James Turner
James Turner, contributing editor for oreilly.com, is a freelance journalist who has written for publications as diverse as the Christian Science Monitor, Processor, Linuxworld Magazine, Developer.com and WIRED Magazine. In addition to his shorter writing, he has also written two books on Java Web Development (MySQL & JSP Web Applications" and "Struts: Kick Start"). He is the former Senior Editor of LinuxWorld Magazine and Senior Contributing Editor for Linux Today. He has also spent more than 25 years as a software engineer and system administrator, and currently works as a Senior Software Engineer for a company in the Boston area. His past employers have included the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Xerox AI Systems, Solbourne Computer, Interleaf, the Christian Science Monitor and contracting positions at BBN and Fidelity Investments. He is a committer on the Apache Jakarta Struts project and served as the Struts 1.1B3 release manager. He lives in a 200 year old Colonial farmhouse in Derry, NH along with his wife and son. He is an open water diver and instrument-rated private pilot, as well as an avid science fiction fan.
What Does Publishing 2.0 Look Like? Richard Nash Knows
Traditionally, writers wrote, editors edited, publishers published, retailers sold, and reader read. But in the age of the Kindle, e-books, author web sites and comment boards, all the roles are becoming fuzzy. Richard Nash has started a company called Cursor, which is trying to pioneer the idea of social publishing, specifically to try and address some of the changes that technology is bringing to the industry. He’ll be speaking about Cursor at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change in Publishing conference later this month.
Bringing e-Books to Africa and the Middle East
Infrastructure, economics and censorship are major issues
In the United States, Western Europe and Asia, e-Books are becoming a major player, especially now that e-Readers like the Kindle and Nook are available. But people living in the Arabic speaking world or Africa haven’t been invited to the dance. Two of the keynote speakers at the upcoming O’Reilly Tools of Change conference are working to improve access to e-Books in these areas: Arthur Attwell in South Africa and Ramy Habeeb in Egypt. We talked to each of them about how e-Books are important in their area of the world, and the challenges that they are facing.