FALL09PB692 | Electronic Publishing Overview http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/ en-us Copyright 2009 Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:55:55 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification The Perils of Blogging and "Fast Food" Journalism
TechCrunch writer Michael Arrington shares his thoughts on what he calls "fast food journalism," yet another danger to the world of publishing caused by the world wide web.

Here's the scenario:  Tiger Woods cheats on his wife.  In the hours that follow, several hundred bloggers share their thoughts, often without giving credit for where they got their information.  It's a messy, poorly written disaster.

While I certainly share Arrington's lament that blogging often means that people get their information from bad "journalists," I also think we will find a way to resolve this in the near future.  Media companies are hiring more and more bloggers to catch up with the rest of the internet, and we will likely have the traditional masthead working online.
]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/the-perils-of-blogging-and-fas.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/the-perils-of-blogging-and-fas.html Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:55:55 -0500 Privacy settings t-shirt.




]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/privacy-settings.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/privacy-settings.html Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:44:35 -0500 E-Textbooks and Accessibility Combined!

Flat World Knowledge in Agreement with Bookshare

By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 12/14/2009 10:58:00 AM

Flat World Knowledge, publisher of open source digital textbooks, has signed an agreement with Bookshare to make its material accessible to students with print disabilities. Under the master agreement, Flat World will provide its texts as digital XML files to Bookshare which will convert them to DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) and BRF (Braille Ready Format) formats. College students with print disabilities and Bookshare memberships can read the texts via free e-book software from Bookshare, and all students with reading challenges can use other DAISY software applications and hardware devices that support DAISY or BRF.

Betsy Beaumon, v-p and general manager of Bookshare, estimated that less than 5% of college textbook material is available to those with print disabilities. The organization has agreements with many trade publishers to make their content available through Bookshare, but this is the first agreement Bookshare has made with a college publisher. Flat World cofounder Eric Frank said that in addition to "being the right thing to do," the agreement with Bookshare "is consistent with our business model" to supply content to as wide a range of people as possible. Under Flat World's pricing/business model, students have access the entire textbooks for free online, and Flat World offers a variety of other formats, including print books, for a fee. The company is immediately making eight titles available through Bookshare and expects to have 17 to 20 textbooks in the system by the end of the spring term.

Bookshare is using funds from a $32 million grant received from the Department of Education to underwrite the program.
]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/etextbooks-and-accessibility-c.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/etextbooks-and-accessibility-c.html Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:01:59 -0500 A day on the internet


 A Day in the Internet
Created by Online Education ]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/a-day-on-the-internet.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/a-day-on-the-internet.html internet Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:34:07 -0500 Facebook Privacy Settings http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/09/facebook-privacy-per-post/

Today is the day that Facebook is supposed to be activating their new privacy standards. We all got the message on the FB home page from Mark Zuckerburg, but I admit that I didn't read it.

Basically, FB is making it easier for you to designate your privacy settings on all of your posts -- status updates, photos, videos. The categories are: Friends, Friends of Friends, Everyone and Customized. It makes it easier to set up friend groups to share information with and they say that they hope the privacy policies will be less confusing in gnereal.

However, the article mentions that by having the privacy settings, many people will be encouraged to select "Everyone" as an option, thus opening up the content to be more available and searchable. Privacy settings that actually reduce privacy. Way to go FB.

Note: I just tried to post a status as a test, but I wasn't prompted with the above options
]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/facebook-privacy-settings.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/facebook-privacy-settings.html privacy Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:08:00 -0500 AOL's new CMS When I was reading this article in the NYT today about AOL's split (or exile?) from Time Warner, the phrase "content management system" caught my eye. AOL uses a CMS called Seed that tracks customer behavior and ad prices. After Googling the term, I found this article, which announced a NYT tech journalist was made the first programming director of AOL's "new data-driven content management platform."

What worries me is a company trying to create innovative technology when most of their revenue still comes from dial-up services. They still had 5.4 million subscribers this year, down from 26.7 million in 2002.

On a completely unrelated note, here's one of the most interesting articles I've read in weeks: Skxawng!

]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/aols-new-cms.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/aols-new-cms.html Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:17:02 -0500 QA in the Time of Blogs (Professional and Otherwise)
This is also a problem now because it seems that everyone is a blogger, and the lines have been blurred between blogger and journalist. It doesn't seem to matter anymore that Perez Hilton has terrible grammar and spells celebrity names wrong on a daily basis. Okay, maybe that's not the best example, but my point is that millions of people read his blog every day and no one seems to notice the difference. Perhaps a better example is the trend of professional organizations trying to connect with people by asking their employees to blog. Today I was on CNN.com and clicked on a link to a blog post on Nancy Grace's site. After a few moments I realized the post was written by one of the show's producers. What made me wonder who wrote the post in the first place was that the subhead read: "Too little, Too late: A mistake that caused a little girl her life." Continued reading turned up even more obvious misspellings and grammatical mistakes. Really guys? Would it hurt to double check a few things before pressing the "post" button? Especially when posing as a journalist reporting on a legitimate news story?

