tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43961382485804286502024-02-19T05:55:07.690+00:00Turning the PagesA blog about where emerging technologies meet access and interpretation for libraries and museums.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-31509685872075611112014-11-18T13:05:00.000+00:002014-11-18T13:05:06.708+00:00Contextual Studies. With Added Viking.I was in Sweden over the summer and took some time out to go to a re-creation of a Viking settlement at <a href="http://www.fotevikensmuseum.se/d/en/home" target="_blank">Foteviken</a>. I, and my kids, loved it. Smiths were forging nails, tanners were scraping hides, cooks were boiling up huge vats of stew. We felt like time-travellers. Towards the exit we saw a figurehead from a Viking longship.<br />
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It looked strangely familiar, and, back in London, it became apparent why.</div>
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In the British Museum I stumbled across an original figurehead from a Viking longship, looking uncannily like the one in Sweden. I'd seen it before.</div>
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So the question is, which one is the most significant? </div>
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The one in Sweden is a fake, made a few years ago. But it sits in context, with the beach just below, the gulls wheeling overhead and the wind in the long grasses. It requires no great stretch of imagination for us to see and feel how life was, and how important this figurehead must have been. We're inspired and engaged, something visceral has happened, even if we don't know anything about the fearsome head. This strong emotional engagement can be the catalyst for a lifetime of interest that might lead anywhere. It provides impetus.</div>
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In the BM, there's a neat label describing it, so we have a lot of information, but it's presented in the neo-classical context of a London museum, replete with wall-eyed tourists wondering where the nearest McDonalds might be. It feels sanitised and lost. Something wild has been caged.</div>
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This was the same problem that I felt the BM had with it's Viking exhibition earlier in the year. Lots of information - no inspiration. Bloodless. Which is a terrible fate to befall anything to do with Vikings.</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-71302514719151240592014-05-06T16:57:00.004+01:002014-05-06T16:59:31.389+01:00Treasures of Many Kinds<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">To Salisbury to talk over some ideas for Magna Carta next year. Along with the BL and Lincoln, Salisbury have one of the only four remaining copies of this pragmatic and unexpectedly profound document. Talking to the various parties I sense an unspoken competition as to who has the best copy. Diplomatically I write off the one damaged by the Cotton fire now held at the BL and declare the others all wonderful but different.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The last time I was here, ten years ago, I'd walked from London on my way south-west. Arriving in the city somewhat sore, I went straight to a chemist and bought some startlingly powerful anti-inflammatories that sorted out a pain in my knee. I remember sitting on the green after looking round the cathedral. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Inside the great building I'd found a remarkable relic: allegedly the oldest clock in the world.With it's bare skeletal construction it didn't seem possible that this device could tell the time at all, let alone have done it since 1386.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Outside was the tragic sculpture of the Walking Madonna by Elizabeth Frink that made a powerful impression on me that day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In my diary I'd written:</span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"I found it looking as if Mary had just come from
evensong, her path leading from the cathedral doors. She was an older Mary,
thin, with ribs showing, a look of bemused grief on her pinched face. She could
only be the mother walking alone back from Golgotha. Her son crucified, and her
old certainties turned upside down."</i></span><!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">To see these three things, the cathedral, the charter, the clock and the statue was a privilege and together they formed a strange hymn. Time, </span>order, worship, wonder, grief and beauty.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">All in the name of work.</span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-8157075957731661092014-02-04T12:37:00.000+00:002014-02-04T12:37:34.311+00:00The Apple Mac Turns 30<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">That was what they were called when I first got my hands on one in 1986 - an Apple Mac. I was working for a financial institution in a large grey building. We had two computers in the office - an IBM XT and an IBM AT. They sat on their own desks and the operators would approach them as a craftsman would his lathe. They did one thing (crunch numbers) and you needed to treat them with respect or else things might go Horribly Wrong.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix_RGDLtBpk6KxUobyf-B144_Efvy5InvHpaomjsP791wf2D9gr74TYaJBxrexJ5tw-kbESe2sj3f8aiUEd2MAnS95Y6vBsEL9Uu-Fcd7nZ7VnCkYYYsXX8PqKij6UEl_SlWY8kH4qlq09/s1600/mac512K.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix_RGDLtBpk6KxUobyf-B144_Efvy5InvHpaomjsP791wf2D9gr74TYaJBxrexJ5tw-kbESe2sj3f8aiUEd2MAnS95Y6vBsEL9Uu-Fcd7nZ7VnCkYYYsXX8PqKij6UEl_SlWY8kH4qlq09/s1600/mac512K.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Nomenclature is a funny thing. All computers had geeky, alphanumeric names and seemed for initiates only. So when I persuaded an Apple dealer to let me borrow something called an Apple Mac for a couple of weeks I became an inadvertent IT rockstar. Perched perkily on my desk the Mac had a greyscale screen (not green), ran a GUI rather than command-line, and had a mouse ("Look, I move this little box on a wire, and that arrow on the screen follows it's movements!"). I used MacWrite and MacPaint to basically play for ten glorious days until it was taken away again, and I was plunged back into the world of words and numbers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But it opened a window on a world that I began to inhabit full-time 5 years later. That of designing things on screen or for screen. It changed my world. I could have been an analyst and instead I work with some of the most precious things in the world and the most interesting people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So to mark the shift and the progression, here's a list of the Macs I've had since then.</span><br />
<div style="min-height: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mac IIci</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mac IIfx</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">PowerBook 170</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Quadra 660AV</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Power Mac 8100</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Power Mac G4</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mac Pro G5</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mac Pro Dual Core Xeon</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Cube G4</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">iMac G3 DV</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">PowerBook G3</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">iBook G4</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mini Core Duo</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mini Core i5</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Macbook Core 2 Duo</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">MacBook Pro Core i5</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-49548649299984534492013-12-04T11:31:00.000+00:002013-12-04T11:31:08.886+00:00Tome TeamMy knowledge of bio-archeology is pretty much limited to watching Tony Robinson peer at skeletons on Time Team in the company of those wise in the ways of interpreting bones. Kind of like reading the runes, but with added science.<br />
<br />
So it was a pleasure to spend time at the bio-archeology department at York University working on a possible project around surfacing a collection of manuscripts which had miraculously had DNA extracted from them in a non-destructive way. This might allow the discovery of which kind of animal the vellum came from, where and when.<br />
<br />
I've always loved this kind of meta-data. The book as originally made, complete with text, illumination and binding for so long represented the entire artefact.<br />
<br />
But the marginalia and annotations are very often more illuminating than the text itself. Aldred's annotation of the Lindisfarne Gospels. Newton's notes in his copy of Principia Mathematica or Eliot's scribbles on the typescript of The Wasteland.<br />
<br />
