The Big Web Site Build: Are We Approaching the End of an Era?
With Google, Twitter, Facebook, and email doing most of the work, why are we building big, expensive, multifaceted sites? Are we being strategic? Or are we in a rut?
Visualize This: LinkTV and Sunlight Labs Move to Put Data Into Action
Two major open data initiatives pose the same questions — Are data inherently useful? Can sites connect data with an audience of users to make it matter?
Penguin Previews How Books Might Look on the iPad
Penguin is experimenting with the iPad, and sharing what they’re thinking in this video demo. It’s pretty amazing stuff.
Update: The Power of Print! (As Seen on YouTube)
The “Power of Print” ad blitz enlists YouTube to get its message out, inviting the question: If print isn’t dead, why?
Follow the Scholarly Kitchen Twitter Feed for More Updates
The Scholarly Kitchen now has an additional Twitter feed. Follow us and enjoy our drive-thru window.
Shirky at NFAIS: How Abundance Breaks Everything
“Abundance breaks more things than scarcity does. Society knows how to react to scarcity.” Clay Shirky speaks at the opening session of NFAIS.
Books As Software — O’Reilly Makes It Happen
O’Reilly launches the “live book,” a way to extend the useful life of a book by turning hardware into software.
Facebook Patents the News Feed — The “One-Click” Button of Social Media Now Has An Owner
In a moment as important to social networking as Amazon’s one-click patent was for e-commerce, Facebook gets a patent on the news feed. But many questions remain, especially about prior art and what is a “news feed.”
The Video College Application: Tufts Embraces the YouTube Generation
A large university embraces video applications, and more than 1,000 students submit, mostly via YouTube. Here are some clever videos spotlighting some of today’s college applicants.
The Internet’s Extended Cultural Memory — Is It Sapping Our Creativity?
One of the great benefits of the Internet is how it has extended our cultural memory. But has this also stolen our freedom of thought, our ability to create original works of art?
Platform Wars Come to the Book Business
Technological platform wars have taken control of the book business, and publishers are now collateral damage in the fight.
“You Are Not a Gadget” — Why Open Culture and Technocentric Philosophies Are Ruining Our Lives
Jason Lanier’s manifesto about the open culture exposes its lack of ingenuity, its commercial depredations, its amoral world view, and its elitist predilections. It’s worth reading in full.
E-books Get a Leg Up from CrossRef
CrossRef moves into the reference works area for e-books, with a linking approach and pricing that might just work.
Star Wars vs. Star Trek — Or, the Story of What Happened to the Crawl in Space
The yellow letters from 1977 imperil some teens. Can NCC-1701 rescue them from this menace and prove which franchise is best?
Why the iPad Marks the End of Price Controls for eBooks—and Why Publishers Have Lost
Publishers may have won the pricing war, but the real struggle is now on for users’ attention. Because the iPad is not a dedicated e-book reader there are, unfortunately, many things that users can do with the device other than read books. Unlike the Kindle, where publishers have the device all to themselves iPad users will be able to surf the Web, play games, watch movies, view their photo collections, listen to music, watch TV, send e-mail, work on a presentation, or access over one hundred thousand applications that do any number of distracting things.