Archive
Browse inside: MediaLoper on HC
Another Medialoper Nutshell, this time on the new ‘widget’ introduced by HC to allow bloggers to embed an extract on their sites:
HarperCollins is facing two key challenges with this feature. In order for this experiment to work, users must associate books and authors with the publisher. When I think “Michael Crichton”, I don’t automatically think [...]
Published: March 6, 2007. Read more →
A Period of Transition
What follows is a post I’ve had lined up for a while, which unapologetically asks a difficult question. My apologies in advance to all of you who have been offended by my improper language in the past - but I’m going to be swearing again in the bit that follows…
Published: January 19, 2007. Read more →
The Key Phrase is “3.5 inches is suspiciously perfect for reading.”
Booksquare has made the one insightful comment I’ve read since Steve Job’s iPhone presentation. And it is that the ‘iPhone can save the book industry’. Two quotes from the full article:
The iPhone also features a surprisingly large screen, and has the ability to automatically change the screen orientation when a user turns it sideways. At [...]
Published: January 16, 2007. Read more →
E-Ink device summary piece
Another aspect of the spring clean, some of it better orgainsed in this case.
Published: November 19, 2006. Read more →
The Master Plan: follow up (& Netflix)
I’m posting an edited transcript of an email correspondence I had with my friend Alex after he read my post yesterday about Abe and LibraryThing. It may be a little bit heady and technical, but I think it’s extremely interesting if you like the way things are recommended to people. And I think Tim from [...]
Published: October 6, 2006. Read more →
YouTube
Some interesting stuff floating around about YouTube and whether it might all be about to go horribly wrong. I thought I’d bring this up as it is a landmark site for many reasons, and how its future pans out could be a weather vane for many things online, most prominently copyright and how it is [...]
Published: October 5, 2006. Read more →
Sony reader update
Two quick (and quite opposed) links about the second coming of the ebook:
IF: book on the Phony Reader Fallacy
The Guaradian on the coming of age of ebooks.
Jason Epstein on Google
Jason Epstein, whom I blogged earlier this year, has reviewed a number of books in the current New York Review.
The books include the long tail, but mainly cover Google and it’s incredible story. Included in the reviews are veteran google watcher (and, of-late, critic) John Battelle’s The Search. It’s an OK piece, and clearly [...]
Published: October 4, 2006. Read more →
Frankfurt predictions
It’s that time of year, and for one, I’m not going to be there - although I wish I could be. I think it’s going to be a busy year in the digital side of things, so here are some predictions for what may happen in the next 6 days.
Amazon announces the launch of Kindle [...]
Published: October 3, 2006. Read more →
Agents on Google
Anecdotally, I spoke to a couple of UK literary agents last week, who were in Edinburgh for the book festival. One of the things we discussed was the approach of UK houses towards technology, digitisation, online marketing, websites and the like - in the light of presentations made by the big three (Penguin, Random House [...]
Published: August 23, 2006. Read more →