The Weekend Links Post: No. 18

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 16 links (I miscounted this week), humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below:

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

"Old media and new each has its place in the media ecosystem": why WikiLeaks turned to the press.

Datajournalism in action: making sense of WikiLeaks' Afghanistan war logs.

Cory Doctorow: is the iPad/Kindle/similar "curated" computing or "monopoly" computing?

More rumours about a forthcoming Google social network: Google is talking to games firms.

Social Media

Why Ron Bowes uploaded personal details of 100 million Facebook users to Pirate Bay.

Facebook now testing out permanent account deletion.

Will photos and videos soon be part of your Twitter stream?

Books, Writing & Storytelling

Anatomy of a marketing campaign: a fascinating series of blog posts - which has itself become part of the marketing campaign - detailing Melville House's efforts to "get Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone on the bestseller lists".

The five best book recommendation services, according to Lifehacker readers.

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

Start!: a customisable alternative home page for Chrome users.

Lesser-known features of the Google search box.

Music

8bitcollective: extensive online catalogue of chiptunes music (i.e. music made using the sound processing chips from old 8-bit games consoles).

URLs will replace MP3s, says Spotify's Daniel Ek.

Games & Other Distractions

How Channel 4 is re-inventing interactive education - with video games about sex, death and government oppression.

Miscellaneous

US judge rules that bypassing DRM is legal - if it's for fair use, rather than piracy. (Meanwhile, in the UK: much the opposite story.)

For those who think Nicholas Carr might have a point: how to rebuild your attention span.

Publishers are living in interesting times...

Yesterday, Amazon announced its new Kindle e-reader models - available in the UK from August 27th - and the launch of a UK Kindle Store. "Our vision," says Jeff Bezos (sounding not unlike Google), "is to have every book ever written, in any language, all available in under 60 seconds."

Which sounds great (to a customer), until you start thinking about DRM, proprietary formats, monopolies and the like. Just as uber-literary-agent Andrew Wylie's threat to get all his clients' e-books published directly via Amazon (if publishers don't start paying better e-book royalties) sounds great until you start thinking about... etc.

Because when you first read that story, that is what you tend to think (or I did): "Actually, why don't authors just publish their e-books direct to Amazon?"

And then of course you remember (or I did) Cory Doctorow blogging about the true practicalities and logistics of self-publishing. And that those album release experiments by Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, etc. succeeded in large part because they already had their audiences. And indeed that Andrew Wylie can so easily sell Odyssey Editions to Amazon because the e-editions in question are by the likes of Vladimir Nabokov and John Updike.

As Wylie has more or less admitted, the deal with Amazon is basically a clever short-term money-spinner designed to make a wider point and perhaps force publishers' hands a little - or at the very least force them to think a bit more urgently about the future. Which is precisely what both these stories should do: because they raise very interesting questions about the shape of the book market in the years to come, and about publishers' roles therein.

If the e-book market does in fact come to outstrip the physical book market, as Kindle vice president Steve Kessel is predicting (Amazon's e-books are already outstripping its hardback sales); if Andrew Wylie's experiment with Amazon proves as profitable as might be expected; where exactly will that leave traditional publishing houses?

Perhaps big literary agencies will be tomorrow's big publishers? Perhaps Amazon will? And Apple? (At least for established authors.)

But perhaps traditional publishing houses will then become primarily breeding grounds for new talent - and begin to rise again? And, perhaps just as likely, according to some, the more nimble and adaptable of today's small presses will be the publishers to adapt themselves most sucessfully to the new environment?

In any case, for publishers these are definitely interesting times: whether that proves a blessing or a curse is up to them.


Incidentally, for one of the most even-handed and comprehensive analyses of the Wylie/Amazon deal: head over to Open Letter Books' ever-excellent Three Percent blog.

And for the funniest coverage of the Wylie/Random House fallout: see Twitter (via the two preceding links).

The Weekend Links Post: No. 17

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 links, humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below:

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

Prominent authors to publish e-books directly via Amazon - and what this might mean for the conventional publishers they've bypassed.

