Thursday, May 31, 2012

Google dealt blow in book scanning lawsuit. From @arstechnica

The coalition of authors suing to stop Google Book Search scored a key victory on Thursday as the judge overseeing the case ruled that three individual authors and the Author's Guild could represent the class of all authors whose works had been scanned by Google. Google had sought the opposite result, arguing that including all authors in a single lawsuit would make the case too complex, and that most authors actually supported the scanning project.
Judge Denny Chin, who rejected a controversial settlement of the case last year, ruled on two distinct legal issues. The first was over whether the Author's Guild was entitled to serve as a representative of its members. Google had argued that only individual authors could be plaintiffs because the case will require the participation of those individual plaintiffs to consider issues such as fair use.

But Judge Chin rejected Google's argument. "The associations' claims of copyright infringement and requests for injunctive relief will not require the participation of each individual association member," he wrote.
More importantly, Judge Chin gave the green light for three individual plaintiffs—Betty Miles, Joseph Goulden, and Jim Bouton—to represent the vastly larger class of "persons residing in the United States who hold a United States copyright interest in one or more Books reproduced by Google as part of its Library Project."
More here....http://wtr.mn/LaSp8E

Publishing Industry Stock Update - June 2012. From @nasdaq

The U.S. publishing industry has long been grappling with sinking advertising revenue, and the global economic meltdown has only worsened the situation. The downturn in the publishing industry, which has been going on for the last few years now, came in the wake of declining print readership as more readers choose to get free online news, thereby making the print-advertising model increasingly irrelevant.

Changing consumer preferences and the advent of new and innovative technologies have been altering the way news is read and offered. Readers now have more choices to collect and read articles and news through devices such as netbooks, tablets or other hand-held devices.

These have been weighing upon the print newspaper industry, as advertisers now get low-cost avenues through which they can reach their target audience more effectively. We believe that an alternative and a stable source of revenue is the demand of time to salvage the dwindling print newspaper industry.
 
More detail here...http://wtr.mn/Kikw9Q

Why the New Chromebook Still Doesn't Cut It. From @rww

A Samsung Chromebook is today, in essence, an Intel Celeron 867-based PC system with a 16GB solid-state drive instead of a 320GB (or thereabouts) hard drive, 4GB of (apparently non-expandable) RAM, two USB ports and no built-in DVD drive. Its suggested retail price is $549 which, if it were applied to the Windows ultraportable market, would probably translate to a street price of less than $500. But discounts come as a result of competition with other machines in its class, and as Google keeps reminding us, there are no other machines in this class. So for now, $549 is probably the street price.
Let's take the perspective of actual consumers and businesses. Let's ask the kinds of questions that humans will ask when they see one of these Chromebooks for the first time. 
First, obviously there's no optical disc drive, yet the software would have me store all my files on this cloud-based service called Google Drive. So how do I get my existing files from here to there? Presumably I would plug a storage device into one of the USB ports. Will the operating system recognize my storage device? This is an important but unanswered question. Perhaps this thing recognizes most flash-based USB thumb drives in the world (again, an assumption) but will it read data from a Western Digital My Passport or Seagate Expansion drive? Windows 7 needed to download new drivers to recognize the latest My Passport drives (I've watched it happen). When a new class of hardware comes out, is Chrome OS equipped to download the latest drivers?
Full article here...http://wtr.mn/KuLwRN

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Free Ways to Promote Your eBook. From @galleycat

Are you struggling to promote your self-published digital book?
Thanks to the Kindle Boards, we discovered a long list of places where self-published authors can promote their eBook for free.
We’ve collected more information about the sites in a simple directory below, linking to the submission pages for these eBook sites. If you are an avid eBook reader, these sites are great for finding new books to read as well….

