You rock, Martha Stewart!

Charlie Rose: "You used to be a billionaire"
Martha: "I know. It felt so nice. I remember driving up Madison Avenue thinking, 'I can buy anything.' But I’m not a spendthrift!"

Watch the video

Newspaper publishers: Read this article or you will die

A great critique by Sara Williams at Made by Many (via Shannon) was the first blog post I've read that gives some very real instructions to the magazine and newspaper biz about how to survive in a world of free content. Williams doesn't miss a beat here in explaining why charging consumers for content that's not enhanced by curation or context has two central and detrimental consequences: first: content can be found somewhere else, and second: being the snobby kid in the playground that doesn't want to share is not going to make anybody like or admire you more. You are not being invited to any birthday parties. It's going to be awfully hard for me to link to you next year, New York Times.

Maaaybe though, you'll get that really awesome pool and the XBox,* and I'll suck up to you. We'll see.


*Someone has got to let me know if these metaphorical statements are getting out of hand. Just tell me, "Megan, say what you mean." If they strike you as humorous, well, if you said so, you'd make me a happy woman.

The Children of Cyberspace

Chelsea just sent me an article from Saturday's New York Times about "kids these days." "The Children of Cyberspace" hits the nail on the head by noting that the adoption of new technology happens naturally and fast for people under 20. I've always had the nagging feeling that people just three or four years younger than me could use technology in ways that were far more sophisticated than anything I could conceive of doing. As Brad Stone argues, there are micro-generational gaps between people born in the same decade. So while us "old fogies" - the twenty-somethings - feel wired and hip using twitter (while still reading books), our younger siblings, nieces, and nephews are just taking every new invention as a natural part of their world. The author's daughter won't be the only little girl who considers a kindle to be a book!

We had a discussion in class today about what it meant to finish a book and put it on your shelf. And the particular arrangement of magazines and books on your coffee table or night stand when guests are over. Sure, they say something about you and lend a sense of accomplishment--but maybe your LibraryThing account could replace that. The kids surveyed in this article would certainly agree. It doesn't sound like they are too attached to their books. (But oh, what would happen if you took their laptops away?)

My feeling is that you'll part ways with your DVD collection (ok, maybe you already threw that out) and your library (if you have to move again), and that you'll define your cultural and intellectual identity to others by customizing your tablet to display what you're watching, reading, and listening to at the time. And you'll keep your copy of The Catcher in the Rye/On the Road/The Bell Jar/Catch-22/The Prophet (har) with you forever.

Agree? Disagree? Shoot.

P.S. ! JULIA STILES?

One little tablet, so many haters

There's much speculation that the Apple tablet will ship in March.

There's been so much hype about the tablet--about what it could do for the future of publishing, how it could change the way that we read, how we interact with the written word.

Something with so much promise, something developed by the unstoppable vision of Steve Jobs, must. garner. cynics.

Today, Matt Yglesias wrote that it wouldn't fit in his back pocket so it probably wouldn't be useful to him.

On TechCrunch, Paul Carr noted that the tablet would likely have the same "retina-burning screen" as the iPod to better display movies and web content, and therefore, this device would probably be pretty useless for reading, and also fix none of the problems with the Kindle.

Slate's Jack Shafer says that tablets will eventually morph into ultra-light laptops and your magazine will just be a website.

I most agree with Carr, who writes his criticisms of the notional tablet (remember-it doesn't even exist yet) by prefacing his disapproval with this note:

Predicting that something is going to fail before it’s even launched is like betting against the future: easy to do, but likely to end in embarrassment.

Image from Wired.com

......

Oh, and see this video from 1994... creepy.

Best Wishes

Happy 2010, everyone. I hope this new year brings you joy and new inspiration.

Before getting my party gear on last night, I put together this little chapbook for my magazine course. This week, my brother and I visited Main Street and Granville Island, and then had dinner with our parents at the very cute (and dark) Les Faux Bourgeois restaurant. This is a photographic journal of our day.

Most of the text in this book links to websites for more information about the locations I visited, some to music on Hype Machine. Explore and enjoy! (and leave comments as before).



Best to read in fullscreen

Testing, 1, 2, 3

I'm experimenting with digital publishing for my magazine course at school. Have a look at this redesign of Maisonneuve magazine I did for my design course.

The project was to produce a new cover, table of contents, sample spreads, and a static website. In the first few pages, you'll see prototype covers I produced (ick). his magazine redesign began with a summer issue of Maisonneuve magazine. Published in Montreal, Maisonneuve is the winner of numerous National Magazine Awards for design and journalism. It is one of my favourite magazines to read. When I began redesigning, I knew I wanted to retain the spirit of the magazine, while going beyond the excellence of the prior design and using typography and images more effectively. Ultimately, I abandoned the design history of the magazine altogether, but I wanted to convey the eclecticism of the content, which I have always admired.

Leave comments about the experience of reading online or the design, and play with Issuu, and you'll help me with my research (thanks!). *I've already noticed some problems when converting my pdf to the issuu platform, including missing text and transparencies that have been altered.



NB: I do not own any of the images used in this mock-up. Please also note that the article used in the sample spread is from the Economist.com ("Reforming Italy's Schools")

It's all the same... except for Kim Kardashian

Who's commanding top dollar on the Internet? For all their bitching and moaning about how they can't compete in the world of online entertainment, the big players--Martha Stewart, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and NBC and FOX (via Hulu)--are still rated by agency buyers and media sellers as the most powerful sellers of ad space.

But one lone lady is making it on her own: Kim Kardashian charges $10,000 for just one tweet. MMMM Carl's Jr., so tasty.

Who makes it happen? Ad.ly

.........
from Ad Age

One Day We Will Look Back and Laugh at This

The Vancouver Sun's bid to get with the times is so adorable. The "THIS TWEET JUST IN" headline just kills me.

