May 2011
1 post
March 2011
28 posts
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Lots of Staffers Leaving The Daily →
Culture reporter Molly Young is leaving The Daily to be a freelancer. She’s the fourth staffer to leave The (young) Daily, and the third from the Sasha Frere-Jones’ culture desk. Which raises two thoughts: 1) Man, we knew people were gonna flee The Daily fast. And they are. 2) What are you doing to your people, Sasha?
Told you so?
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The Electronic Publishing Bingo Card →
For those of you unfamiliar with the “Bingo Card” concept, basically, if you see one or more of your favorite arguments for how ZOMG EPUBBING WILL CHANGE THE WORLD FOR EVAR on the bingo card, you can be assured that your argument is not, in fact, anywhere as good (or original) as you might think it is. You might wish to cultivate new ones, or at least learn why your favorite argument isn’t...
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WHO ARE YOU KIDDING?
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BEDTIME STORIES
I used to have a difficult time reading a book on my iPad before bed, even on the lowest brightness setting. The eerie glow, no matter how faint, would slowly but surely sap the tiredness away from me. The next thing I knew it would be three in the morning and I would be wide awake.
Now, when I’m alone, I just leave my bedside light on. With the easy addition of ambient lighting, I...
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New iBooks update opens door to fully illustrated... →
Apple’s latest version of its iBooks app, which allows e-books to have a pictorial layout similar to printed books and supports full page illustrations, has been hailed by one publisher as being “the beginning of a phenomenally exciting phase in picture book publishing”.
The new version of the online store means all publishers signed up to Apple’s terms on the...
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Enough Episode 16 — Stuff I Love: Reeder →
minimalmac:
In today’s episode of the Minimal Mac podcast, I discuss the RSS Feed Reader I love – Reeder. I also discuss a bit of how I keep up with the less-than-minimal amount of feeds I’m subscribed to. Worth a listen if you are struggling with the same.
Now, I’ve never been a huge fan of podcasts, but I really like Patrick Rhone’s Enough. Chock full of useful nuggets for living...
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Firefox VP: Say Goodbye to Flash →
I think so in the long run,” Sullivan says. “A lot of it has to do with HTML5. With Firefox 4, Internet Explorer 9, and Chrome, to the extent that we provide functionality in enough browsers, then the developers will switch over to HTML5, especially in mobile, where you can’t have Flash popping up on every page just to do some little animation. The idea that you’d have to embed an entire...
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Why do we tell stories? →
theendpaper:
Anthropologists tell us that storytelling is central to human existence. That it’s common to every known culture. That it involves a symbiotic exchange between teller and listener — an exchange we learn to negotiate in infancy.
Changes in the way we behave through digital are morphing the relationship between author and audience…
This is a very big Something I Believe In.
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Side by side comparison to top 5 ebook readers →
ebookporn:
New e-book readers keep hitting the market, yet a veteran model, the Amazon Kindle e-book reader tops Consumer Reports first full Ratings of these devices. Despite improvement to the rival Barnes & Noble Nook e-book reader and the arrival of Apple’s iPad tablet computer, which offers e-reader capability, Amazon’s Kindle is still the best choice for most consumers.
To...
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SUNDAY MORNING IPAD SESSIONS
Usually when I’m lounging about in bed on Sunday with my girlfriend, we’ve got our noses in physical books, magazines, newspapers, whatever is to hand really. As I have said before, I don’t like how alienating an iPad can be, especially when the company is that good.
But I failed to mention how that rule goes out the window if she’s still asleep and I’m trying to be...
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“I don’t care how people read, I care that they read.”
– John Green on: The Kindle (via silentsecrets)
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Condé Nast readies GQ iPad app →
Hmm, I wonder if this app will be as bloated and take as frustratingly long to download as WIRED.app?
I bet yes!
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TODAY I
Received the books I ordered from Amazon, less than 24 hours after ordering, just as I was on my way out the door for work.
Just in time for my weekend away at the seaside, which starts just after work today.
I love Amazon.
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Survey Says: 82% Of Tablet Buyers Plan To Buy An... →
An astonishing 82% of consumers plan to buy an iPad despite the dozens of competing tablets due this year, a ChangeWave survey found.
There’s a caveat: that’s 82% of consumers who plan to buy a tablet in the next 90 days, which is only 5% of the 3,091 consumers surveyed in February – before Apple showed off the iPad 2.
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INSTAPAPER 3.0
My personal favourite ereading app has just gotten so, so much better.
The most exciting new feature for me is the perfectly executed social features. With one touch, you can browse through and read all the articles that your friends from Facebook, Twitter or even your own address book have “liked.” This is a massive step forward for ereading and I wouldn’t be surprised for...
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TODAY I
… ordered three, count ‘em, three new books from Amazon. Real books. Made of paper.
Felt weird.
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The iPad 2 →
The single best collection of thoughts on the iPad 2 that I have read yet.
It is a refinement of the original iPad — an impressive one, in several ways, considering that it arrives just 11 months after the original. But it is in no way a radical or significant departure from last year’s model. The fact is, Apple got it right with the iPad 1 in almost every way, and the iPad 2 reflects that. If...
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How UK consumers purchase, use and enjoy content... →
Good insight into who is using which e-reading device, how frequently and (in the case of tablets) what for.
February 2011
69 posts
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Just How Is Apple’s App Store Subscription Policy... →
Here’s how I see it as good for users:
In-app subscriptions are easy to sign up for.
