On Holiday Till August

3D Coming to Screens Near You?

Sony appear to have all the 3D bases covered. They are filming in it, developing it, providing devices to rum on it and distributing it. 3D is certainly going to change gaming and its going to change sport filming but will it really take over and become the next big digital change? Many like ourselves, were impressed by the cinematography of Advatar and less impressed with Tim Burton’s quick 3D fix on Alice, but 3D is coming and big money is waging on it win.



There are some interesting issues. First, the Eyecare Trust claim some six million people in the UK, or 1 in six, will not be able to view the 3D images properly. The claims relate to people who have poor binocular vision and will have difficulty processing and viewing the 3D effects. They may only see blurred images and could have side effects such as headaches. Glasses may be the cure but the health risks when increase when people are subjected to prolonged and close exposure, such as experienced by gamers. There is no real health warning with 3D and the effects of excessive exposure are not established, nor are they know with respect to age.

The 3D section of the PlayStation 3 terms states, ‘Some people may experience discomfort (such as eye strain, eye fatigue or nausea) while watching 3D video images or playing stereoscopic 3D games on 3D televisions… If you experience such discomfort, you should immediately discontinue use of your television until the discomfort subsides.'

Reggie Fils-Aime, the President and COO of Nintendo of America recomends, "Very young children not look at 3D images…. the muscles for the eyes are not fully formed... This is the same messaging that the industry is putting out with 3D movies, so it is a standard protocol.’

3D is coming and gaming powerhouse, Ubisoft’s UK marketing director, Murray Pannel predicts a 3D TV in every living room within three years and that 3D gaming will be at the forefront.

However we have the cost of production of content. Here we have two different approaches, one which shoots in full 3D and one that merely transforms to 3D. There are basic two technologies. First stereoscopic or full 3D, which is like in Avatar and costs around 70% more than normal and requires you to shoot in 3D from the start. It works by giving depth of field, enabling the viewer to see ‘into’ the image. The other is slightly cheaper, around 50% of mormal and is called dimensionalising. This involves taking a 2D film and in post production making it into 3D. The finished product may not be as good, but is a way to turn a back catalogue into 3D and capitalise on the 4 times greater revenue 3D movies are making over 2D. Tim Burton’s Alice used this post filming technology and is why some of the imagery is not focused. 2D depends on a focus point and is when it it is turned into 3D it can become blurred. There is also a contrast issue where 3D 'dulls' an image and light has to be adjusted to compensative. Images may appear different when the same original film is viewed in 2D and 3D. Finally, shooting has to be on the diagonal not face on and this can make original 2D film look weird.

Sport appears to be where TV production is cutting its 3D teeth and Sony filmed the whole World Cup in 3D.


NTT Docomo have just launched a 3D LCD display that can be viewed with the naked eye without those glasses at Expo Comm Wireless in Japan. It will display 3D images which can be viewed from eight viewpoints, each of which has an angular range of 15°. The display however cannot show 2D images but they claim, ‘We would like to equip mobile phones and smart phones with the display within a few years.’ 3D LCD displays can be viewed with the naked eye using either a lenticular lens or a parallax barrier, which provides a slit to partially block off light.

Facebook Skeletons Keep Coming!

We talk one minute about bad PR and the next about skeletons in cupboards. When we discover one skeleton in a cupboard we deal with it and move on. When another is find another its only natural to raise more than an eyebrow.

Remember the millionaire brothers who rowed in this years Oxford Canbridge University Boat? Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, together with Divya Narendra where co-founders of ConnectU, and took on their former Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg. They claimed that Zuckerberg the CEO of Socail Network Facebook had taken their software code and business plan. In 2008 they settled out of court for some $65 million in Facebook stock and cash. The dispute still rages on over the company valuation and some would suggest that there is there is no smoke without fire.

Now Mark Zuckerberg have had another potential skeleton in New York web designer Paul Ceglia. Ceglia has filed suit against Facebook and company CEO, claiming an April 2003 contract which would now entitle him to around 84% ownership stake in Facebook. The case is over a 7 year old contract signed by Zuckerberg and Ceglia, the designer. The contract is claimed to pay Ceglia some $1,000 and a 50% stake in the site. When it was nothing the 50% was worth nothing but today that could be substantial. The lawsuit also claims that Ceglia is entitled to "an additional 1% interest in the business for every day after Jan. 1, 2004, until it was completed." The terms apparently state, "It is agreed that Purchaser [Ceglia] will own a half interest (50%) in the software, programming language, and business interests derived from the expansion of the service to a larger audience."

Ceglia seeks a declaratory judgment and relief in the form of monetary damages and 84% ownership -- worth between $5.6 billion and $9.24 billion, which is based on Facebook's estimated value of between $6.5 billion and $11 billion.

Apple: Is All PR Good?

One day you are a hero the next you are a villain. One day everyone hangs on your every word the next they hang you for every word. We saw what bad PR did to a delayed car recall recently and BP has had a mare of a communications problem since oil stated to impact its main buying community. No one is immure to bad press and not everyone can handle it. Now Appleworld certainly is experiencing a rollercoaster of a month since it launched its iPhone 4.

The iPhone 4 went on sale in late June 24 and Apple claim to have sold more than 1.7 million units in the first three days of the launch.

Should they recall the phones and correct them, simple tell people how to hold them, download a patch, or tough it out? The one thing you don’t do is act arrogant and say that there isn’t a problem when there is. The next thing you don’t do is tell people how to fix your problem and offer them a bumper at a cost of $30. The last thing you don’t do is expect it to go away – ask BP.

The Comsumer Reports statement which it could not recommend the iPhone 4 should have been taken on board. Apple blog TUAW however claimed that the company was deleting threads in its support forum that referenced the Consumer Reports ratings. The chorus of complaints continue to grow and consumer review sites question whether a recall is required.

The company so far has made two official responses to the reception issue, which has been blamed on an external antenna design. One recommended that customers refrain from holding the phone in a way that covered the bottom left corner. Another said it had discovered a software glitch that miscalculated the strength of wireless coverage in a given area.

Smaller iPads Coming?

We have long awaited the emegence of OLED technology into the mass device market and it could be Apple's trump card if rumours in Digitimes are to be believed. They claim a second generation of the iPad, using 5.6" and 7" OLED panels by the end of the year. We will read that as January and at the usual Apple show.

The first quarter date may also tie in with rumoured iPad orders to Taiwan-based component makers for the fourth quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011.

So are Apple targeting the eInk 'Lookie likie' market and aiming to take them out with one swipe? Are they watching the tablet market and trying to spread their attraction to the lower end? The use of OLED is certainly a major shift and one that could give them significant traction if they can get the price right.

Remember Steve Jobs 2008 quote on the Kindle, "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore... The whole concept is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore.” Well perhaps everyone makes a mistake.

The $100 eBook Reader is Coming

We have been saying for a long time that the eInk reader price had to drop to a point where it becomes a throw away commodity. We have seen recent skirmish with Nook and Amazon but today we saw the first real push into that price point space.

eBookNewser has reported that Books-A-Million has been selling one version of the Sony eReader which was originally $299 for $99 and $89 to members. Guess what - within hours the members-only special offer had sold out. Ok we offer was limited to just one version, restricted to members and was a time window offer, but it clearly proves that people will buy at the right price and we will continue to suggest that $100 is it.

If a real price war were to start today it will be interesting to watch. With the recent demise of iRex and Cooler readers and many others probably looking shaky it is easy to see the opportunity for many to dump their inventory onto the market and cut their losses. This has to drive down the high end machines and it is a brave man who stick at the old price. The likely winners are those who like Amazon can cross subsidise any loss, those with a sizeable repository on offer and the brave.

