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Yochai Benkler, a Yale University law professor and author of the new book "The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom" (Yale University Press), has gone even farther: his entire book is available - free - as a download from his Web site. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people have accessed the book electronically, with some of them adding comments and links to the online version.

Abstract This paper argues that the evolution of e-book technology is related to the penetrating impact of networks and information technology on society. It defines the concept of e-book and describes some aspects of e-book technology. By focusing on book production processes, the paper examines what probable consequences the development of e-books and a global network economy will have for publishers and book industries. E-books, along with other electronic formats, will trigger major changes as the digital products and distribution channels will force the logic of the network economy on the book publishing industry.

This is an overview of the development of the digital research infrastructure in Arts and Humanities in Slovenia. The aim of the case study is to identify the development of the digital humanities infrastructure, to map all relevant recommendations, strategies, initiatives and key figures supporting and enabling the development of (future) policies. The main focus is on the development process itself; identifying individual initiatives, ideas, strategies, collaborations, accomplishments, references and the obstacles encountered. The paper includes a comparative component - considering developments in Slovenia within a broader EU and non‐EU context. Programme Seventh Framework Programme Specific Capacities

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 Those creating computing progress increasingly see these journals as unreadable, outdated and irrelevant.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.

Rupert Murdoch in China, arguing for paid content, and greater freedom for the press. 'The challenge of fusing past and present is real for media companies, and for China. Our aim must be to enhance the lives of our customers and citizens, and yet we find ourselves in the midst of an information revolution that is both exciting and unsettling. It is a digital revolution turning traditional business models upside down … traversing geographic, industrial, and media boundaries … and creating a new source of wealth, material and social, around the world.'

"THE fundamental reasons why the electric car has not attained the popularity it deserves are (1) The failure of the manufacturers to properly educate the general public regarding the wonderful utility of the electric; (2) The failure of [power companies] to make it easy to own and operate the electric by an adequate distribution of charging and boosting stations. The early electrics of limited speed, range and utility produced popular impressions which still exist."

Although many authors believe that their work has a greater research impact if it is freely available, studies to demonstrate that impact are few. This study looks at articles in four disciplines at varying stages of adoption of open access-philosophy, political science, electrical and electronic engineering and mathematics-to see whether they have a greater im- pact as measured by citations in the ISI Web of Science database when their authors make them freely available on the Internet. The finding is that, across all four disciplines, freely available articles do have a greater research impact. Shedding light on this category of open access reveals that scholars in diverse disciplines are adopting open-access practices and being rewarded for it.

For Chilean scientist Humberto Maturana, 72, living beings are machines that distinguish themselves from others in their ability to "self-produce." This theory - which he calls "autopoiesis" - has captivated many philosophers, psychologists and environmentalists around the world who are interested in exploring the essence of life from a basis of the "biology of cognition."

This is a llst of the most pirated ebooks from file sharing site, BitTorrent. Given nearly all of them are software guides or porn, the article says the publishing industry doesn't have much to worry about in terms of lost revenue - although the Twilight series is number seven.

The uproar, including a lawsuit, over the removal of copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle devices comes as Amazon faces renewed e-book competition. Interesting article in terms of some of the issues discussed in the Thompson reading this week re the digital revolution and the publishing world.

The way to test the impact advantage of Open Access (OA) is not to compare the citation impact factors of OA and non-OA journals but to compare the citation counts of individual OA and non-OA articles appearing in the same (non-OA) journals. Such ongoing comparisons are revealing dramatic citation advantages for OA.

Read The seven ages of magazine readers & other Media Week news online. The seven ages of magazine readers from Media Week. Media Week magazine - news and information from the world of media

Mike Elgan writes about ebooks and how publishers should be embracing them and not trying to block them. He promotes the idea of an all inclusive package of ebook, hardcover and audio book.

Mike Elgan writes about ebooks and how publishers should be embracing them and not trying to block them. He promotes the idea of an all inclusive package of ebook, hardcover and audio book

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.

Bing positions itself as a 'decision engine' with the launch of 'visual search in Bing.' Instead of providing a list of blue hyptertext links, now Bing will visualise their search results on a 3D grid including icons and photos.

"We wanted to ask a different question," said Clifford Nass, a Stanford University cognitive scientist. "What happens to people who multitasking all the time?" In a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nass and Stanford psychologists Anthony Wagner and Eyal Ophir surveyed 262 students on their media consumption habits. The 19 students who multitasked the most and 22 who multitasked least then took two computer-based tests, each completed while concentrating only on the task at hand.

Interesting that. And scary. Hail the era of scatterbrains. I'm definetely one of them.

China approved of Google's efforts to filter porn from search results on its China portal following state-led criticism of the links, the former head of Google China said Sunday.

In the 15th century Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing process. This new technology changed the world forever. One specific task was made incredibly easy - the spreading of written words. eBooks take us to the threshold of a possible shift in the way we read books.

The millions of blogs on WordPress.com will now have a clean mobile theme turned on by default, removing most of the formatting and making the sites easy to load on a phone. WordPress bloggers may want to opt-out of the new setting; not everyone likes how the first mobile themes selected by WordPress looks.