Peter Brantley
Kindle Projections, Roadblocks and Sightings
Theresa Poletti from MarketWatch comments on the relative absence of Kindle sightings, particularly in Silicon Valley: The biggest problem is the fact that the Kindle is only available online, via the Amazon.com Website. For many consumer electronics products, potential buyers need to touch and feel the device, to pick it up and play with it, before making any kind…
Game Re-creates Lost Oakland Neighborhood
My hat's off to the release of a superb project out of the UC Berkeley Journalism School that re-creates a "lost" and once vibrant neighborhood of Oakland, 7th Street: There's much more to be done — developing a curriculum so grade school students can use the game to learn about 7th Street and the blues and jazz scene (we got…
Story Development Thrives in the Sports Department
The Associated Press recently commissioned an anthropological study into how youth obtain news information. What struck me most was this reference to something a bit orthogonal to the report — the elements of story development. From Ethan Zuckerman's My Heart's in Accra: … the biggest thing I took from report was the connection between sports coverage and other news coverage….
App Mashes Up Digital Text on Facebook Platform
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…
Photography Up, Photojournalists Down
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…
Build Sites Around Authors and Subjects, Not Publisher Brands
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…
Mobile Frenzy Feeds Mobile Carriers
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…
Sony Reader Now Supports EPUB and Digital Editions
The new firmware for the Sony Reader (model PRS-505) supports EPUB and Adobe Digital Editions. From MobileRead: I can now confirm that this particular speculation seems to have proved out: the new firmware (available sometime today, July 24th) will include support for both epub and Adobe's Digital Editions. It will also include support for PDF reflow, which is something we've…
Opportunity Turns the Tables on Piracy
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…