That would be Andrew Piper whose book, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times, was excerpted in Slate today. Actually I wouldn't recommend reading it. So let me save you the trouble by commenting on it. Piper's point is this: electronic reading sucks compared to physical book reading because with out the touch of a real …
Continue reading "What is the biggest load of drivel you'll read about books today?"
Continuing on the MOOC discussion of this week, Tyler Cowen points me to this Inside Higher Education article about accreditation and MOOCs. The clearest path to college credit for massive open online courses may soon be through credit recommendations from the American Council of Education (ACE), which announced Tuesday that it will work with Coursera …
Continue reading "Accreditation and MOOCs: How about we just don't do it"
Two posts came out in the last day on online education. One is by Clay Shirky and the other is by Alex Tabarrok. Both are worth reading. Both make a similar point although in very different ways. They argue that critiques of massively online open courses (MOOCs) are misplaced because they are comparing them to …
These days publishers are moving towards DRM free options. This has the advantage of freeing customers from Amazon lock-in as well as just making it easier for them to control their content. So for consumers who want to pay, this makes their product more valuable and gives them a reason to pay. But for the …
Continue reading "What are publishers afraid of with device restrictions?"
The news yesterday that Disney was acquiring LucasFilm and along with it, the Star Wars franchise led many in the blogosphere, twitter and every sub-editor in the media jump for joy. Never before had so many puns become available for some many headlines in such diversity. But at the same time, there was the realisation …
Continue reading "I suggest a new strategy George. Let the mouse win."
This week saw the unveiling of Apple's iPad Mini and the launch of Microsoft's Surface. I want to focus on the latter as I think that it reveals something fundamentally important about the personal computer/mobile computing/mobile phone market that no analysts are really appreciating: the type of person you are really matters. And for that …
Continue reading "I'm a Mac. You're a PC. There really are two types of people"
The people at PHD comics have posted a video summarising the case for open access to scholarly publications. It is a good summary of the issues and particularly salient as I spent yesterday at a Workshop that was looking into the economics of these issues. One part of the video was interesting. It was about …
Continue reading "Opening up library subscriptions to scholarly publications"
Now, you might think this is all in jest but, actually, it is pretty close to something else we have already discussed on this blog: Scott Adams' plan to see if he can sell an idea. If you recall, Dilbert creator, Scott Adams actually does not believe it is possible to sell an idea (unlike …
Information Wants to be Shared focusses on business models for information content provision. But the principles behind it, that information is more valuable if it is exchanged freely, obviously extend to many other matters. One such matter is health-related information. John Wilbanks is a crusader that has taken the issue of health sharing on. As …
FTC Challenges Innovators to Do Battle with Robocallers Agency Offers $50,000 for Best Technical Solution as Part of Ongoing Fight Against Illegal Calls The Federal Trade Commission is challenging the public to create an innovative solution that will block illegal commercial robocalls on landlines and mobile phones. As part of its ongoing campaign against these …
Continue reading "A Contest to end Robocallers with Technical Invention"
Digitopoly 