Another week, another tabloid failure to fact check stuff on the net. (Well, let's assume it was something The Daily Star found online, rather than completely made-up. More here and here.)

India develops world's cheapest laptop - just £23.

Samsung tries to capitalise on iPhone 4 reception problems - by handing out free phones. (Check out the cheeky ad at the bottom of the page.)

Social Media

Facebook reaches half-billion users mark, celebrates by asking users to tell it how special it is.

And Tumblr's growing at a pretty startling rate too...

Books, Writing & Storytelling

How publishers are responding to Twitter's #dearpublisher hashtag.

What's this Google Editions thing? Er, no-one's exactly sure yet... but here are some educated guesses.

Readernaut: a new social network for books (currently in beta).

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

Rebtel releases Android app enabling free calls to other Android users - even in other countries.

SpareRoom.co.uk: "the UK's #1 flat and houseshare website". And very handy it is too - whether you need a room or a tenant.

Music

Tastemaking music venture RCRD LBL hosts hundreds of free MP3s - and sends out an MP3 Of The Day newsletter (featuring two MP3s).

Kristin Hersh 'did a Radiohead' long before Radiohead, now she's released an album as a book.

Games & Other Distractions

Make It Good: superb (but fiendishly difficult) interactive fiction detective mystery that isn't at all what it at first appears. (Walkthroughs to be found here and here/here.)

Miscellaneous

An art project to send everyone in the world a handwritten letter - bafflement has thus far been (benignly) visited upon a small Irish village and a Pittsburgh neighbourhood.

The Weekend Links Post: No. 16

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 links, humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below:

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

What happens when a story breaks behind a paywall?

How much did social media influence the UK election?

Blogging is dead, long live blogging.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange talks to Stephen Moss: "Journalism should be more like science."

First there was the slow food movement, now there's slow reading.

Social Media

Posterous wants your WordPress blog; easy blog-import option launched.

Friends for sale: how (some) marketers and self-promoters are manipulating social media.

Books, Writing & Storytelling

Writers' Houses: an online database of houses where writers used to live.

Which author do you write like?

Writer and filmmaker Ryu Murakami will release his next novel on iPad, before the print version.

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

AppInventor: create apps for Android with drag-and-drop options, no coding required.

Music

Free downloads from San Francisco/Berkeley's world-famous record store Amoeba Records.

Games & Other Distractions

Cut It: more physics puzzling from the creator of Crayon Physics Deluxe.

Miscellaneous

GodBlock: a web filter for God-free browsing - but does it exist? (Try downloading and you'll see why I ask.)

Tessa Jowell is a London landmark, according to Google.

The Weekend Links Post: No. 15

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 links, humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below:

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

How seven British iPhone app developers found success.

Surely you've already heard of TED? Anyway, now TED's coming to Oxford.

Why Clay Shirky should give TV a break. (Interesting comments thread too).

Finns now have a legal right to broadband internet access. We have the Digital Economy Act. Sigh.

Daily Mail fails to notice parody Steve Jobs Twitter account is a parody. (Fool me once... etc.)

Social Media

Is Google working on a rival to Facebook?

700,000 Facebook declare themselves fans of an Israeli speechwriter's memoir - most of them inadvertently.

Books, Writing & Storytelling

Marcus du Sautoy looks at the interactive future of books - iPhone apps offering additional material, for instance.

Your book as a relational database: a new perspective on e-publishing.

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

How to increase your virtual RAM with a spare USB flash drive.

Onbile: an online utility for making your website mobile-friendly.

Music

A free mixtape of the songs that influenced the soundtrack for Alan Moore's new audiobook project Unearthing.

The Hood Internet's mash-up mixtapes are probably old news by now... but The Hood Internet vs. Lykke Li, in particular, is well worth a download.

Games & Other Distractions

ImmorTall: the tiny alien only wanted to help...

Miscellaneous

Edge.org's annual question 2010: "How is the internet changing the way you think?"