In-app subscriptions are easy to unsubscribe from. This is where things start getting way better than the old days. It’s always been in magazines’ and newspapers’ interests to make it easy to sign up for a new subscription. They couldn’t replicate iTunes-style one-click-and-a-password ease, but they...
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“Just as it was easy to dismiss MP3s until you’d test-driven an iPod, so the...”
– Charlie Brooker - Why I’m an ebook convert (via shakingtambourine)
Sentiments I believe in.
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O'Reilly: 79% of our book sales are eBooks →
quatermain:
I can probably tell you why O’Reilly is doing so well in the eBook market today: They are the only publisher to require no DRM on their eBooks.
Every other publisher I know of has an explicit requirement in their vendor contracts that the vendor must implement some form of DRM to be applied to the publisher’s eBooks, and that such DRM must be maintained against attack. O’Reilly...
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BANG!
Apple on Wednesday sent out official invitations for a media event next week on March 2 in San Francisco, presumably to show off its second-generation iPad.
via.
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Subscriptions and the new In-App Purchase... →
Reframing the discussion
I’ve seen three common arguments so far about this policy that I think aren’t strong and only serve to weaken the other points made around them:
“The 30% rate is too high.” It doesn’t really matter what this rate is. It could be 80% or 5% and be similarly defensible. Apple can charge whatever they want for the commission — the issue is that they’re forcing everyone to...
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Minimal Mac: The Future is Now! – Music That... →
minimalmac:
We live in the future. You know that, right? To show you the proof, I’m going to start regularly posting examples starting with this one:
I started out listening to the new Radiohead album this morning in the shower on my iPhone plugged into the auxiliary jack of my Tivoli radio which lives on the bathroom shelf.
I got out, toweled off, unplugged the iPhone from the Tivoli, stuck...
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2 Platforms, With 2 Sets of Problems →
For publishers, all this was, and is, a moment of reckoning. The new subscriptions would be lovely but dear. Apple demands a steep share of the revenue, but also denies publishers precious consumer data. Before the Web, print advertisers had to live with the fact that they were buying some share of an audience they didn’t want. That world has changed. Now advertisers are looking for more...
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Books Are Not Retail →
Retail pays the rent, but isn’t what draws people into the store. For every single diehard reader that still buys books, there are:
2 homeless people. I’ve been calling them ‘urban campers’
3 assholes coming in to use their cell phone, *noisily*, because ironically the bookstore is a quiet place where they can hear their conversation. (and so can everyone else… turn down the volume a tad;...
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REMEMBER
If you want to discuss anything posted on this blog, get personal and get at me on Twitter @dan_osburn.
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THREE LITTLE PIGS
Indie children’s publisher Nosy Crow has harnessed the power of the iPad and with a new app that demonstrates clearly how rich an experience an ebook can be.
The Three Little Pigs app was created to take full advantage of the iPad’s technical capabilities.
Blow into the microphone to blow down the pig’s houses
Tilt the device to see more of the scene
Zoom in to reveal hidden details
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Gaiman on Copyright Piracy and the Web
quatermain:
thisfeliciaday:
via youtube.com
Very interesting comments about piracy from one of my favorite writers!
I love the way he makes the connection with book lending. This is how I found many of my favourite authors too (although not all— but those were much more recent). And it shows just how important book lending is going to be in the digital world. The first people to really...
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A Round-Up of Reactions: Apple's Greedy,... →
In case you haven’t had you fill - a few more opinions on what Apple has done here.
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APPLE, EBOOKS, SUBSCRIPTIONS AND WHOLE LIT OF...
Alright, Apple’s new pricing model and regulation for all different kinds of in-app transactions and activities has been causing all kinds of strong feelings from publishers and pundits across the internet.
In case you’ve somehow miss it, this pretty much all kicked off when Steve Jobs said:
Our philosophy is simple: when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30...
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Lendle. The easiest, fastest, fairest, and best... →
If a fellow Lendler requests a book you own, you’ll get a notification asking if you want to lend it. When you lend a book, the borrower will have it for 14 days, and then it will be automatically returned to your Kindle.
Until DRM is done, this is a great way to grow your digital library legally and fairly.
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Apple rolls out digital subscription service →
“Our philosophy is simple - when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing,” Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a statement.
Sounds fair, doesn’t it?
A bit more info from Macworld here.
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Less is more: the age of minimalism | The Guardian →
An interesting article on the relationship between physical goods and your freedom.
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WHAT DO I WANT FROM AN E-READER?
Using and e-reader should be an easy and fun experience, as simple a pleasure as cracking open a book or a magazine. However, each e-reader and proprietary platform, whether it be Apple or Amazon or Barnes & Noble or whatever, comes complete with their own hiccups and idiosyncrasies. There is presently no “perfect” e-reader.
Some of these are the fault of the provider for wanting...
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Is Monetizing the Used E-book Market the Next Big... →
Another pitiable example of someone desperately clinging a metaphor that has no place in the market as it exists today.
If you’re sitting around thinking about how to start a used ebooks market, you’ve missed the point.
Stupid, stupid crap like this makes my blood boil.
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E-Readers Catch Younger Eyes and Go in Backpacks →
simplifyyourlife:
Something extraordinary happened after Eliana Litos received an e-reader for a Hanukkah gift in December.
“Some weeks I completely forgot about TV,” said Eliana, 11. “I went two weeks with only watching one show, or no shows at all. I was just reading every day.”
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