Archive for February, 2010

links for 2010-02-23

Books, iPads and chickens

@obionyeaso recently asked me for a view on this by David Gelles and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in the FT – essentially will the iPad / Kindle shatter the book publishing business in the way the iPod and iTunes shattered the music business.

My short answer would be no – it won’t.  The short reason for this is that the form of content that is a book is very well adapted to the form of distribution that is printed and bound bits of paper.  This is unlike news, which is not necessarily well adapted to the form of distribution that is newspaper, or the music track which we have discovered is very poorly adapted to the form of distribution that is an album or CD.  At the same time a book is an important cultural feature in the way that a CD, album or even a newspaper is not. Continue reading ‘Books, iPads and chickens’

A new Bright Shiny Google Tool

Google have just come out with a a New Shiny Tool – and I haven’t got time to really analyse it at the moment.  Does it take us a step closer to my “Mythical One Place” – i.e. a tool that recognises that a social media citizen needs to do three things – produce stuff, consume stuff and share stuff – across multiple places and platforms but all from one place?  Not sure – in the interim check out the ever reliable Mashable for an assessment.

Alan Rusbridger, Dan Gillmor, the future of journalism and the Great Schism between the Ism and the Ist

This is something I’ve not done before – posting a comment.  But hey, it took a while to write and the social media revolution is all about the separation of information from a dedicated means of distribution, so that’s alright then.

The comment was on a post by Dan Gillmor, which was really just a link to Alan Rusbridger’s recent speech about the future of journalism.  I think my comment makes sense without first reading the speech – but I  recommend you do read it.  It is very good, albeit a speech that doesn’t really nail the answer – probably because the answer involves arriving at the conclusion that journalists have little role in the future of journalism.

Here is my comment. Continue reading ‘Alan Rusbridger, Dan Gillmor, the future of journalism and the Great Schism between the Ism and the Ist’