Harvardwood is a unique organization of more than 2,500 Harvard alumni, students, faculty and staff in Hollywood, the media and entertainment worlds, and the arts. In collaboration with Unlimited Publishing LLC, Harvardwood is proud to announce an exciting new program to publish e-Books for the iPad, iPhone, iTouch and other smartphones by its members: [...]]]> Received the following press release:

Harvardwood is a unique organization of more than 2,500 Harvard alumni,
students, faculty and staff in Hollywood, the media and entertainment
worlds, and the arts. In collaboration with Unlimited Publishing LLC,
Harvardwood is proud to announce an exciting new program to publish e-Books
for the iPad, iPhone, iTouch and other smartphones by its members: http://www.unlimitedpublishing.com/harvardwood …

The first release in the Harvardwood series will be “Lawyers, Law and
Social Change” by widely-published legal activist Steve Bachmann ‘73, HLS
‘76. Following it will be “Rough Magicke,” a fantasy novel by John William
Houghton ‘76, and “Summer Love,” a screenplay by filmmaker G. Wayne Miller
‘76 of Eagle Peak Media. Additional titles are expected to appear by
midsummer

This is part of a new program by Unlimited Publishing as the company is launching parallel programs with tother nonprofits and umbrella groups. The books are going to be published as iPad apps. Another example of mainstream publishers being bypassed by new technology.

… While there is a lot of good commentary, much of [...]]]> In the first of a series of articles Michael Bhaskar discusses the state of digital commentary. It’s a really good read and makes a lot of sense. It’s about time somebody took on the commentators who are speaking from a platform of ignorance.

… While there is a lot of good commentary, much of it – my own included – too often fails to acknowledge the self-evident truth of digital that, to quote William Goldman, nobody knows anything. Whenever one reads about the impact of digital on publishing, one reads hearsay, rampant speculation and after-the-fact rationalisation. Guessing at the strategy of company X doesn’t mean you know what they are doing. Data is shrouded in veils of corporate secrecy or simply doesn’t exist. Technologies, trends and tastes evolve and die and at a pace that makes predicting tomorrow impossible. At digital conferences the standard speech will claim that: a) consumers expect new things; b) we are in a new world; c) everything is changing; and d) you need to experiment. The actual substance of this: nobody knows anything.

It seems that for publishers digital is defined as much by what we don’t know as by what we do. In the manner of Donald Rumsfeld then, we need to categorize our “known unknowns”, as it will be these that ultimately shape the future of the industry.

Two recent events have rocked the publishing world. First, The New York Times, which many regard as the newspaper of record in the U.S., said it would abandon the practice of providing free online content and start charging regular readers beginning in 2011. And second, Apple’s much-hyped tablet — the iPad — [...]]]> From the Wharton website:

Two recent events have rocked the publishing world. First, The New York Times, which many regard as the newspaper of record in the U.S., said it would abandon the practice of providing free online content and start charging regular readers beginning in 2011. And second, Apple’s much-hyped tablet — the iPad — made its appearance. What implications will the Times’ decision have for newspaper publishers and other providers of free online content? How will the iPad re-define what a book means, as well as how it is produced, marketed and delivered? Peter S. Fader, a marketing professor at Wharton and co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, and Stephen J. Kobrin, a management professor at Wharton and editor of Wharton School Publishing, weigh in on how these developments could reshape publishing.

(via Resource Shelf)

Here is a snippet from the press release announcing Kindle [...]]]> According to Tech Flash, Mike Nash, a 19 year veteran of Microsoft, is leaving to join the Kindle team. Nash is, or was, Microsoft’s corporate vice president in charge of Windows 7 platform strategy. Nash, according to the article, is familiar with the Kindle business.

Here is a snippet from the press release announcing Kindle for the PC, where Nash is quoted:

“Customers have told us that they want access to a wider variety of content and an increasingly diverse set of form factors,” said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows Platform Strategy at Microsoft. “With the announcement of Kindle for PC, Amazon is making its massive selection of Kindle books available on the world’s most widely used platform. The new Kindle for PC’s use of Windows 7 features such as Jump Lists and Windows Touch demonstrates how Windows 7 makes new things possible.”

io9 has a summary of a recent [...]]]> There is are major problem with ebooks, or any digital archive, and that is what is the shelf life of the documents and if current technology fails then how do we read them. At least with paper books you don’t need electricity or computers to access the information.

io9 has a summary of a recent New Scientist article on just this topic:

A recent article by Tom Simonite and Michael Le Page in New Scientist tackles this question by positing a minor cataclysm: something bad enough to tear apart civilization as we know it, but not quite enough to kill off humans entirely. Candidates include a pandemic, a financial collapse that would make 2008’s pale in comparison, a severe natural disaster, or just the slow accumulation of decay in society’s foundations.

The question, then, is in the absence of most of the raw materials that powered the construction of our current industrial civilization – there wouldn’t be nearly enough fossil fuels to rebuild from scratch, for instance – whether the survivors of this collapse could make use of the one great resource we would leave behind in huge quantities: information. If we could leave behind the equivalent of a cheat sheet for these post-apocalyptic survivors, could they perhaps bypass the trial and error of rebuilding science and jump straight to the achievements of the 21st century?

You can find the library here.

(via Resource Shelf)

“We’re trying to meet and anticipate student needs,” Smith says. “E-book readers are something students [...]]]> The University of Kansas has made 4 Sony Readers available for checkout in its library. According to Rebecca Smith, communications and advancement director for the libraries, they have been so popular that the libraries are going to buy four more.

“We’re trying to meet and anticipate student needs,” Smith says. “E-book readers are something students are incredibly interested in. So far, we’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback.”

More info here.

Now I wonder [...]]]> Download Squad is reporting that an Apple threatened to remove an iPhone application because it contained a mention, in it’s description, that the app was also a finalist in Google’s Android Developer Challenge. For the app to remain available in the store the developer had to remove any reference to “Android”.

Now I wonder how much publishers will have to put up with when their books enter the Apple store. I suspect it won’t all be the bed of roses that they are expecting.

Digitisation, like any disruptive agent, forces us, and at unexpected moments, to confront the unfamiliar constituent parts of our composite forms. When a digital book “doesn’t feel right” we are reminded of how a bound [...]]]> Matt Hayler has a very interesting article on his blog entitled It’s Just a Book – A Problematic Gestalt.

Digitisation, like any disruptive agent, forces us, and at unexpected moments, to confront the unfamiliar constituent parts of our composite forms. When a digital book “doesn’t feel right” we are reminded of how a bound book’s form functions. When an electronic text is reproduced and pirated and sent across the world in a second we are reminded of print’s legal history, its fixedness in space, its immutability, its scarcity. When you read materials which would otherwise would have been unavailable, when you see a first time author able to publicise their work to an ideal audience in 50 countries, when you can look up a word or reference that you’d never normally have made the effort to, then things start to seem different. Do we have the right gestalt? Or rather is the default always correct?