Read on here....http://wtr.mn/KTzJrX

Amazon's adoption of ad-supported ebooks is shifting from possible to likely. From @radar

It all started harmlessly enough with Amazon's Kindle with Special Offers. That's the cheaper Kindle that displays ads when the device is in sleep mode or at the bottom of the screen when paging through the owner's catalog of books. It is very unobtrusive and, since it lowered the price of the device, has made that Kindle an extremely popular device.
Now there are rumors that Amazon is selling ad space on the Kindle Fire's welcome screen. That sounds pretty reasonable, too, as it's a simple way for Amazon to drive a bit of additional income that's pure profit for them.
Given that Amazon's goal is to offer customers the lowest prices on everything, what's the next logical step? How about even lower prices on ebooks where Amazon starts making money on in-book ads? Think Google AdWords, built right into the book. Of course, Amazon won't want to use Google's platform. They'll use their own so they keep 100% of the revenue.
More here...http://wtr.mn/N6cCON

Are enhanced e-books bad for kids’ reading skills? From @paidcontent

New research from the Sesame Workshop’s Joan Ganz Cooney Center suggests that enhanced e-books’ special features can be distracting both to young kids and to their parents reading the books with them.

In its latest “quick report” (PDF), the Cooney Center studied 32 child-parent pairs. The kids were all between 3 and 6 years old. Half the pairs read a print book and a regular e-book and the other half read a print book and an enhanced e-book (defined as an e-book with “enhanced multimedia experiences” like games and other interactive features, and the focus of reading apps like Scholastic’s Storia and Ruckus Reader).

 Kids who read enhanced e-books remembered “significantly fewer narrative details than children who read the print version of the same story.”

More  here...http://wtr.mn/LBPhlp

Friday, May 25, 2012

If e-books are so big, why are they marketed so badly? From @globeandmail

While print-book sales continue to slide, all measures seem to indicate that e-book sales will continue shooting skyward. Still, what is “good” for publishing is either unknown or simply being ignored. E-books – released alongside print editions, or as e-only books, or shorter forms like Kindle Singles – remain just outside the traditional books business, sharing Venn Diagram circles with the suspicious kingdoms of Apple, Google, Amazon (which makes the Kindle) and Indigo (which still sells books along with those candies and coffee mugs, and launched the e-reader Kobo). Simultaneously a corporate-driven, profit-maximizing threat and a big possibility for new sales strategies (and new kinds of authors and works), e-books are currently being marketed and promoted … badly.

Read on here....http://wtr.mn/LjlZeF

A Jennifer Egan Original … Tweet by Tweet. From @nytimes

When the novelist Jennifer Egan submitted her latest short story to The New Yorker, she hinted to Deborah Treisman, the fiction editor, that there was a catch. It soon became evident: Ms. Egan had written an entire work of fiction in 140 character bits, to be first posted on Twitter and then published in the magazine.

More here....http://wtr.mn/KzsysK

New Orleans Newspaper Scales Back in Sign of Print Upheaval. From @nytimes

The Times-Picayune, a 175-year-old fixture in New Orleans and a symbol of the city’s gritty resilience during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, has buckled under the pressures of the modern newspaper market.

Advance Publications, owned by the Newhouse family, said Thursday it would scale back the printed editionto three days a week and impose staff cuts as a way to reduce costs as well as shift its emphasis to expanded online coverage.

The decision will leave New Orleans as the most prominent American city without a newspaper that is printed every day. But it also reflects the declining lure of the paper as a printed product. In 2005, before Katrina struck, the paper had a daily circulation of 261,000; in March of this year, the circulation was 132,000.

More here....http://wtr.mn/K4Brv2  

Thursday, May 24, 2012

How Tim Cook is changing Apple. From @cnnmoney

A 14-year veteran of the company, Cook is maintaining, by words and actions, most of Apple's unique corporate culture. But shifts of behavior and tone are absolutely apparent; some of them affect the core of Apple's critical product-development process. In general, Apple has become slightly more open and considerably more corporate. In some cases Cook is taking action that Apple sorely needed and employees badly wanted. It's almost as if he is working his way through a to-do list of long-overdue repairs the previous occupant (Jobs) refused to address for no reason other than obstinacy.

