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Yahoo Makes Advancements In Mobile Ads - 10/09/2009

Possible generation-gap-type issues for digital educational publishing for colleges: "Today, the college assumes all students not only have computer skills but a plethora of high-tech devices and services. The class schedule and registration procedure is entirely online-even if you're in the registrar's office....In the first class, the professor handed out her e-mail address and the URL where the syllabus could be found--instead of her office phone number and a copy of the syllabus. Unfortunately, the college sites are full of graphics and animations and download very slowly on my dial-up connection. (Even if I could afford a broadband connection, my ISP doesn't provide it in my area.)" "At least one exercise in each chapter requires accessing the publisher's textbook Web site. Many of these exercises could just as easily be put on the computer disk also sold-at an increased profit (I used to work for a textbook-preparation company)-with the text....Again, a dial-up connection won't download the videos. The audio files are .mp3; I can't open them, don't have the skill to know what program I need, and have no access to free technical support....So once every chapter I head for either the heavily used public library or the equally heavily used computer lab in the college's suburban learning center (branch campus)--and hope that a computer is available."

Fortune magazine will publish just 18 issues a year, down from 25, as it looks to cut costs in the ad slump. Cuts at other Time Inc. publications are expected." />

Ranking Redundancy: Digg Launches Trending Stories - 11/05/2009

Apple Tablet, Publishers Not Included? - 10/30/2009

Questia Library Plus iPhone app. Credit: Questia We'll spare you the obvious "there's an app for that" joke. But you can get a library's worth of books on your phone. Questia, an online research portal for students, announced its application today for reading books, articles and periodicals on an iPhone or iPod Touch. The app costs 99 cents for 5,000 public-domain books and a week of unlimited access. After that, users can buy a two-week subscription for $9.99. There are so many things wrong with this we don't know where to start. For one, students don't like to buy things....

McClatchy Launches Digital Papers on the Kindle - 11/23/2009

Ethical dilemma -- how far can a publication ethically go to get a hold of its story sources?

Are textbooks history in the digital era? : States across the country are slashing education budgets, forcing schools to cut expenses. One option getting a lot of attention is digital textbooks. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports.

A look at a different way for books to get to the public...

A must-read series on online privacy by the Wall Street Journal.  If you browse the web, if you write email, if you have an ISP you should know about this  

I know we've discussed in class how Google (and other entities) seems to know so much about us, but isn't it a bit naive to assume the opposite? We expose a piece of our private lives in every way: credit cards for example track where we go, where we eat, what we buy, and the like. Even if paying cash at places, we're signing up for list servs, blogs, campaigns, donating to charities that require contact information, filling out surveys. Given this, is it all that surprising that we are being "watched"? I don't think it's possible to function in today's society without exposing much of ourselves (when you want to pay cash somewhere, the bank knows when, where, what time of day you withdrew money), unless we change our names or deliver false information.

The Canadian government is about to change its stance on copyright to a much tougher view.

October 14 is Open Access day. Co-sponsored by the Public Library of Science, open access is gaining ground, but PLOS, SPARC, and Students for FreeCulture are hoping to get a little boost with this first OA Day.

How do you keep a print book relevant in a rapidly changing technology domain?  Continuous publishing is one possibility, supported in O'Reilly Press' Live Editions.   See the comments for some interesting discussion with the authors of the first Live Edition book.

Top Newspaper Publishing Stories - Editor & Publisher provides newspaper industry headlines covering emerging and important news.

Mostly having to do with scholarly publishing....