NEGATIV - Magazin für Film und Medienkultur Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: eBook Indexes & User Interface Features The more I talk to people about the uber index idea, the more I realize the significant effort required to create and implement it, particularly in the e-reader app. I still believe it's a viable solution for rich content, but maybe it's not something we'll see in the short term. So how about a few simple thing between now and then? Let's start with a "back" button in the e-reader, to take you back to where you just came from. Every time I've clicked on a link in an ebook and it takes me to an earlier/later spot, there's no easy way to go back. (Note: Regarding the back button, I'm talking specifically about the iBooks reader on the iPad.) How about pop-up windows? And how about similar functionality in the body of the book? The index is such a critical element of a print book and it could take on so much more functionality in ebooks.
The future of web and location based apps We have written before about the rise and competition of location based social networks (lbs) that enable mobile web user to make actions based on their whereabouts, like checking in to a restaurant, club or store, receiving information about nearby locations or seeing where their friends are hanging out. But the the big question is: Should that be everything? Even if users might benefit from seeing who else is a regular visitor of a location or from knowing that a good friend is close-by, and even if they might get rewards for checking in often at a specific shop, using applications like Foursquare or Gowalla is still mainly a pure fun activity without deeper purpose and nothing that really helps you improving your daily live. Fortunately we have Robert Scoble, the Silicon Valley uber-geek, who recently wrote a guest article for TechCrunch, outlining his vision of how location based services will work and interact with other apps two years from now. /Martin Weigert
Dear Hotmail: What The Hell Happened to You? To: Hotmail@hotmail.com From: Soren@hotmail.com Subject: What Happened? Dear Hotmail, You poor, gentle specimen of archaic technology. Like a creature from another age, you lie frozen in the depths of the Internet, or as you know it, the World Wide Web. Now this isn't easy for me. You and me at that naked sorority on Halloween. It seems like yesterday when you were kicking ass, increasing your storage size and showing up on business cards. For once, a bear fighting a giant squid is not the answer. Problem 1: Servers You rely on narcoleptic servers, and quite honestly, this shouldn't even be a problem because all other email providers seemed to have solved it. Candy, enjoying her new life from the bottom of a stairwell. Problem 2: Security The only amputee erotica picture I kept. Problem 3: Spam Your spam filters are lazy. A finger painting I did of nurses getting schooled. And these are just the three most egregious of your problems, but I have a solution that requires fixing none of them. P.S.
Six tips for getting Apple's iBooks to accept your ePub file This has been an interesting week. What was supposed to be just a weekend project turned into a week-long research project. Along the way, I got to make a bunch of new friends, learned a lot, and actually made progress. Before I go any further, let me say that I did get the iTunes store to accept my ePub file. I started the process last week, when I attempted to sign in to iTunes Connect using my iPhone developer account and found it wouldn't work. Read iTunes won't let you publish books if you write software This wasn't a big deal-breaker. The next step was preparing the ePub and uploading it to the iTunes store. Read iTunes Publisher inexplicably fails to publish an iBook. So, now you're caught up. My favorite TalkBack came from Edesw88 who got the Paranoid-Much? Aside: As many of you know, I write a lot of politics-related material. Next: Fixing the iBooks import problem » Fixing the iBooks import problem An ePub file is basically a zip file filled with a bunch of XML documents.
Dear Hotmail: What The Hell Happened to You? To: Hotmail@hotmail.com From: Soren@hotmail.com Subject: What Happened? Dear Hotmail, You poor, gentle specimen of archaic technology. Like a creature from another age, you lie frozen in the depths of the Internet, or as you know it, the World Wide Web. What the hell happened to you? Now this isn't easy for me. You and me at that naked sorority on Halloween. It seems like yesterday when you were kicking ass, increasing your storage size and showing up on business cards. For once, a bear fighting a giant squid is not the answer. Problem 1: Servers You rely on narcoleptic servers, and quite honestly, this shouldn't even be a problem because all other email providers seemed to have solved it. Candy, enjoying her new life from the bottom of a stairwell. Problem 2: Security The only amputee erotica picture I kept. Problem 3: Spam Your spam filters are lazy. A finger painting I did of nurses getting schooled. Rather than try to catch up with Yahoo! Hotmail: The Garbage Man of the Internet P.S.
Joho the Blog The hosts of the BardCast podcast consider Cymbeline to probably be Shakespeare’s worst play. Not enough happens in the first two acts, the plot is kuh-razy, it’s a mishmash of styles and cultures, and it over-explains itself time and time again. That podcast is far from alone in thinking that it’s the Bard’s worst, although, as BardCast says, even the Bard’s worst is better than just about anything. Nevertheless, when was the last time you saw a performance of Cymbeline? Yeah, me neither. We saw it yesterday afternoon, in its final performance at Shakespeare & Co in Lenox, Mass. It was directed by the founder of the company, Tina Packer, and showed her usual commitment to modernizing Shakespeare by finding every emotional tone and every laugh in the original script. These two embellishments are emblematic of the problem with the play. To be clear, most of the interpretations seem to bring Shakespeare’s intentions to life, even if unexpected ways.
ePUB logo announced – probably not very useful | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home By Paul Biba The official ePUB logo has been announced. According to their web page the IDPF received 203 entries from 18 different countries, and the contest was won by Ralph Burkhardt from Stuttgart, Germany. You can find more details here. Of course, as a lawyer who has had a fair amount to do with trademarks and intellectual property, I can tell you that this is a fairly meaningless exercise. As a matter of fact, unless they do enforce such standards – since ePUB is a standards based thing – they may very well end up diluting the mark and losing it completely. I just noticed something.
The Book Bench: The Trouble With Recommending Books As a child—an easily bored, semi-feral child without a TV—I spent a lot of time in the local bookstore. The store had a large children’s section, with rows and rows of chapter books that led out to a small café, but by the time I was eight or nine, I would peruse the stacks and come away with the distinct impression that I had read everything there. The only thing—or, rather, person—that stopped me from giving up and turning to some other sort of entertainment was the children’s bookseller, a short black-haired woman who had read everything and could, if I told her some books I liked, recommend a new one to me—inevitably a more obscure but equally good one—with seemingly magical accuracy, the way that other adults enjoy pulling quarters out of kids ears. It was astonishing. The recent appearance of the Biblioracle had a similar effect on me. Offering to suggest a book based on one's last five reads, he was impressive in his range, perfunctory in his responses, and quick on the draw.
Does the Internet Make You Smarter? IS Parade Jules Verne Book Comes With QR Codes For 21st Century Footnotes