Good read here....http://wtr.mn/MKW15q

HP Drives Record Results At Drupa 2012 With New Digital Printing Solutions

HP announced that its performance at drupa 2012  surpassed results from any other graphic arts tradeshow in its history, further validating HP’s success in leading the analog-to-digital transformation.
Demand for HP’s new digital printing solutions significantly exceeded the company’s goals for all regions and product lines. Results included:
• Orders from more than 200 customers across 55 countries
• Thousands of qualified sales leads
• Record levels of booth attendees, with more presentations and live demonstrations than at any previous show
Read more here....http://wtr.mn/LdwAHS

Yahoo Axis: A surprising fresh take on mobile browsers. From @gigaom

Yahoo announced the launch of a new mobile browser on Thursday: Yahoo Axis is available in the iTunes App Store for iOS devices and will be supported on other mobile platforms in the future. An Axis plugin for HTML5 browsers on the desktop allows for browsing sessions and searches to be synchronized from smartphone to computer. With Axis, Yahoo is attempting to turn the browser from “destination to companion.”
I was leery when I heard the news about Axis, mainly because Yahoo’s mobile strategy has arguably been second-rate by comparison to Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Then I took Axis for a spin on my iPhone and I was pleasantly surprised. In my opinion, Yahoo has accomplished its stated goals with Axis, and its peers could learn something from the venerable search company.
More here....http://wtr.mn/Lj5Dz4

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

H-P’s Whitman takes charge with big cuts. From @marketwatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Hewlett-Packard Co.’s Meg Whitman made her biggest, and probably toughest move in announcing the computer giant’s biggest layoffs ever, and if she and her team execute, she could be bringing shades of Lou Gerstner’s IBM revival to H-P.

Gerstner is well-known in American business for his turnaround at International Business Machines Corp. IBM -0.36% . In one of his first big moves, Gerstner and his right-hand man, CFO Jerry York, did a big round of job cuts within three months of joining IBM in 1993. But he also reinvested and built up the company’s now-massive services business. 

H-P’s HPQ -3.21%  Whitman has similar plans, and investors were giving her an initial thumbs up. She promises to eventually reinvest some of the $3 billion to $3.5 billion the company will save in innovation, research and development, as well as quality and design of products. She also plans to better streamline H-P’s business processes. Read more about H-P layoffs. 

More here....http://wtr.mn/JSTnuu 

Google+ wants to be your new Flickr. From @VentureBeat

Google+ is succeeding in small bursts, feature by feature. As a social network competing with Facebook it’s a flop, but its video-chat tool Hangouts is a winner. Now photo sharing is poised to be the service’s next breakout hit, thanks to an enthusiastic community of photographers who like the focus on attractive full-size images, Google+’s new photo-centric iPhone app, and a uniquely Google passion for metadata.
In fact, Google+ is pushing hard on the photography front and is in a great position to dominate the floundering Flickr.
The Google+ team teamed up with Kelby Training for a two-day Google+ Photographers Conference in San Francisco, or as it was adorably called, a HIRL — Hangout in Real Life. Vice president of product for Google+ Bradley Horowitz (pictured above), who led Yahoo’s purchase of Flickr in 2005, kicked off the event Tuesday by talking about the future of photography, how Flickr changed his outlook, and whether ads will ever make an appearance in Google+.
More here....http://wtr.mn/LgKMN0

Guy Kawasaki Compares Google+ to Apple, Calls it a ‘Religious Experience’, From @mashable

Former Apple software evangelist Guy Kawasaki thinks that Google+ has a lot in common with Apple.
“When I saw Macintosh for the first time it was somewhat of a religious experience for me,” said Kawasaki during a talk at the Google+ Photographer’s Conference Tuesday. “Fast forward about 25 years and I had a second religious experience — which is when I saw Google+ for the first time”
Kawasaki was leading a presentation at the conference on building your brand on Google+. A suggested account, Kawasaki currently has over 2 million people following his posts on the service. He also has 900K followers on Twitter, and a substantial Facebook following.
More here....http://wtr.mn/KaUMuq

Electric! My 3-day date with a @chevyvolt from @klout #voltklout

Courtesy of my latest Klout Perk, I had a brand-new, beautiful black Chevy Volt delivered to my Seattle address on Monday for a 3-day loan.  I've taken advantage of a few perks, but never one so seemingly significant as this one.  I have to say I was prepared to hate this car since I prefer a bit of high-performance when I drive (my primary car is a Lexus IS300 Sportcross).  But quite the opposite--I loved it!

The Volt is not a hybrid like the Prius or a strictly electric car like the Leaf.  It runs on an electric motor full-time, but it carries an on-board gasoline-powered generator for whenever your battery runs down.  What this means is that it won't leave you high and dry but also that you are always running on the high-torque electric engine.  That's the big thing here.