We predict that the price of many readers will fall to $100 before the Christmas buying season. However consumers beware that the first to be on offer will be the old models, refurbished ones and generally those that are sitting on shelves waiting to be written off in the ebooks. Also consumers must ensure that the readers, especially the less know ones, are capable of doing what they says on the box.

Is ePub, ePub or ePub?

We are only just really starting to get into the interoperable digital world we all seek but already cracks are surfacing and more importantly it is not difficult to envisage some further issues moving forward. Unfortunately we are not all experts in the detail, nor are many experts across the full range of issues and technologies and most importantly the experts often miss the commercial and cultural aspects in their search for technical utopia.

Yesterday I was sitting in our Pune office in India when I received an email which I am not saying is right or wrong only that the author is someone who I respect when it comes to digital file manipulation. His objective was to highlight that ePUB for iPad is different from ePUB for ADE and SonyReader and raise some areas for consideration. The mail was quiet detailed and extensive so I have just listed some of the issues raised.

1. The ePUB for the iPad needs a new-standard CSS for iPad-ePUB which will generically apply colour for Part/Chapter/Sections/Noteboxes/CodeListing and others. Fairly straightforward but not required until colour was delivered.
2. Image/Graphic format: iPad-ePUB supports JPG and PNG formats, but PNG (transparent) is recommended. Transparency of images helps’ if a coloured Notebox has an inline equation then image will not render white-patch of inline equation image.
3.The graphic dimension requirement is different for as images which occupy 25% or 40% of the page need more scaling as compared to Sony/ADE. This applies to cover dimension too.
3. Special Character support is extensive for iPad-ePUB as compared to ADE and SonyReader. This means that the iPad can render more characters as text as opposed to image.
5. iPad-ePUB does not work on XSL-stylesheet as ADE and SonyReader does. iPad-ePUB entirely works on CSS.

Although iPad-ePUB can be viewed on ADE but will not display colour enhancements in SonyReader (because of its grey screen). We can’t assure 100% cross-compatibility of ePUB between iPad and ADE/Sony, as the owner of respective specifications also don’t claim this cross-compatibility.

We already have DRM diversion as Apple, Amazon and Adobe go their separate ways. We still have multiple format s with Amazon, Blio, epub, Apple epub, Adobe ebook and obviously these will develop different versions and be open to different interpretations.

What we need to remember is that its not just the consumer that is faced with the question of interoperability but also the publisher and aggregator who has to hold and maintain them. Someone who invested early in digital files may now have to revisit these in order tomake them comply with the new demands. The recent change from 1.03 to 1.05 version of epub is a classic example of such a change.

The one thing we all want is interoperability.

Android 2.2 Looks Cool

Ars Technica have done a first class review of the new Android operating system 2.2. We may have only just moved to 2.1 but the wealth of features clearly demonstrates both Google’s commitment to push the agenda on Android. With more and more devices coming on stream even the guys at Apple are in for a battle.

We don’t wish to steal Ars thunder so click here to read more on the features and see the screens.

Peer Review about to Change?

Peer review is a critical part of the journal article process involves an editor selecting those who are best qualified to review specific articles.

Now Elsevier are to pilot a new approach which turns the process on its heads and through the use of its PeerChoice software enables the reviewers to select the articles that match their academic competencies and interests. The process still needs to be done within a time period but instead of pushing articles to reviewers the processes effectively allows reviewers to pull them. All the checks and balances of the peer review process remain to ensure the expected high quality of the process. Elsevier is piloting the new programme for three months on its Chemical Physics Letters journal.

The new approach follows a survey by Elsevier which highlighted that many reviewers are sometimes hesitant to review an article because of their lack of expertise in that particular field and that researchers wanted to improve peer review by increasing the relevancy of articles and the turnaround time.

Opening peer review is interesting in that it obviously starts to empower the reviewers but it is also dangerous as it could dilute the quality of the current process and is dependant of there being the right level as well as the right relevance of response and remember reviewers do it for free.

eInk Just Lost its Cool, While eBook Issues Just Got Hotter

Cooler reader looks to be another casualty of the squeeze that is inevitable in the ‘lookie likie’ eink reader market. They follow iRex in what may be a growing queue of dead technology failures. The one consistent thing we have said is that this technology made little sense and had a very limited life and now the writing may be clearly on the wall.We doubt we will see eink readers as we know them today in 2012.

The cooler reader entered the market in a full colour with a spectrum of cases, but forgot to make the screen colour too. They also misjudged their launch with a stand and presentation more geared to a car show than a book show and their one trick pony was just a colour case. According to various sources they are no more.

Cooler will not be the last and there will be a lot more casualties before some sense prevails and we haven’t yet seen the inevitable price drop to minus $100 which will sort out many that are merely hanging around on death row today. As we said earlier this week the ones with strong content revenues and offer are the only ones with a survival chance today.

The Amazon Kindle however continues to push forward and now has a fancy graphite case. Surprisingly they have just discovered that a dark contrast makes a ‘white’ screen look like paper! Hello did they not realise this when Adobe created Digital Editions some four years ago. A graphite case and better eink resolution isn’t going to save what is basically inferior technology. You don’t see people going out to buy black and white TVs today so why expect them to buy black and white readers? The only stay of execution will be a drop to $99 a unit.

However the demise of black and white eInk has another interesting twist as it starts to potentially fracture Adobe’s DRM platform ACS4 which today was more or less the universal DRM across the eink devices. It also starts to highlight the differences between the adoption rules being applied to epub standards and formats in general.
There are a number of interesting issues now emerging on epub, hard DRM, soft DRM (watermarking) and readers. It will be interesting to watch as these unfold and what is certain is that there will not be one universal solution to these issues for some time yet.

Amazon Patent Comes Out of Woodwork

Engadget scored a significant scoop in its exclusive article on Amazon’s patent on e-readers with secondary LCD displays. Apparently the patent was filed some 4 years ago for US only rights and so wasn't required to publish the patent application. The one refernce picked out by engadget refers to a two screen device.

A handheld electronic device comprising: a housing; an electronic paper display disposed in the housing and having a first surface area; and a liquid crystal display (LCD) disposed in the housing proximate the electronic paper display, the LCD having a second surface area that is smaller than the first surface area of the electronic paper display.

Whether Amazon takes legal actions against others is uncertain and the obvious targets are the Nook and the Alex readers from Barnes and Noble and Spring Design. More interesting is that this effectively would kill off any thoughts anyone may have to create a dual screen reader , what its impact is on any clamshell tablets such as the KNO tablet and whether it will impact mobile developments in the future.

It is hard to believe that the Amazon patent can’t be challenged, that it was granted long after these devices can to market, that no challenge was made by Amazon given that they had a patent pending and finally that it only applies to a single region. It would suggest that Amazon’s application was speculative and will simply slip away but we may be wrong.

Chasing Cheap Labour in a Digital World

Chasing cheap labour in a global economy is easy at first, but becomes harder over time. Every supplier of goods and services wants the lowest cost base and the highest margin and cheap labour will always be a major factor. Managing costs has become somewhat of an art form in this connected world and often work simply flows from one low cost center to another in search of cheap labour. Today components may have to be source from one specific place or a limited number of options. All the various components may be sourced from many countries and then merely assembled in another and then transported and sold in the most profitable markets.

So the New York Times today reports on changing situation and aspirations of China and the potential impact on gadgets such as Mobiles and the iPad. China’s labour costs are rising and being fuelled by worker shortages, a booming Chinese currency, worker unrest, inflation is rising so is the cost of housing and consumer affluence. Wages in China since 2005, have risen by over 50% and now are under extreme pressure to rise significantly again. China’s currency has also appreciated against the US dollar since 2005, and is now expected to rise about 3 to 5% a year for the next several years.

