How Barnes & Noble Can Take a Bite Out of Amazon
Barnes & Noble can compete more effectively with Amazon by moving to a strategy of making its infrastructure available to numerous companies, many of which formerly saw B&N as a rival.
The Mirage of Fixity — Selling an Idea Before Understanding the Concept
In despairing over the loss of “fixity,” Nicholas Carr unintentionally reveals how fluid even printed materials have been.
YouTube — Long-term Strategy Pays Off With Amazing Stats for 2011
How many views did YouTube have in 2011? More than you might imagine. Is it any wonder YouTube is front and center in so many cultural shifts?
More On the Power of Mobile — Trends, Functionality, and Adoption All Point to Dominance
Mobile integration with plants, carpets, and shoes? Yes, they are increasingly being used, as the centrality of mobile devices increases.
The Costs of Print
The question of when print will end is often framed as if it is a natural occurrence, an evolutionary question, or the likely outcome of a sporting event, rather than a business decision that publishers may revisit on a regular basis.
Little Printer — Possibly a Big Disruptor
Can a cloud-based printer with a small footprint insert print back into daily information flows?
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Plagiarist
Is plagiarism of fiction less of a problem for publishers? Another tale of pilfered prose seems to indicate that checking for plagiarism isn’t something book publishers care about . . . yet.
Cheat Sites: Where Students Turn to Crib Papers
A study of matched content in student papers submitted to Turnitin reveals where students turn for sources but is unable to distinguish instances of plagiarism from valid scholarly use.
Siri and the Resurrection of the Semantic Web
Siri may be many things — cool feature, Google killer, source of amusement — but it is perhaps the ultimate expression of the semantic Web. And it’s still in beta.
Can Amazon and Apple Peacefully Coexist? Probably, But As for Google…
The Google Era isn’t over by a long shot, but initiatives from Apple and Amazon reveal that the search giant is open to disintermediation by some clever and large-scale commercial tactics.
Red, Green, and Blue — The Library Classification System Parody
Full of “all kinds of odd mappings between the categories and the world they describe,” library organizational systems get a jolly send-up in this pre-Google British comedy sketch.
Mary Meeker's Internet Trends 2011 — Global, Mobile, and Immersive
Once again, Mary Meeker has presented her Internet trends, and once again, they are fascinating. Subtitled, “We Aren’t in Kansas Anymore . . .,” the data Meeker presents paints a picture of an online world — literally. More users come […]
From 1987 to 2011 — Apple's Prototype Prediction Is Eerily Prescient
It seems Apple underpredicted the future they’d make. Facetime, Siri, iCloud, iPhone, and other innovations have made this prediction of the future seem almost old-fashioned.
Short-term Thinking, Twitter, Economics, and the Change Process
Technology adoption in the academic space may occur more slowly, especially when the technology requires a bit of what feels like hackery to become adept at it. But it does occur. And by watching the long-term trends, recognizing the compatibility of the motivators and reward, and watching the fundamentals, we can think about their implications now instead of later.
The Emergence of the Disposable E-Book Reader — An Inflection Point in Ambient Computing?
By offering a bare-bones Kindle at a very low price point, Amazon has created a virtually disposable e-reader that does exactly what it should, and little more. Will this little probe down-market unleash a tidal surge toward e-books?