There is a lot of discussion about fuel efficiency these day, with a large contingent of folks saying that a strictly gasoline-fueled small car can beat an electric car as far as cost per mile.  But to get that efficiency you generally have to give up performance.  At 149 horsepower and the torque of it's electric motor, this little car does not feel like it's all about economy.  It's really fun to drive!

The Volt is designed to be plugged in each night to recharge and its battery will take you about 50 miles on a full charge.  To keep the efficiency high it's not a long-haul car.  But if you work close to home or if you are fortunate enough to have a charging station near your work it could very well be your regular ride.

Shout outs to Ryan Gartman from the MSL Group (@mslgroup) and Kevin Williams and his team at Page One Auto for great communication and service along the way.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Getty Images Owners Consider Sale or IPO. From @cnbc

The owners of Getty Images, the world’s largest distributor of stock photos, video and other digital content, have retained bankers to examine a possible sale or public offering ofthe business they took private four years ago for $2.4 billion.
Hellman & Friedman, the US private equity fund, is working with Goldman Sachs [GS 97.53    1.02  (+1.06%)   ] and JPMorgan Chase[JPM  34.01    1.50  (+4.61%)   ], five people familiar with the plans said, adding that a sale or IPO could value the business at as much as $4 billion.

More here...http://wtr.mn/JRVQU9

Monday, May 21, 2012

New book surveys career of #Seattle photographer Johsel Namkung. From @seattletimes

Photographic eyes don't come much sharper than Johsel Namkung's.
The 93-year-old Seattle artist might technically be a "nature photographer." But in focusing so closely on the patterns and textures of rocks, sand, wood, water, forests and meadows, he comes surprisingly — and vigorously — close to something more abstract.
A new book honoring Namkung's career, "Johsel Namkung: A Retrospective" (Cosgrove Editions, 144 pp., $175), makes clear how glorious his achievements are. The images are huge. The detail is crystalline. The essence of each object under his lens vibrates with life.
More here...http://wtr.mn/K9cCwt

Waterstones deal with "ruthless, money-making devil" puts Kindle and ebooks instore. From @guardian

Waterstones has announced a surprise tie-up with Amazon that will enable shoppers to pluck ebooks as well as physical books from its shelves.

The companies did not reveal the terms of the deal, but Waterstones said it was planning a digital revolution in its stores, with Kindle e-readers on sale for the first time and free Wi-Fi, so customers can choose between buying a physical book or downloading it there and then. It is also opening instore cafes as part of an upgrade of the 30-year old chain.

Its managing director James Daunt, who once described the website as a "ruthless, money-making devil", struck a more positive note, calling the new venture an "exciting prospect".

More here....http://wtr.mn/K5rEVp

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Files for Bankruptcy

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., the publisher of authors from Mark Twain to J.R.R. Tolkien, sought bankruptcy protection to eliminate more than $3 billion in debt.

The company, based in Boston, listed assets and debt of more than $1 billion each in Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. More than 20 affiliates also entered bankruptcy, including Broderbund LLC and Classroom Connect Inc.

The filing comes as traditional print-book publishing faces growing competition from e-books. Sales of adult paperbacks and hardcover books fell 18 percent from 2010 to 2011, according to the Association of American Publishers. Borders Group Inc., the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain, filed for bankruptcy in February 2011.

More here....http://wtr.mn/LuDcnv

Friday, May 18, 2012

How to Scan Film Negatives with a DSLR. From @petapixel

Well, lets just say I’ve gotten better at this over the last couple of years. The left image was one of the first I’ve “scanned” with my DSLR, and the one on the right I’ve just rescanned using the techniques described below (higher resolution available here). Right now I can get higher resolution and better image quality that what street labs give you on CD.

I’ve seen many articles on the web explaining the basics of digitising film negatives or transparencies with a digital camera. The basics are quite simple: you take a photo of a negative into a light source and invert. That’s it. But that alone led me to scan negatives that looked like the one on the left, above. Because I’ve never seen one tutorial that told me “the whole story” of how to do it properly, I’ve decided to put together what I’ve learnt during the last two or three of years of scanning film with my DSLR.

