TOC Combined Feed : Tools of Change for Publishing

Michael Tamblyn's TOC Frankfurt presentation (actually a dramatic recreation thereof)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:05:38 -0500

Shortcovers' Michael Tamblyn was kind enough to record his talk and slides from last month's TOC Frankfurt Conference. I got a lot of great hallway feedback about the session, and you'll see it's for good reason. Michael will also be speaking at TOC New York.

Posted via web from TOC Posterous

Michael Tamblyn's TOC Frankfurt presentation (actually a dramatic recreation thereof)

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:00:05 -0500

via blip.tv

Posted via web from TOC Posterous

William Patry delivering Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property Law at Duke

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:10:42 -0500

via ustream.tv

Google Senior Copyright Counsel Bill Patry, who will be one of our keynote speakers at TOC 2010, delivered a great lecture at Duke last month dissecting the "moral panic" approach to copyright debate, as exemplified by the late Jack Valenti, former CEO of the MPAA. His talk is just under 30 minutes, and then he goes into Q&A with the audience. I particularly appreciated his point that copyright is a social structure, not a moral one, and not one that's based on property rights.

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Agree with this summary of why Posterous makes posting dead simple

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:45:05 -0500

via broadcast.oreilly.com

Mark Sigal's spot on in his assessment of micro-blogging service Posterous. It bridges the gap between Tweeting and Blogging and makes posting effortless.

Posted via web from TOC Posterous

Qwitter: Accessible Twitter client (uses TTS) (via @doctorow)

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:19:51 -0500

Just make sure not to follow anyone who's a member of the Author's Guild ...

"The Qwitter client enables blind individuals to interface with the Twitter service globally, regardless of application focus. Based off of revolutionary concepts pioneered in The Jawter Jaws Scripts, Qwitter, with full support for the three major comercial screen readers and sapi speech, provides you instant access to all aspects of the twitter microblogging service, giving you the ability to post a tweet from anywhere, read tweets, perform searches, and far, far more."

http://www.qwitter-client.net/

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"Web-based ePub validator adds Preflight and API" (via @liza)

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:26:49 -0500

From @liza at Threepress:

"EpubCheck’s lesser-known companion checks for additional issues like content documents that exceed 300K, which can’t be loaded on the Sony Reader."

http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/04/epub-validator-updates/

(ps -- thanks to @liza for making my day with the pointer to http://twitter.com/big_ben_clock)

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Despite recent gains for books, Games still dominate in the App Store (via @dliman)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:30:37 -0500

O'Reilly's Ben Lorica slices and dices current app trends for iPhone and Android (nice data points on price stabilization too):

"While it might be true that the number of Book apps is growing at a faster rate, Games continue to dominate the list of popular U.S. iTunes Apps. Games accounted for about a fifth of all iTunes apps over the past week†, but the category continued to have a disproportionate share of the Top 100 charts, accounting for 52% of the Top Grossing, 56% of the Top Paid, and 50% of the Top Free apps."

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/games-top-the-charts-iphone-android-markets.html

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Despite recent gains for books, Games still dominate in the App Store (via @dliman)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:25:04 -0500

O'Reilly's Ben Lorica slices and dices current app trends for iPhone and Android (nice data points on price stabilization too):

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/games-top-the-charts-iphone-android-markets.html

Posted via email from TOC Posterous

Early Registration Now Open for TOC 2010 New York

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:13:06 -0500

Early registration is now open for the 2010 Tools of Change for Publishing Conference returning to the Marriott Marquis Feb. 22-24 2010.

The program for TOC 2010 reflects how quickly the landscape is changing for publishers -- digital can no longer be thought of as a separate topic; digital creation, delivery, distribution, consumption, and communication are permeating every layer of the publishing ecology.

This year we've tried to include a lot of conversations about and with readers, to encourage discussion about how new formats and modes are shaping preferences and behavior. We've also split the popular Lightning Demo sessions into two different components, both now part of the main program. The familiar 5-minute demo format will remain for a dedicated Breakout Session, and as a special Plenary Session, we'll be using the popular and entertaining Pecha Kucha format, where each speaker gets 20 slides that advance automatically every 20 seconds. We've also split several of the tutorials into two 90-minute workshops, rather than the longer 3-hour format.

It's important to remember that we are still very early in a transition as big or bigger than the shift from manuscript to print as the primary form for books. And it's useful to look back on that transition for insight into how the apparent shortcomings of the new and uncertain matter little in the long run. From James J. O'Donnell's essay, The pragmatics of the new: Trithemius, McLuhan, Cassiodorus in The Future of the Book:

Every negative claim made about print [in the 15th century] is correct, and every negative prophecy came true. Take the argument about the likeness of copies making collation and correction impossible: a perfectly valid point. Why did it not derail print in its glorious career? ... [T]he system of communication introduced by print was so large, so fast, so powerful, and ultimately such a source of wealth that the defects of the system could be remedied as far as need be. ... In short, in the end, the defects of print and the criticisms they drew didn't matter. This is a lesson worth mulling at length.