You can see the same on many Asian countries and what was cheap a few years ago is no longer the case. China labour will and can be moved from areas such as Shenzhen to cheaper and more rural areas, but the same issue slowly reappears. It’s no different in India where centres such as Bangalore, Pune and Chennai are stating to look unattractive and new cities are opening up and becoming attractive.

As we about to fly out to India again to our digital content factory in Pune and the in Coimbatore we note that the labour rates vary significantly between the two. We will also visit our team in Bangalore which is different again. There are so are many other factors that influence what one do where and the overall mix. Ability to recruit, transport infrastructure, the right raw skill set and much more effect the ability to migrate work between different cost bases. Someone was talking to us only last week about moving to Vietnam and setting up a factory there. Someone else trains their operators in the city then equips them to operate from their villages. The common factor is the cost of people and the fixed cost of doing business in a location. If you want Arabic digital conversion the cheapest place today is probably Cairo, but it is not the best place to do English or European languages as the cost base is geared to deal with other issues such as the lack of effective Arabic OCR software.

All, manufactures and service providers, chase the elusive cheap ticket but must face the reality of their business needs and stability.

The ultimate challenge is to manage the margin, and whilst companies such as Apple can accommodate rising costs within their ‘fat’ 60% margin, others making personal computers, mobiles and other electronics may not have the same levels of fat. Commodity services such as digital conversion also live on tight margins and have started to change as prices that have flattened or even dropped. There again these may start to come under pressure to rise sharply as digital demand starts to surge and capacity remains constrained.

It was interesting to read in the NYT article about the breakdown of the iPhone 4’s expensive component costs. More than a dozen integrated circuit chips accounting for some 60% of the cost of a single device. It’s claimed that Apple pays, Samsung some $27 for flash memory and $10.75 to make its applications processor; German chip maker Infineon receives $14.05 a phone and the gyroscope, by STMicroelectronics, costs some $2.60. It is claimed that the total bill of materials on a $600 iPhone is $187.51. The assembly in China is the cheap part with workers being paid less than a dollar an hour today to assemble and package the iPhone 4. However rising wage demands directly will continue to impact cost and logistics is only cheap when it is in bulk.

The most interesting point is that counties such as China and India no longer want the low end assembly and service work. “China doesn’t want to be the workshop of the world anymore,” says Pietra Rivoli, a professor of international business at Georgetown University. India is already maturing as a workforce and aspirations and wages are growing fast. The question is will the West pay more or simply flow to the next cheap source of labour?

The Cisco Kid to Deliver a Tablet

With built-in teleconferencing and desktop integration features the tablet Cius from Cisco starts to present a different form of competition to the ipad and could make it appeal to business users. Then there is USB and Ethernet ports, WiFi or 3G connectivity options, a 7” screen, forward facing cameras that can record video at resolutions up to 720p at 30 frames-per-second and a back-facing camera with a 5-megapixel camera for VGA resolutions. The Android tablet will have hardware buttons for navigation and menu access as well as a touchscreen.

This could also give a great opportunity for information companies to develop mobile solutions and apps for the Android platform. The Cius is planned for release in early 2011 and no doubt will arrive before anyone can spot anything from Plastic Logic.

Sony: Anything You Can Do We Can Do Too

We saw Amazon drop their price of the Kindle to align to the Nook and now Sony has dropped the prices on its Pocket Edition from $169 to $149, the Touch Edition from $199 to $169 and the 3G Daily Edition is now $299 from $349.

Our take is that this, is too little too late and they have to break the $99 price point to be attractive. Will anyone be prepared to cut to the bone, or run a loss leader to capture the market? The problem with so many ‘lookie likies’ is that they don’t make money on the sales of books, only on the devices and as the price wars heat up then some will go to the wall. It is hard to see anyone but Kobo, Amazon and B&N surviving these wars if they get as hot as they must do soon. Forget the social networking, forget they fancy add ons and split screens, for eInk readers to make it through winter, they have to make money out of content sales.

How long before one starts to give them away to schools, institutions etc. Remember they also will soon face OLPC tablet offer at the low end and more Android tablets at the top end and after all said and done, they are still one channel black and white TVs, in a multi channel, Technicolor and HD world.

Woot: Amazon to Sell 'Bags of Crap'?

Imagine an online store that only does ‘happy hour’ and focuses on a single item each day and when it’s midnight, its gone. Imagine the same store labelling its products as "bags of crap" and joking that it hopes to be profitable by 2043. Woot.com is certainly no ordinary online experience but it is one that is gaining significant following and last week was bought by Amazon. Watch the video!!!



Woot has some interesting advice on their site:

If you buy something you don't end up liking or you have what marketing people call "buyer's remorse," sell it on eBay. It's likely you'll make money doing this and save everyone a hassle. If the item doesn't work, find out what you're doing wrong. Yes, we know you think the item is bad, but it's probably your fault. Google your problem, or come back to that product discussion in our community and ask other people if they know. Try to call the manufacturer and ask if they know.

We are busy sourcing new products and shipping orders. You can post a comment to our community board, but we don't guarantee we'll respond.

A new product is released every morning at 12am central time, seven days a week. (If you're not a morning person, this can be described as every night at midnight. Better?) If a product sells out during its run, a new item will not appear until the next release time. You will know if a product is sold out, because the main page says "SOLD OUT" instead of "I want one". (Clever, eh?)

Seriously they can get away with their tongue in cheek approach and what Gerald Ratner couldn’t do because they do it on everything and say it in a way that makes them sort of endearing. However, the question now is how they will fit into the Amazon camp. Will they sell books with some funny commentary, ‘buy now before we pulp it’ or Kindles with colour reading glasses? Their comment on being taken over for a reported $110 million, "More details forthcoming after we pick our eyeballs up off the floor."

Digital Reading Tests Prove Little?

So which would win the ultimate reading test out of the iPad, the Kindle, the PC and the physical book? Take 24 readers give them a short story by Hemingway on each of the four options, time them and then test their comprehension understand .

Jakob Nielson, a leading experts on usability ran such tests and has posted his results his Alert box website.

Based on this data, the study concludes that Books are still better for reading than ebook readers.

However the numbers are very small and the time taken was very similar. Nielson says that based on the tests, reading on the iPad is more difficult then a normal book, as the story took 6.2 percent longer to read, with the Kindle being even slower. Some suggest that the new or unfamiliar interface of the ereaders would easily account for the variance in results and that over time this would be obviated. Some would suggest that the tests ignored the benefits of the technology platforms and merely focused on one aspect reading. Some would also question whether speed actually matters?

So as eInk strives to play catch up to the iPad and the world gets addicted to tablets what can we draw from this small piece of research? Some would say very little, others that the book still wins, others that the tablet with its higher resolution and touchscreen interface wins over keys and poorer resolution. We think its all academic really but if it makes Mr Nielson happy and keeps him off the streets so be it.

There again its getting close to August and news is getting harder to find!

Adobe PDF and InDesign Face New Competition

Why would anyone want to challenge Adobe and its now open PDF format? Adobe have developed the format without any real challenger and today printers, typesetters, digital companies and virtually every publisher deals with PDF.

Enter Founder Apabi Technology a Chinese e-book player from Beijing who have an established name in the Chinese e-book market and are used by some 500 Chinese publishers, provide digital platforms, libraries and e-book readers. They have developed their CEBX (Common E-document Blending XML) technology which is capable of storing document data and which is fully compatible with PDF. Apabi Reader is their equivalent to Adobe’s Reader enabling documents to be viewed but not edited. Apabi Maker can convert other document formats to CEBX. Apabi Carbon is the full CEBX editing suite. The company also claim that it has applications under development for Windows Mobile, Android, and iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad).