Details here....http://wtr.mn/JSRfiz

Amazon Rumored to Be Readying a 10-Inch Kindle Fire. From @wired

If rumors are to be believed, Apple and Amazon are both working on tablets that would invade each other’s turf. The latest scuttlebutt has Amazon preparing for a 10-inch Kindle Fire: DigiTimes reports that “market rumors” are pointing to a 10-inch Amazon tablet launching in the third quarter of this year.
While Amazon is notoriously tight lipped about its sales figures, the Kindle Fire has been pegged as thenumber one selling Android tablet on the market, with a 54 percent share among a vast field of competitors. With such a commanding lead, it makes sense that Amazon would set its sights on expanding the Fire line, and taking on the iPad in the 10-inch tablet market.
More here....http://wtr.mn/JSPcLh

Thursday, May 17, 2012

HP’s Stock Price Is Climbing Amid Massive Layoff Rumors. From @techcrunch

HP is reportedly going to be announcing massive layoffs next Wednesday. Conflicting reports state somewhere between 25Kand 30K jobs, between 7% and 8% of HP’s global workforce, could be eliminated in an effort to absorb loses from decreasing demand for the company’s products and services. The cuts could happen over the next year, rather than a mass layoff, according to AllThingsD who also state that the total number is still undecided.

More here http://wtr.mn/L3nPN8 and here http://wtr.mn/L3nUAs

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Ruling in e-books class action is blow to defense in DOJ antitrust suit


U.S. District Judge Denise Cote could not have sent a stronger message to Apple, Penguin, and Macmillan in an opinion Tuesday denying their motions to dismiss a private e-books antitrust class action: E-books collusion claims, in both the private case and the Justice Department's antitrust suit, are not going away unless the defendants agree to settle them. The judge, who is presiding over all of the e-books antitrust litigation, roundly rejected the legal defenses Apple and the publishers advanced and brushed aside their suggestions that Amazon is the real monopolist villain in the e-books market.

The publishers were hoping that the class action didn't meetthe high pleading standard for antitrust complaints under the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, but Cote found there were plenty of the specific, well-supported allegations of collusion that Twombly demands. (As an aside, Cote's ruling, which cites a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals decision from April and other recent Twombly interpretations, is more evidence that the Supreme Court ruling isn't as daunting a standard as the antitrust bar once thought.) Cote cited, in particular, a passage from Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, in which Jobs describes the publishing industry's distress at Amazon's pricing policies and its concerted attempts to break Amazon's grip; various publishers' meetings with Amazon to complain about its policies; and publishers' apparently concerted attempts to withhold books from Amazon before Apple entered the business. Those added up to a plausible case of collusion, Cote found.

More here....http://wtr.mn/JHDl3D

What’s the right price for ebooks? It’s probably not 99 cents. From @cjr

Author Chuck Windig, GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram, and TechDirt’s Mike Masnick all took on the question of ebook pricing recently, arguing that production costs (you know, minor details like advances, editors, etc.) don’t or shouldn’t factor into the end price.

Ingram writes that “It doesn’t matter what e-books cost to make,” and Masnick follows with “Nobody Cares About the Fixed Costs Of Your Book.”

But nobody cares about the fixed cost of your car, either. And yet, it matters, in theory as well as in practice.

Interesting read here....http://wtr.mn/KxPAAu

How A Book Is Born: INFOGRAPHIC. From @galleycat

Publishing house Weldon Owen created an infographic called “How a Book is Born,” tracing the path of a book from idea to final product.
We’ve embedded the whole infographic below–all book professionals can learn from this image which shows how a book is conceptualized, pitched, picked up, written, edited and who gets drunk along the way.
Check it out: “Here’s the heartwarming, only slightly messy, and roughly 74 percent accurate story of how an idea churns through the publishing process just like—as a publisher we once knew put it—a rat travels through an anaconda. Don’t think too much about that analogy. Just enjoy this flowchart that takes you from a brilliant idea to a best-selling trade book. And stop asking your mother embarrassing questions.”

