Curiosity About the Breathtaking "Mars Curiosity Descent" Video?
An impressive video of the Mars Curiosity Rover’s landing — from the Rover’s perspective — has been circulating. Now, a “how it was made” video reveals some of what it took to make it.
Online Isn't Cheap, We Know — But An Environmentally Problematic Energy Hog?!
A new analysis suggests that energy costs and carbon footprints for online could surpass those of older media types. Oddly, copyright might be part of the solution.
Are Open Access Initiatives "Catastrophic" for Commercial Publishers?
An analyst frets that Elsevier might suffer from the trends in OA publishing and its mandates. But there’s no logical or practical reason to believe this.
(Re)Defining the Library, Part 2: How?
After exploring why the library requires redefinition, this second part of a two-part post offers a new taxonomy for allocating library functions and roles.
(Re)Defining the Library, Part 1: Why?
With changes in the scholarly communications world, many old questions for the library are unsettled once again, and many news ones arise. In this first part of a two-part post, we’ll ask the questions.
Udacity Redux: And Then There Was Credit
Udacity students can now transfer credits to Colorado State. Is this the start of something big?
And Another Thing — A Postscript to the Proposed List of 60 Things Publishers Do
In addition to what publishers do directly for authors and readers, they foster many collaborative and philanthropic efforts around the world.
Amazon Will Even Read the Book for You
Amazon’s new X-ray technology creates books that are automatically annotated. In doing this, the machine is beginning to preempt some aspects of the act of reading.
Short-form Publishing — A New Content Category, Courtesy of the Internet
The publication of short works opens up new opportunities for academic publishers that heretofore have had to choose between the forms of the article on one hand and the full-length book on the other.
"Patenterprise" — Jean Luc Picard, Apple, and Androids
In space, nobody can hear you litigate.
Photography at One Trillion Frames Per Second — Light's Glamor Shot
A new high-speed camera has the potential to reveal the world of light in completely novel ways. This video is amazing from start to finish.
The "Facebook Fallacy" and Whipsaw Attitudes Toward Web Advertising
Facebook’s IPO has disappointed many, but to think that it presages a complete meltdown of the online ad market is a bit of an overstatement.
E-books and the Personal Library
Moving from the West Coast to the East prompts some thoughts on personal libraries and e-books, as it no longer makes economic sense to carry a lifetime of books around with us. But maybe economic sense isn’t the only sense bibliophiles possess . . .
Is the Higher Education Bubble About to Pop?
The potential higher education funding bubble may be more likely to burst, with the LIBOR scandal revealing another weakness in the system, trends in admissions and discounting showing the effects of the recession, and American politics locked up in partisan nonsense.
The NPR Model and the Financing of Scholarly Communication
The “listener support” model works in some cases. This fact alone suggests it may not have a robust future in the funding of scholarly initiatives.