The fascinating research done by Kathryn Rudy to determine the most read and used parts of a book, which can be determined by the wear and dirt of certain pages also reveals a whole new side to the life of the book. There's a great TED talk by her <a href="http://youtu.be/wFYN0wa2jxs" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
So the analysis of the page itself propels us to a point where we can find out what animals were used, what time of year they might have been killed and whether the manuscript was consistent in it's use of material. It's likely to pose as many questions as it provides answers.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-64194623402902373082013-11-27T14:21:00.000+00:002013-11-27T14:21:10.992+00:00The NorthTo Newcastle University to discuss presenting some great local material. Getting out of the train from London, the temperature is definitely several degrees colder. This is "The North" as the signs on the M1 so bluntly put it. Locals might insist they are from the North East, which is quite a different thing.<br />
<br />
I was early for the meeting so spent some time walking around Newcastle, and was struck by the range and quality of architecture. Dynamic modern buildings up at the university, moneyed sandstone parades of Victorian shops and towering redbrick warehouses on the steeper roads straggling down to the Tyne.<br />
<br />
But it was the incredible Tudor survivors down at the quay that stunned me. Much like the short stretch by Chancery Lane in London, these came as a surprise. But a wonderful one.<br />
<br />
Some, like Bessy Surtees House are well-preserved and in use (in this case by English Heritage).<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Others were sound but unused. The roofs looked watertight, but the windows were occasionally boarded and the rooms empty. Peering through dusty windowpanes from the street, they looked unmolested and original. So what to do with them?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The quay is a little cut off from the city centre, and on the cold day of my visit, I was the only one down there. The enormous bridges tower above you and you feel somewhat out of place. This dislocation has probably been the reason they're not in use.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But in most cities these buildings were swept away in Victorian redevelopment or post-war reconstruction. So to have them at all is a gift. But it feels like a gift that has been left on the shelf, waiting for someone to realise it's value.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-8293570751263076382013-10-17T15:12:00.002+01:002013-10-17T15:12:18.057+01:00Rochester RevisitedBack to Rochester to start work on the Textus Roffensis, one of the most significant documents in England along with Magna Carta, Domesday and one or two others. To find out why, google it, but it's basically the foundation of our current legal system and includes transcriptions of laws from as early as the 6th century, the document itself being 500 years older.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
But the task we're faced with, as with Magna Carta, is how to convey the significance of what is a very opaque book. Page after page of Anglo-Saxon and Latin with nary an illumination to lighten our darkness.<br />
<br />
I think the answer is conjuring up people's imagination. To try to immerse them in that Anglo-Saxon world of wild tribalism and post-Roman chaos. The darkness, the violence, the invaders, the pervasive sense of insecurity. The holy men retreating to their fastnesses on the edge of our little island.<br />
<br />
And who's to look out for us? To whom are we accountable?<br />
<br />
In to the ferment comes a book of law, setting out right and wrong, compensation and civilisation.<br />
<br />
Miraculously it has survived almost 1000 years and our job will be to animate it like some bibliophiliac Dr Frankenstein. Helpfully the book will be displayed in the crypt, and, if we can get the space right, the evocation will be simpler.<br />
<br />
So much of examining the past is an exercise in imagination, which, if successful, allows us to see our present in new ways. Hopefully we can help.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-14514092283750163772013-08-29T14:40:00.000+01:002013-08-29T14:41:57.964+01:00Turning the Pages Deep Zoom <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In response to some conversations at the
<a href="http://lib.stanford.edu/iiif">IIIF
conference</a> in Paris earlier this summer, we decided to take a look at
producing an enhanced version of Turning the Pages that would have 4 key features:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">- HTML5 based<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">- use an API to call in any repository
items rather than use the existing proprietary TTP database<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">- allow magnification to the native
resolution of the source scans (whatever that might be)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">- accommodate PNGs, TIFFs, JPGs or JP2s as
source files<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">This project would take the long experience
we have of producing compelling page turn experiences with that we developed
for the iNQUIRE framework of surfacing deep zoom images, especially those
created from a variety of source file formats.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Going through these one by one:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">HTML5<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">It's clear we had to build on the work done
in TTP 3.0 and make this a web app that will run on any platform and be easy to
reskin and customise, so HTML5/Javascript and CSS were the way to go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">API<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Previous versions of TTP have provided a
great user experience but been connected to a proprietary MS SQL Server
database populated by the TTP CMS. This made it really easy to use, but hard to
scale. The objective for TTP_DZ is for digital libraries to be able to just
call up a URI (for example for a folder of images) and TTP would dynamically
create the books on the fly. Rather like the Open Archive Book Reader works.
This approach would allow us to scale to millions of books in an automated
fashion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Zooming<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">One of the issues with rare books and
manuscripts is the need to see as much resolution as possible. Traditionally
we've used as high a resolution JPG or PNG as we can get away with, which has
been good enough for the general public, but scholars want more. So we want to
be able to provide the great TTP user experience, plus be able to zoom in to
native resolution scans, all in a seamless way. No clunky image swapping or
downloading of new page images.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">JP2<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Many of our clients are transitioning to
using JP2s as their repository and delivery files format. We wanted to be able
to accommodate this and serve up deep zoom pages derived from JP2s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">This project is a work in progress and the
first build is now live here:
<a href="http://armadillo.onlineculture.co.uk/deepzoom/ttp.html">http://armadillo.onlineculture.co.uk/deepzoom/ttp.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">This version hits a couple of our goals:
it's HTML5 and it uses Deep Zoom versions of pages as required (i.e. beyond a
certain zoom threshold). At the moment it's hard-wired in to the page images so
the next thing we'll be working on is the abstraction from that model. It's
also just using the standard TTP 3.0 interface
for now - we may add some more scholarly features as we progress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">As a prototype, we welcome all feedback, so
tell us what you'd like to see and we'll add it to the list...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-49128943705500943562013-08-28T14:44:00.003+01:002013-08-28T14:45:23.312+01:00Sounds of LindisfarneWe've been working a lot recently on the Lindisfarne Gospels, making website, kiosk, Kindle and iBook versions. Which isn't to say we're satiated. The intricacy of the cross-carpet pages, the startling immediacy of the title pages for the Gospels, the interlinear annotations to the Latin text all make this a book of endless fascination.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjktcpcfHAQTqeR6ugsM2A6CCw1YFtCX_xw4pz7iN-0cuygsixSze9p_4Tr6QXCkZnAT9mDEGoZOQGcNbLDXp09FPxQ73U9FZvPi0FTSS2dqcGgukWU_LNryr2eaRoa004YrzIzIeFX4-w/s1600/11_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjktcpcfHAQTqeR6ugsM2A6CCw1YFtCX_xw4pz7iN-0cuygsixSze9p_4Tr6QXCkZnAT9mDEGoZOQGcNbLDXp09FPxQ73U9FZvPi0FTSS2dqcGgukWU_LNryr2eaRoa004YrzIzIeFX4-w/s640/11_0.jpg" width="460" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
