- Nook pulls out of UK – can't guarantee access to ebooks
If I owned a Nook, I would a) be furious and b) be looking to break the DRM on everything on it, ASAP.
- Dymaxion: Infrastructural Games and Societal Play
An article on using Nordic LARP tools to design and build societal infrastructure. Fascinating/important and at the perfect intersection of my interests.
- The Official Hannibal Cookbook Will Not Include Human Ingredients
The important bit: there's going to be a Hannibal cookbook!
Tag: ebooks
Bookmarks for October 31, 2012
- Pentametron: With algorithms subtle and discrete / I seek iambic writings to retweet.
An automated sonnet-generator, scanning twitter for iambic pentameter tweets, and combining them, complete with rhyme.
- Migrating from Kindle to iBooks – zacwe.st
This is definitely esier now that it was the last time I looked at it. Must do this.
Bookmarks for April 18, 2012
- CMAP #2: How Books Are Made – Charlie's Diary
I have had a few conversations recently with people who have kvetched about having to pay the same price for an ebook as they do for the paperback, and I have wished that I was able to easily find this post to point them at. Short version: the cost of your paperback book is *not* a materials cost. Physical production, shipping and distribution account for around a quid of the price. The other six of seven quid is labour, and there's a lot more labour goes in that you might think, and most of it isn't the author's.
- Twitter’s “Innovator’s Patent Agreement” – Marco.org
No, it looks like other people have come to the same conclusions.
- Twitter Blog: Introducing the Innovator's Patent Agreement
This is quite a good idea, although one might quibble over what "only used defensively" means – it's possible that I'm misunderstanding the legalese, but it looks to me that any company who has filed a patent infringement suit for any reason in the last ten years (and who might be infringing, obviously) would be fair game. Which in turn means that this is meaningless, and will be just as innovation-stifling in practice as any current agreement. But I await being told that I've misunderstood.
- Paul Woods – Life on the Northern Line
This made me smile this morning.
Bookmarks for April 17, 2012
- What Amazon's ebook strategy means – Charlie's Diary
Mr Stross, on Amazon's strategy, and the obvious step publishers could take to help unseat them from monopsony.
Bookmarks for March 23, 2012
- A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: Presumed Inane
This si interesting food for thought – a couterpoint to the usual amazon-is-bad publishing-industry rhetoric. I don't know if I buy it (and I don't know if I don't) but it's certainly made me think about some of the things I've taken for granted as "facts" in the debate.
- On Improving iBooks – Connor Tomas O'Brien
This is two years old, and I am frustrated that most of the things that are being talked about here are not implemented. At the very least, it seems it ought to be possible to make iBooks-DRMed content available to other apps on the same device, via API. Apple/Publishers still get to make their sales money, while another app could do the work of tracking my reading habits.
- Large Bookbag – Henry Tomkins
I think I may have found the bag of my dreams. Satchel strap, double buckle, with front pocket. Knocking on the door of 200 quid, as opposed to my current 40 quid effort, but oh, isn't it beautiful? Time to start saving.
- Cool Tools: Where There Is No Doctor
This is either brilliant, or pure hypochondria fodder.
- Geeklist and a public apology
In the spirit of fairness: Geeklist have made a pretty unreserved public apology in the time since I bookmarked that first link. I'm still annoyed that they didn't get it right first time, but then, who among can say that they always do?
- Cow magnet – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I have absolutely no reason to blog this, except that I did not know these were a thing, and the words "Cow Magnet" make me laugh. I also wish that there was an accepted a alt.fan.warlord syntax for blogging as this comment would have been shorter if I thought more than three of you would understand IHNW IJLTS "Cow Magnets" without having to look anything up.
- OH HAI SEXISM · charlesarthur · Storify
Short version: woman calls geek men on their sexism. Geek men lash out in a grossly disproportionate and unprofessional manner. This is nothing new, except that these people are in the same industry as me, with a product that is targeted at, well, people exactly like me – well, it's saddening. And pathetic.