So is it a replacement technology or a complimentary one? So what is their strength?
Founder Apabi plans to focus in the business-to-business market, with a specific focus on academic and professional content and have announced a strategic agreement with China's Science Press, which will make products in more than 18 different subject categories and plans to launch more than 8,000 e-books in five major disciplines. They claim that the CEBX format has been specifically designed to integrate with all kinds of smartphones, handheld e-book readers, and tablet computers

They believe the adoption by Chinese government departments to meet their document-processing needs and the productitivty they claim CEBX has over PDF on mobiles will be key areas to make CEBX a dominant force and Apabi tools a must have.
So it was also interesting to read about Quarks latest comeback and realise that Adobe may not have a clear run for long. Over a decade ago many book designers used Quark and it was dominant force in the market. However in that same period the likes of Adobe have made great inroads into the market and now their ‘InDesign’ holds the premium spot.

Quark, K-NFB Reading Technology, the creator of the Blio e-reader application, and Baker & Taylor, the US book distributor, have announced a partnership to offer content creators the ‘first complete solution for Digital Publishing 2.0’. The partnership aims to combine their complimentary expertise to help publishers and other content creators capitalize in the emerging digital market. Their joint offer aims to include video, audio, interactive Web pages, social media, note-taking, exporting capabilities, and more. They say it will transform static, black-and-white pages into rich, engaging digital media content.

There are obvious questions about the commitment of all three to stick it out and try to change a well defined market, their ability to get wide adoption of the Blio format and whether it can displace the current incumbent InDesign.
What is clear from both the Chinese intiative and the Quark one as well as Steve Job’s Flash denial is that Adobe isn’t going to have it as easy as they did in the last decade.

3 Million European Orphan Works and Counting!

The major digital issue, with the still to be resolved Google Book Settlement, is Orphan Works. These are works that are still in copyright but where the rights owner can’t be traced, or fully determined and many believe is a goldmine of works that can’t be legally digitised today. Different countries have different rules over length of copyright and the criteria under which they get impacted. Some claim the number of titles impacted is relatively small and that there is little value in them, other would suggest the opposite. Now a review involving responses from 22 cultural institutions and published by the European Commission claims, that not only books are affected but that there is a significant high percentage of orphan works among photographs and audiovisual collections and the numbers are high.

Google is not the only one looking at orphans and Europeana, which plays a key role in making Europe’s digital resources available online has called on the European Commission to establish a rights clearance system. Our own view is that it’s somewhat hypocritical for a rights industry that calls foul on infringement not to have even the bacsics of a rights registry today. After all,how can an industry be taken seriously when it doesn’t even cover the basics?

The new report claims on orphan books, a‘conservative estimate’ of 3 million orphan books (13 % of the total number of in-copyright books). The British Library in their report claimed that orphan works represent over 40% of all in-copyright material.

The older the books the higher the percentage of orphan works. ‘Vast numbers of items in the collections of the consulted cultural institutions have uncertain copyright status. Even when institutions are intentionally focusing their digitisation efforts on what they believe is public domain material, a lot of effort to establish the exact copyright status is required. Only material from as far as pre-1870 may relatively safely be assumed to be in the public domain, but it turns out that the oldest book still in copyright in the UK dates back to 1859.’

The issue is not confined to books. Film archives from across Europe categorized after a search for right holders claimed 129 000 film works are orphan and works that can be presumed to be orphan without actually searching for the right holders augments the figure to approximately 225 000. In the UK 95 % of newspapers from before 1912 are orphan and a survey amongst museums in the UK also found that the rights holders of 17 million photographs (that is 90% of the total collections of photographs of the museums) could not be traced.

The Accessible Registries of Rights Information and Orphan Works, ( ARROW project) aims to make the procedure for managing and identifying rights ownership more efficient and has been working to connect the databases of national libraries, publishers and rights organisations across Europe and although there is must noise and initial activity much has to be done for it to even effectively scratch the surface of the issue.

What the European exercise shows us is that the issue is not small, is not going away ,covers different media sectors and that there is no silver digital bullet. Everyone wants these works to be made available within the digital world but it is not a simple case of emulating Google’s attempted land grab of orphans, but about setting up a registrar that is available to all and that the commercial interests of the rights owners are protected from commercial abuse.

Does Anyone Care About The Impact of eBooks For Free?

With the announcement that South Ayrshire libraries are now to offer a free downloadable "ebooks" service to their members 24 x 7 we ask again who is dealing with the question of free versus buy on the High Street? Do the publishers feel that being paid is enough and that its no different to physical books being sold to libraries? Do the bookstore believe that libraries are no threat to their livlyhood? Do authors feel that they will get adequately rewarded by library royalties and a shrinking PLR (public lending right)? Why is this debate being sweept under the carpet?

Memebers of the library can then be read or listened to ebooks a computer, mobile phone, ebook reader, MP3 player or be burned to CD. Up to four titles can be borrowed at once from the libraries' website and although the selection today is relatively small it is being provided by US digital aggregator Overdrive who only this week partnered with Internet Archive in the US. The ebooks on the library shelf cover adult, children, fiction and non-fiction titles and include authors such as Kathy Reichs, Roald Dahl, Sophie Kinsella, and Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel and autobiographies by Barack Obama, Frankie Boyle, Peter Kay, Andy Murray and Sir Chris Hoy.

We believe the questions over the commercial models of digital libraries, inter library lending of digital books and control of US material needs to be fully and frankly aired.

Amazon Continue On Their 'Mission'

Remember those early Amazon days when people said they wouldn’t make profit and that they could continue to run at a loss. Amazon stuck to their task and came through and those of us who believed and the understood what positive cash flow meant, customer service and virtual inventory, the power of global branding and what a golden egg was knew they would. They then moved into ebooks and Kindle and once again the doubters surfaced. Even we hated the Kindle device but could see past its limitations to what Amazon was doing. It was if every step that Bezos makes there is an army of publishing cynics trying to pull him down.

So it was interesting to read the interview with Jeff Bezos in Fortune this week.

Bezos quite rightly says that he ‘thinks there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It's really a different product category. The Kindle is for readers and his strategy is one of 'buy once, read everywhere.' Bezos says , ‘ We think of it as a mission. I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it's not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that's not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.’

This is a very sensible strategy and clearly sets Amazon apart from the real contenders Google and Apple.

However the interesting points Bezos makes are with respect to pricing where he understands the market is diverse and there are ‘as many opinions about what the right thing to do is as there are publishers.’ He believe that proactive low pricing will prevail and those with low pricing will win share over those who elect to keep the prices high through the agency model. He claims it’s already happening and it no surprise that Amazon wins. Then there is his self publishing offer and compelling case to the authors locked into a royalty model based on preserving the status quo.
The status quo is somewhere Amazon doesn’t live. This week they announced e-books that come embedded with audio and video and a free Kindle application for Google Android phones. Now it continues it news by announcing “Kindle Previewer for HTML 5″ that will allow readers to view samples of books directly from within a Web browser via a “Preview” button on a books Amazon Web page. When the button is clicked a window will open enabling customers to read the sample chapter of a book. They then have the option to purchase the full book for a Kindle device or platform.

Amazon claim that the pages will offer “complex layouts and graphic design, embedded audio and video where useful, and enhanced user interactivity.”

We wait to hear their next move but are certain that they are not going to be rolled over easily by Google or Apple.

Public Libraries, The Internet Archive and Double Standards?

As libraries become a battleground for ebooks, who will win the digital library business?

A heated debate appears to be looming as the Internet Archive announces it is integrating the lending of books within its Open Library with Overdrive to participating libraries in the U.S. and elsewhere. The objective is to increase the number of books that are available for people to borrow digitally. Overdrive already claims some 70,000 titles that are being provided through 11,000 libraries worldwide. Now many more books that are not commercially available will be made available and can be borrowed from participating libraries using the same digital technology

A user can visit OpenLibrary.org to search or browse for books with the "only ebook" check box checked to find books they can borrow and read online. If the book is a commercially available, then the user is directed to Overdrive.com where they can borrow it from their local library using their library card. If the book is not commercially available and no one else has checked out the book, then the user can borrow it for a 2 week period via OpenLibrary.org. The Boston Public and Marine Biological Laboratory are among a number of libraries that have contributed titles for digital borrowing.

