Saturday was the second Papercamp. There are some write-ups appearing online already, such as these from Ben and Roo, as well as photos on Flickr. I couldn’t make it unfortunately, but Matt suggested I create some briefs to get people going, and so I did. Apparently, there weren’t many formal responses to them (with this […]
Walter Benjamin’s Aura: Open Bookmarks and the future eBook
I spoke earlier today at Tools of Change in Frankfurt. The short version is that many of the things we think about ebooks are wrong: but they are very interesting. The future of the book lies in its aura not in its copies, and that’s why I’m launching Open Bookmarks. For the longer version, read […]
To Frankfurt, and Australia
A quick reminder that I’m speaking at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair next week. I’m looking forward to seeing some of you there. Worth noting that the talk description cited on the website is bobbins. I’ll be talking about the challenges, limits, and possibilities of ebooks, particularly when it comes […]
On Book Guilt
We need to talk about something. It’s quite serious. It affects a lot of people. And I genuinely believe it costs the book industry millions of dollarpounds every year, in addition to incalculable personal misery. We need to talk about book guilt. When I created bkkeepr, it had (still does) three commands: start, finish and […]
iBooks and Kindle: Bookkake and Artist’s eBooks
I’m very pleased to announce that all five Bookkake titles are now available direct from Apple’s iBookstore, and several are available on the Kindle. In addition, all Artists’ eBooks titles are also available free in the iBookstore. This has not been the simplest process, but I think it’s really important to make ebooks available in […]
Maps for Birds: London at 300 feet
Ever since I took the above photo from a boardroom high above the Euston Road, I’ve had this image in my head of what London looks like at 300 feet (~ 100 metres). So, as usual, I got it out of my head by making something, while also using it as an excuse to have […]
Bus-Tops: London, screens and the Olympics
Back in January, I was approached by Art Public and asked to build an application and website as part of their Bus-Tops project. This has just gone live over at http://bus-tops.com/shelters/, so it seems like a good time to talk about the project. Bus-Tops is part of the Cultural Olympiad, and benefited from a grant […]
On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography
On Friday, I spoke at dConstruct in Brighton. Huge thanks to everyone at Clearleft, and everyone who came, for a really great time. I talked about a number of things. I started out talking about Geocities, and how it was a very real thing, a place that I grew up in, and how it was […]
A journey through formats: Blair, Hardbacks and Ebooks
I won’t get into the politics here, because this isn’t the venue, but since the lying, warmongering scum former Prime Minister Tony Blair is all over the news today, I thought I’d look around to see where and how his book is available. A Journey is officially released in hardback today, with the RRP of […]
Five Things
This Five Things thing. Various people have been doing it. So here goes. Five things I’m thinking about: The future of the book That may seem a little obvious. And vague: let’s talk about novels. The novel is a historical accident, it’s different to everything else, and it’s not dead yet. It’s only been around […]