Applications, Not Publications
Don’t develop publications, develop applications!
The End of Returns
NPR report: The practice of allowing booksellers to return unsold books back to the publisher may be nearing an end.
Information Overload = Too Much Dog Food
An old Silicon Valley maxim exhorts technology firms to “eat their own dog food” (aka, use their own technology). Now they’ve realized they’re eating too much. And so are we.
The Future is Now! Or Really, Really Soon
Futurists provide us with something we all want to hear, yet far enough into the future to avoid accountability.
Lois Smith: “Comment-ier” Isn’t Better
Commenting is one option among many for measuring the success of a blog.
Summer Reading — By the Book, or By the Box?
60% of book purchases now happen outside the traditional brick-and-mortar bookstore
Crisis? What Crisis?
The “crisis in scholarly communication” makes good narrative.
SSP TMR Blog Debuts
The Society for Scholarly Publishing‘s Top Management Roundtable meeting, scheduled this September 3-5 in Philadelphia, PA, now has its own blog, updating interested parties about the meeting’s format, linking to interesting work from speakers, and allowing for blogging at and […]
Live Entry 2: Green
An interesting session on “Green Publishing,” meaning more environmentally aware publishing choices. One observation from the audience is that there were two types of “green” being mentioned in the same breath — the type when choices are made solely based […]
Watch Out, “Professionals”!
According to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, a new publishing entity called 8020 Publishing is showing that the wall between amateurs and professionals sometimes collapses when tested. While creating travel and photography magazines named, respectively, Everywhere and JPG, […]
25 Years of Cyber Love
It may seem impossible, but last month, the first couple to marry after meeting online celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, according to a story in the Chicago Tribune. It may seem odd these days, but this 1983 story was a […]
Information Does(n’t) Want to Be Free
David Pogue just published a post on the New York Times that quotes at its heart the statement, “Information wants to be free.” In the post, he notes that he’s pretty conflicted over the issue, and takes solace in the […]
We’re Still Digitally Divided
The digital divide, a term coined by President Clinton and Vice President Gore, is alive and well, according to a recent survey. Some eye-opening results: 30% of American heads-of-households have never created a document on a computer 21% of American […]
Open Access Backlash
The Chronicle of Higher Education has published a story about open access backlash among creative writing students. It’s interesting to see how the battle lines are drawn, and how the terms of a negotiated embargo period at the University of […]
The Conduit Metaphor
One of the most powerful ways to reimagine the status quo is to engage in lateral thinking. When you combine this practice with the insight that we think and speak in metaphors (even though this is difficult to recognize because […]