- Cutting Their Own Throats (Charlie Stross) — DRM on ebooks gives Amazon a great tool for locking ebook customers into the Kindle platform. This essay is gold and so very true. Read, believe.
- v1.0 of Arduino Out — this is the dev environment, with language additions and lots of features in the libraries. Glad to see the 1.0 stamp put on this important piece of the homebrew hardware world.
- Koha and Why We Need Foundations — Simon Phipps looks into the Koha trademark dispute and says that it shows why open source needs foundations (collective IP ownership).
- Majestic-12 — a World Wide Web search engine based on concepts of distributing workload in a similar fashion achieved by successful projects such as SETI@home and distributed.net.
"DRM" entries
It's time for a unified ebook format and the end of DRM
Proprietary ebook formats and rights restrictions are holding consumers back.
The music industry has shown that you need to offer consumers a universal format and content without rights restrictions. So when will publishers pay attention?
SOPA and PIPA are bad industrial policy
The solution to piracy must be a market solution, not a government intervention.
SOPA and PIPA not only harm the internet, they support existing content companies in their attempt to hold back innovative business models that will actually grow the market and deliver new value to consumers.
Traditional vs self-publishing: Neither is the perfect solution
Dan Gillmor offers an author's perspective on choosing how to publish.
In this video podcast, author Dan Gillmor talks about the pros and cons of traditional publishing versus self-publishing.
Five things we learned about publishing in 2011
Lessons from Amazon, self-publishing, ereading studies, HTML5 and DRM.
It was a busy and sometimes bruising year for publishing as the industry continued its digital transformation. Here, we take a look at five of the biggest lessons from 2011.
Open Question: Is it realistic for publishers to cut Amazon out of the equation?
Charlie Stross argued that publishers are cutting their own throats with DRM. But should we drop DRM or just drop Amazon?
Author Charlie Stross argued recently that Amazon's growing position toward a monopoly can largely be attributed to publishers' use of DRM. A back-channel discussion brewed about whether cutting Amazon out of the picture entirely would be a viable solution.
Four short links: 1 December 2011
DRM Good for Amazon, Arduino Updated, Open Source Foundations, Distributed Search
Addressing the state of econtent
Javier Celaya on the future of ereading and epublishing.
In this podcast, Dosdoce Digital Culture's Javier Celaya sat down with Joe Wikert to discuss what may impact the future of econtent, including sales, devices, service and DRM.
Mindset over matter
Timo Boezeman on the digital transition of a centuries-old analog industry.
In this interview, A.W. Bruna's Timo Boezeman talks about things going right and things going wrong in the digital transition and what publishers should be doing differently. He says the biggest hurdle publishers must overcome is their mindset.
Radar's top stories: June 27-July 1, 2011
Getting started with Hadoop, a look at Clojure, publishing lessons from Pottermore
This week on Radar: We took a deep dive into Hadoop, Stuart Sierra discussed Clojure's growing popularity, and we looked at two key aspects of J.K. Rowling's Pottermore that publishers should copy.
Two lessons from Pottermore: Direct sales and no DRM
Why publishers should take a note from J.K. Rowling's latest effort.
It's not surprising that J.K. Rowing is forging ahead with a well thought-out direct sales plan for Harry Potter ebooks, but it's a shock that publishers aren't doing the same things for their titles.