“The Sorted Books project picks books out of collections whose spines, when placed in sequence, can be made into a sentence or story”. Take a look, it’s fascinating.
Skills in the Digital Era part two
Posted on 26 September, 2008
Posted in Publishing, Reading devices, eBooks
The Society of Young Publishers evening on Wednesday proved to be very illuminating, and it turned out that I agreed with everything Chris Meade had to say, especially about the importance of the creative roles in digital media, although from the other side of a five-year cline, and had anticipated some of his conclusions in [...]
Skills in the digital era
Posted on 24 September, 2008
Posted in General, Publishing, eBooks
I’ve been asked to be part of a discussion tonight given by the Society of Young Publishers.
‘While publishing companies invest significantly – if cautiously – in new technology, and the ‘digital age’ continues to accelerate, the portfolio of skills that publishers need is expanding rapidly. From editorial to production to marketing, the growing influence of [...]
Cultural Amnesia and ’special edition’ eBooks
Posted on 14 April, 2008
Posted in General, Publishing, Reading devices, eBooks
We published our first eBook back in 1979, of course. It came preloaded in its own reading device, with a screen about three inches by four, and featured full multimedia support, scrolling text, a hyperlinked index, automatic text-to-speech, regular (if infrequent) wireless updates, and a slip case with ‘Don’t Panic’ printed in large friendly letters. [...]
‘Digitizing the British Library’
Posted on 18 December, 2007
Posted in Library, Search
The February 2008 issue of PC Pro reports on the British Library’s plan to digitize 100,000 books published in the nineteenth century – 25,000,000 pages.
The digitizing partner chosen is Microsoft, with the actual work being done by a German firm, Content Conversion Specialists; the library ‘retains the rights to all the data being collected’ but [...]
I want to be a digital reader
Posted on 17 December, 2007
Posted in Reading devices
On 26 November, A. N. Wilson wrote an article in his Word of Books column entitled ‘I don’t want to be a digital reader’, a review of the Kindle, and in the current issue of PC Pro there’s another. I want to compare them because PC Pro, as one might expect, gets it about right, [...]
