Group items tagged

What happens when you extend your brand/clout too far? Scholastic is taking heat for promoting non-book merchandise to kids, with video games causing the biggest uproar.

Play around, you'll figure it out.

How the rise of ebook sales is changing the game for book stores, particularly Barnes & Noble.

Google adjusts an algorithm to to combat SEO gaming.  No longer true (at least on Google) that "All publicity is good publicity"

A fascinating investigation that raises questions about Digg's ranking algorithm; revenue models based on page views; and the ethics of media outlets inflating their page hits using social bookmarking.

Look for flexible Kindle screens, in color.

Technology research firm IDC makes forecasts for 2010. Also, a look at Apples new touchscreen tablet computer, or iPad, that will have an 8-10inch screen. The iPad will be ideal for watching movies, surfing the Web, playing games, and reading books. It will be general-purpose, unlike Amazon's single-pupose Kindle reader and may give the Kindle a run for its money.

Two new e-book readers: The PocketBook 301 and the PocketBook 360. Both support six languages, have built in Sudoku, chess, sea battle, and solitaire games as well as a picture viewer with a slideshow function, a clock, and calendar. Users can also change the font size or make notes.

Tablets, e-readers and game systems will dominate the consumer tech market. What stocks to buy.

Interesting project for Internet archiving...wonder about some of the (eventual) privacy issues that might be involved, though. As the article quotes the archivist: "'Whoever is going to be president in 2048, she's in high school now, and she may have a Web site, and we probably have it.'" How many political opponents would love to seize on this hypothetical person if her teenage rants (e.g., "OMG my mom is so horrible, she won't let me go to Kasey's party on Saturday! Isn't there some kind of law against child abuse?") came to light when she's 53 and in a position of power? Is/Will it be considered fair game to judge a middle-aged woman by what the adolescent says now?

Is the KindleFire really that great? Has anyone used one yet?

I haven't played with the Fire yet, but I'm always very dubious of the "tech analyst". Let's face it, dominating the Android tablet market isn't all that difficult right now, as there is a dearth of poorly built, poorly performing Android tablets on the market today. My own personal opinion is that the OS offers a lot of promise, but ironically the real value of the Fire is its connection to Amazon's own "walled garden" of products and services, which flys directly in the face of Android's selling characteristic of "openness".

Randomly, my friend won a Kindle Fire at an office holiday function and I got to play around with it last night. Here are my impressions: First, it's very simple to use though it has that same noticeable lag that all Android tablets seem to have, though I will say not as pronounced as others. It has a rubber-like backing in the same style that the NOOK Simple Touch employs, so it feels good in your hands and won't slide around. Here's one thing that I was surprised about; it's a bit of a brick, meaning it's a lot heavier than I expected. For an eReader, weight seems like a big deal, so I would definitely take one for a test-spin before buying if you can, especially if you're going to use it for long reads. My friend only had one copy of a book, and I thumbed through pretty quickly, and the Fire seemed to handle it well. It had a lot less lag page turning than it did starting apps. On the web, the Fire did pretty well, it downloaded and ran pages smoothly for the most part. Though I will say I went to one of my favorite sites (arsenal.com) to watch some video highlights of yesterday's game, and even though it has a 7 inch screen, the video "wasn't optimized" for the Fire, so the playback size was smaller than it would have been on my iPhone (postage stamp size). On ESPN.com though it seemed to handle video there much better. My other complaint was that the Fire didn't seem to recognize page widths very well, so you have to do a lot of pinching to get the right view of a page in portrait view. So, I'll put down my pocket-protector, ease off the dork-pedal a bit, and just say for the price it's a solid tablet that runs pretty well.

Getting in shape for a changing job market.

One editor's take what endures and what changes for publishers and editors in the digital world.

Insuring that cloud computing doesn' lead to a loss of privacy and the ability to innovate.

From the Pan Macmillan blog earlier this year. Please see the reader comments and the follow up post.