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Gizmodo smells a rat (well, they smell something) when it comes to iPhone ebook sales

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:43:30 -0500

John Herrman has nice counterpoint on the rise of ebook apps, underscoring that quantity is not the same as quality:

Treasure Island, a free, public domain book, is available for purchase as a standalone app from over a dozen different developers, in all kinds of containers, at all kinds of prices. And why not! the content is free, so once developer has designed an ebook app container, he can just paste any public domain etext in there and throw it into the App Store. I have no idea if these things sell, but to be honest, they wouldn't have to do very well to make money for their developers—the investment is minimal.

http://gizmodo.com/5395396/iphone-ebooks-the-new-fart-apps

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"The future of news is entrepreneurial"

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:48:21 -0500

Nice post from TOC 2009 keynoter @jeffjarvis on the future of news:

There’s a lot in that statement. It says: The future of news is not institutional… The news of tomorrow has yet to be built…. The structure – the ecosystem – of news will not be dominated by a few corporations but likely will be made up of networks of many startups performing specialized functions based on the opportunities they see in the market…. Who does journalism, why and how will change…. The skills of journalists will change (to include business)…. We don’t yet know what the market will demand and support from journalism…. News will look disordered and messy…. There will be more failures than successes in the immediate future of news….

That statement also holds many implications for sectors of the economy and society: investment (put money into the new, not the old)… public policy (don’t protect and preserve the incumbents but nurture the startups by creating a fertile and level playing field)… education (how do we train journalists when everyone can do journalism? – how do we train everyone?)… marketing (advertising won’t be one-stop shopping anymore and that means it may support news less)… PR (influence will be no longer be concentrated)… technology (there are opportunities here)…

Finally, that statement does not say some things. It does not say that the incumbents’ institutions will necessarily die, only that they have proven not to be the source of innovation and growth in news.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/11/01/the-future-of-journalism-is-entrepreneurial/

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Amazon’s Kindle not lighting fires in Norway (from Quill & Quire)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:46:45 -0500

Despite healthy sales and an endorsement from Oprah in the U.S., Amazon’s Kindle reading device may run afoul of Norway’s consumer regulations should the online bookselling giant decide to release the device there in its present form.

via quillandquire.com

FWIW, there are currently 19 O'Reilly books in the top 100 paid book apps in Norway.

Posted via web from TOC Posterous

Free news but paid comments? (via @adamgaumont)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:46:07 -0500

Not sure I agree with the conclusion, but the journey was articulate and entertaining on the changing economics of media.

http://sicmind.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/premium-content/

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Amazon’s Kindle not lighting fires in Norway (from Quill & Quire)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:41:07 -0500

Despite healthy sales and an endorsement from Oprah in the U.S., Amazon’s Kindle reading device may run afoul of Norway’s consumer regulations should the online bookselling giant decide to release the device there in its present form.

via quillandquire.com

FWIW, there are currently 19 O'Reilly books in the top 100 paid book apps in Norway.

Posted via web from TOC Posterous

Apple Will Soon Overtake RIM in Consumer Smartphone Market

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:20:44 -0500

A new report by ChangeWave Research provides yet more evidence of the surge in consumer interest in smartphones; and of Apple's iPhone in particular. Last week we reported statistics from AdMob stating that smartphones are now edging out feature phones as the device of choice for consumers. In the race for the highly lucrative consumer smartphone market, blackberry devices still hold the lead over iPhone - but ChangeWave's data shows that the gap is rapidly closing.

We predict that it won't be long until Apple overtakes RIM as the leader in this hotly contested (and vitally important, in context of the Web's shift from PC to phones) market.

via readwriteweb.com

Posted via web from TOC Posterous

TOC Combined Feed : Tools of Change for Publishing

Michael Tamblyn's TOC Frankfurt presentation (actually a dramatic recreation thereof)

Michael Tamblyn's TOC Frankfurt presentation (actually a dramatic recreation thereof)

William Patry delivering Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property Law at Duke

Agree with this summary of why Posterous makes posting dead simple

Qwitter: Accessible Twitter client (uses TTS) (via @doctorow)

"Web-based ePub validator adds Preflight and API" (via @liza)

Despite recent gains for books, Games still dominate in the App Store (via @dliman)

Despite recent gains for books, Games still dominate in the App Store (via @dliman)

Early Registration Now Open for TOC 2010 New York

Gizmodo smells a rat (well, they smell *something*) when it comes to iPhone ebook sales

"The future of news is entrepreneurial"

Amazon’s Kindle not lighting fires in Norway (from Quill & Quire)

Free news but paid comments? (via @adamgaumont)

Amazon’s Kindle not lighting fires in Norway (from Quill & Quire)

Apple Will Soon Overtake RIM in Consumer Smartphone Market

Gizmodo smells a rat (well, they smell something) when it comes to iPhone ebook sales