The Internet Archive appear to be treading on the very thin ice. Yes they are the same people that fought The Google Book Settlement! They claim that one person at a time will be allowed to check out a digital copy of an in-copyright book for two weeks and that due to copyright restrictions, the physical copy of the book won't be loaned during that same period. The interpretation of Fair Use may appear fair to The Internet Archive but not to authors and publishers who own these copyrights who may not have granted permissions. It also appears to be a different Land grab of Orphan Works which they fought to protect.

Mr. Kahle of the Internet Archive is quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying "We're just trying to do what libraries have always done." To add insult to injury Mr. Blake, of the Boston Library claims,. "If you own a physical copy of something, you should be able to loan it out. We don't think we're going to be disturbing the market value of these items." Some would seriously question the interpretations being used here and again ask why the Internet Archive appear to not practice what they preached against Google? Are publishers and authors happy with libraries scanning and passing around copyrighted works without permission and on the basis they own a copy?

Despite the current budget cuts, or because of them, the library world is being eyed up by many.

Sony have announced a new US Reader Library Programme which aims to help public libraries adopt eBooks and grow their collection. The programme will offer to enlighten library staff via a one-time web-based session covers digital reading formats, an overview of sources for digital materials, and training on Sony's Reader digital reading devices. Not surprisingly Sony will push Sony and provide digital reading devices for library staff and bi-annual updates on developments in eReading technology.

The Library program reaffirms Sony's commitment to work with local libraries throughout the US, "Libraries play an important role in our civic and cultural life, and Sony believes that it's important to support public library systems as they expand their services and digital offerings, particularly eBooks," said Phil Lubell, vice president for Sony's Reader business. "Our program is a new initiative that will provide librarians with additional resources, enabling them to inform and demonstrate to patrons how to benefit from their growing eBook collections."

Let's face it Sony want to sell ereaders and promote they lacklustre bookstore and must be feeling the heat on the streets today.

We will no doubt hear more on the Internet Archive interpretation of fair use or what some would suggest are double standards. It however clearly shows that irrespective of the financial constraints they face, libraries also face serious questions over its role, fair use and the clear conflict between its digital model and that of the commercial world.

Place Your Bets: Amazon, Apple or Google?

The battle between Amazon, Apple and Google is heating up and each are clearly adopting different strategies and book market positions.


Following last week’s pricing gauntlet from Amazon they have now announced 'Kindle for the Android' and clearly see the 'Kindle' as a cross platform brand no longer tied to a device. There approach is simple and covers all the bases Apple, PC, eInk,Blackberry, Android where the common entity is the store and the service and the reader becomes agnostic with respect to the platform. Obviously the devices and platforms today have to be Amazon controlled with respect to buying and reading. This is AmazonWorld, an immersive closed world managed and served up by Amazon. Forget the price drop we would probably go further and make it a no brainer and set a price that would burn off virtually all ‘lookie likies’. However, that may not be in Amazon’s best interest, as these could continue to support a eInk world and avoid a straight Apple Amazon technology dog fight. Amazon handled the adoption of the agency model with great skill and what looked like a climb down to some became a quiet victory. They also avoided the contractual price fixing clause adopted by others and could pass on tax issues to those who wanted to control prices. They continue to quietly burying themselves deep into the publishing market and clearly have much to offer everyone from the author to the reader.



Apple makes devices and develops software. As designers their capabilities are second to none, but as media people they are second division. Their media credentials are mainly born out of iTunes and although very groundbreaking it was not YouTube nor could it defend itself against the inevitable MP3 market which forced it to open up and change. Apple is like a self contained bubble and is great until you want something outside of the bubble. Primarily its role in life is to sell devices and associated software. Its strategy is to tie devices (they have to be prefixed with an ‘I’ ), with software tools which have to be ‘approved’ by Apple, with applications and services that they control and finally with iAd advertising that they will collect revenues on. The weakness is that they can’t control the Internet so have to acknowledge others exist outside their own ecosystem and some would suggest that is hard for their leader’s ego.

Anyone who believes Apple love books should remember Steve Job’s 2008 comments on the Kindle, "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore... The whole concept is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore.” Also worth noting was the speed that they introduced self publishing options after wooing the publishers.


Google continues to quietly move forward into the book market. Gone are the brash days of beating the chest and ignoring the market. They have learnt that they can’t always expect to steamroller the market into their way. The Google Book Settlement may still be stuck in the courts not going anywhere fast and remain unsettled, but it has apparently taught its perpetrator much about exclusive strategies and changing the law through the back door. Google scan on regardless and continue to build their repository in the cloud. They have the biggest repository of books and cleverly don't see a real difference between rare, public domain, orphan or new front list books. Their audacious ‘land grab’ of the orphans may have been halted, but you can guarantee is not over and those who think there is little money there will we suspect eat their words.

They now are on a mission to capture the device and platform world but not through hardware, but their software and Chrome and Android systems. They continue with their Editions platform now swooning the very people who objected to the settlement, the booksellers. Their mission to control information is still on track and their ability to leverage advertising revenues to drive their business remains mostly unchallenged. They pose the most likely winner in that the are truly pervasive and everyone uses Google even if they don’t use Amazon or Apple. Denying Google is like denying technology and the Internet itself and that is why they will in the long term have the greatest impact on all. With books they will have the geatest repository of digital material and have indexed the route to the rest. They clearly have the best opportunity to create a open marketplace which is based on them collecting ad revenue.

The question who will dominate is not down to the depth of their resources, these guys don’t have the same finacial constraints as B&N, Kobo, and the rest. They will woo the author, the publisher, the bookseller but will cut out any middle men at a stroke. All will dictate their terms and their rules. All have huge plusses as to why they are where they are today and why they should succeed in the book world. But three may be one two many and if so, who is the passenger and most likely to move onto ‘other things’? Who is the Weakest Link?

YouTube is a Safe Harbour

Safe harbour is one of those relatively new concepts which syas that in principle a Internet service can’t be held responsible for what others do on their service. Some would word it differently but in essence it’s a reactive approach to copyright infringement as opposed to a proactive one that attempts to check first.

In 2007 Viacom filed a lawsuit claiming that Google’s YouTube was based on copyright infringement and that it profited from knowing that the site was full of unauthorised copyrighted material. The US District Court for the Southern District of New York has ruled that YouTube is only liable for infringement once it has been told of specific videos that infringe specific copyrights and fails to act to remove them from its site.
The US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) allows online service providers to avoid liability for their users' law-breaking actions and absolves them of any burden to monitor their service for infringements of the law. It gives them a safe habour in which to operate Under DNCA companies who are informed of law-breaking, must act quickly to disable, remove or block the content or become they become liable.

The Court said that Viacom can have no quibble with how YouTube's current system operates and that when Viacom sent a mass take-down notice on February 2, 2007, by the next business day YouTube had removed virtually all of them by the next working day. The Court also said that previous cases made it clear that the responsibility to find and identity infringing material was the copyright holder's, not the online service provider's.

What does this mean to other safe habour operators? It clearly differentiates those who file share knowing that material is violating copyright from those who provide a platform and are ignorant of any abuse until notified. It also clearly enforces the owners responsibility to catch the offence and offender. So maybe we do now need an industry police force or maybe everyone should follow Macmillan’s lead and have a Digital Piracy Director.

