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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Is Mobile Affecting When We Read? →
You’ll note four major spikes when most of the reading on an iPhone is done:
6am - Early morning, breakfast
9am - The morning commute, start of the work day
5pm – 6pm - End of the work day and the commute home
8pm – 10pm – Couch time, prime time, bed time
In reality, this really is a graph of whitespace time. Whitespace is the time between A and B. It’s the time on the subway or bus. It’s...
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Great converter {GlobeConvert Pro}
Beautiful app that is worth having if you travel a lot. Or buy foreign cookbooks.
stylishipadapps:
Great looking currency converter.
Enjoy!
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EBOOKS AND SIMPLICITY
I am an ebook lover. I am a book lover. I refuse to believe that these things are mutually exclusive. Here’s a bit of my backstory, and why I care so damned much about ebooks.
I first started really getting into ebooks when I moved from New York to London. I had built up a large collection of gorgeous, hardback books and an impressive collection of vinyl records while I was in University, but...
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IPad Makes Space in Japan's Tiny Homes by Removing... →
Japan’s cramped living conditions and the arrival of the iPad in May have spawned as many as 60 companies offering to turn paper books into e-books as publishers have been slow to provide content for new electronic readers. Japan has lagged the U.S. in introducing e-books because of a rigid pricing system, uncertainty over copyrights and early problems reproducing Japanese characters on screens,...
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BBC releases iPlayer iPad app tomorrow →
It will be available for free to UK iPad users and to those with Android devices. It is a move forward for the BBC as, up until now, iPad users and those with Android devices have only been able to watch BBC programming live on the iPlayer via the browser.
Danker said: “Having stuck our toe in the water last year with the iPad…this new native app is a significant improvement on the...
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LENDING E-BOOKS? AS EASY AS... →
In theory lending e-books should be as simple as lending paper ones. In actuality the process is bewildering and daunting, particularly in the retail e-book space. Though the savvy technicians of Barnes & Noble/Nook and now Amazon/Kindle are on the way to solving many problems, they have a long way to go.
A good place to start might be truly realising that a digital book isn’t a...
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Top Kindle Books Cost $5 Or Less →
Kindle owners like cheap eBooks. According to Amazon’s Top 100 Paid list, 7 of the Top 10 titles cost $5 or less.
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Managing risk →
Coming from a tech background, we knew when we founded Enhanced Editions that a scalable platform (ie the ability to make 1000s of apps from the same code) would dramatically mitigate the risks and costs involved in the setup, so long as we got the user experience right. By comparison, the entry point to our platform is just £5k. However, whilst companies such as Vook in the USA take a similar...
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Real Page Numbers Coming to Kindle E-Books →
Device owners will be especially happy to learn that the page numbers in tens of thousands of e-books now match the page numbers in their respective print editions, a feature that will be especially useful to academics and students who need to quickly reference and cite passages.
Page numbers will be coming to Kindle’s mobile apps “in the coming months,” a spokesperson said.
This is an...
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AGAINST CHROME: A MANIFESTO →
This is the iBooks app. Notice how lovingly the designers have made it look like you are in the middle of reading a physical book by drawing a little pseudo-3D evocation, down each vertical side, of the pages you have read and the pages you have still to read. What do you think this looks like when you are on page 2 of a book, or 2 pages from the end? I’ll tell you what it looks...
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The e-volution of the American reader →
Lovely insight into the average e-book reader.
ebookporn:
A nice article on current e-reader experiences from a staff writer at The Great Falls Tribune in Great Falls, Montana. These aren’t NYC mid-level publishing minions on Metro North, these are real people from the heartland of the country who still use the library and have to drive 45 minutes to get to the nearest bookstore.
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AOL + Huffington Post = disaster? →
Part of Huffington Post’s success was its vibrance and its position outside the establishment. It has now not only joined an establishment, but joined one where most people feel about as close to the brand as they do to Walmart.
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"Why The Daily is an Abomination," by Joshua... →
This guy gets it.
engers:
Another happy customer for The Daily. Yeah, yeah… but why do I keep posting about it?
It was designed from the ground up to be an iPad app; it’s a terrible example what the iOS platform can do.
It has an acknowledged development budget of $30 Million; that probably means a lot more.
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Asda unveils UK's cheapest e-book reader →
ASDA has launched the UK’s cheapest e-reader at £52.
The View Quest Mediabox 5in Media Tablet went on sale today through its Asda Direct website. The Asda site does not sell e-books with the supermarket chain instead encouraging readers to download out of copyright e-books for free from the Project Gutenberg website. The device also offers music and video playback.
If this device sucks, it...
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Applemob: iPad app store adds new search functions →
A much needed update, thanks Apple.
applemob:
The iPad has now gained a better way of searching for apps via five new filters, Category, Release Date, Customer Rating, Price, Device, Reset Filters. It certainly gives you a fighting chance of finding exactly what you want, however this doesn’t seem to have been extended to the…
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INSTAPAPER: MY FAVOURITE WAY TO EREAD
Clean, simple, efficient - practically magical.
Instapaper is such a joy to use. You just find an article you like, save it, read it on your phone, iPad or computer - anywhere really. No silly DRM, no silly availability issues, no bells or whistles or added content. Just e-reading, easy.
The minute there’s an ebook app this clean and simple, the format will really take off.
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The Daily Wait →
From the time I tapped the icon on my home screen until I could read a single page, today’s issue took one minute and twenty seconds. And to be clear, that was over a reasonably fast Wi-Fi connection.
One minute, twenty seconds. For over a minute of that time, this is all that I saw. At that point, it’s already a lost cause. There’s nothing the actual content or interface of the app can do to...
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Jasonified.: Why people pirate... →
Sharp observations on what happens when new e-books aren’t available on all platforms at the same time as the paper book is available. Which is, of course, something I believe in.
jasonkneen:
Ok it’s not the only reason but it’s one nonetheless.
Availability.
I found myself yesterday actively looking for the latest Tim Ferriss book via less than reputable channels.
Why?
Because I...
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Another interesting graphic.
scaffeo:
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Minimalistic RSS {Readlines}
Pretty gorgeous!
stylishipadapps:
Yet another way to reed RSS, this time just minimalistic headline reader.
Enjoy!
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Could Digital Publishing Save Longform Journalism? →
If nothing else, the popularity of apps and services like Instapaper and Longreads shows that longform journalism is A) in demand and B) perfectly suited to e-reading.
I’m keen to see how the monetisation effort ends up working out. I’m excited about Kindle Singles, and will add The Atavist to my watch list.
If I were a betting man, I’d bet on them both being quite...
