Book Digitization Will Continue

The recent announcement by Microsoft that it is canceling its Live Search Books and Live Search Academic doesn’t mean that book digitization initiatives are coming to a halt, states Joseph Esposito in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. […]

Howard Ratner — A New Cook in the Kitchen

Please join me in welcoming Howard Ratner, Chief Technology Officer and EVP for the Nature Publishing Group, as a new contributor to the Scholarly Kitchen. Howard will be writing occasionally. I’m personally thrilled to have the help, especially from such […]

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, […]

Interface Eye Candy

Two new visualization approaches have caught my eye, and though I typically loathe cute interface write-ups (the kinds of interfaces that generate write-ups are usually too trendy and ephemeral, and won’t stand the test of time), since today is a […]

The Browser Battle Heats Up

Image via Wikipedia Firefox is my favorite browser. It has been for years. Now, Mozilla is preparing to release Firefox 3.0, according to a story in the New York Times, which details how Microsoft, Apple (through its controversial push of […]

easY readiNG thanKS to XML

A fascinating article in Publishers Weekly details changes in large print books and magazines, enabled by the broad utilization of XML and more custom and e-publishing options. One of the groups profiled is ReadHowYouWant. Not only are new type sizes […]

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 […]

Volume Is Not Usability

Web metrics are often relied upon simultaneously for two things — commercialization of Web content (selling the page views and ad impressions, or selling site licenses) and analysis of usability issues or user preferences. Using traditional Web metrics for commercialization […]

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 […]

Internet & Society Now a Legit Couple

We are gathered together today to honor a union that has been 10 years in the making. By taking this brave step, these two — the Internet and Society — have acknowledged their ongoing devotion to one another, the profound […]

20% Is All You Can Hope For?!

I knew he was right when I found myself printing it out. Jakob Nielsen has a new report on how much users read online. The report is only 1,068 words long, but this is apparently beyond the point most readers […]

The Web Fills Up = Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Demonstrating that Aristotle’s assertion “Nature abhors a vacuum” applies even to online resources, a recent report from WebSiteOptimization.com illustrates how Web 2.0 has created enough content and interactions to begin to fill the capacity generated by broadband access. Yet, broadband […]