Some librarians are complaining that they have been used by Google (hat tip to David Rothman) and they worry that Google is now losing interest in the library market. Google certainly seems to have backed away from publishers (no longer attending the main trade fairs, not making a concerted pitch towards them). So is the Google Book Search project losing its direction? Here are three guesses about that:
Seth Godin has some intriguing and radical reactions to the Kindle. Hear his conclusion:
… Keep ReadingA lot has been written about how cool the screen is. It is cool. A lot has been written about the offbeat interface (not so good) and the seamless downloading (a wonder.) This is all irrelevant to me. What’s worth commenting on is how close the Kindle comes to revolutionizing the way ideas are sold and spread, and how short it comes out in the end
The Exact Editions platform makes it easy for publishers to offer free searching of their titles. The publisher can decide how ‘restrictive’ the search results will be, but even on the most restrictive view, the search results can be quite informative. For, example if you search in Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage on your own name, (click on the Debretts link if you wish to see any of the links which follow) you will find out whether you have aristocratic connections. … Keep Reading
This topic is really only for publishing and logistics nerds. Since I am not nerdy enough, I am not really qualified to opine on the matter (but when did that stop anybody?). Anyway we find it an intriguing and perplexing issue. PersonaNonData today has a report on the flux that digital publishers find themselves in. Should there be as many ISBNs for each title as there are conceivable ebook formats? If so, there are going to be a very great … Keep Reading
Zoomii is an imaginative way of using and displaying front covers (works fine in Firefox, not in Opera and Safari). It is an alternative interface to Amazon which gives you a good way of shopping for Amazon titles using a ‘virtual bookstore’ with the covers on shelves, face-out and clickable to purchase or get more data. I really like the way that it is built on Amazon bookstore meta-data, uses Amazon’s S3 and Amazon EC2 (Amazon’s cloud computing infrastructure) and … Keep Reading
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