books

Textbook 2.0

August 26, 2011

I’ve written a few times about the future of publishing. Once to highlight concepts by Bonnier, another time to highlight a talk given by Steven Berlin-Johnson. I now work at a publisher, GigaOM produces reporting on the tech industry and GigaOM Pro produces long-form research reports. The long-form research reports are an interesting challenge. Because [...]

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Seth Godin on Changes in Publishing

May 19, 2011

Seth Godin’s is a prolific writer and a champion for the book business. That’s why he wants to save it, but not in a format you would recognize. The Domino Project is a joint venture with Amazon to rethink the way books are, “built, sold and spread.” In a piece written earlier this week, Seth [...]

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Three Schools of Thought on the Internet

February 22, 2011

Adam Gopnik has a survey in this week’s New Yorker running down a few of the recent books about the internet and divides them into three schools of thought: The Never-Betters believe that we’re on the brink of a new utopia, where information will be free and democratic, news will be made from the bottom up, [...]

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Skeuonyms and Collapsitarians

January 29, 2011

Just finished Kevin Kelly’s latest book, What Technology Wants, and learned two new words/phrases. Skeuonym – an expression left over from an older technology, no longer used. Examples include, “rewinding the tape,” “dialing the phone, “filming a movie,” or “cranking the engine.” Anti-civilization Collapsitarian – folks like the Unabomber who view technology with suspicion and [...]

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The Next Opportunity in Publishing

November 17, 2010

Much to the chagrin of my wife, I took over the remote on our internet-enabled TV (old macbook hooked up via HD cable to the back of our flatscreen) to catch highlights from the Web 2 Summit taking place this week in San Francisco. Steven Berlin-Johnson’s “high order bit” on the early history of book [...]

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Manga Farming

July 5, 2010

From the sustainable Otaku department. Tokyo artist Koshi Kawachi demonstrated how to use old manga to start your own urban farm. [via Pink Tentacle]

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Custom Book Jackets Drive Awareness

June 19, 2008

From the folks that brought you the Day in the Life and America 24/7 photo books, comes their latest project which takes a peek inside homes across America. As they have done in the past, they are offering custom book jackets and they have a cool little app where you can upload a photo and [...]

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Crowdsourced Book Cover Art

August 19, 2007

Remember Penguin’s crowdsourced novel? Looks like it’s done and getting prepped to go to print. They’re at it again. This time in conjunction with Piczo on the cover art.

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David Weinberger on the Miscellaneous

May 15, 2007

One of the great things about working at Yahoo is that on any given week there’s a brown bag lunch with someone interesting or provocative. Posters around campus promote these bigger draws and I subscribe to an internal mailing list which lets me know of the others. I try and make it to as many [...]

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Richard Scarry’s Cultural Commentary

November 23, 2005

Flickr user Alan Taylor finds some interesting differences between his 1963 edition of Richard Scarry’s book and the more recent version he got for his kids. Annotated photos show point out the details. The "brave hero" rescues the "beautiful screaming lady" in 1963 but in 1991 its the "fire fighter" rescues the "cat in danger."

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