But we were still surprised and delighted that Chris Watson has released a CD called "In St Cuthbert's Time" which is "a sound installation that reflects the acoustic landscape of that island during the time that the Lindisfarne Gospels were being considered, written and illustrated."<br />
<br />
It was produced with Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study, and sounds like a remarkable project. As well as an installation it's available as a CD.<br />
<br />
What books like the Lindisfarne Gospels have the capacity to do is to transport us back to the time of their creation. The evidence of their handling, the techniques of production, the annotations and the wear all speak volubly of the sacred time and space in which the work was made. To spend time in the company of the book is to let the 21st century fall away.<br />
<br />
This evocation is sometimes hard to conjure up and I hope that Chris Watson's work will help the process. Very often we spend our time in pursuit of the facts about a book or trying to decode the meaning of the text. We don't allow ourselves to be transported back to it's world and our capacity for speculation, wonder and serendipitous connection is diminished.<br />
<br />
I tracked it down on <a href="http://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2013/08/in-st-cuthberts-time-chris-watson/#more-25203" target="_blank">Caught By the River</a> by the way, one of my favourite websites.<br />
<br />
The iBook of the Gospels is also available <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/lindisfarne-gospels-enhanced/id651431125?mt=11" target="_blank">here</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-65682262829281660752013-07-08T14:59:00.002+01:002013-07-25T11:20:32.723+01:00The Lost Library of Glastonbury<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've always had a fascination with lost knowledge. There's an expanding corpus of knowledge in any given area, but is that <i>everything</i> that's <i>ever</i> been known about the subject? The hidden libraries of Timbuctou and the discovery of manuscripts at St Catherines Monastery are particularly gripping examples of these.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But, if we can fillet the unhelpful grail mythology from the tale, so is the lost library of Glastonbury.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So far as we can tell, the monastery was founded before 601. William of Malmesbury, probably the foremost historian of the 12th century, visited the abbey in the early part of the century and saw a charter of that date demonstrating a grant by a king of Damnonia at the request of Abbot Worgret of the isle of Yneswytrin to the monastery there. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />The Life of St Boniface, written by his disciple Willibald, mentions the abbey in the mid 8th century, and it also gets a mention in the 10th century Anglo Saxon Chronicle. We know St Dunstan was Abbott in the middle of the century and there is mention in the Domesday Book of 1086. After that William of Malmesbury picks up the tale some time after 1200 and we move through the 13th and 14th century towards the bibliographic apocalypse of the reformation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
We'd be right to guess, therefore, that, by the reformation the abbey would have collected a significant library in it's 900 year history, despite the predations of the Danes and William the Conqueror, as well as regular fires, thefts and losses.
This is born out by a survey of the abbey library made by John Glastonbury in 1247, as catalogued by the precentor William Britton. In the survey there are over 400 volumes, some, no doubt, with multiple manuscripts bound together. There are the writings of the early church fathers like Augustine, Gregory and Athanasius, but also some intriguing curiosities. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
What was "the second part from the psalms (old)"? If it was deemed old in 1247, how old was it? And what were "two English books, old and useless". Saxon, most likely, but what were they? And of the classics from Plato, Seneca, Orosius and others, were they just faithful copies of texts that have come down to us today, or did they hold now lost writings? Not to mention the transcriptions, transliterations, marginalia and appendices that these books must have had.
Many were undoubtedly Saxon, but some may well have been earlier. If the abbey was founded in the middle of the 6th century (say), the Romans had only left these shores 100 years previously. How many of the books had come from their empire?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
After this enticing survey in 1247, we know that, as the abbey grew rich along with the church, other manuscripts flowed into the great library at Glastonbury.
Our next chronicler is John Leland, who, before he became a de facto antiquarian to Henry VIII, visited the monastery library for his own benefit in 1533, before the dissolution. A renowned (if slightly mad) bibliomane, the doors of the library were opened to him and his response was electric "<i>Scarcely had I crossed the threshold when the sole contemplation of these ancient books filled me with I know not what—a sort of religious fear or stupor, and made me pause. Then, having saluted the genius of the place, I most curiously examined for some days all the shelves".</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
Maybe Leland knew the end of the abbey was in sight. The bishop, Whyting, was harrassed by Thomas Cromwell from about 1535, and was now an old man. He had graduated in 1483, so, by now must have been over 70. Through the late summer and autumn of 1539 Abbott Whyting and the </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">brothers were further harried by Cromwell, who had seen to it that, by this time, Glastonbury was the last abbey standing in Somerset. By October, Cromwells men were ransacking the abbey. 11,000 ounces of gilt plate, 6,000 ounces of silver, cash of over £1,100 and even furniture were hauled back to the king.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19px;">Whyting was given a show trial and executed on the tor that stands outside the town. He was hung, drawn and quartered and the parts of his body displayed in </span>Bridgwater, Ilchester, Wells and Bath.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-left;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And what of the books? Leland had estimated there to be over 4,000 volumes at the time of his visit. The greatest library in England and a treasure house of the rarest and most important books.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-left;">
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, the stories that have come down to us are tragic. Bindings were ripped from the books, and the jewels and gilt prised off as treasure. The folios inside burnt. We hear of thousands of pages blowing away in the wind, gathered to be used as toilet paper or to scour out candlesticks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But we know of 40 or so that survived, rescued from the flames by Archbishop Matthew Parker and Sir Robert Cotton. The former now known as the <a href="http://parkerweb.stanford.edu/parker/actions/page.do?forward=home" target="_blank">Parker Collection</a>, and the later forming the basis of what became the <a href="http://www.bl.uk/" target="_blank">British Library</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are books like <i>Prognosticon futuri saeculi</i> by Aldhelm, now at the BL:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Or here is a fragment of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle of 890, now at the Parker Collection:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZFAeTmWu8RM9miiJkL79fG7jEA0MAteblVImnIrgFyWgzSd62GIEXNv4dR-XbqgKx5e9vkmCXdYr1kNAOOPaGMciOxL_hyphenhyphenb7MaEGTua6hZBWS-tUDrbv0c6ZDuFQ7chZ8etI9UNew62Fy/s1600/parker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZFAeTmWu8RM9miiJkL79fG7jEA0MAteblVImnIrgFyWgzSd62GIEXNv4dR-XbqgKx5e9vkmCXdYr1kNAOOPaGMciOxL_hyphenhyphenb7MaEGTua6hZBWS-tUDrbv0c6ZDuFQ7chZ8etI9UNew62Fy/s320/parker.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So while much as been lost, at least some remains. And maybe there's more to be found.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A couple of years ago I worked on the lost minutes of the early days of the Royal Society. Kept by Robert Hooke, they'd been mislaid sometime just after 1700. In 2006, during a house clearance, a tattered manuscript was found in a cupboard in a house in Sussex. It was the lost minutes - a record of the intellectual sparring between Hooke, Boyle, Newton and others. Amongst other things it identified the fact that Hooke had invented the balance spring as a doodle on the back of a page, an invention hitherto credited to Christian Huygens.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You never know what remains to be found. Lost knowledge doesn't always stay lost.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you want to pursue this fascinating area of study I looked at <i>The Victoria County History of Somerset</i> (vol 2), the <i>Somerset Extensive Urban Survey</i> and much enjoyed Michael Wood's account in <i>In Search of England</i>. Had I more time, I'd have tried to turn up James P. Carley's <i>"John Leland and the contents of English pre-dissolution libraries"</i> which seems to be a recent definitive work on the subject. William of Malmesbury you should find at the Internet Archive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You'll also have to forgive my sketchy scholarship. As a technologist rather than an academic, I'd like to think this might be forgiven on account of my amateur status.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-90434674063797923782013-07-02T14:23:00.000+01:002013-07-02T14:23:43.557+01:00Leaving the fieldA little while ago I <a href="http://digitalcultureonline.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/impoverished-by-marketing-dollar.html" target="_blank">wrote</a> about how difficult it is for small app developers to make it, in competition with the huge marketing spend of big app houses.<br />