I guess my point is that, while functionality and usability are extremely important (obviously), maybe we should get back to the basics as well.
]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/qa-in-the-time-of-blogs-profes.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/qa-in-the-time-of-blogs-profes.html Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:05:45 -0500 The Wallstreet Journal vs. Google Discussion in class the other day reminded me of the unorthodox anti-Google strategy Rupert Murdoch has recently gone public with. Murdoch has blocked search engines from crawling his sites, which makes them all but invisible to search engine users. He claims keeping out of search engines prevents low quality (i.e., non-paying) readers from stumbling on the site. Google responded to Murdoch's block with: "Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don't." Here's a summary of the back and forth.

Murdoch seems to be more interested in rebelling against Google's omnipotence rather than doing what's best for his publications. While it may seem like he's shooting his newspaper in the foot, at least he's standing up to a company most industries bend over backwards for. In principle, good for him. In reality, probably not the best idea. The WSJ recently published this article by Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, who predictably agrees with me.

]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/the-wallstreet-journal-vs-goog.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/the-wallstreet-journal-vs-goog.html Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:11:00 -0500 New marketing The chapter from The Cluetrain Manifesto and the O'Reilly Webcast made similar arguments about what sort of marketing works in the digital age, and it's marketing that doesn't look so much like marketing. Chris Brogan notes that even blogs devoted to selling books shouldn't be just pitches for products. People don't want to read that. They want engaging content. Levine has a little more bite, scoffing at shiny brochures and corporate messages and calling for corporations to stop delivering lies and start genuine conversations. What both argue for, in essence, are advertisements that look like edit. Certainly a lot of the editorial content in magazines and online is conveniently product-focused. Book, music, and movie reviews serve dual functions as criticism and publicity. And then, in reverse, are publications like bn.com's "B&N Review," which I'm not sure if anyone actually reads, but it has some really great editorial content--really long, in-depth interviews with authors and little pieces on obscure books like Dino Buzatti's 1969 graphic novel "Poem Strip." The underlying purpose, of course, is no secret--pricing and an "add to cart" button are prominent on the page--but that doesn't negate the fact that the publication ("publication"?) has engaging content that's worth reading. In fact, maybe I like that it's not masquerading as purely editorial when there are other factors at play (the Huffington Post had an interesting piece a while back about all the editorial space the New York Times devotes to its own writers upcoming books, but now I can't seem to find it). Are the days of even pretending at ad/edit distinction over? What is the implication?]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/new-marketing.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/new-marketing.html Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:15:26 -0500 Google's Control Over Search Results this article on CNN about how last week's picture of Michelle Obama doctored to replace the First Lady's face with an ape's raced to the top of the image search results. The article talked about how there are over 200 criteria that determine the order that search results come up, and Google's policy is not to alter the results out of fairness. However, they did manage to swing it so that the picture would not appear on a search for "Michelle Obama" but would appear on a search for "Michelle Obama ape." Isn't this a violation of their own policies? And if they can do this, why is the search result for King acceptable? I'm sure this will blow over quickly, but I would still be interested to see the debate that would come up if someone kicked up a real fuss.

I don't believe that Google doesn't somewhat alter their search results, personally. For example, in preparation for class I Googled "Google Analytics." Of the ten results, there were Google sponsored results, a wikipedia hit, and a variety of blogs, none of which were critical of the system in any way. I'm sure that was just coincidence, though...

But, on a lighter note, I do enjoy this piece from Mashable that shows some examples of humorous Google autofills. For example, typing in "can jes" returns a top Google Suggestion of "can Jesus microwave a burrito." It shows that Google has a sense of humor. And, my guess is that it also shows that Google has more control than it is willing to let on.
]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/googles-control-over-search-re.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/googles-control-over-search-re.html Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:18:28 -0500 Will New Book Marketing Site Be Effective? this article on Teleread the other day. Neil Levin is launching a new site, EverPub, that is aimed at indies and self-publishers who are hesitant or unable to design their own web sites. For a fee of $295 for two years, they get a book and/or author web site "that brings together all the sales, marketing, and social media information about his book," and also includes an experts forum. The article points out that more and more tools are coming out to aid self-publishers. 