Bookmarks for May 20, 2011
- Amazon.com now selling more ebooks than print books
In the UK, they're only selling more ebooks than hardbacks, but in the US, it's only taken 4 years for ebooks to pass print, so I imagine it'll be even quicker here. Still: if your business depends on dead trees, it's time to start thinking about switching. And when I say "time to start thinking about", I mean "if you don't have a plan in place already, you're probably fucked".
Bookmarks for December 6, 2010
- Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian’s Digital Death Not Moving People – DesignTAXI.com
On the one hand: I'm sorry that the fundraising hasn't been as as successful as they hoped, because it is a good cause, on the other, surely a child of six might have thought that while people *like* having celebrity drivel as part of their Twitter/Farcebook experience, it's not something people would actively *miss* if it went away – whichever marketroid through the campaign up is clearly not very good at their job, especially as the campaign ensures it's own silence – they can't remind people that they're not there in order to drive donations without violating their pledge. (No, I'm not donating via said campaign. Show me a cause where I can get celebrities to stop Twittering/Facebooking for good by pledging, and I'll get the chequebook out.)
- Falling out of love (Phil Gyford’s website)
More grist to my mill in re: getting rid of books as physical objects: cheap POD books, which is where we're heading for book-as-physical-object (unless you want current bestsellers, which I almost never do) tend to be shoddier things. A good POD book is just as good as a regular book, but I've seen some very shoddy examples in the past, where I would definitely rather have had the ebook.
Bookmarks for December 2, 2010
- I, Reader by Alexander Chee – The Morning News
This is a really really good personal summary of an obsessive book collector's relationship with his new e-readers. If you're a bibliophile who is wondering if there's a place for e-readers in your life, I suggest you read this.
- How Lieberman Got Amazon To Drop Wikileaks | TPMMuckraker
This is idiotic rubbish on the part of Lieberman, and worse, Amazon. It isn't at all clear that Wikileaks has done anything illegal, and presuming they have just because powerful people don't like it is exactly the wrong response, and sends all sorts of hideous messages about society.
- After secrets: Missing the point of WikiLeaks | The Economist
And of course, as this makes clear, Lieberman and Amazon are very much missing the point. This is not a problem that can be fixed by attacking Wikileaks, or any similar service.
Bookmarks for October 12, 2010
- Amazon Introduces The Digital Pamphlet With ‘Kindle Singles’
Ooh, now this is very interesting indeed. I could probably assemble 10,000 words on any one specific subject quite easily. They might even be entertaining enough to be worth buying.
- Pass The Parcel by Delilah Des Anges
Del has made her frankly excellent book, Pass The Parcel, available for purchase, for which you should all be very grateful. Del is a writer of no small talent, and deserves your cash, so you should fork it over at your earliest convenience. In exchange, you're going to get a novel containing Weird London and collection of freaks, losers and bastards with will have you clamouring for more. Go.
Bookmarks for February 5, 2009
- Southbank Centre > Music > Mouse on Mars soundtrack Herzog's Fata Morgana
Anyone interested in this? Herzog + weird German Electro sounds like a moral victory to me.
- Should The New York Times Ditch Paper, Distribute Kindle E-readers?
According to one set of maths, it might actually work out cheaper for the paper to give away Kindles for a while, and then switch to digital only. The logic is flawed in a number of places (the move would cripple their ability to pick up new readers in the short term for example), but it's still fascinating to see that even with e-paper equivalent as expensive as the Kindle, the maths looks to be becoming favourable.
- Open the Future: Flunking Out
Jamais Cascio explaining quite clearly why the academic program offered by the recently opened "Singularity University" is a load of old trousers, and offering a rather more sensible sounding educational program for teaching people to think about the coming years/decades.
- DesignAday – Truism
"Broken gets fixed. Shoddy lasts forever." Having recognised that as true, I don't particularly need to refer to the actual this link myself, but I thought I'd mark anyway it just as an action to ensure I commit it to memory.