OBS once built a zesty Web interface for a school that enabled students to drop, click, aggregate, and otherwise customize and combine web-based content with their own. The system automated workflow which up till that point had existed on legal pads, hard drives, and in paper files. When we demo’ed the program to the school’s →
We participated in the University of Arizona’s “Sprint Beyond the Book” at the Frankfurt Book Fair, talking about today yesterday. Enjoy. Laura http://sprintbeyondthebook.com/author/laurafillmore/
Social media platform Milq, created by Don MacKinnon, Jordan Jacobs, and Tomi Poutanen, was founded upon the belief that today’s feed-based social media is stifling the generation and discovery of online content. With an all-star list of investors ranging from Viacom CEO Tom Freston to Bacardi CEO Michael Dolan, and from Google to Goldman Sachs →
As the immigrant population swells in the United States, the number of Americans growing up with English as a Second Language (ESL) has increased as well. While some debate whether one can be considered American if they do not speak the nation’s official language, the reality remains that in some U.S. public schools, over 40% →
OBS intern Oliver notes that: “In the near future, custom publishing may run only skin-deep. In light of Apple’s recent introduction of Touch ID, a fingerprint scanner to the iPhone 5S, it could soon become possible to receive any amount of pre-packaged, personalized information everywhere you go at no more than the push of a →
“BioBibliometrics.” Sounds almost holy, doesn’t it? It’s a useful new word to describe the impending nuptials of content and reader that’s starting to be possible thanks to Near Field Communications (NFC)-enabled smartphones, a development that promises to do away with clunky old encumbrances of yesterday such as usernames, passwords, credit cards, and bookshelves. I am →
Ever stop to wonder what’s behind the current Yoga craze? It seems like the number of practitioners has been growing by some 20% a year in the USA; “Statistics Brain” tells us that $27 billion was spent on Yoga products in the USA alone in the last year. It might be interesting to correlate the →
In light of all the flurry of activity these days around the (re)selling of intangible digits, we might be wise to re-think the focus of our predominant, copy-based business model. In an economy of scarcity with tangible artifacts like hardcovers, if I give you my book, my hands become empty. Alternatively, in an economy of →
These days, with the ubiquity of mobile devices, it seems like we are living inside a kind of Memex. First envisioned by technology pioneer Vannevar Bush after World War II, a Memex is “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications and which is mechanized so that it may be →
A clear boundary used to exist between publishing houses and everyone else–government agencies, not-for-profits, schools, corporations, and membership organizations. These “gray publishers” produce books, booklets, pamphlets, three-ring binders of conference proceedings and the like, usually given away and not for sale in bookstores. Books published by traditional publishers like Simon & Schuster and Random House →