store has 'opened up' the iPhone to publishers and to e-reading. The reality is that the iPhone has always been enabled for e-reading ... So, whilst we have been awaiting the launch of the App Store with interest, we didn't see enormous advantage in, for example, creating a reading app ourselves or Being There on Day One, just for the sake of it.
Expanding on the software theme, James Bridle says book publishers are uniquely positioned to develop ebook applications that meet consumer needs. From booktwo.org:
... who better than publishers to craft such software? Most ereader technologies are built by techies who put the technology before the reading experience: the combined skills of typesetters, print designers, editors and technologists that only publishers possess could, with the right direction, produce a far superior ereader app than any we've seen so far.
Broadening the analysis, Michael Cairns says the "silo" mentality displayed in this iPhone debate is a competitive obstacle that needs to be put aside. From PersonaNonData:
To bring us back to the iPhone circumstance, as long as publishers continue to think in terms of traditional functional silos and roles and responsibilities they limit themselves in their ability to leverage their assets. In contrast witness Amazon which has never considered any aspect of the publishing value chain to be off limits and more publishers need to think in this manner if they want to redress some of the advantages Amazon and others retain (or new competitors develop) in the marketplace.
(Many of the links and call-outs in this post were provided by Peter Brantley via his Read 20 list.)
Additional Coverage & Related Stories:
Free Ebooks with Embedded Ads Via Scribd-Lulu Partnership
Peter Brantley
July 16, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Scribd and Lulu have joined forces to combine Scribd's iPaper format, a Flash-derived viewing technology optimized for bandwidth and speed, with Lulu content. From ReadWriteWeb:
Beginning this month on the self-publishing site Lulu.com, you will soon find a broad selection of some of the site's most popular free content made available via the iPaper format ... And thanks to iPaper's ability to embed [Google] AdSense ads within the documents, content creators will now have a way to offer free e-books that also have the potential to earn them an income.
Related:
Mobile Barcode Scanners and Retail Stores on Collision Course
Peter Brantley
July 15, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Ilya Vedrashko points out a near-term future scenario in which retail sites are going to have to entirely rethink what integration into online services means:
The obvious future of in-store experience: you find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and where the same product is available for a lower price. Brick-and-mortar stores become little more than showrooms for merchandise bought elsewhere.
This future just got one step closer today [July 12] with the release of an iPhone app Checkout SmartShop, "a shopping assistant meant to help you find online and local prices when you're out and about shopping." For now, you still need to type in the UPS code; they are working on converting the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner.
Related:
Ebook Adoption Could Come from Mobile Apps, Not Hardware
Peter Brantley
July 11, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Martyn Daniels speculates on the real breakthrough for Apple -- its store -- and the ramifications for ebooks; particularly, who is best positioned to take advantage of providing tools to the market:
Many have said that if Apple were to create an ebook reader then the market would take off. Others have agreed that the content and it[s] packaging would need to change also to fit the mobile demands. What is clear is that the mobile applications market is hoting and opening up and it may not be Apple who now has to create that magic connection. Interestingly it is not rocket science to understand that the reason that Adobe back[ed] the epub standard so heavily and developed the only DRM to support it today was to have re-flow text that can be rendered on the mobile platform.
Related:
Readers Already Picking Up the Interactive Slack
Peter Brantley
July 11, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Harlequin announced this week the launch of Enhanced Edition ebooks, which link out to Net resources that augment the value and experience of the books. At Electric Alphabet, Kate Eltham notes that, in a way, this has already been happening by the readers, not by the publishers:
Last year I read Spook Country by William Gibson ... I remember Gibson saying in an interview at the time that "every text today has a kind of spectral quasi-hypertext surrounding it ... all of the Googled information that found its way into the book but which isn't available to the reader as a literal hypertext unless you're willing to be the animator of the hypertext process ..."
Blogs and social media are already making this spectral hypertext less quasi and more actual. But as Gibson predicted, other text was destined to follow.
Related Stories:
New "Libraries" Bring New Privacy Implications
Peter Brantley
July 9, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
As Google, Amazon and others become de facto digital libraries -- and lawsuits emerge -- Jeff Jarvis wonders what this means for users' privacy. From BuzzMachine:
Any site with content -- Google, Amazon, a newspaper, a blog, an ISP -- is now the moral equivalent of a library or bookstore, two institutions that try hard not to hand over information on what content we seek and consume arguing that that would violate our First Amendment rights. The controversy in the telco immunity legislation is that those searches were made without warrants. In this case [Viacom/YouTube], there is a warrant. When I ran sites, we got subpoenas all the time and handed over IP addresses when ordered; that was company policy. I always found it troubling and as a result ordered that we would change our data retention policy and get rid of IP addresses as soon as possible. Should Google and other sites erase IPs and rely only on cookies without personally identifiable information?
Related Stories:
Magazine POD Service Looks to Help Publishers Experiment
Peter Brantley
July 3, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Folio interviews the founders of MagCloud, a print-on-demand (POD) service that provides the ability to aggregate magazine content from multiple publishers:
Large publishers are as challenged as anyone to reach niche segments efficiently, and likewise have no way to do the kind of hyper-targeted publishing that digital print can provide. We hope MagCloud can help in these ways, not just to enable niche publishing to flourish, but to enable traditional publishers to experiment with and find these new opportunities.
Related Stories:
AP Struggles with Digital Growing Pains
Peter Brantley
July 2, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
A story in the Wall Street Journal looks at how the Associated Press (AP) is struggling to find its place in a very different market for news distribution:
Many member newspapers say they support the AP's new-media initiatives and, particularly, its recent efforts to push members' content to mobile devices. The problem, some say, is the organization's perceived insensitivity to newspapers' financial hardship. The AP requires a seven-figure annual payment from most large newspapers, and it makes it very difficult to opt out of certain services. The New York Daily News has given notice that it will terminate its AP membership largely to protest a rule that requires two years' notice to drop AP services.
Related Stories:
- Stay Connected
-
TOC RSS Feeds
News Posts
Commentary Posts
Combined Feed
New to RSS?
Subscribe to the TOC newsletter. 
Follow TOC on Twitter. 
Join the TOC Facebook group. 
Join the TOC LinkedIn group. 
Get the TOC Headline Widget.
- Search
-
- Events
-
TOC Online Conference
Join us on October 8th for this half-day online conference to explore the state of the art of electronic publishing.
- TOC In-Depth
-
Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales This report tests assumptions about free digital book distribution and P2P impact on sales. Learn more.
The StartWithXML report offers a pragmatic look at XML tools and publishing workflows. Learn more.
Dive into the skills and tools critical to the future of publishing. Learn more.
- Tag Cloud
- TOC Community Topics
-
Tools of Change for Publishing is a division of O'Reilly Media, Inc.
© 2009, O'Reilly Media, Inc. | (707) 827-7000 / (800) 998-9938
All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing on oreilly.com are the property of their respective owners.
O'Reilly Media Home | Privacy Policy | Community | Blog | Directory | Job Board | About