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Adobe’s Updated Digital Publishing Suite Means More Magazines For The iPhone. From @techcrunch

When it comes to digital magazines, why should tablet owners have all the fun? That’s the sentiment Adobe was espousing earlier today at an event held in New York where they officially pulled back the curtains on their updated Digital Publishing Suite.
You’d be forgiven if you haven’t stumbled across Adobe’s DPS before — as the name sort of implies, it’s meant for publishers to prepare digital editions of their print content for consumption on all sorts of gadgetry. Given their size, tablets have been the obvious focus for content creators, but Adobe’s new update brings the ability for them to whip up digital magazines meant for the iPhone too.
One publisher has already signalled their commitment to tailoring their digital magazine experience to the iPhone — Conde Nast leans pretty heavily on Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite to layout their digital editions, and they revealed that an iPhone-friendly makeover for The New Yorker was in the works. Here’s hoping that some of Conde Nast’s other properties (my fingers are crossed for the exceptionally handsome Wired) get the same treatment, though the shift toward smaller screens will force designers to rethink how users read and engage with that content.
Even with the process for creating rich media content for smaller screens streamlined (Adobe offers up their own best practices here), it’s still no easy feat to devise a handsome, thoughtful way to dive into that content on a smaller screen. That lack of real estate means that publishers will have to get really creative in order to deliver the sort of experience that make digital magazines more compelling than their dead-plant counterparts.

How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet. From @gizmodo

Web startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet out of that structure can come art. But code is art that does something. It is the assembly of something brand new from nothing but an idea.
This is the story of a wonderful idea. Something that had never been done before, a moment of change that shaped the Internet we know today. This is the story of Flickr. And how Yahoo bought it and murdered it and screwed itself out of relevance along the way.
Great read here.....http://wtr.mn/Ksojzs

Facebook Hires Team Behind Android Photosharing App Lightbox. From @techcrunch

Facebook has just closed a deal to hire about seven employees from Android photosharing app Lightbox. The app will shut down, has already been stripped from Google’s Play marketplace, and people have until June 15th to download their photos.
Along with the Instagram acquisition, the Lightbox hires will help Facebook prepare for a very mobile-centric future. In a statement, Facebook said “The Lightbox team has incredible experience developing innovative mobile products that people love. We look forward to welcoming this world-class team of engineers to Facebook.”
Here’s the full statements from Lightbox’s blog:
We started Lightbox because we were excited about creating new services built primarily for mobile, especially for the Android and HTML5 platforms, and we’re honored that millions of you have downloaded the Lightbox Photos app and shared your experiences with the Lightbox community.
Today, we’re happy to announce that the Lightbox team is joining Facebook, where we’ll have the opportunity to build amazing products for Facebook’s 500+ million mobile users.
This means we’re no longer accepting new signups. If you’re an existing user, you can continue to use Lightbox.com until June 15 and you can download your photos from here.
Facebook is not acquiring the company or any of the user data hosted on Lightbox.com. In the coming weeks, we will be open sourcing portions of the code we’ve written for Lightbox and posting them to our Github repository.
We’d like to thank the Lightbox community, our investors, and our families for supporting us during this journey.
Thai Tran & Nilesh Patel
Co-founders, Lightbox

Seven Budding Photo Collectives You Need to Know. From @rawfileblog

In recent years, the photo collective has emerged as a clear and strategic response by photographers who've reasoned that – in uncertain times – there is strength in numbers.
"In an industry that has become increasingly disjointed and often predatory upon its contributors, the collective has become a final refuge and place of community," reasons Justin Maxon, founding member of Razón collective. "The collective provides not only creative inspiration, but also a sense of support that can be lacking in this field."
Photo collectives differ in organization and intent, but tend to sprout from existing friendships. Some are little more than loose affiliations, other collectives are full-on business enterprises. On any given day, members of a collective may be brainstorming story ideas, editing others' images, marketing, developing the brand, cranking social media or helping partners draft contracts and model releases.
It is not uncommon for photographers in a collective to be geographically dispersed, some internationally. From serious discussions on branding and distribution to just chatting and catching up, regular video chats are the standard.
Of course, photographers rallying together is not a new thing. Magnum Photos, founded in 1947, along with large, contemporary groups such as VII and Noor Images, operate along the cooperative/agency model. These three groups license images and employ administrative staff in central offices whereas the smaller collectives -- featured here -- tend to work with lower overheads.
We contacted members of various emergent collectives to find out what they've learned during their infant years. In a collective of four, is the workload quartered or quadrupled? What sort of assistance do members provide one another? Do collectives advance careers and opportunities? What are the downsides? What are the tangible benefits of collectivism?
Read on here...http://wtr.mn/JECgZA