Project Canvas Steps Forward

The BBC has been given the go-ahead for Project Canvas which could be a major step in the evolution of full internet TV and is likely to be called YouView, a hybrid of YouTube and Freeview. A partnership between the BBC, ITV, BT, Five, Channel 4 and TalkTalk is to develop standards and will see a range of set-top boxes available to access on-demand TV services such as iPlayer and ITVplayer. Users with a broadband connection will be able to access a wide range of on-demand content including BBC iPlayer, free of charge, through their TV sets. However as always there are a number of conditions the BBC trust has imposed such as ensuing all viewers are able to watch BBC programmes without a subscription and allowing other broadcasters and content providers to have have access to the platform.

However, rivals BSkyB and Virgin Media still question whether the BBC should be involved in such a commercial service and there could still be a challenge to its status under competition law and other legislation. They claim that Project Canvas will restrict competition and innovation and ultimately this will harm consumers and also that the BBC's involvement is an unnecessary use of public funds.

We welcome the move forward on Canvas and see the need to create a common platform and architecture to support the online on demand TV of tomorrow. Can we have 3D thrown in too!

Library Budget Cuts And Challenges Are Global

In the US library budgets are being slashed. New York Gov. David Paterson has proposed a budget reduction in state aid to libraries of $2.5 million, or 2.9%, cut from exiting levels. This would represent an $18 million, or 17.6% reduction in the past three years and the fifth time state spending for public libraries has been cut in that time. Queens and Brooklyn library systems have informed some 620 employees that their jobs are in jeopardy, Hemet City, California closing the $14 million library building. Newton County Library, Atlanta will be closed on Mondays effective with the library budget already slashed by $280K, and facing further cuts of $100K in the next year. The Seattle Public Library system have taken a different closure strategy and plan to save some $650K by closing down from August 30th through to September 6th . This is just one of the measures the Library is implementing to achieve $3 million in cuts for 2010. Dallas central library plans to cut its hours from 44 to 24 per week, closing Monday through Wednesday. These cuts would eliminate the equivalent of 96 full time positions. Branch library hours could also be cut from 40 to 20 hours per week, eliminating a further 88 full time positions. Dallas City library system budget last year was $28 million, is currently $22 million and could go to as low as $13 million next year.

In the UK austerity demands cuts and it was inevitable that the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport would have to suffer. It was also a given that the ‘Hotch Potch’ of vision created at the 11th hour by Margaret Hodge's Public Library Modernisation Review would be high on the list of soft targets. Free internet access in all libraries and the promotion of library membership as an entitlement from birth has been abandoned. The extension of the Public Lending Right to non-print format books has been suspended and there is also the question of the cut back of the fund itself.

Libraries are a cornerstone of our society and learning but are often the first to feel the axe as funding becomes tough. The question must be not just about their funding but about there role moving forward. If they are to go digital what is their relationship with the retail market and how do we square free to loan versus buy to own? If they have access to digital files is that through a third party service ,where they actually don’t own them, but merely serve them up on demand? You need local branches in an internet world?

The debate rages around the globe and in every form of library but is the thinking fresh? Are the same old comities trying to find the answers that suit them? Who is really tackling the challenge of conflict that the digital models and services present?

Plastic Logic to become an Urban Myth?

We all waited and waited and waited. Everyone said it would change the face of eInk and take it into the corporate space and bring newsprint to the net. We started to doubt it and some said that it had a longer reticulation period than an elephant. Now we hear that our favourite urban myth Plastic Logic’s Que-e reader isn’t shipping yet again with an official rating of a “delay.” They have gone as far as to cancel all pre-orders and new ones and that they are no longer offering a date for its launch.

Plastic Logic’s email to customers simply said, “We need to let you know that since your unit will not ship on June 24 as planned, our automated ordering system has automatically cancelled your order,”

The iPad has effectively wiped the Que off the market and although it claimed to be able to do much more in handling Microsoft Word files, Microsoft Outlook, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, digital books, PDFs, magazines and newspapers, the price was high and it was still the same black and white tv.

Plastic Logic have made the fatal mistake of promising too much and taking too long to deliver in a rapidly changing world. They would have been far wiser to get out there a year ago with some shortfalls and get it right on version two than strive for perfection and never deliver or arrive to the party as all the guests are leaving.

Bibliophile Offers Thousands Of Collection Points

Sometimes something so simple is created one wonders why it hadn’t happened before.

Today a 30 year old UK mail order and online bookseller/retailer BibliophileBooks.com has joined forces with the recently launched Collect+ to announce a new service to their tens of thousands of their internet customers.

Delivery options can be a deal-breaker for online retailers. Free delivery offers are quite common, yet until now, none offer delivery to specified convenient collection points. This new service will mean no more waiting in all day for that parcel to arrive, or that slip that says you weren’t in and can you come and collect that parcel of books. The new service offers deliver of parcels to local shops and could be a compelling prospect for customers who may have work commitments, cannot accept deliveries at the workplace, live in multi-occupancy buildings or find it risky to leave a parcel with a neighbour or outside their home.

Now parcels can be delivered to any one of thousands of local convenience stores which offer the Collect+ service and pick them up at a time that suits them.

Customers will be able to merely enter their postcode online to find their local Collect+ store and have up to 10 days from the date the parcel arrives at the Collect+ location to pick it up. Stores are open at least 9 hours a day 7 days a week. Customers who provide a mobile phone number or email address when placing their order and will be advised by text or email when the parcel has reached the local store they have nominated for collection. The parcel will be delivered to the store through Yodel (trading name for Home Delivery Network Limited) with whom Bibliophile have had an 8 year relationship.

The new Collect+ joint venture between Yodel and PayPoint PLCgives access to 3,500 selected outlets from the UK PayPoint network to ensure that over 90% of the UK population are within 2 miles of a participating store in urban areas. In terms of Bibliophile’s environmental policy, they celebrate that this service will result in far fewer wasted delivery journeys to their tens of thousands of customers throughout the UK.

Sorry No Case for The NBA

We read many blogs and articles, which like ourselves see only part of the picture. We also read the feedback and comments made sometimes by those who know more. The one thing that we can be certain of is how little we know and much we don’t know about the digital environment in which we now live. When we layer on that the different publishing perspectives across the life cycle and then the different geographic nuances and finally the different publishing sectors, its hardly surprising that is sometimes appears that its like the blind leading the blind.

Today we read an article posted in the Guardian by Sam Jordison and advocating a return to the Net Book Agreement (NBA). He looks back to the restrictive practices court examination of the NBA in 1962, which declared that, it was in the public interest to allow publishers to subsidise works of authors. He accepts that this was some 48 years ago and much has changed since then. He then comments of the role Dillons played in breaking the NBA, as he claims aided and abetted by publishers in ‘the lure of quick profit’. He claims that the lone anti NBA voice of John Calder was ignored and how Maher was to blame for not seeing the consequences of what Jordinson deems was a wrong decision and concludes that it is better ‘to have a thriving independent book sector and broad range of titles than a few cheap bestsellers?’

This to us appears to be like Stalin rewriting Russian History to fit case. It is alarming that the Guardian should give it column inches and that we even feel it deserves a response.

The reality was that the NDA stifled creativity as much as it supported it and history often comes with rose coloured glasses especially to those who never really knew it. Publishing today continues to have a fixation on front list and publishers continue to wallpaper shelves in bookstores on sale or return basis. During the time of the NBA we had a supply chain disjoin that not only was wasteful, l but created waste itself. The National Book Sale was well past its sell by date and insufficiently geared to deal with the volumes. The domestic market wasn’t expanding but the number of books was.

If the role of the NBA was to support and subsides the work of authors, did that truly hold water then. Today we have more books being published and self publishing thriving is growing. So is the case being made about the demise of the bookstore and uncontrollable discounts? Are these directly attributable to the demise of the NBA or would they have happened anyway? Would the emergence if the internet and global commerce not done the same? Hiding behind NBA dreams is as bad as not facing up to the fact that the world has changed and longing for the ‘good old days’.

