Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Mind Candy

We have a tradition here in Kings Cross of inviting interesting people to come and speak to the staff about interesting developments, usually of a digital kind. A little while ago we had a fascinating presentation from the Mind Candy team. One of the presenters, Adrian Hon, has a blog called Mssv which is shorthand for massive apparently. His pieceyesterday on the death of publishers is well worth reading even though he has a few side swipes at Macmillan and even though I disagree with much of what he has to say.

Meanwhile, Pan Macmillan's summer of successes rolls on, with Colm Toibin's Mothers and Sons  winning the Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story 2007 and Jackie Kay  winning the Outstanding Contribution to Literature Award at the Grazia O2 X Awards last week.

More importantly, today is a day to celebrate the release of the wrongly incarcerated and prosecuted nurses in Libya. I am proud that Nature took such a proactive stand on their behalf as described here and that the world of science as a whole stood up for justice.

Left to right, Bulgarian nurses Snezhana Dimitrova, Cristiana Valcheva, Valya Chervenyashka, Palestinian doctor Ashraf Hajouj, and Bulgarian nurses Valentina Siropulo and Nasya Nenova in court in Tripoli last year.

#    |  Comments [2]  | 
7/24/2007 7:54:46 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
All this digital talk makes me consider what happened in another field - photography.

In the early 1960's, with the rapid developments in Polaroid colour printing it was considered by a few that ordinary film cameras would be obsolete within ten years.

Of course it didn't happen, and I cannot recall anybody back then even considered digital photography which went through many upgrades before it was suitable for the general user.

Me thinks that ebooks will go through many similar upgrades before they take a firm hold on the market.

On another tack, I wish that the rulers of this world would realise that people prefer tactile inter-action, better to educate people with books and then introduce laptops, rather than expecting laptop software as a first function to be capable of furthering knowledge and education within the poorer nations.
Clive Keeble
7/25/2007 9:12:20 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Thanks for the mssv link. Followed up here
http://exacteditions.blogspot.com/2007/07/ebooks-and-libraries.html
I would be interested in the Macmillan view on why it has been possible to develop really excellent and profitable digital publishing for the Nature audience, and this commercial digital market still doesnt look at all convincing for trade publishing in general.
Adam Hodgkin