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Today it was sad to see that <a href="http://www.agant.com/" target="_blank">Agant</a> has let go all of it's staff, citing that the app development environment is just too risky.<br />
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I feel sorry for the company and the founder, and he proposed a number of solutions for making his apps more appealing, including time-limited trials which make perfect sense.<br />
<br />
But a number of things come back to me:<br />
- you're never going to change Apple. They have a stranglehold on the paid-for apps market.<br />
- you need friends in high places to succeed. Apple would be a good friend to have. Failing that someone with deep marketing pockets<br />
- outstanding quality will succeed partly because it attracts friends. Touchpress, for example, do well and turn out apps with high production values (and budgets)<br />
- originality will attract eyeballs. If your app is pretty much like a dozen other apps in the store (at least to the consumer) then how are you going to differentiate yourself. <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/06/different-or-remarkable.html" target="_blank">Seth Godin</a> wrote about this last week. If you're doing something new, you'll generate a buzz and sales will follow.<br />
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None of which is a comment on Agant's efforts. I've not used their apps.<br />
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But any independent developer should pay careful attention what the market is telling us.<br />
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Remember - during the goldrush most prospectors didn't make a dime, and the real winners were the guys who sold shovels and the corporations who came in and swept up the land rights. Little guys never lasted long.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-26819796387188939662013-06-13T11:30:00.003+01:002013-06-13T11:31:32.207+01:00Skeuomorphism hits the headlinesMost gratifyingly, the subject of skeuomorphism has become a hot topic in the last weeks as Apple have refreshed iOS and done away with the green baize of Game Center, the ripped paper of Calendar and the stitched leather of Notes.<br />
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Having written an essay for this for Tate a while ago, which I also posted <a href="http://digitalcultureonline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/suspending-disbelief-dubious-role-of.html" target="_blank">here</a>, the BBC tracked me down and Sam Judah interviewed me the other day. His piece is now live on the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22840833" target="_blank">BBC</a> website.<br />
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I think there's still a debate to be had here. Hideous forced metaphors, especially in productivity apps have no role for me. Cut to the chase please, I have work to do.<br />
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But in other contexts, such as gallery interactives, or apps designed for a more leisurely experience, then surely there is space for an alternative view.<br />
<br />
As I said in the interview:"Is there no room for ornamentation, for playfulness, for beauty? Are we all going to live in a minimalist world and walk around wearing grey polo necks?"Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-33516245670405572332013-06-11T16:19:00.001+01:002013-06-11T16:19:26.377+01:00Interoperability gets seriousThe other week I was in Paris for a conference on interoperability. It was the working group of the IIIF, the brainchild of a consortium of libraries including the British Library, Bibliotheque Nationale, National Library of Norway, Los Alamos and Stanford.<br />
<br />
The efforts being made in this area are immense, and, since I've been involved in this field, something of a holy grail. As research slowly becomes digital, the concept of information being locked in discreet digital silos becomes more and more absurd. Ingest of just metadata into a vast database (Europeana) or strict adherence to standards before ingest of metadata and image into another vast database (Biodiversity Heritage Library) do surely not, in the end, point the way forward.<br />
<br />
And yet, what to do? Decisions over digitisation and metadata standards that were taken decades ago affect us now and prevent effective cross-collection search and collaboration.<br />
<br />
IIIF is designed to address that problem by developing metadata and image APIs as well as a comprehensive image markup model called Shared Canvas.<br />
<br />
It was fascinating to be involved in the emergence of something so potentially game-changing. The unsung heroes of interoperability will be those who sweat the details over the schema and the API. My job is then to build software that exploits this liberating commonality and frees the repositories up for researchers. They make me look good.<br />
<br />
So thank you to Tom Cramer for inviting me and I look forward to seeing how this pans out.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-91291334901186665882013-06-06T16:05:00.003+01:002013-06-10T15:32:49.097+01:00Changing viewsOur office, as I may have mentioned before, is on the street that Charles Dickens grew up on. We're at number 106, he was at number 22.<br />
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Walking past the other day, I stood outside his front door and took this photo.<br />
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I thought, initially that Dickens would have been horrified, seeing the cranes, the lorries, the builders and the noise and dust. They're building a Crossrail station.<br />
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But then I recalled that he grew up in this street during one of the biggest phases of population growth London has ever seen.<br />
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When he was born, in 1812, London was already the largest city in the world, an unimaginable heaving mass of just over a million people crammed into a decaying, often medieval, housing stock.<br />
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By the time he died in 1870, the population was 3.3m, swathes of old rabbit warren housing had been swept away, and the seep into the suburbs had well and truly begun.<br />
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So he'd have lived with change, noise, disturbance and an uncomfortable sense of things not being what they were.<br />
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Our changes are now digital as much as physical, and the world around us is changing as fast it did for Dickens.<br />
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A new landscape is being created.<br />
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It's just, when you walk down my road, you can't see it.<br />
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ps. This weekend, 9th June, the house got finally a blue plaque. Thanks to <a href="http://spitalfieldslife.com/2013/06/09/at-charles-dickens-childhood-home/" target="_blank">Spitalfields Life</a> for running a story on that.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-36769720294267390082013-05-13T15:09:00.000+01:002013-06-11T16:21:32.016+01:00To the FensThe middle if nowhere depends, of course, on where you start from.<br />
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Early maps (like the Mappa Mundi) had Jerusalem at the centre of the map. Having built an empire we decided that England should be at the centre of our maps.<br />
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It's argued, with some reason, that there has been an unintended but clear divide building between London and the rest of the country. London has wealth, power, a rampant property market and a disproportionate number of our cultural institutions. We tend to think it's always been like this.<br />
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But that's not quite true.<br />
