The National Audobon Society has gone mobile, creating a digital version of their nature field guides for Iphones and Ipod Touch. This way, according to the creators, all the answers are just a click away--including GPS, bird calls, pictures for identification, and all the written information available in a traditional field guide. "Mobile platforms allow field guides to explore
nature in more fun and interactive ways than they ever could before...These new apps transform
field guides as we know them," says one of the creators, Andrew Stewart. I think this is one instance of a successful transition from book to digital because the content has been adjusted and adapted to the new format. Being able to carry all the field guides (along with additional information) around with you in your pocket seems like a great idea.
Harlequin Entreprises is throwing a whole new wrench in book publishing everywhere by announcing their plans for a digital only publishing house. Titled Carina Press, this new venture will focus on mostly romance novels and "it's sub genres". With Carina Press, Harlequin is trying to give the author more control over their work, thus they will not be given any advance, but a high percentage of the royalties. Carina Press will sell the books on their website and some outside parties as well (more than likely Sony, iTunes, & Amazon). One downside for the writer is that the new digital publishing house will also not place any DRM's on the writer's work so it won't be "protected against copyright infringement and from being illegally downloaded".
This is a great step for electronic publishing and writers everywhere. Carina Press allows for more unknown writers to reach so many different types of readers throughout the world. The downfall of not having any DRMs can be a very big set back because it can deter writers from submitting their hard work on to the site. Well, we'll just have to see how Harlequin's new venture plays out when it launches in the Spring of 2010.
link: Quill & Quire
This is a great step for electronic publishing and writers everywhere. Carina Press allows for more unknown writers to reach so many different types of readers throughout the world. The downfall of not having any DRMs can be a very big set back because it can deter writers from submitting their hard work on to the site. Well, we'll just have to see how Harlequin's new venture plays out when it launches in the Spring of 2010.
link: Quill & Quire
I don't think I've actually played a video game since high school - and even then I was bad at it - but I think everyone knows the basics of how most games work: you pretend to be someone you're not, running around in a strange environment, doing things you could never do on your own (or, if you're like me, you're playing a some kind of strategy game that's more about thinking and less about pressing the right buttons fast enough). And while individual games don't really teach people much about 'the real world,' Mark Riggan over at atlanticbt argues in this article that they can teach us, at the very least, about Web usability.
The six parallels he draws between video games and Web design are:
- Users have no patience.
- It's all about the experience.
- Progressive enhancement is good.
- Minimize learning curve by including tutorials.
- Keep the interface as simple as possible.
- Don't rely on graphics alone.
I think I agree with all of his suggestions, except for including tutorials. While this might be appropriate in a video game, as a way to learn how to play the rest of the game, it isn't exactly appropriate for the Web - where I would expect users to leave if they have to learn how to do something new.
Ok, I know this doesn't relate directly to electronic publishing, per se, but usability is a factor, which brings us to the age old argument of mac verses pc. I found an article written on slate.com right when the mac campaign started (the one with Hodgeman and Long doing various sketches to prove how inadequate pcs are). The author of the article claims that those ads do not work on him, and, as a pc user, he acknowledges that a lot of the ad's claims are false, with a pc functioning just as well as a mac in several different arenas.
I believe pc has responded with the ad campaigns of people from all over the world saying they're pcs (heart warming) or someone visiting an electronics store to discover that pcs are cheaper and just as reliable as macs. Obviously, the Hodgeman/Long ads are more memorable, but are they any more true because of that?
Will consumers do more research when it comes to making a new computer purchase, or will they go with a more convincing ad? This could also be asked of e-readers, especially after we looked at the websites for amazon kindle verses sony reader in class. One might be a better product, but we would have no way of knowing outside of the success of an ad campaign.
I believe pc has responded with the ad campaigns of people from all over the world saying they're pcs (heart warming) or someone visiting an electronics store to discover that pcs are cheaper and just as reliable as macs. Obviously, the Hodgeman/Long ads are more memorable, but are they any more true because of that?
