When I first read the news that Nintendo was moving to turn their hand-held DS game system into an ebook reader, I was pretty excited–Imagine, turning a wildly popular game platform into a Kindle competitor! Sadly, it’s not as cool as it could be. It looks like Nintendo is releasing a single collection of 100 classic titles (the anthology sports the imaginative title “100 classic books“) for the DS. It looks to me like the titles being mentioned are probably all in the public domain, which means no messy royalty issues for Nintendo. It also means that the titles are unlikely to be terribly compelling to young readers. I dug up some demographics information on the DS, and it looks like 54% of DS owners in Europe (not sure as of when–pre-June 2006, when the linked article was written) are women, which bodes well for their venture into ebooks, as most readers are women. However, 52% of European DS users are under 14, which seems like a young market for “100 classic books.” Read the rest of this entry »
Author Archive
More stuff cropped up today that resonates with Accelerando. Linda from Ink and Paper tweeted about an article on Mashable about a pretty fascinating service. Or program. Or some combination thereof. It’s called WordPressDirect, and it’s essentially a blog automation service. You get the program, decide what sort of niche you want to blog about, and enter some keywords. The program then sets up a blog for you (though you get to choose how it looks), making categories for posts dependent on the keywords you’ve given it. So far so good, and no huge deal. The next bit is what put me in mind of Accelerando: the program will then monitor RSS feeds, other blogs, YouTube, and a host of other resources, and automatically post blog entries for you. More after the break. . . . Read the rest of this entry » I’ve recently been reading Charles Stross’s Accelerando, and that, combined with the news that the Google settlement has gotten preliminary approval and the recent offer I got from Verizon for a new phone has made me think that I’m probably going to go for a high-end phone come June or so. In Accelerando, Stross paints a not-unfamiliar picture of the near to distant future: Technological change continues not just to advance, but to accelerate, aided by ever-faster computers and more and more ubiquitous communication. It’s a pretty fascinating book so far (I’m just about a third of the way through, but my rate of advance, like his technological change, is accelerating), and I’m reminded more than a bit of George Zebrowski’s Macrolife. Both books span a large stretch of human history, but beyond that they both stress the interconnectedness of people when technology approaches the singularity. So what does this have to do with my phone and the Google settlement? Well, assuming the Google settlement is approved in June, I’m sure it will not be long until we see the fruits of that settlement show up online. All those books that Google has scanned in will be available for the downloading or the on-line perusing, and there will be a system set up to pay rights holders–and to pay them about twice what Amazon pays for works they sell on the Kindle. To me, this sounds like Google is aiming to enter the ebook market with a bang. So in June or July, I would expect to see a Google alternative to the Kindle store pop up. So is Google going to roll out an ebook reader? I would say no. Well, not really. But kind of. What we’re going to see, I think, is a new version of the Android cell phone OS that comes out in, oh, June or so. Maybe May. Right now there’s just the one phone that I know of that runs on Android, but there are more companies who are interested. And I would be surprised if we don’t see a new version of the OS, or at least new applications built for the OS, that are tailor-made to display ebooks purchased from Google. So the letter from Verizon? It was one of those “new every two” things, where I can get a discount on a new phone since I’ve had my old one for two years, as long as I sign a shiny new contract with them. And will I? Well, reading Accelerando has excitied me about the prospect of virtually ubiquitous internet connection. even if I have to do it through a cell phone instead of cool heads-up display glasses, cranial implants, or having my consciousness uploaded onto the internet. So far. So yes, I’ll probably be getting a new phone in June or so, and it will probably be running Android. I suppose that leaves whether or not I’ll be signing up with Verizon, up to Verizon. For those of you in the Portland area, this weekend you ought to stop by the Portland Convention Center to check out Wordstock, Portland’s annual convention of the book. There are going to be a lot of authors and a ton of publishers and booksellers there, so even outside of the panel discussions and presentations there should be plenty of chances for great conversation. Plus, admission is only $5. Ooligan Press will have a couple of tables, with a pretty neat display showing the publishing process and a pitch table for authors to come throw their ideas at us. So come on down, meet cool people, and enjoy book culture for an afternoon!  