There is an entertaining and instructive piece about libraries The Library in the New Age and their exciting future, from Robert Darnton (distinguished historian of print and librarian at Harvard) in the current issue of the New York Review of Books. A lot of his focus is on Google and Google Book Search, but the conclusions of the article are surprisingly conservative: “Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter.” It is as though … Keep Reading
Author: adamhodgkin Page 85 of 151
Richard Charkin (Exacutive Director at Bloomsbury and – to declare an interest – friend of many years standing) is quoted in the Guardian on the permanence of books:
‘There will continue to be a market for printed books for a very long time. I believe the bulk of people will still prefer to hold, feel, treasure, give, receive, display and read a printed book.’
Although, in some moods I am inclined to agree with Charkin: what if he is whistling … Keep Reading
The Exact Editions import process now makes post codes live, clickable, resources. We have been doing this for a week. It is not easy to predict all the doors that this might open for our publishing partners. But it is very clear that it makes advertisements more useful and more interesting. Take a simple classified ad in the Quaker weekly The Friend, which we distribute every Friday. The Penn Club has a regular ad in the magazine:
… Keep ReadingYesterday’s FT had a piece about mapping as an interface to the web. This is one view on why this change is important:
… Keep ReadingErik Jorgensen, a senior executive in Microsoft’s online operations, says the software company is building a “digital representation of the globe to a high degree of accuracy” that will bring about “a change in how you think about the internet”. He adds: “We’re very much betting on a paradigm shift. We believe it will be
Sure, it is already happening. Today I followed a link from Om Malik, where he was talking about movie clips popping up within Skype conversations (apparently that is coming — and I totally agree that Skype video calls work very well, so why not include video in the conversation?). Anyway, Om was citing the way that TV shows are now using Skype interviews, here is a link to Oprah doing it. Well that is interesting, and the Skype … Keep Reading