Making Ink: A Movie About an Amazing Craft
The crafts of print are refined and amazing, truly mature and interesting technologies in their own right. Here’s to the technology of liquid color.
Is the Music Industry’s Recent Past Still Instructive?
Recent inflection points for the music industry may yet again prove instructive for publishers and others. But is it already too late for us to recover the craft of making products rather than providing content?
“Toxie” Illustrates the Difference Between a News Story and a News Narrative
“Toxie” is a story based on facts, and worth waiting for. Why can’t the news media return to telling it like it is rather than playing to the narrative?
Does Rejecting Papers Amount to More Than Just a Transaction Cost?
The expenses publishers incur rejecting papers and book proposals are about more than filtering.
Anchoring Communities and Trust Markets — Advantages Shift to the Users
While losing distribution and production advantages might have hurt our businesses, losing our roles as anchoring and trust centers might cut deeper.
Copyright: A Fairy Tale
A clever video montage explaining copyright issues, including fair use.
Fighting Copyright Trolls — The Electronic Freedom Frontier Strikes Back at Righthaven
Apparently, practices by a Las Vegas publisher are spreading, and the EFF has stepped in to stop them.
Radiohead Contemplates Digital Realities — Parallels for STM Publishing
Radiohead’s bassist contemplates the band’s journey through digital distribution as they prepare to release another group of songs. Publishers can find parallels.
The Asymmetry of Waste in the Age of Abundance — A Reversal of Scarcity’s Balance
A rumination on how abundance might be turning the table on producers by giving consumers pathways to efficiency.
How the WSJ-NYT Turf War Looks From China
A video from practical people outside our little bubble gets it right.
Libraries and Netflix — Questionable Borrowing Practices From People Who Know From Borrowing
Libraries publicize their use of Netflix to save money on acquiring digital video for patrons, opening a potentially costly can of worms.
Liquid Journals or Lazy Journals — Can Technology Alone Make a Journal?
A “new” approach to making a journal smacks of old thinking, and is essentially inflammatory and naive.
The Wrong Approach: Harrisburg University Bans Social Networking to “See What Happens”
A provost sees multi-tasking in his home, and decides to make his university suffer — all because he took the wrong lesson to heart.
Another Missed Opportunity for Bookstores — Hardware Lessons from the E-Reader Space
Traditional bookstores are missing a huge e-reader opportunity, proving that, sadly, they are not the customer-focused retailers they once were.
CrossDress: A New Fashion-Forward Service Where Social Media Meets Glamor
CrossRef announces a new system in conjunction with New York’s Fashion Week.