Copyleft symbol Cory Doctorow, science fiction author, blogger, and part time super hero, has an interesting article up at Locus Online titled “Why I Copyfight.” Doctorow has been involved with Creative Commons for a long time, and has progressive-to-radical views about copyright law and copyright reform; he asks a lot of very pertinent questions, and asks them well. The thrust of his article in Locus is that copyright laws were created in a time when copying took time, effort, and expensive equipment. As such, he argues, it is out of place in the modern world, where copying is ubiquitous and even necessary. He also brings up the point that copyright law today is at odds with the way that people live their lives; we are all copyright infringers, he argues. More after the break. . . . Registration has just opened for O’Reilly Books‘ Tools of Change conference in New York. As reported in the TOC blog, O’Reilly is offering a chance to win free admission to the conference to four authors of personal accounts about “your experience with a new technology, technique, or strategy based on the shifting publishing landscape.” These accounts can be in any format; text and video are both mentioned. O’Reilly is one of the big names in tech books of the “not for dummies” variety, and it should come as no surprise that they are very interested in new technology and publishing. The conference promises to be fascinating; there’s certainly a lot to be discussed, from what publishers sell to how they sell it. Their site doesn’t have a detailed list of presentations that will be given yet, but I’m sure it will be forthcoming as the date of the conference gets closer.  More of my bookshelf. Clever, no? Well, here it is, hot off the presses both here and over at Ink & Paper: Part 2 of my exploration of ebook world. Again, thanks to Jen, Linda, Bo, and Cam for giving me the green light about posting this here as well as on their site! Welcome back to the world of ebook design. Last time, we talked about the necessity of mutable design for ebooks; specifically, about the need for things like reflowable text and proportional rather than static margins. Today, we’ll be looking at how to achieve that mutability of design.  Image of a newspaper Well, this is some interesting news: Google and the Author’s Guild have settled their dispute over author’s rights and the digitizing of massive collections. Or at least, there is a proposed settlement that’s still pending a judge’s review. But it’s sounding pretty definite. For those not in the loop, the issue here is that Google was working with Stanford University, the University of California and the University of Michigan, to digitize their entire collections. Google would then make these selections available through their Book search program. The selections are not generally complete, though if the copyright holder consents Google will display the entire work. On some of the books I browsed through, there were notes indicating ommitted pages (“Pages 12-14 are not part of this preview”), and other books would let you browse through the entire work, but only for a certain number of pages; The Two Towers stopped about 300 pages in, with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum just taking leave of Faramir. So most of the books was there, but not all of it. Books in the public domain are viewable in their entirety, and are downloadable as PDF files. More after the break . . . .
Yeah, they’re charging enough for it that they can afford to knock over a thousand bucks off the price tag for students. And yeah, I went and bought it. Why? Well, mostly because InDesign and Photoshop are industry standards. And yes, I know and love the GIMP, and I’ve heard good things about Scribus, but I’m just learning how to use those tools right now, and if all goes well I’ll get a job after graduation with a publishing place that has computers of its own. Those computers will more than likely be loaded with Adobe products, so it behooves me to be pretty familiar with them, and I’ll learn how to use them more easily if I’m not more familiar with how another program works. Another selling point for me was the presence of Dreamweaver, which my sister the web designer swears by. So the Design Premium suite came with some other stuff that seemed useful to me. I haven’t had much of a chance to test drive everything yet, and in any case I’m at best a novice user, so I wouldn’t check back frequently for insightful product reviews or anything (actually, check back frequently for whatever you want), but I’ll probably have something to say about my impressions of CS4 in the coming weeks.
I don’t know about most of the rest of the reading world, but I do most of my reading on paperbacks. I pick up hardcovers of books I particularly like, or more rarely of new books by authors I know I like. If I buy a hardcover by an author I don’t know, it’s because it’s either on the discount rack or because I’ve heard amazing things from a reliable source, or both (as was the case when I picked up Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which did not disappoint in the least). The bulk of my reading, though is done in paperback. Read on for more of my thoughts. . . . |
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