Holtzbrinck Online

No Impact Man

Over the past couple months, we helped a new Farrar, Straus and Giroux author start publishing a blog called No Impact Man. On the blog, author Colin Beavan chronicles his year-long project to make no net impact on the environment. Quite a challenge to begin with, and even more so when you factor in that he’s doing it with his wife, young daughter, and his dog, and living in the middle of New York City! But so far, he’s making it work, AND getting some well-deserved attention. Colin discussed his project on WYNC’s The Brian Lehrer Show this morning and a profile of No Impact Man and Colin’s family is in today’s New York Times House & Home section. Colin’s project has already been featured in TimeOut for Kids, and you can read an Op-Ed by Colin in the New York Times here. No Impact Man will be published by FSG in 2009 and a documentary film about the project will come out the same year. Amidst loads of information about environmentalism, it’s fascinating and informative to follow how Colin is attacking the problem on a personal level. The blog is a great read and a compelling call to action – there ARE plenty of things individuals, even those of us in living in big cities, can do to decrease negative impact and increase positive impact on planet Earth. We’re truly excited about the way No Impact Man has taken off, and encourage everyone read more, join the discussion, and take part in Colin’s initiatives.

E-ink in the workplace

I ran across this post at Engadget earlier this week and it reminded me of the use the iLiad reader has been finding in the airline industry.   It also made me think about a conversation I had with a co-worker who owns and uses a Sony reader (the first time I've seen one "in the wild", as it were) and who absolutely loves it for its ability to hold every manuscript she is working on and still fit in her purse.   

Both of these examples really throw into perspective how beneficial the ability to carry as many papers as you want in a 12oz package.   

One of the things I think will be interesting to see is how this plays out in the educational market - particularly for college textbook publishers.    If a single platform such as this becomes widely adopted, which would seem to be the next stage of the various clicker devices that textbook publishers are offering as an extra to many of their books, it would be unbelievably easy to deliver students' books without the cost of printing (or the cost of the used book market) and it would allow them to install Blackboard-esque tracking and collaboration software at the same time, potentially linked to notes that students make directly on their texts. And (unlike in the trade market at this time), this is a move that would probably be embraced by the students - fewer items to lug to class, more interactivity, and cheaper textbooks (they would lose the money they get when selling books back, but that never comes near the price they paid for the book in the first place).   

Web 2.0 Expo

Growing up, the only type of conventions and expos I heard about were for Science Fiction/Fantasy fans - Star Wars, Star Trek, comic books, etc. Now that I'm a grown up ::waits for snickering to stop::, I've heard of other types of conventions for various interests and have been coerced into attending a few of them by some enthusiastic pals.

On a very short list, I've gone to a tech expo, comic book convention, and a car show. Let's just say I was a little disappointed with the amount of awe and entertainment the displays provided. Rather than getting sneak peeks of developing and innovative projects, spacious rooms were filled with neatly arranged products already out on the market. Suffice to say, I feel a bit jaded. Then lo and behold I came across an ad for the April 2007 San Francisco Web 2.0 Expo, apparently a new event. Targeting marketing, design, technical, and business professionals, their homepage boasts a attending list of personnel from some well known companies. While terms like "Wow!" and "Jiminy Jilikers!" may or may not be bellowed by the mass, this is an event I would probably learn something from. Let's hope they make plans to come to New York.

Read a lengthier description about the Web 2.0 Summit here.

Double Clicking Goodness

My incredible discovery of the day, which is apparently not "new" in any way, is that you can double click any word in any article on NYTimes.com and instantly receive thesaurus and dictionary entries for that word in a pop up window.

I think what amazes me about this functionality is that this is exactly the sort of thing I want to see eBooks doing, and here it is on the NYTimes website right under my nose!  It's simple, elegant, and extraordinarily helpful to users. 

But ultimately it also shows a different attitude towards how we interact with text than most books or websites do - the very fact that they do not trumpet this feature shows it as something that we should be able to take for granted, and hearkens back to times when it was unthinkable that one should read a book without other books to reference or writing materials to make notes in the margin.    When did the act of reading become so passive? 

Already browsers are including search bars that will allow you to quickly choose a search engine or website (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, IMDB) and jump directly to the search results for a phrase, how long before we can select text on the screen, right click, and choose from a drop down menu whether we want to see what sort of response that selection brings up in Dictionary.com, Google, or Wikipedia?    It seems more and more likely that the answer is "not that much longer".  I'm looking forward to it.