“Darling, remember when we downloaded Sons and Lovers in Napa Valley?”

How can I impress strangers with the gem-like flame of my literary passion if it’s a digital slate I’m carrying around, trying not to get it all thumbprinty?

Books not only furnish a room, to paraphrase the title of an Anthony Powell novel, but also accessorize our outfits. They help brand our identities. At the rate technology is progressing, however, we may eventually be traipsing around culturally nude in an urban rain forest, androids seamlessly integrated with our devices.

--James Wolcott, "What’s a Culture Snob to Do?," Vanity Fair

Why have I been posting so much junk?

Because the article skimmer for the New York Times--my primary source for healthy brain food--is broken. What's wrong with it?

Amazing!

Artist Rob Matthews printed off 5,000 pages of wikipedia's "feature articles" and bound them into a single volume:

"Reproducing Wikipedia in a dysfunctional physical form helps to question its use as an internet resource."

Also, how cheeky is Matthews's work?

This blog is the most popular site among beautiful and intelligent people

The Wall Street Journal reports that "Most Popular" lists affect audiences' perceptions regardless of their accuracy.

A ...recent study demonstrates that popularity in the music world, even unearned, breeds more popularity. Researchers enlisted more than 12,000 volunteers to rate and download songs from among 48 chosen for their relative obscurity. Some of these volunteers were lied to: At a certain stage in the experiment, popularity rankings for this group were reversed, so the least-downloaded songs were made to appear most-downloaded.

Suddenly, everything changed. The prior No. 1 began making a comeback on the new top dog, but the former No. 47 maintained its comfortable lead on the old No. 2, buoyed by its apparent popularity. Overall, the study showed that popularity is both unstable and malleable.

...Other recent studies have quantified the popularity of popularity in other settings. Signs telling guests at a hotel in the Phoenix area that towel reuse was the No. 1 choice among their peers increased the rate of this practice by 34%, compared with other signs with messages stressing the impact on the environment. Arizona State University psychology Prof. Robert Cialdini and colleagues found that rates went even higher when the signs specified that most prior guests in the same room reused towels

Considering the power of these lists, more and more websites are including "most emailed/blogged/viewed" lists on their sites, effectively making Kate Gosselin one of readers' favourite topics and burying all their other news... about, y'know, civil war in Sri Lanka and stuff like that.

Full disclosure: guilty as charged!

Twitter: Officially over capacity

All I'm getting from Twitter in the past few days is the fail whale. There's been a huge surge of new this week due to the AplusK vs. CNN showdown and new members Oprah and Gayle King.

Here's a rundown of the events at Maria Write Now

And the illustrated version

Thanks, Internet

If I never surface from my room again, it's because I'm on Polyvore, a scrapbooking, styling, fashion watching, DIY, social networking, creative expression extravaganza. You can see what I've done with my day so far in the carousel below.



Find me on Polyvore

In reality, it's weird

This is a very weird blog feature that Style.com has launched for this season's fashion weeks called "Virtual Front Row". They have correspondents in Milan, Paris, New York phone in a blog-style post and Style.com animates the avatars in these little "live" videos below. It's a very bizarre little idea, not in the fact that the technology is very exciting but because it looks a bit creepy.

I wonder if people are enjoying these. Either way, they are fascinating to me. Here's (from top to bottom), Erin Wasson, Tim Blanks (yay!), and Vera Wang. Other contributors include Michael Kors, Haley Freedman, Averyl Oates, Jefferson Hack, and Oliver Zahm. All "virtual front row" videos so far can be found here. And in this meta-moment , Jefferson Hack (current editorial director of Dazed and Confused) plays around with the idea of avatar mash-ups.

Clash of the Titans: Google vs. Amazon & Apple

Today, Amazon announced that it will sell e-books for the iPod Touch and iPhone:

Starting Wednesday, owners of these Apple devices can download a free application, Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch, from Apple’s App Store. The software will give them full access to the 240,000 e-books for sale on Amazon.com, which include a majority of best sellers.

The move comes a week after Amazon started shipping the updated version of its Kindle reading device. It signals that the company may be more interested in becoming the pre-eminent retailer of e-books than in being the top manufacturer of reading devices.

Remember when I thought that the whoever would be the first to sell books through apple would will the digital-book game? It might not be true anymore. Recently, Googlebooks launched a $7-million spending campaign to seek out authors world-wide via print ads in newspapers.

The almost comically sweeping attempt to reach the world’s entire literate population is a reflection of the ambitions of the Google Book Search project, in which the company hopes to digitize every book — famous or not, in any language, published anywhere on earth — found in the world’s libraries.

...But as it turns out, authors and publishers are hard to track down. More than members of most settlement classes, said Kathy Kinsella of Kinsella Media in Washington, which is directing the ad campaign, these are a particularly diffuse group.

“We looked at how many books were published in various areas,” she said, “and we knew from the plaintiffs and Google that 30 percent were published in the U.S., 30 percent in industrialized countries. The rest of the world is the rest.”

So, using United Nations data, her company created a list of countries and territories. Some nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, were excluded because they do not agree to international copyright terms. In others, like Cuba, North Korea and Myanmar, her company is prohibited from buying ads because of United States trade embargos, Ms. Kinsella said.

Google is willing to make an arrangement with the authors to allow their books to be read online for a fee; Google will take a cut and so will the copyright holder. This is a game changing move, considering the scope of the Googlebooks project. Googlebooks might be simply more accessible since it works on any platform, not just Kindles or iPhones. Their strategy probably has Amazon and Apple shaking in their boots.

via NYTimes, "Amazon to Sell E-Books for Apple Devices" and "A Google Search of a Distinctly Retro Kind"