Outperforming Books at Getting a Job Done

Andrew Savikas
November 16, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Clay Christensen talks about how people hire products to do jobs for them, and for a very long time books have been the best performers at doing certain types of jobs. That's changing of course, and the crop of new Augmented Reality applications should be on the radar of many types of publisher, from travel to fiction to repair manuals:

In the not-too-distant future, it might be possible to slip on a pair of augmented-reality (AR) goggles instead of fumbling with a manual while trying to repair a car engine. Instructions overlaid on the real world would show how to complete a task by identifying, for example, exactly where the ignition coil was, and how to wire it up correctly.

A new AR system developed at Columbia University starts to do just this, and testing performed by Marine mechanics suggests that it can help users find and begin a maintenance task in almost half the usual time.

We'll have a session on Augmented Reality at February's TOC Conference.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23800/?a=f

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Michael Tamblyn's TOC Frankfurt presentation (actually a dramatic recreation thereof)

Andrew Savikas
November 7, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (4) | Listen

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William Patry delivering Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property Law at Duke

Andrew Savikas
November 7, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Google Senior Copyright Counsel Bill Patry, who will be one of our keynote speakers at TOC 2010, delivered a great lecture at Duke last month dissecting the "moral panic" approach to copyright debate, as exemplified by the late Jack Valenti, former CEO of the MPAA. His talk is just under 30 minutes, and then he goes into Q&A with the audience. I particularly appreciated his point that copyright is a social structure, not a moral one, and not one that's based on property rights.

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Qwitter: Accessible Twitter client (uses TTS) (via @doctorow)

Andrew Savikas
November 5, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Just make sure not to follow anyone who's a member of the Author's Guild ...

"The Qwitter client enables blind individuals to interface with the Twitter service globally, regardless of application focus. Based off of revolutionary concepts pioneered in The Jawter Jaws Scripts, Qwitter, with full support for the three major comercial screen readers and sapi speech, provides you instant access to all aspects of the twitter microblogging service, giving you the ability to post a tweet from anywhere, read tweets, perform searches, and far, far more."

http://www.qwitter-client.net/

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"Web-based ePub validator adds Preflight and API" (via @liza)

Andrew Savikas
November 4, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

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Despite recent gains for books, Games still dominate in the App Store (via @dliman)

Andrew Savikas
November 3, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

O'Reilly's Ben Lorica slices and dices current app trends for iPhone and Android (nice data points on price stabilization too):

"While it might be true that the number of Book apps is growing at a faster rate, Games continue to dominate the list of popular U.S. iTunes Apps. Games accounted for about a fifth of all iTunes apps over the past week†, but the category continued to have a disproportionate share of the Top 100 charts, accounting for 52% of the Top Grossing, 56% of the Top Paid, and 50% of the Top Free apps."

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/games-top-the-charts-iphone-android-markets.html

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Early Registration Now Open for TOC 2010 New York

Andrew Savikas
November 3, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Early registration is now open for the 2010 Tools of Change for Publishing Conference returning to the Marriott Marquis Feb. 22-24 2010.

The program for TOC 2010 reflects how quickly the landscape is changing for publishers -- digital can no longer be thought of as a separate topic; digital creation, delivery, distribution, consumption, and communication are permeating every layer of the publishing ecology.

This year we've tried to include a lot of conversations about and with readers, to encourage discussion about how new formats and modes are shaping preferences and behavior. We've also split the popular Lightning Demo sessions into two different components, both now part of the main program. The familiar 5-minute demo format will remain for a dedicated Breakout Session, and as a special Plenary Session, we'll be using the popular and entertaining Pecha Kucha format, where each speaker gets 20 slides that advance automatically every 20 seconds. We've also split several of the tutorials into two 90-minute workshops, rather than the longer 3-hour format.

It's important to remember that we are still very early in a transition as big or bigger than the shift from manuscript to print as the primary form for books. And it's useful to look back on that transition for insight into how the apparent shortcomings of the new and uncertain matter little in the long run. From James J. O'Donnell's essay, The pragmatics of the new: Trithemius, McLuhan, Cassiodorus in The Future of the Book:

Every negative claim made about print [in the 15th century] is correct, and every negative prophecy came true. Take the argument about the likeness of copies making collation and correction impossible: a perfectly valid point. Why did it not derail print in its glorious career? ... [T]he system of communication introduced by print was so large, so fast, so powerful, and ultimately such a source of wealth that the defects of the system could be remedied as far as need be. ... In short, in the end, the defects of print and the criticisms they drew didn't matter. This is a lesson worth mulling at length.

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Free news but paid comments? (via @adamgaumont)

Andrew Savikas
November 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Not sure I agree with the conclusion, but the journey was articulate and entertaining on the changing economics of media.

http://sicmind.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/premium-content/

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Interesting TV subscriptions via iTunes in the works? (via @jafurtado)

Andrew Savikas
November 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Reports suggest Apple is shopping $30/month TV subscriptions via iTunes (I cut the cable nearly a year ago for AppleTV and haven't looked back -- totally worth it.)

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20091102/apples-itunes-pitch-tv-for-30-a-month/

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New info on upcoming Ibis Reader from @liza's threepress -- another books-in-cloud model

Andrew Savikas
November 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

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"E pluribus tunum: Uniform prices for online music are no way to maximise profit"

Andrew Savikas
November 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

This research suggest maximum value in a digital media market like iTunes (for both producer and consumer) comes from a combination of subscription/membership fee and per-item purchase:

"Charging an "entry fee" for use of the service and then a small, fixed per-song cost for downloads turned out to benefit both the seller and the buyer. The most revenue, according to the 2009 survey data, would be generated by charging the students $21.19 for entry and 37 cents a song. This could raise the producer surplus by 30% compared with uniform pricing. Consumer surplus would also rise in this instance, because some people would buy songs they would have not have done at a higher uniform price. Spotify, a rival to iTunes, has a model somewhat like this for its premium service, where it charges a monthly fee for songs without limit."

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/economicsfocus/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14699573

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NaNoWriMo Now Underway

Andrew Savikas
November 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

One of my favorite keynotes from TOC 2009 was National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) founder Chris Baty. It's November, which means the annual event is now underway. Check out the website for ways to support and participate.

In-depth insight from Tim O'Reilly on lessons learned from Safari Books Online

Andrew Savikas
November 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

"As I outlined above, Safari adopted a "cloud library" model rather than downloadable ebooks as its fundamental design metaphor. I thought it might be worthwhile to understand how we arrived at that decision, as well as some of the other lessons we've learned over what is now 22 years of ebook publishing experience. (O'Reilly published its first ebook, Unix in a Nutshell for Hypercard, back in 1987!) With that, a few reflections on lessons learned"

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/safari-books-online-60-a-cloud.html

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O'Reilly Ebooks Now in Aldiko Online Catalog for Android

Andrew Savikas
November 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

The iPhone gets a lot of the attention when it comes to smartphones, but signs point to Android playing a huge role in the growing smartphone market, with 20+ new devices by the end of this year worldwide (like the Motorola Droid). O'Reilly readers with an Android device can now browse and buy via the online catalog in the Aldiko ereader app.

Buying through Aldiko gets you the same DRM-free ebook bundle offered on oreilly.com (and there's even a 15% discount applied at checkout).

The catalog is implemented using a prototype of the OPDS spec, part of the BookServer architecture.

Books overtake games in app store (1 in 5 new Oct. apps was a book) (via @gigaom)

Andrew Savikas
November 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

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