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In Saxon times the capital of England was briefly Winchester, and in the 14th century King's Lynn was the most important port in England. Times changed and sea levels fell, and Kings Lynn found itself a backwater as Liverpool and London took precedence.<br />
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But great buildings of that time remain, and Oxburgh Hall is one, now in the care of the National Trust.<br />
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I was there to look at a selection of wallpapers the family had kept since the early 18th century. Most of us keep the odd length of wallpaper or spare bathroom tile in our attic, but this looked more deliberate. More a case of keeping a record rather than being able to re-paper a damaged section.</div>
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Old families often think in this way. The regard for the future is as keen as that for the present. They are aware, all the time, of their custodianship of a house rather than ownership, their sense of obligation to unborn descendants.</div>
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In a little room, with the spring sunshine streaming in, we gathered round a small table and looked at the scraps and fragments and wondered at the mistress of the house carefully boxing up these remnants after the decorators had left. For the future. As it transpires, and how impossible for her to conceive this, for us.</div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-65449359588468733542013-01-29T18:03:00.002+00:002013-02-25T12:47:20.519+00:00Impoverished by the Marketing DollarSomething that's become very apparent in our choice-saturated and confusing technology space is the ability of marketing to push products to the top of the heap that might not deserve to be there. Having made it to the top of the heap, the confused consumer will never look down the charts for something more intelligent, appropriate or economical. In picking a top ten product, he trusts what he perceives to be the wisdom of crowds, but what may well be just the might of the marketing dollar.<br />A couple of studies have highlighted this to me recently. The Kindle Fire has 33% of the Android tablet market according to <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/kindle-fire-nabs-33-of-android-tablet-market-nexus-7-just-8/" target="_blank">Localytics</a>, with the Nexus 7 grabbing only 7%. This despite the Fire being described as an Amazon cash register - most things you do on it funnel you towards Amazon and the siren call of one-click checkout. Nexus 7 is faster, cheaper and open, but the Amazon marketing dollar has prevailed.<br />The other saddening <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/04/top_25_app_devs_earn_half_of_revenue/" target="_blank">statistic</a> was that half of all app development revenue goes to just 25 developers. It's the normal suspects: Disney; Electronic Arts; Zynga; Rovio. The days of a great indie app making it seem over.<br />The great, the original, the worthwhile and the quirky are being drowned out by gigantic marketing budgets and the paralysis consumers face when presented with 14 seemingly similar tablets or 131,727 games to choose from (as of this weekend).<br />Maybe this is the way markets work - innovators prove to be one-hit wonders or get bought out, the big boys move in and a suddenly it's (big) business as usual. But as a developer and publisher I increasingly feel we can't compete and are relying on the goodwill of Apple or a lucky break. Neither of which are a good basis on which to build a business.<br />
<br />UPDATE<br />With the seemingly inevitable demise of Barnes and Noble in the e-reader and maybe even book space drawing closer, I read this analysis in the New York Times:<br />
<br />“In many ways it is a great product,” Sarah Rotman Epps, a senior analyst at Forrester, said of the Nook tablet. “It was a failure of brand, not product.<br />“The Barnes & Noble brand is just very small,” she added. “It has done a great job at engaging its existing customers but failed to expand their footprint beyond that.”<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Further evidence that a great product can't compete in a confusing market without a ton of marketing.</span></h2>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-28123349186456968952013-01-14T17:38:00.001+00:002013-01-14T17:38:50.911+00:00Listening to what mattersA while ago on this blog I <a href="http://digitalcultureonline.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/things-that-matter.html" target="_blank">wrote</a> about the joy of doing work that mattered, with a nod to Tim O'Reilly for the inspiration. It was near the beginning of 2009 and felt like a New Years resolution.<br />
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At the beginning of this year, I need another resolution, similar but crucially different.<br />
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Listen to what matters.<br />
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In the intervening years, the background noise of chatter, comment, opinion, advice and alarm has grown beyond my expectations. 120m Facebook users then, a billion now. Twitter had registered less than a billion tweets ever, now it's 16bn a month.<br />
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It's hard to filter out noise and only ingest information that will be helpful. If you're pushing out into new areas of work, how can you tell the experts from those who just talk the talk and have a lot of followers? How much time should you spend finding and processing all this information?<br />
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My 2013 resolution then is to listen to what matters and ignore the rest. I'm going through my social and web feeds, bookmarks and Flipboard settings, and purging the marginal voices, letting those who remain be heard more clearly.<br />
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And trusting my judgement.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-10967467958751245442012-11-20T12:37:00.000+00:002012-11-20T12:38:24.471+00:00Next generation digital discoveryA few years ago we were asked by the British Library to imagine how research would work when everything was digital. No need to come to the reading rooms any more.<br />
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We worked for maybe two years building prototypes, working with curators, academics and researchers and doing some serious analysis in to work patterns, use of tools and interface expectations.<br />
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One output from that was the Growing Knowledge exhibition held in 2010-11 at the BL where some findings were presented and questions asked.<br />
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But we were convinced that there was a need for a fully-fledged piece of software for the next generation of researchers. It had to:<br />
- work anywhere including tablet and phone<br />
- be as easy to deploy as possible<br />
- be flexible for users and customisable for clients<br />
- provide a great set of research tools<br />
- interface with all sorts of existing tools from Twitter to citation software<br />
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We've called it iNQUIRE and it's now available for your institution. There's <a href="http://www.inquireresearch.co.uk/" target="_blank">more here</a> and take a look at the first project we're just completing with the Bodleian.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-58915264272439281782012-10-31T10:58:00.000+00:002012-10-31T10:59:45.763+00:00Suspending Disbelief – the Dubious Role of Skeuomorphism in Software Design<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The above is the title of a piece I wrote a couple of months ago for a project at the Tate - Transforming the Artists Book.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I was prompted to look at it again with the news that Scott Forstall, head of iOS has been fired from Apple. He is the guy that presumably champions interface designs like this:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">An unholy alliance of overstretched metaphor and vanilla XCode button design.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Set that against the Windows 8 UI:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNCdnYUR5B39ssSvXhoKYkDfSuJI8O9aOa1a6scY5ou3GphAiiA7Jgfbpk9iHN7q1UFb9T2ehotNEr5tn9_o652dkuPrVjS6CX888rYy6nAyLT8WUrhyphenhyphenKS9hgQXCfU0qzQmEE3B_kpCV3r/s1600/Windows-8-UI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNCdnYUR5B39ssSvXhoKYkDfSuJI8O9aOa1a6scY5ou3GphAiiA7Jgfbpk9iHN7q1UFb9T2ehotNEr5tn9_o652dkuPrVjS6CX888rYy6nAyLT8WUrhyphenhyphenKS9hgQXCfU0qzQmEE3B_kpCV3r/s1600/Windows-8-UI.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I just wonder if Scott Forstall was sticking to his skeuomorphic guns, and Tim Cook saw where Windows 8 and Android were going and decided that Scott's path was a dead end?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Anyway, here's the article...</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">My
first job in what was then known as multimedia was for a design agency in 1991.