Will consumers do more research when it comes to making a new computer purchase, or will they go with a more convincing ad? This could also be asked of e-readers, especially after we looked at the websites for amazon kindle verses sony reader in class. One might be a better product, but we would have no way of knowing outside of the success of an ad campaign.
We have learned in class the importance of a website's usability because users need to easily navigate through the design of a website. We have learned and read that if users are confused they leave, if they don't find what they are looking for, they also leave, and so on. In order for users to buy something, they have to be able to find it in a website, and once they do find it, it has to be easy to keep on navigating or to purchase it, etc. According to an E-commerce report this year, only 17% of the 360,000 visitors of 160 websites tracked were in the buying stage. They believe that the main reason is because users couldn't find what they were looking for, and the second reason was because of price and navigation (usability) issues. This goes to show how important usability is. The article also states that shopping or cruising around a well designed website will reassure consumers in the purchasing stage.
We've been on usability for a while now, but after looking around for a subject for this blog, it's easy to see why the topic is so important. I searched around different sites for a while, and came up with this beast of a page. Feast your eyes and ears and graphics processor on this:
This webpage is basically a collection of every design misstep that any designer has ever made, in the history of designing things.
It scrolls for miles in every direction, even on the Z-axis, with tons and tons of little banners stacked on top of each other. It plays music the second you enter the site, coming from who knows where. There are ads for every cause imaginable, and they often have conflicting viewpoints. Many are outdated. Text hyperlinks scroll across the page and obscure text on the page itself. There are so many blinking and moving parts to the page that my computer (only a year old, mind you) has to fire up its processor fan just to keep up. Often you can't tell what text is a link and what text is just plain text.
The page violates every rule of usability. I don't know how to get around, and it would take me years and years to even begin. I doubt what little I do know of the page would really stick with me, since I would rather be boiled alive than re-visit this nightmare. I don't even know for sure what the page is even supposed to be about! Were it not for my browser's ability to pick out the <title> tags of the page, I wouldn't even know that the page was at least trying to be about something. I think the page might be about a South American activist named Bella De Soto--- but I can't be sure.
Designers take heart. Even a page full of boring text would be more usable and more enjoyable than a page like this. Let this serve as encouragement to those of us struggling to improve our pages' usability. We're moving in the right direction. Of course we can always do better, but dear god, we could certainly do much worse.
"All of a sudden you have something that offers more than Skype,"
Abramson said, saying the combo could now put Google in competition
with phone and cable companies, IP "telephony" (VOIP) companies and
Vonage. "But now you can do everything with Google and pay nothing and
have a platform where engineers can build new things."
Honestly, I wouldn't mind this. But will it work?
If Google had the power to make calling less expensive and carried through with their plan successfully with advancing their "Google Voice," then yeah! Who wouldn't want their phone calls to be more affordable? I noticed on the comments below this article on CNN that the majority agreed to having "Power to Google," and carrying through with their new technology with the best of luck.
"Communication and Cable companies already charge way too much for their services. I wish Google the best in making communication more affordable," one user says.
Some, however, are critical thinkers and have a different viewpoint on the Google efforts.
"Too bad the phone companies also have a stronghold in many areas on Internet connectivity as well. If they lose phone service business, they can just increase the cost of their Internet, be it Cable, DSL, or if anyone on the planet is still using dial-up. Google, will you offer cheap Internet access too?"
Others also wrote how they simply use MagicJack and will never change their method, for its already cheap and they don't need to have a mobile or land line in order to use it. Apparently with MagicJack, you simply "plug a little device called MagicJack into a PC, then connect your telephone, and get unlimited calls throughout the United States for $20 a year."
Neat.
I don't really know what the deal is with these technologies, but they're advancing at a faster speed than my mind can fully comprehend them. My phone with 1000 minutes and unlimited texts works well enough with me!
Honestly, I wouldn't mind this. But will it work?