My concern is that there are too many tools out there, and very soon there will be too many authors out there. Will this make it even more impossible for authors to differentiate themselves from the ever-growing crowd? I also wonder if EverPub will provide any SEO services, or information to customers at the very least? Is it worth $295 if no one will be able to find your site in a search? And, my final question, will this site allow for customization for the author's needs, or will it be an uncustomizable template that may or may not be usable depending on the project? My main fear with programs like these is that people are becoming more obsessed with getting as much information onto the web as possible without consideration for quality or usability/functionality.
]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/will-new-book-marketing-site-b.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/will-new-book-marketing-site-b.html Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:37:14 -0500 Do you hear what I hear?: Market conversations and Kindle vs. Nook Shelf Awareness about how much the limited availability of the Nook has been a shot of adrenaline to Kindle sales--despite the fact that the Kindle is largely considered a lesser product and is poorly marketed.

In light of the reading from The Cluetrain Manifesto I can think of only one reason why the Kindle would reign as the king of the e-reader mountain, and it is admittedly simple to discern: the holidays. We get in such a frenzy to buy "the item" of the season that we totally ignore the conversations that are taking place in that market. 

Amazon has become such a successful online retailer because of its customer reviews, but if you go to the Kindle page you'll notice the customer reviews are all but absent, buried at the bottom of the page under scrolls and scrolls of repetitive listings of features and specs. And they're obscenely out-of-date. February and March 2009? Come on! I find it disconcerting that the page for the currently "#1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon" hasn't even been updated since the introduction of one of its fiercest competitors nearly six weeks ago.

So it seems pretty clear that Amazon does not want to have a conversation about its product, it just wants you to shut up and buy it. And we consumers are doing exactly that. I'm not saying that Barnes & Noble is necessarily doing a better job when it comes to marketing their Nook--that is another issue entirely. But what I am saying is that the pervasive consumer culture is capable of totally negating all of the aspects of positive marketing that The Cluetrain Manifesto delineates. Jingle bells, jingle bells... 




]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/do-you-hear-what-i-hear-market.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/do-you-hear-what-i-hear-market.html Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:23:50 -0500 Tracking images across the interweb service that uses image-recognition technology to help protect the copyrights of photographers and other visual artists on the web.

At present, many photographers rely on their audience to alert them when their images are being used inappropriately online. It can be challenging for visual artists to prevent unlicensed use of their work when they have no reliable way to monitor its movement through the interweb. Especially in creative communities like Flickr, this type of theft limits the way artists share their work, often forcing them to hide their work from public view or brand their images with giant watermarks to discourage unauthorized use.

While ImageRights isn't the first service of its kind, the services previously available were aimed primarily at larger agencies (some have a required minimum of 30,000 images) and were too costly for independent artists. ImageRights seems to present an easy, cost-effective solution for individual artists to track their work online. For $4.95 per month, users can track 250 images and receive weekly reports that display where their images have been found, along with contact information for the infringing sites. The ImageRights software is even able to identify cropped, rotated, flipped, and colour-changed images. 

In addition to helping artists protect themselves against copyright infringement, I think the service would be interesting to artists who license their work under the creative commons, so they can see if and how their work is being used by others. ]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/tracking-images-across-the-int.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/tracking-images-across-the-int.html copyright Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:36:22 -0500 SEO and Newspapers

Who doesn't love the New York Times? But why aren't they always the first to come up in a search? With the amount of information they publish daily, hourly, by the minute, are newspapers getting the most out of the internet's ability to FIND?  

In an interview done last year with New York Times' Search Engine Strategist, Marshall Simmonds, the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for newspapers was an obvious topic. Her response to being found online for a newspaper of their magnitude is a careful (and time-consuming) combination of KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTIONS, XML feeds and Metadata. But in the end, its not about searchability for the New York Times but rather a focus on the audience they know they have already. Simmonds said in the interview:

Decentralization of the search engine optimization strategy has been an effective approach for us at the New York Times and our consulting clients as we can't be the go-to resource for every search related question.
In reality, let's thank the SEO gods for not having us filter through all those NYT results that would have popped up in our googles.
]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/seo-and-newspapers.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/seo-and-newspapers.html Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:11:58 -0500 Google shuts down longest-running entertainment news website--without explanation! search engines Google really is.

StudioBriefing.net, an entertainment news online publication that has been around almost since the creation of the internet itself, is being forced to close its doors after unexplained threats from Google over "one or more serious violations of [Google's] advertising policies related to Landing Page and Site Quality."

According to Studio Briefing's post, they have done all they can to contact Google for explanation and guidance:

"We have repeatedly asked Google to explain its decision and to provide guidance on how to bring StudioBriefing.net into compliance with its policies. Our messages have either been ignored or we have received copies of their original boilerplate notifications."
You've most likely seen Studio Briefing on the immensely popular film and entertainment database, IMDb, which uses Studio Briefing as a partner news site, along with WENN.

Because they admittedly can't battle it out with Google, StudioBriefing.net has no choice but to shut down entirely.
]]> http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/google-shuts-down-longestrunni.html http://blog.emerson.edu/fall09pb692/2009/12/google-shuts-down-longestrunni.html Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:02:28 -0500