One of the early jobs we did was an internal multimedia brochure. This being
just after the 1980s the boss still drove an Aston Martin and wanted the
interface to look like the dashboard of his car. So that’s what we built. You
pressed buttons to go to various sections and the speedometer showed where you
were. Steering wheel, walnut dashboard, indicators – this interface was a
complete re-creation of the MD’s car. He loved it. Everyone else hated it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Skip
forward 20 years, and we see a strange revival of this sort of design, that
includes the apparently unlikely participation of Apple. In iOS we see a shaky
wooden bookcase to contain all your iBooks, a facsimile of some sort of
notebook for Notes (complete with ripped edges to the pages) and a frankly
bizarre green baize look for the Game Center.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This
approach to interface design is known as skeuomorphism, or making one thing
resemble another. More simply expressed it could be seen as the use of metaphor
in design.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In
1991, the use of skeuomorphism was rife. Buttons lit up, had beveled edges and
depressed when you clicked them. Backgrounds were made to look like paper, wood
or glass. Aston Martin dashboards were still a rarity however. All of these
devices were designed to familiarize users with a new world of interaction.
Prior to the invention of “multimedia” driven by the use of software such as
Hypercard and Macromind Director, users interacted via command-line interfaces
or the early versions of Windows and Mac OS. How then to assist people in
navigating this new multi-dimensional world of content? The easiest way was to
appropriate devices people were familiar with and use them in interface design.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The
last 20 years have made us comfortable with multi-modal ways of navigating
content, and, for the born-digital generation, their ability to grasp
seemingly-complex interfaces comes with a very short learning curve. Why then
do software developers persist with this use of metaphor?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In
1997 we started to develop Turning the Pages – three-dimensional digital
facsimiles of normally rare and valuable books. We would film a curator turning
the pages of one of these books, use this footage as source material to develop
a millimeter-accurate three-dimensional model of the original and then code it
so that, when the users fingers swept across a touchscreen, the pages would
turn. It was so realistic that staff at the British Library once found an
elderly lady vainly swiping all the glass cases in the Treasures Gallery. She
had spent too long using Turning the Pages and thought none of the books were
real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Why
did we do this? Why not present the pages, folio by folio, flat on the screen?
Our answer was that most books are about content. You buy them for the words on
the page. Some books are about the artefact itself – the beautifully bound and
the immaculately typeset. But some transcend the state of “book” and become
icons. There is no other Lindisfarne Gospels or Domesday Book, no substitutes
are possible. One of the earliest books we worked on was the Sherborne Missal,
which allegedly has more medieval miniature paintings than the whole National
Gallery. People wanted to engage physically with this object, to pick it up, to
turn the pages. Because of it’s value and fragility they were not allowed to.
Many very valuable books are now not even on display all the time. For six
months a year they are “rested” for light, stress on the spine or binding and
sub-optimal atmospheric conditions. So our attempt at digital facsimiles is a
deliberate response to the frustrated needs of museum and library visitors to experience
the original. We have been asked many times whether our software should be used
to display magazines or print books. I simply don’t see the value in this.
Continuing to use metaphor in this context seems a lazy approach to interface
design when the folio ceases to have any meaning other than as a container for
words that originated in a formless medium like Microsoft Word.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Why
then does the use of skeuomorphism still exist in design? I believe it is
because the wheel has turned full circle. We moved from a cartoonish use of
metaphor, to a brutal exclusion of the decorative, the beautiful and the
playful as espoused by usability experts such as Jakob Nielsen. The almost
universal adotion of such principles spoke of a lack of confidence in developers
for over a decade, but now, with a broader, more casual user base, increased
confidence, and an iterative approach to design that readily allows for change,
developers have re-discovered their playful side and introduced fun into a
visual world that had become too austere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For
most books though, I think there remains a huge intellectual challenge to
re-imagine their form for a digital age. The Kindle edition remains a largely
slavish copy of the codex unbound. The first steps in a new direction have been
taken by Apple with their iBooks Author software, allowing books to change and
re-flow in portrait or landscape form, and for the ready inclusion of all sorts
of media.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But
of all the challengers for the re-imagining of the book interface, it might
just be that we see Microsoft as the unlikely champions of a new approach.
Their approach to the design of Windows 8 shows that they have been through a
rigorous rethink of what an interface might be like, and the result is modern,
pared down, triumphantly usable and surprisingly elegant. Were they to take
this approach to books, perhaps in conjunction with their relationship with
Nook, the results might give everyone a reason to denounce skeuomorphism for
good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Except
maybe us.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-35576739334580921172012-10-29T10:54:00.001+00:002012-10-29T10:56:42.395+00:00eBook Fun and Games on Windows 8Here's a short video of the things we did for the eBook Treasures Windows 8 app, making use of the stylus and the gyroscope built in to the tablets.<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bepudUrKR2M" width="560"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-53560168555286052382012-10-25T14:27:00.001+01:002012-10-25T14:53:47.282+01:00Our eBookTreasures Windows 8 AppSo this is what we've been working on for the last 6 weeks or so. One of the first Windows 8 apps.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-nLneOSnnzfi8a34sEMCgSpnhMR3dJmmIiMCs0rUp_bMpltWYMXS0GeEwYmNvOgBmQK4SRoMc59WQMjpf3WqSgIijN1CgHVD7TC-JodyyTOFYJ32cy4zLhXRoR3dylsDRVK5N9QAJv_6l/s1600/screenshot_1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-nLneOSnnzfi8a34sEMCgSpnhMR3dJmmIiMCs0rUp_bMpltWYMXS0GeEwYmNvOgBmQK4SRoMc59WQMjpf3WqSgIijN1CgHVD7TC-JodyyTOFYJ32cy4zLhXRoR3dylsDRVK5N9QAJv_6l/s640/screenshot_1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The previous versions of our books were (and are) sold in the iBookStore, and I had a revealing conversation with a client the other day. He was trying to demo one to a colleague and spent ages rootling around on his iPad looking for it. He couldn't find it as he was looking for an app. It didn't occur to him that we'd built it as an iBook.<br />
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With visual books like these, people just think of apps. So we built them one.<br />
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There are other advantages too. As well as aggregating all our books in one place, we can add features like gilded pages catching the light when you tilt the tablet, annotation on the page using a stylus, pinning a book to the start page, our own version of whispersync and much more.<br />
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We're really proud of the app and I think the sort of content we have sits very well with the minimalist interface design encouraged for Windows Store apps.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglD5esm6i_6Y_bgNJ5V5dWXX2JPIm3V8n8mZ9k0QgQM5DR64ydD_ebJl0784pHxUc2_Sh1ipxHfKws2__fWb0vGQErK23JUNAEud28-W-tiNXIHjLYsS_BbmzZoG6ISmBjsrvJXYWyb0sk/s1600/screenshot_2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglD5esm6i_6Y_bgNJ5V5dWXX2JPIm3V8n8mZ9k0QgQM5DR64ydD_ebJl0784pHxUc2_Sh1ipxHfKws2__fWb0vGQErK23JUNAEud28-W-tiNXIHjLYsS_BbmzZoG6ISmBjsrvJXYWyb0sk/s640/screenshot_2.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The app is free, and A Medieval Bestiary from the British LIbrary collection is available for free download within the app for a while. Other books range from £1.79 to about £3.49.<br />