If Google had the power to make calling less expensive and carried through with their plan successfully with advancing their "Google Voice," then yeah! Who wouldn't want their phone calls to be more affordable? I noticed on the comments below this article on CNN that the majority agreed to having "Power to Google," and carrying through with their new technology with the best of luck.
"Communication and Cable companies already charge way too much for their services. I wish Google the best in making communication more affordable," one user says.
Some, however, are critical thinkers and have a different viewpoint on the Google efforts.
"Too bad the phone companies also have a stronghold in many areas on Internet connectivity as well. If they lose phone service business, they can just increase the cost of their Internet, be it Cable, DSL, or if anyone on the planet is still using dial-up. Google, will you offer cheap Internet access too?"
Others also wrote how they simply use MagicJack and will never change their method, for its already cheap and they don't need to have a mobile or land line in order to use it. Apparently with MagicJack, you simply "plug a little device called MagicJack into a PC, then connect your telephone, and get unlimited calls throughout the United States for $20 a year."
Neat.
I don't really know what the deal is with these technologies, but they're advancing at a faster speed than my mind can fully comprehend them. My phone with 1000 minutes and unlimited texts works well enough with me!
According to Wikipedia, to lifelog is "to capture continuous physiological data together with live first-person video from a wearable camera." Lifelogging has been around for quite some time; and we've seen this theme explored in various films, including Ed TV and, to a sinister sci-fi extent, The Truman Show. Lifeloggers walk around with cameras strapped to their person, or cameras embedded ala James Bond in sunglasses frames. A Canadian film-maker/lifelogger is trying to fit a video camera into his prosthetic eye, so followers of his "lifestream" can experience the visual world directly from his perspective.
Previously, lifelogging was the pursuit of the tech-savvy alone - notice how all the dudes on the Wikipedia page wear MIT sweatshirts. However, this article, published in October, suggests that the release of a commercially-available, wearable camera (intended to help Alzheimer's patients) could bringing lifelogging to the everyman. Including your mom, your little cousin, your freaky neighbor you never wanted to know about, etc.
What does this have to do with the publishing industry? Well, bringing an arcane avocation to the doorstep of the average citizen is exactly what blogging did for publishing: everyone became an author, and a publisher. Along the same lines, blogging is in and of itself a form of lifelogging - we tweet daily text updates of our lives from Twitter, post visual peaks into our day on Flickr, and upload real-time narratives on Youtube. In this sense, the wearable camera will bring a new level of immediacy and intimacy to the blogosphere, reducing the wait-time between action and the narration of that action in the Web. The democratization of lifelogging will only further blur the line between professional and novice.
An article I read on Time's website discusses the latest on Google's plan to scan millions of books for their online data base. The Department of Justice is concerned that some parts of Google's settlement is eliminating competition with price fixing their books. It made me wonder just how far Google will get with this project. It seems they have already made quite a dent with the amount of books they already have scanned. I also found this photoessay about the Google headquarters. Their facilities are pretty amazing. This picture is especially relevant to our last class. It's really no wonder they're taking over the world...
With the launch of the new Droid OS for phones and the rise of smart phones in the market, it was destined for Mozilla to create a mobile version of the second most popular web browser, Firefox. The online version doesn't have a name yet, but it does have a logo. Mozilla drew up a contest and were able to pick out the winner "PocketFox" as the logo for their new venture. Though Mozilla's announcement does wonders for all of the Firefox enthusiasts in the world, there is one big setback: Mozilla isn't releasing the app for either the iPhone or Blackberry OS. Smartphone users can first use 'PocketFox' on Nokia Maemo tablet and on Windows Mobile and they have plans on expanding to Symbian and Android.
This is definitely a step in the right direction for being able to read on mobile phones. Giving users options will ensure them to want to read on the go via their phones. Hopefully Mozilla and Blackberry can work something out in the near future because I'd love to get my hands on the PocketFox.
This is definitely a step in the right direction for being able to read on mobile phones. Giving users options will ensure them to want to read on the go via their phones. Hopefully Mozilla and Blackberry can work something out in the near future because I'd love to get my hands on the PocketFox.
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