- How to Prototype and Influence People (Aza Raskin) — I’m fascinated lately by prototypes, mockups, tangible artifacts, and other design tools for conveying the essence and promise of something without having to build it all. This talk nails it.
- paper2ebook — Utility to re-structure research papers published in US Letter or A4 format PDF files to remove the 2 columns layout to make it suitable for viewing in an ebook reader. (via Olivier Grisel on Twitter)
- The Real Life Social Network (Slideshare) — presentation from a Google ux designer starts with a typical “social networking makes you lump everyone as a friend but people don’t think that way” set of slides, but by slide 70 it’s talking about research into how people think of their friends. I’d love to see a UI for a social network that got this right. (via Matt Zimmerman on Twitter)
- uquery — simple search engine for the iPhone/iPad app store. (via Marco Arment on Twitter)
"ebook" entries
Books as a service: How and why it works
Will a "Netflix for ebooks" catch on? 24Symbols is counting on it.
24Symbols, a kind of Netflix for ebooks, aims to benefit readers and publishers alike. Company co-founder Justo Hildago outlines the books-as-a-service model in this interview.
How one publisher uses "aggressive marketing"
Open Road gets aggressive with adaptation and real-time marketing.
Being digital isn’t the novelty it once was, so some publishing companies are shifting focus to competitive differentiation within digital. Jane Friedman’s company Open Road Integrated Media believes aggressive marketing is the key to digital success.
10 innovative digital books you should know about
A look at 10 envelope-pushing digital books.
These days, Peter Meyers is knee-deep in digital books. Here he shares 10 of the best digital / interactive texts he's run across.
Does digital text create a cognitive gap?
A study finds electronic text may disrupt learning techniques.
Students and professors have anxiously anticipated the replacement of analog textbooks with digital options. As it turns out, however, current technology might actually hinder learning.
Four short links: 9 November 2010
A Prototyping HowTo, Decolumning PDFs, Real World Social Networks, and App Search
Four short links: 22 October 2010
Image Remapping, Internet Futures, Ebook Reader, and Open Cloud Computing
- Historical Images Remapped — Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum released historical images from their collections, and a historical photo site Sepiatown geolocated and oriented them so they can be viewed side-by-side with current Google Street View images of the same place. And then contributed the refined metadata back to the museum. A great example of your users helping to improve your data.
- Future Internet Scenarios — results of scenario planning by the Internet Society, some possible futures from open and competitive to anticompetitive centralised walled-gardens.
- OpenLibrary Bookreader — the Internet Archive’s book reader is (naturally) open source for you to reuse and improve. (via Kevin Marks on Twitter)
- OpenStack Austin Release — code to compute controller and object storage released. Competition and interoperability require exactly this kind of open cloud environment.
On re-reading Steven Levy's "Hackers"
Why the "Hackers" thesis still holds. Plus: How links created new context in the ebook.
Spiffing "Hackers" up for the book version has paid off by delivering a new dimension to the book that readers are reporting back on favorably. Here I offer my reactions to re-reading the text after 25 years and a discussion of the links we added to the electronic version.
Cookbooks: The highest priced iPad book category
Just like the iTunes app store, the iBooks app on the iPad spotlights the Top Paid (and Top Free) books within each category. Here are some charts that compare the average price (by rank)1 across the major categories. The average price of the Top 50 titles across the major categories range from $7-$15. Cookbooks, History, Biographies are slightly higher priced,…
Is the "e" in ebooks the new blink tag?
How one vowel creates a limiting design paradigm
The first group/publisher/company/person who moves away from the ebook and to content — content that can be delivered to a variety of media, digital and non-digital, with display and style applied separate from and after content creation — wins.
Slides from "What Publishers Need to Know about Digitization" Webcast
Slides from the "What Publishers Need to Know about Digitization" webcast.