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There's a link <a href="http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/app/ebook-treasures/636cd5ad-468b-4bd8-b632-2e6db3cdf8c1" target="_blank">here</a> to the Windows Store. If you are on another OS (kind of probable right now...) you'll just get a web page. But with a predicted 1m installs of Win8 a day, I'm hoping that the link will be useful for you someday soon.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-15970216405047846962012-10-23T10:58:00.001+01:002012-10-23T10:58:49.353+01:00Windows 8 pt2 - second guessing the futureAs developers and publishers we have to make regular bets on where different platforms and devices are going to be in the next year or two. I don't look further out than that, as I mostly think things are too volatile, and if I can't turn our little ship around in that time frame, I'm not doing my job.<br />
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So I was interested to see some new Forrester research into predicted market shares in 2016.<br />
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For Windows 8, Microsoft are talking a lot about a unified experience across tablet, desktop and phone. With the phone piece, I think they have a way to go, but I can see the tablet/desktop differentiation blurring.</div>
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For the Win8 app we just built, we made a bet. We'd rather be a big fish in a small pond that's growing fast than a small fish in an enormous pond. This used to be called first mover advantage. Our app will be published in the Windows Store in the Books and Reference category. I expect around 250 apps to be there on Friday, so we should get some attention. Discoverability won't be a problem, even if overall numbers might be. Contrast that with the Apple App Store, where there are currently 28,255 book apps. We'd be buried.</div>
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Now the bet wouldn't make any sense if the Windows Store doesn't grow, but we know that Microsoft will sell 350m Win8 licenses a year if they track the progress of Win7. If you combine that, with the increased relevance in the tablet sector that Forrester highlight, and mix in people's habituation with buying from online stores and I think it will grow.</div>
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Which isn't to say we aren't building an iOS app as well, of course...</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-30980933207128470142012-10-19T16:21:00.001+01:002012-10-19T16:21:14.370+01:00Windows 8 - Brilliant and/or Flawed?I've been spending the last month or so working on a Windows Store app, and, as a result have installed the OS on a tablet and desktops. I'll come to telling about the app in a week or so when it's live, but the experience of using Windows 8 in anger has been interesting. And it's a tale of two halves.<br />
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On tablets, Win8 is a gamechanger. iOS is a slick OS and an iPad works great for the tasks we've grown accustomed to using a tablet for like web browsing, mail, gaming and some note-taking maybe. But how many people do you know who've ditched their MacBook and run only on an iPad? Pretty tough to do that, what with missing or hobbled key apps, small HD, no USB etc<br />
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The Win8 experience has made it possible or even likely to run a slate as your only computer. USB and HDMI out means you can plug in your monitor and keyboard, SD card slot means you can drop in another 64Gb of storage at low cost, and you have a full fat work PC. But then you come to the OS experience on a desktop. And I have to say there's a learning curve. In an attempt to develop one OS to rule them all, the erstwhile Metro UI elements mean you'll be scratching around for a while even trying to find things like Power Off and Control Panels (or maybe that was just me). Navigating the UI with a mouse is perfectly possible, but it feels like eating grains of rice with chopsticks.<br />
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In a touch environment, the whole thing makes sense. The UI makes iOS look dated, the UX elements that aggregate feeds into the Start page make life easier, and the fluid touch interactions that take some learning (from within any app, just swipe from the top of the screen to the bottom to close it) soon become intuitive. Shifting back, iOS felt clumsy, jabbing at buttons the whole time. Snap View even works well, running an app just in part of the screen while you get on with something else.<br />
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So I think Microsoft is to be applauded in trying to bridge this divide - one OS for all you do. There will be a vocal minority (majority?) who will not learn how to get the best from the OS and hate it because it's not Win7 (or even XP). But for those who give it a couple of days and realise they can run everything from one device, it's a gamechanger. Apple showed us how to build a tablet. And maybe Microsoft have shown us how it grows up.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-59070324634028559402012-06-21T12:46:00.002+01:002012-06-21T12:46:41.031+01:00Giants in the Room<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When Gregory the Great sent Augustine to Christianise the inhabitants of this dank isle in 597 ("Thank you Holy Father. What exactly did I do to annoy you so much?") he settled at Canterbury as being a nice spot. I imagine him choosing it rather as I choose a place to lay out the picnic rug - largely random, but with some logic (like less molehills).<br />
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Seven years later the diocese of Rochester was founded, a fact of which they are very proud, and I was there this week to look at the Textus Roffensis, one of the earliest extant books of law, and the one which apparently sets out the concept of financial compensation for injury rather than corporal retribution. A fact for which ambulance-chasing lawyers the world over must be very thankful.<br />
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In the meeting I was sitting next to an elderly conservator, who spoke slowly and with some difficulty, and occasionally seemed to veer somewhat off-topic. At the end of the meeting I knew more about limp vellum binding and alum-tawed hide than I thought likely to be useful, but not much about the conservator.<br />
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Talking to Claire Breay and Alixe Bovey afterwards and then googling him, I discovered Chris Clarkson is the godfather of modern conservation.<br />
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Summoned dramatically to Florence in 1966 he rescued thousands of books from the devastation of the flood, working in a temporary conservation studio in the power station.<br />
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From there he was recruited by the Library of Congress to set up their first conservation studio with a budget of $6m "And in 1971", as Christopher told me "$6m meant something". He went on to work in many places, eventually coming back to the UK and now consults for a select group that includes my friends of the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage.<br />
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It's often my privilege to sit in meetings with learned and erudite people, many of whom wear their learning and reputations on their sleeves. It's a delight then, to stumble into someone who has genuinely changed the face of a profession and who's main concern was making sure his sat-nav could get him out of the Rochester one-way system.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-20519796072965333302012-05-16T11:48:00.000+01:002012-05-16T11:48:57.235+01:00When Developers Become Publishers<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">For almost 20 years now, we've been building websites and applications for libraries and museums. Fairly heavy code too, some of it. We won the British Computer Society, Best Web Technology Award a couple of years back for some 3D C# craziness.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br />So, when ebooks emerged we took a look and <a href="http://www.ebooktreasures.org/" target="_blank">jumped in</a>, leveraging our clients existing assets to generate a little revenue for them and us. At the same time, I started reading lots of blogs and articles, as I knew nothing about publishing, either the industry or best practice. I found myself in a very alien world. Undoubtedly lots of very smart people battling with sudden tectonic shifts. But some things that I took for granted seemed to complete blindside or outrage publishers and authors. So here are some of the glaring differences I've seen as we've tried to straddle what are (for now) two industries.