Archive
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 […]
A year ago this week, I went freelance. So this seems like a good time for a recap. In the last year I’ve been extremely lucky to work with clients including Hachette UK, Bonnier, Art Public, Six To Start, Airlock, Newspaper Club, Proboscis, Dennis Publishing, and a number of others. I’m continuing to work with […]
I’m just returned from Scotland, where I swam in lochs and rivers and partook of nature. This was good. I also read: novels aside, I was immersed in Walter Benjamin and Montaigne’s Essays. Of the former, this was my first experience of reading on the iPad, and a very good one indeed. The highlight function […]
So it’s started again: the planes rumble overhead. The first I’ve heard is right above me now—for a few moments it drowns out the birdsong and childrens’ voices rising from the gardens below my window. I grew up beneath the flight path of Heathrow. From my bedroom window I could read the flight numbers of […]
On Friday I went to The Story, a conference organised by Matt Locke of Channel 4. It was very good, and also confusing. In a good way. And because it was confusing this won’t be a straight trip report: it will be some hastily scrawled notes and some linked reflections. Attempt no summaries here. [For […]
For those who expressed an interest, Immanent In The Manifold City, my newspaper concerning Walking Stewart, ubiquity and time travel in the Nineteenth Century, is now available for purchase, in an edition of 100 signed & numbered copies.
For a long time now, I’ve been somewhat obsessed with Patrick Keiller’s 1994 film London. And so, this year, I’m doing something about it. I’m studying it: watching it again and again, mining it for references and meaning, analysing and locating shots and scenes. London lends itself to this process, more than any other film […]
As some of you may have noticed, booktwo.org has over this year become increasingly personal. This trend is likely to continue in 2010, and while I’ll continue to write about books, technology, and their intersections, I’ll be writing about other things. The main reason for this is that in August I went freelance, and now […]
A couple of months ago, I drew this on the back of an envelope: That’s pretty much the best representation I could come up with of what I do. I encompasses all my major projects of the last few years: this site; Bookkake, my print-on-demand, experimental small publisher; bkkeepr, the web app for tracking your […]
A couple of months ago I was doing some research into various sources of book data, and one of the things I was interested in was seeing if it was possible to hook into local library data. For example, if I was building a site that contained lots of book info, it’s easy to point […]
It’s Remembrance Day today, 90 years since the end of the First World War, 63 since the Second, and all the others too, and it’s always been resonant in my family. On my mother’s side, there were lots of boys in the family: uncles, brothers and sons, who didn’t come back, and on my father’s […]
Over at Times Emit, I’ve just posted my notes from last night’s talk by Vicky Barnsley at LSE, where she talked about the changing publishing landscape, and some of the things HarperCollins is doing to expand the role of the publihser in the 21st Centure. It was a good talk, with a number of interesting […]
I recently bought one of the Tikitag starter kits, and have been playing with it. To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed, but here’s a nice application with a bunch of Ifs attached. IF everyone had RFID readers (like tikitags’) and IF the tags were dirt cheap (mass-produced, they wuld be, but no idea of […]
Books Published: The size of each territory shows the number of new book titles published each year.* “Each new book published is counted only once on this map, regardless of how many copies it sells… A book is defined as having at least 50 pages; a pamphlet has 5 to 49 pages. Publications with fewer […]
Attempting to bypass a creative block today, I started photographing objects around the house. I noticed the texts that cover most consumer goods, the sheer wealth of them, and how they are so often hidden, turned away. I started making them visible. I’d just been reading an extract from Felicity Lawrence’s Eat Your Heart Out […]
Back in February, I sketched out this idea on the back of an envelope. I’m pleased to say it is now a reality. Bkkeepr allows you to track your reading and make bookmarks via text message and the web. It uses Twitter as it’s source, generating a timeline of everyone’s reading, as well as pages […]
I’m very pleased to say that my open-source literary festival, London Lit Plus, is happening again this year. Full details at londonlitplus.com, with plenty more to come. Head over, check it out, start spreading the word – and think about holding an event!
I’ve been thinking about how to create RSS feeds and achievements for pBooks, almost an API. Here’s a quick, on-the-way-to-work scheme. Think Foamee. Bkkeeper monitors your twitter feed for @bkkeeper notes – just text an ISBN and ‘start’, ‘end’ or a page number to your Twitter stream. On ‘start’, bkkeeper adds that ISBN to your […]
Things Magazine just pointed to the growing cult of book covers online – Flickr groups for good looking books, old paperbacks, graphics and more, and similar projects like their own, wonderful Pelican Project. There are also plenty of blogs dedicated to the subject, and Penguin have spent the last couple of year deliberately turning them […]
Brief outline of ideas for locative storytelling (more thoughts originating from here and here). Goal: To produce a locative storytelling experience, where strands of the story are triggered by the reader/listener’s location. Tech requirements: GPS-enabled mobile phone, or Google Maps’ new locator function, headphones, application running on Symbian or Windows Mobile (or preferably both…). Personnel: […]
For Hire
Booktwo.org is the blog of James Bridle, a book and technology specialist with specific expertise in planning and producing web and new media projects for clients in publishing and the arts. If you'd like to hire me, have a look at my CV and portfolio, and feel free to get in touch.
I am also a member of the Really Interesting Group.
You can follow me on Twitter.
Speaking Engagements:
I am available for conferences and other events. For examples, see my talks at Interesting, Playful, South by Southwest, dConstruct and Tools of Change Frankfurt.
A complete list of talks, with links, is available.