Adobe Tool Eases iPhone Content, Social Sharing. From @ClickZ

Adobe has updated its Digital Publishing Suite to make it easier for publishers and brand managers to distribute their content on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices.
The tool, if it works as promised, will be welcome by designers using Adobe's Creative Suite. Previously, designers could not easily take materials designed in CS and convert them for use on the iPhone or iPod touch. Condé Nast has tested The New Yorker using the application, according to Adobe. Jim Guerard, general manager, creative and media solutions, Adobe.
At Adobe's annual Digital Publishing Summit today, the software maker also introduced social sharing features that permit readers and customers to easily share articles on Facebook, Twitter, and via email. The tool gives publishers or brand content managers the ability to configure articles available for sharing, choose social media channels in which they can be shared, and set a limit on the amount of content that can be shared free of charge.

More here....http://wtr.mn/JEB6gv

Monday, May 14, 2012

Apple Said To Debut iCloud’s New Photo Sharing Features At WWDC. From @techcrunch

With Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference just weeks away, expect plenty of reports of new features to come crawling out of the woodwork. In fact, here’s one from the Wall Street Journal — they claim that Apple has been doing some major tinkering with their iCloud storage service, the fruits of which will be unveiled on June 11.
First up is the ability for users to share and comment on each other’s photos, a pretty dramatic shift away from iCloud’s current approach to photo storage. As it stands, each user has a single Photo Stream meant mostly to make sure images are on the devices they need to be on. This shift in sharing actually sounds a little reminiscent of Apple’s recently-killed MobileMe service, though how exactly the sharing process would play out within iCloud is still up in the air.
More here....http://wtr.mn/IRUi9E

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Expect a 6 month freeze on Facebook’s Instagram acquisition. From @gigaom

A former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer and antitrust expert says Facebook’s purchase of photo-sharing site Instagram will take between four months and one year to clear regulatory hurdles. In the meantime, the deal is effectively on hold.
One month after Facebook announced it bought Instagram for an eye-popping $1 billion, the Financial Times reported that the deal would be delayed due to a probe by the Federal Trade Commission. Here’s what you need to know....http://wtr.mn/K5hFui

An Inconvenient Truth About E-books. From @jmartellaro

E-books seemed awfully cool at first, especially as Apple and Amazon popularized terrific tablets and e-readers on which to read them. Plus sales of e-books are greater than paper versions now. But there are lots of gotchas, and the whole industry is basically a mess.

Read on here...http://wtr.mn/IVBcD8

Why free photo book offers keep flowing. From @reuters

In the uber-competitive world of photo printing and photo books, you don't have to wait long for the next deal. Whether it is 101 free prints or a deeply discounted book, the deals keep coming, without any signs of abating. You've already missed your opportunity to grab one of those deals for Mother's Day, but with graduations and Father's Day next up, and who knows how many birthdays or other occasions in front of you, there are plenty more opportunities.

More on the race-to-the-bottom here....http://wtr.mn/LB0nZN

Friday, May 4, 2012

Warming up for 'the Olympics of print': your guide to Drupa 2012. From @printweek

B2 or not B2? That is the question digital manufacturers have been asking themselves pre-Drupa and - for the most part - they have opted for the affirmative answer. So much so, in fact, that some are already calling Drupa 2012 'the B2 Drupa'. However, despite the best efforts of Fujifilm, Screen, HP, Xeikon, MGI and Landa, plus those of a Ryobi/Miyakoshi partnership, show director Manuel Mataré says the epithet is a little premature for the self-styled 'Olympics of print'.

More here....http://wtr.mn/KlUP8s

Why Instagram Is Terrible for Photographers, and Why You Should Use It. From @allen3m and @wired

Although everyone has an opinion on Facebook’s purchase of Instagram for $1 billion, I think we can all agree: Instagram is terrible for photographers.
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Why? Let’s count the ways
More here.... http://wtr.mn/J1y7yz