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /><b>1. Change is normal.</b> The practice of publishing doesn't seem to have changed much from Wynkyn de Worde to the present day. From the outside, change (until recently) seems slow. Even meetings are scheduled months ahead. In software development, change is very rapid. A year ago Flash was the default choice for rich internet applications. Now it's being shunned by all and sundry. The iPad turns up and everyone needs an app. As an industry, you need flexibility built in, as well as good antennae telling you what's coming next. As publishing and software development merge, publishers need to be able to react fast.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>2. Expect conflict.</b> Right back from when Netscape was battling with IE, we've had to deal with conflict. Code something for one browser, and it won't necessarily look good in another. Build a Flash version, and you'll likely need an HTML version for disability-compliance. Build a regular site, and you'll need a mobile version too (although these are now conflating). I hear regular cries of "when will there be one ebook standard?". I can guess at "never", and I know that developers accept this as just the way it is. Those late nights in the studio with take-out pizza? Testing and bug-fixing on all those platforms.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>3. The code isn't hard.</b> The codebase that makes up ebooks is not hard. Javascript, CSS, XHTML etc are pretty basic tools. Finding developers who are competent is a whole lot easier than finding good Objective-C people to code your next app.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>4. International Rights.</b> Coming from software, international rights variations for ebooks seem like a piece of legacy nonsense. I can release an app into the wild, why not an ebook? If someone can strip the DRM and mail an ebook to their friend on another continent, why can't I just sell them a book?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>5. It's the beginning of the end, or maybe the end of the beginning.</b> Either way, it's early days. Publishers are still finding out whether apps work, what the best price points are for ebooks, how to market them, what sort of sales volumes to expect from each platform and are still defining workflows. Me, I'm still waiting on epub3 adoption, the Kindle Fire, Nook and KF8 formats to arrive in Europe (we're over here, turn right at New York and keep going till you hit Ireland...), Apple to fix discoverability and the secret of a really good flat white. At this stage in proceedings, I expect things to be messy. And they are. In web terms we're at about 1995.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>6. Disintermediation happens.</b>There are still lots of web design agencies out there, but since the advent of Blogger and Wordpress, many individuals and companies have cut them out of the loop and just built their own web presence. <a href="http://wordpress.org/news/2011/08/state-of-the-word/" target="_blank">Wordpress</a> now powers 22% of all new domain registrations. It may not be as good as a bespoke site, but it isn't £30,000 either. As the tools emerge to create and market ebooks, writers of all sorts will seek to cut out middlemen. iBooks Author is the beginning of this, but expect something similar from the Microsoft/Nook deal.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>7. Users decide.</b> If a website or blog or Facebook page goes up, there's no quality control or screening from a third party. It's success or failure is determined by the community, and it's all there in black and white in the log files. Traditional publishing moves the gatekeeping upstream ("We really liked the manuscript, but..."). eBooks are undoubtedly going the way of the web. People will publish books because they can, and the world will decide. There's an interesting piece in the <a href="http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6823.html" target="_blank">Harvard Business Review </a>stating that Amazon reader reviews are likely as good as professional reviews. If that's the case, then they're probably, in aggregate, as good as publisher's opinions.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So, after 9 months or so, I still don't know much about traditional publishing. But the interesting thing is, I may not need to.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396138248580428650.post-84961681115549897622012-04-11T15:17:00.001+01:002012-04-11T15:17:43.133+01:0042 - Don't Panic<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD4D0sOOQxa-VQNJ7Nk1_FNlp1btEnmbPEInqszlYop1fJNti_KKkuxcyXc-d2jd19jqYu2bvOQWybw0S4RvK2lV4bAj3bqlLl9ePQZQjqcziuWZANnBizEF647LNDI6dxhdScglHtm_I_/s1600/42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD4D0sOOQxa-VQNJ7Nk1_FNlp1btEnmbPEInqszlYop1fJNti_KKkuxcyXc-d2jd19jqYu2bvOQWybw0S4RvK2lV4bAj3bqlLl9ePQZQjqcziuWZANnBizEF647LNDI6dxhdScglHtm_I_/s1600/42.jpg" /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In the latest, and very excellent Pew study on e-readers habits, published <a href="http://bit.ly/HYzyhS" target="_blank">here</a>, one fact jumped out at me amongst the data.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">42% of people consume ebooks on a computer.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Almost half of all reading of ebooks is done not on Kindles, iPads, iPhones, Android phones, Android tablets or Kindle Fires, but on the humble and ignored PC. It's like there are legions of ebook contrarians going "You know what - the old PC suits me just fine."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But what's really going on here. Maybe 5 things.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>1. Tablets/e-readers are expensive.</b> People love free and many of the ebooks read are free, not least the Project Gutenberg collection. If you're in to classic literature, this trove is a godsend and has the benefit of being free. Download the Kindle for PC (or Mac) app and you're good to go. For the thrifty or cautious this route is perfect and good enough.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>2. Notebook computers are pretty small too.</b> An 11" MacBook Air is a pretty small device with a great battery life. For the sofa-use that the iPad/K Fire fits in to so well, a tiny notebook PC is a close second in terms of form factor, and you may either have one lying around, or figure picking up a cheap one makes more sense than a dedicated device. And you may well be right.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>3. Reading at work.</b> I think Mike Shatzkin picked up on this. In those dog-day afternoons before the bell goes, why not download the Kindle app and sneak a few books on to your work PC, fingers hovering over ALT-TAB in case the boss shows up? </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>4. Try before you buy.</b> Downloading an e-reading app is a nice way to try before you buy. If it works for you, you might then take the plunge and get a dedicated device. This is as much about behavioural change as cash. Any books you bought can then just be synced over.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><b>5. Reading wherever you are (ie outdoors or on the train) isn't such a huge deal.</b></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What are the implications of all this though?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The first is that I think there is big pent-up demand for e-readers. Using a PC is definitely a sub-optimal way to read ebooks, but people are putting up with it. The try before you buy brigade will soon start buying, and the price points and choice of devices is falling, which will encourage that.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Screen quality is not such a big deal. Most PC screen are pretty lame, yet people put up with them for reading eBooks.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Apple have nothing to offer for this constituency with iBooks. They can only therefore address a little over half the market. The same survey says only 23% read on tablets (in early 2012 tablets = iPads).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I'd seen Kindle for Windows as a sideshow. It's not.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Consumer behaviour is malleable, but not as plastic as we thought. Print=>PC=>Tablet looks like the progression (assuming dedicated e-readers are not long for this world).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So all the noise over devices has been masking the stories about behaviour. I think we need a "marketing noise" filter in this industry.</span><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0