What happened post NDA was apparent on day one. Anyone who has run a retail operation through a price war will tell you that it’s easy to create one, but almost impossible to stop one. The winner is usually the one with the deepest pockets, or the one with the strongest nerves. Did the book retailers really understand discounting – no. They had been mothballed from reality by the NBA. Some 4 years earlier B&Q had brought the UK to a traffic log jam when they did their then famous 20% discount weekend, a discount figure that was unheard of at the time. Their war was with Texas Homecare who was offering 15% one day discounts. The war lasted some few weeks and when the phone call was received by Kingfisher from Texas, normality returned and they moved to develop ‘everyday low pricing’.

In contrast the book market didn’t know common sense and the discounts got deeper, to the point where it was difficult to differentiate between the bargain trade and the front list stores. ‘Three for Two’ and every sort of marketing discount was introduced. Retail cooperative marketing deals increased. The publishers merely controlled the Recommended Retail Price (RRP) and some would suggest jacked up the RRP to compensate for the discount to be given away. Returns and the sale or return practices were not addressed. We moved from bulk weekly orders to low quantity and quick turnaround daily response and supply. It’s a pity that the sales didn’t increase in proportion to the waste being created and the increase in books that were swishing around the system. Bookstores suffered by being controlled by the RRP margin games and short sighted volume sales. Some would suggest that the bargain market never had it so good as waste increased and more books needed special sale help. Publishers started to pulp to cut back on the books in circulation, but more landfill was as much the wrong answer as Jordinson’s naive plea for a return to the restrictive practices of the NBA.

The one challenge that has occurred is the agency model, which ironically may kick start even more authors to go digital by themselves. The NBA is not bookselling nor is it retail, it is a false economy that hurts the one person who puts real money into the mix – the consumer. We believe that the agency model is flawed just as the NBA was. Digital renditions are over priced and the real control is with the aggregators, new entrants, technology providers not any publisher.

The truth is that we are were we are and before we embark on any knee jerk reaction and dream of the past we should take a cold hard look at how we got to where we are and face facts not rewrite history falsely.

Wanted Digital Piracy Director

We have seen an increased effort by publishers to track down piracy and now Macmillan U.S. operations whose imprints include Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, Henry Holt, Picador, St. Martin’s Press, Tor, Audio Renaissance and Bedford Freeman & Worth Publishers are advertising for a Director, Digital Piracy. The position will help coordinate and manage Macmillan’s anti-piracy initiatives.

For the job interview do you wear a suit, a pirate’s outfit or dress as King Canute? Do you put down Pirate Bay as a reference? Do you name yourself ‘Jonny Depp’?

The major responsibilities are some weird as the first mentioned are not active but passive act as a representative on piracy committees, co-ordinating company responses, tracking litigation and legislation , reviewing changes developing an internal educational program and processes to eliminate abuse. Then secondly comes the tale down notices, action plans for ‘attacking piracy issues’, recommending new anti-piracy initiatives, following-up on ‘tips of pirated works world-wide’ and investigating pirate websites.

Does the job demonstrate how serious publishers are about stopping abuse or merely deal with the need to be seen to service it? It as if the role has got its priorities wrong in listing attendance on committees as being more important than stopping abuse, or maybe it has them right and recognise the genie is out of the bottle and its better to be alongside others than fighting a lone war.

Should they employ a pirate who may know best and who has lived on the other side? Why doesn’t the industry recognise that there are a lot of lost sheep out there and create and fund a central agency that can be used by all large and small?

click to apply

2000 Years of Art but Apple Knows Best - Update

Perhaps sense does prevail in Appleworld after all. We wrote previously about Apple censorship of comic nudity in a new rendition of James Joyce's Ulysses and pointed out that Apple’s obsessive control of content could mean that art as we have known it over the centuries would be banned from the iPad. It was ironic that last night we watch a programme on the Italian Renaissance and the works of the likes of Michelangelo and wondered what those censors would make of these paintings, or for that matter the horrors of other works such as Goya.

Today marks the worldwide celebration of all things Joyce and Ulysses and as if on queue, AppleWorld censors have decided to allow the nude pictures in Throwaway Horse's graphic novel version of the book. The Apple folk had obviously seen the day in the diaries and realised it was a good day to turn a PR nightmare into a quick or quiet win.

The publisher is widely quoted that they have been told by Apple "that they made a mistake in establishing guidelines that were too rigid to allow for artistic growth". "We made a mistake," Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told the Washington Post, adding that when the comic's art was brought to Apple's attention, it "called the developers and offered them the opportunity to resubmit". "[Ulysses is] now in the store with the original panel drawings," she said.

The Ulysses chapter may now be closed but the questions still remain as to what the censor accepts as acceptable and fit for iPad consumption. The rigid control by geeks reading scripted rules begs the question of how many more times Apple’s rules will be tested before common sense prevails and the effort is redirected to more productive activity.

Do Pixels Per Inch Matter?

How many Androids equal an iPhone? Some would say that the iPhone is better than them all but the reality is that the healthy competition that is now in the market can only benefit one group – the consumer.

Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Dell are all spreading their bets with Windows 7 and MeeGo and Symbian 3 but the reality is that Android is getting the traffic and is a must make for all with multiple model offers. Motorola is clearly one that is pumping up the gigahertz looking at the devices that are coming as competitors for the notebook and of course the iPad. They are already rumoured to be relasing a phone to incorporate the Nvidia Tegra 1GHz apps processor, an iPhone-style gyroscope, Android 2.2 and of course, full Flash 10.1 hardware acceleration.

But the battle is not just about the operating system, how much GHz umph you can get into a phone but also about the display technology.

The new iPhone 4 was has Retina Display which is ultra-high resolution. The system still uses an a backlit LCD display but with advanced In-Plane Switch (IPS) technology to increase resolution, brightness, support a wider viewing angle and increase colour quality. Apple use smaller pixels, more than doubling the number to that in the iPhone 3GS screen. The LCD/IPS combination was first used on the iPad. It is claimed around 300 pixels per inch is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels when a display is viewed some 10 to 12 inches away from your eyes. So at 326 pixels per inch Apple have created a pixel-less world! It could be said they have the closest to print on a small screen.

There are doubters and some who claim 477 is the perfect number but there again its down to the vision of the beholder and someone with 20/20 vision would see it different to someone with less perfect eyesight.

By contrast, top end LG and HTC models and the Sansung Galaxy S will be using an AMOLED display which achieves its effects by using sub-pixel rendering and other advantages are greater range of colours, faster response time, thinner displays, reduced power and no need for backlighting. Samsung claim only a marginally less sharp image than the iPhone 4 and will be only 3 to 5 %. They claim a 30% power advantage which will give the Galaxy S some 576 hours of 3G standby over the iPhone 4’s 300 hours.

Whatever the outcome smartphones are getting smarter and the technology battles rage on many fronts. It is clear that what we will be using shortly in the future will make today’s models look very clunky.

News Corp Buys Skiff

News Corporation continues on its somewhat unclear digital strategy and the company has announced the acquisition of the digital Skiff platform from Hearst. Skiff delivers digital newspaper and magazine content to tablets and e-readers, with the capability to deliver high-resolution graphics, rich typography and dynamic updates. News Corp has also taken a stake in Journalism Online which is designed to help online press establish pricing and payment structures and set up the “metered mode” to enable a certain amount of content to be given away free.

So what is Skiff? When Hearst first showed it off it was certainly a big format eInk reader but with the emergence of the iPad and the queue of ‘wantabes’ its hardly a smart reader anymore. Like the Plastic Logic reader it simply took too long to get off the launch pad and by the time it got close it was in danger of looking tired and old. A black and white TV, in a HDTV Technicolour world.

