Holtzbrinck Online

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.

The Socially Impulsive

Who among us hasn't sent an impolitely-worded, sloppy email and then regretted having sent it moments later. I don't do it often, but I look over English soccer league chat sites every now and again (never at work, of course), and the banter can get heated and potentially offensive fairly quickly. Social networking and other forms of online interaction require a different set of emotional triggers than face-to-face discussion, and as evidenced by an assault last October involving two men who had been communicating in a chat room, a pickax, and a knife, not appreciating the rules of online engagement can be dangerous (read the NYT article). The absence of real-time responses such as change in tone and other social cues, makes it easier for us to fall victim to the "online disinhibition effect," or flaming. So, what does this mean for those of us who work in this largely self-policing, socially ambiguous landscape? Does this mean that we resign ourselves to being as impersonal as possible for fear of unleasing online rage? Or, maybe it simply means that we just deal with the human emotions behind the IP address, as we do in the real world, and try to be as decent as possible to each other.

The Power of Community

Featured as the Entrepreneur of the Week on Yahoo finance is Threadless.com.  I first heard of Threadless.com when a friend mentioned it on Facebook a few months ago. I paid no attention to the fact that it attracted a huge web following, all I focused on were their laid-back, yet fashionably hip t-shirts. If I had to describe the website in two words, it would be “T-shirts galore”. 

Threadless.com is a retail business that heavily relies on consumer judgments. A majority of t-shirt designs are submitted by registered users via the website and are voted on to determine which designs will go into production. Every registered user has a blog and posts or comments on shirts for sale are cross-referenced on the respective product page. The brilliance of it all is that the community built by this website ensures a constant supply of fresh and original merchandise and then sells it to the same crowd. By passing on production decisions to the site users, calculating the equilibrium on the pesky supply & demand graph is probably avoidable.

Creators of Threadless.com, Nickell and DeHart, have accredited their success to the intricate web community they’ve built. Where else can one reach an international audience and bypass the dilemmas of assorted time zones? Nowhere.

Blame It On Culture

In a recent New York Times article, an independent bookstore owner accredits the shrinking of the independent bookseller market to a cultural shift. Logan Fox is closing his bookshop, Macawber Books of Princeton, NJ, sometime this March and apparently puts partial blame on society’s fascination with pop culture television and the need for more immediate satisfaction. I attribute this to our movement into a more visually based culture.

From a scientific standpoint, information presented with graphical aid is more quickly recognized by the brain than if presented in just text; while words precisely relay ideas, pictures quickly relay broad concepts. A luxury book publishing company devoted to the elite, Assouline Publishers have been sustaining a rather successful business by publishing fashion photography books. Riding on trends, they can speedily put together and publish a book within 2-3 weeks time, promptly satisfying public craze before the fad fades. As with many other publishers in this genre, their books contain very little text and are filled with photos and artwork featuring topics that range from high-end designers to social identities.

By no means am I advocating that we abandon literature, but rather exercise the concept of adaptation. While Mr. Fox was trying to maintain his shop’s atmosphere and functionality based on the years of yore, he failed to integrate that with new cultural trends. As he proudly admits resisting computerization, e-books, and Barnes & Noble field research, it is no wonder as to why he worried about the depreciating value of his business and sold it off to Princeton University.

Curious about Assouline Publishers? Read a more recent article about them here.

A Literary Light

Congratulations to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who will receive one of France’s top cultural honors, the Commandeur des Arts et Lettres medal, from the San Francisco consul general of France this evening (SF Chronicle). A well-known poet, writer, painter, publisher, activist, and intellectual, Ferlinghetti founded the country’s first paperback bookshop, City Lights Bookstore with Peter D. Martin in 1953. The San Francisco store has served as a literary landmark ever since. In 1955, he launched City Lights, a publishing house famous for the Pocket Poets Series and its commitment to progressive ideas. Ferlinghetti was named San Francisco’s poet laureate in 1998, and has previously won several other cultural and literary awards. Each year, about 20 people receive the Commandeur des Arts et Lettres award, which is awarded in recognition of significant contributions to the arts. Past non-French awardees include David Bowie, Jackson Pollock, and Ferlinghetti’s friend, Allen Ginsberg.

Pileus is not a cloud…

Before all the angry meteorologists start leaving rebuttals as comments, give this post a chance.

The term Pileus is known to Romans as a hat and to forecasters as a sign of stormy weather. From the same culture that brought us squid-ink pizza and Power Rangers, the Japanese will tell you that Pileus is the name of the coolest umbrella - ever. To out perform this umbrella, the challenger must beat the following list of unexpected features:

1) Wi-Fi enabled 

2) Integrated digital camera 

3) Handle with a built-in projector 

4) Automated picture and video uploads to Flickr and YouTube (respectively) 

5) Last, but not least – rain resistant.

Developed in the Okude laboratory of Tokyo's Keio University, a Pileus prototype showed up early in the year at the Ubicomp 2006 conference. Accounts were also set up on Flickr and YouTube with photos and videos uploaded. The Pileus’ design has been improved into a sleeker version since then and features a twistable grip for file navigation. Although I question the practicality of this invention, I still find it an extremely innovative creation. By debuting at a conference on ubiquitous computing, it’s further evidence that soon no one will be able to escape YouTube – even if it’s just you, the rain, and your umbrella.

Let's talk turkey...

Brooklyn Style Pizza?

While reading Slice the other day I saw that Domino's is now offering "Brooklyn Style Pizza".  While I am appalled by this notion on basic principles I am particularly unsettled by the Brooklyn Style Pizza Website.

Ok, if you visited the site I'm going to encourage you to take a few deep breaths to clear your head.   I can't decide if I'm more offended by the awful Brooklyn stereotype or the terrible web design that's at work here.  I'm not a Brooklyn native, but the part that I live in now certainly lacks many of the elements Domino's nightmarish Bizzaro-Brooklyn.   So that's appalling because I have grown to love my neighborhood and its hard to imagine anything being further from my home than this website.   

On the other hand, the terrible decision to embrace such an obnoxious web design philosophy only compounds the problem - a company like Domino's does not get a website this bad by accident.  So at some point someone sat down and said "this will make an excellent website". 

If you want more grisly details you can read the NY Times article. 
 

My(Global)Space

This story in the NYT is a bit old, but it struck me as interesting enough to resurrect. (Oddly, it reminded me of passages about Scyles in Herodotus' History--- not sure why.) Myspace, purchased in July by the globally-oriented News Corporation, has expanded into the UK, Australia, Ireland, Germany and France and intend to push into 11 other countries soon. This global outreach has resulted in encounters with some un-American sensibilities regarding modes of social interaction. It seems that some people overseas have problems with seemingly random, unwanted messages and garishly designed pages decorated with blinking images and drop-down banners (go figure). Also, the young overseas tend to rely on SMS, or text messages on mobile phones (speaking of phones, I'm really intrigued by the Cingular 8525 smartphone; it has a glow in the dark keyboard!) versus young America's preference for I.M. But MySpace is all about the music, right? That's what MySpace is betting on. Once local bands and other cool people catch on to MySpace abroad, the rest will come through the portal for the music and to carve out an identity for themselves (maybe this is where Scyles comes in), and just possibly find a home amidst the myriad of ads and blinking lights.