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Ask any news Web site manager about their site's current design (and state of continual redesign) and the desire to "simplify" is likely high on the wish list. Also near the top: making better use of social networking tools.

This paper explores alternative forms of IBM technical documentation in the form of two case studies-one an eBook and the other a Macromedia Flash-based interactive multimedia presentation. Both projects were co-developed by the writers and graphic designers, with a mandate to create a rich, graphical approach to entice and engage users to read and understand complex technical concepts.

While current computing practice abounds with innovations like online auctions, blogs, wikis, twitter, social networks and online social games, few if any genuinely new theories have taken root in the corresponding "top" academic journals. Those creating computing progress increasingly see these journals as unreadable, outdated and irrelevant. Yet as technology practice creates, technology theory is if anything becoming even more conforming and less relevant. We attribute this to the erroneous assumption that research rigor is excellence, a myth contradicted by the scientific method itself. Excess rigor supports the demands of appointment, grant and promotion committees, but is drying up the wells of academic inspiration. Part I of this paper chronicles the inevitable limits of what can only be called a feudal academic knowledge exchange system, with trends like exclusivity, slowness, narrowness, conservatism, self-involvement and inaccessibility. We predict an upcoming social upheaval in academic publishing as it shifts from a feudal to democratic form, from knowledge managed by the few to knowledge managed by the many. The technology trigger is socio-technical advances. The drive will be that only democratic knowledge exchange can scale up to support the breadth, speed and flexibility modern cross-disciplinary research needs. Part II suggests the sort of socio-technical design needed to bring this transformation about.

Editors Only is a blog newsletter for publication editors. Topics include: editing, writing, magazine design, editorial management, online publishing, copyright, grammar, and readership surveys.

Vodafone is launching a cloud-based service designed for business people and consumers who are looking for a way to back up the data on their desktops, laptops and netbooks. The move is significant as Vodafone is making another move beyond the mobile market and is using cloud-based services to get there

The convergence culture again reflect on dual-screen device. we are looking forward to a design as perfect as the paper book itself.

Social networking, is really about people as sensors.Google Social Search is designed to let searches return traditional results along with updates and tweets that users' friends and other people they follow on various social networks have posted.