It’s unclear whether News Corp. will develop Skiff as a mere platform or continue to develop it as a device. However it is clear that they are serious about making content pay.

News Corp has struggled with its digital strategy, most notably their acquisition of MySpace and their ability to tie together the disparate parts of their digital empire. The other aspect that is interesting is News Corps ability to go in what appears the opposite direction to the market and their competitors.

Selling Your House Via Google Maps

So you select an area you would like to live in on Google maps. You can look at street level, review where all the local schools, doctors, shops, restaurants are. You can take an ariel view and look at the landscape from the sky. Now you can even look at what properties are available in the area and probably zoom in to take an even closer view. When you find what you want you click to the agent and see the details and maybe even have a virtual tour. You may also like to see local planning consents and email the details to your partner. All this and more can now be achieved without to leave your laptop or mobile app, or even making a phone call!

Today’s Guardian reports that Google UK has launched a new feature of Google Maps with new house-hunting services. Today they have decided to work with real estate agents Countrywide, Zoopla and Trinity Mirror. This new service will allow both buyers and renters to search location and further qualify by specifics such as price, type and numbers of bedrooms and bathrooms. It is an obvious extension for Google services and one that must be a no-brainer for every agent and everyone wanting to sell or let a house.

Google will today make money from running ads above and below search results with estate agents and online property companies not being charged to be partners. However, the interesting question is whether in this new world the agent becomes stronger, or Google effectively cuts them out, or takes a further cut. Remember when Google said it wasn’t going to be a bookseller?

When Is Tablet and eBook?

We all know that there are a number of players focusing on the textbook market and Apple is about to join them. So it was refreshing to see a new Californian start-up called Kno that is aiming to make a splash with a new tablet aimed at the same textbook, academic reference and educational space. The tablet is a clamshell style tablet and folds together just like a book and the device has also been specifically developed for the educational market. The question is whether it can it compete with Apple, Amazon and the rest or will fade like others before them into oblivion?

The Kno has dual touch screen 14-inch LCD displays which are obviously larger than the competitors screens and which are joined convienantly at the hip. It will support Flash, HD video, audio recording and playback along with HTML5, and users can multitask between email, text the Internet and offers a stylus for handwriting recognition, and up to 8 hours of battery life. The tablet will be powered by an Nvidia Tegra processor and has either 16 GB or 32 GB of storage The device can also fold in on itself to turn into a one screen tablet.

Kno was founded by Chegg founding CEO Osman Rashid and Dr. Habib, a Semiconductor physics recognized authority in electrical engineering and the design of integrated circuits. They already claim to have entered into early partnerships with McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Wiley, and Cengage Learning
The tablet which is scheduled for release at the end of this year is no lightweight weighing in at 5.5 lbs and is expected to be ‘well under $1,000’.


The trick is to get the content and then get the devices seen as a must have. One maybe relatively easy, but the other a lot harder.

The Kindle Goes Waterproof

There will always be cool accessories for gadgets. Some will be useful and beg the question why they weren’t done in the first place, others mere bling for those who have everything. Summer is now upon us and those ‘summer must haves’ that we buy and use for a couple of weeks and forget are clearly here.


M-Edge have launched The Guardian, a water-proof case for Amazon's Kindle ereader. It even comes in different colours. It’s not for sports divers to read under water, nor is it positioned to protect the device when reading in the bath. It is however marketed at all those pool owners who want to read and lazy by their pools. No more paperbacks with water curled pages and water stains. You can now float on our lilo in the pool and read all the best sellers.

The Guardian is a transparent polycarbonate casing that is designed to fit the Amazon’s Kindle ereader and is waterproof to a depth of one meter but if you drop it don’t worry as its also designed to float on the surface. There is a big question whether it only floats on still water and then there is the bigger question of what is the definition of ‘still’. However it does float - albeit only in certain conditions. This floating feature enables you to read hands-free, but again would you seriously let go of the device if the next minute it could be dive bombed and its ‘still water’ capabilities tested? There is also an anti-reflective film to cut back on sun glare and to protect the screen, which we thought was the benefit of eInk. Finally, just in case you fall asleep, there is a lanyard ring for securing the Kindle.

No mention of the sea, which is probably not 'still', sand which we all know get everywhere nor and whether the Guardian can ‘cook the books' in the sun.

Irrespective of what we think it will appeal to some and provide a certain cache at the poolside. The M-Edge Guardian case is available in black, red, and blue for $79.99.

Irex The First of Many eReader Casualties?

IREX Technologies BV developed the first eInk way back in 2004 and spun itself from Royal Philips Electronics a year later. It has championed eInk ereaders and ebooks but over the last three years has been overshadowed and out manoeuvred by all the new ‘lookie likies’. The biggest issue was that they made even eInk look dull and their pricing was always at the top end of the market. We now read of their demise into administration in the Netherlands. It never ceases to amaze us what the folk at Philips invent and fail to deliver themselves.

We predicted that there would be eInk casualties as the market was saturated, with too many identical or near identical readers and supply clearly greater than the demand. The price was clearly too high and when colour arrived it wasn’t eInk but Apple that supplied the obvious.

Meanwhile Seth Godin predicts a “paperback” e-reader, a cheap Kindle which would could make e-books affordable for all. Godin suggest $50 is the right price, or as any retailer will tell you $49,99. At that price we would agree Amazon would be on a winner and if the can subsidise it correctly provide a price point that many of its competitors could not live with. We even may buy one! It is a position we believe that eInk readers have to adopt to survive. Unfortunately many are just manufacturers and only supply the reader, they don’t get ebook sales revenues, are not locked as value added suppliers into sectors such as education. So once the device is sold that’s it no more money!

Perhaps this cheap Kindle reader is the position Amazon aims to adopt to fight Apple. It certainly makes more sense than trying to compete with eInk colour in a battle that will not be won on poor substitute technology.

As for iRex and the iliad readers they will not be alone for long.

2000 Years of Art but Apple Knows Best

Steve Jobs is getting a track record for hypocrisy. In 2008, on commenting on the Kindle he said, "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore... The whole concept is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore.” Yesterday he claimed that Apple lives at the intersection of Technology and the Liberal Arts.

Everyone knows that James Joyce's Ulysses is a classic novel, one of the most important works of 20th centenary literature. Any rendition of the work will contain explicit language and scenes. These put the book in 1932 in the US dock and it won that famous court case. In 1933 United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that the book was not pornographic and therefore could not be obscene. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirming the ruling in 1934. However, outside of any court it has fallen foul of those ‘big brother’ censors who control Appleworld and a comic book adaptation of the classic has been rejected by Apple for containing cartoon nudity!

Would these same ‘McCathy’ or Mary Whithouse censors remove great swathes of art from antiquity to today on the same grounds? Would great cartoonists and illustrators such as Rowlinson, Gillray, Crumb would be banned? Would the majority of the photography of the likes of Breton, Newton, Bressai, Sieff, Weston and of course Mapplethrope ever make the cut? How will these consors deal with the many films have nudity in them.

Apple’s strict guidelines and a rating system is geared to prevent ‘adult’ content, but appear to only see black and white and clothed or unclothed and ban nudity irrespective of age!

So as the illustrators pixel over the bits Apple deems to rude to be seen, one questions whether they have gone too far and in whose interest they are acting? Perhaps Disney has a say perhaps not? The stupidity of Appleworld is that you can see the cleansed version in its purist form on the iPad and go to the website to see the uncensored rendition.

Will we black penned out words in the text of books or will a significant volume of written work be rejected? Will we have to those censor bleeps on music tracks?
Rated 17+ by Apple, Ulysses Seen is currently only available behind the censor’s cuts on the U.S. iTunes Store.

Some would say that the real shame is that Apple makes great products and bad moral judgement. Perhaps Applespeak is double entendre for Orwell's 'Doublespeak'.

Source Macworld