Inspiration Overload

Een mooi voorbeeld hoe de wereld van studieboeken eruit kan zien, komt van Inkling. Inkling heeft een app ontwikkeld waarmee je hun interactieve studieboeken kunt benaderen. Het concept is dat zij content van uitgevers ombouwen en via de app aanbieden. Je betaalt dan voor hoofdstukken of voor het hele boek. Tot nu toe is de catalogus beperkt in aantallen en richt deze zich vooral op hoger onderwijs. Maar dat hoeft geen probleem te zijn, als de kwaliteit maar uitstekend is. Dan komt de rest vanzelf.


Social media is just the latest term, pushed by IT consultants and internet evangelists. It would be good to ‘deconstruct’ their position first, before answering such questions. The future is an collective obsession of corporate marketing departments, but you never hear any surprising scenario coming from these circles. For kids these days the internet is boring. Why should they embrace the gadgets of their parents? I would like to see the future as a truck that incidentally drives into your front room: something that is very unlikely, sparking off all sorts of events. I know this is already included in the ’scenarios’ of large corporations. We just do not hear enough about the unlikely paths we as humankind can wander off on. History is speeding up, that’s for sure. But is the future as well?

Een kort interview met Geert Lovink over digitale netwerken en het delen van informatie over die netwerken

It won't be enough just to build branded mobile applications that repurpose content across all of the different platforms. That's like newspapers taking the print experience and replicating it on the web as they tried back in the 1990s. Rather, we will need to rethink, remix and repackage information for an entirely different modality than platforms of yore.

Electronic democracy is about blogs, spam, flame wars, rather than the responsible participation in society. Sharing music means destroying the music industry. Digital artisanship means precarious employment. Dot com starts ups means existing monopolies on the ground and occupational forces that can’t establish functional governments. E-banking means financial panics. It’s endearing but flawed.

The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!) That minute has been watched by more people than the viewership of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and the Superbowl combined. (174 million views and counting.)

Lezen! Aanrader!

When you purchase a book from them, you're not just getting a static ebook, you're buying into a dynamic, integrated online application environment that becomes richer with each new publication, and with each new member to their community. Even if Bible study isn't your thing, check them out for future-of-publishing inspiration. I can't do them justice here.

Over the weekend Robert French from Auburn and I have been debating on Google Buzz the value of Facebook as a news source. It does have a ways to go but it's coming. Six years ago, as an experiment, I lived off blogs as my sole news source. I might try that again with Facebook. I continue to be impressed with how media companies are starting to experiment and the utter richness of the conversation that occurs in a very navigable, digestible format.