2023 in Review: A Few of My Favorite Things
2023 was a pretty good year for my personal relationship with immersive media, though. I enjoyed a range of new-to-me books, games, movies, and TV, while also uncharacteristically diving back into some old faves when I needed a bit of comfort food.
Five Things: February 16, 2023
“A dim future for big publishers is not a dim future for readers.” Five things for February 16, 2023. That’s it! That’s the excerpt.
Five Things: February 2, 2023
“Accountability rolls downhill in Corporate America.” Five things for February 2, 2023. That’s it! That’s the excerpt.
Why DRM is a Toothless Boogeyman, Ebooks are like Video Games, and Amazon is the Winner
It’s not a huge stretch to posit Amazon as the reverse-Valve of the ebook world, constantly pushing the envelope in unexpected ways, aggressively experimenting with pricing, developing a core of popular franchises, while staying focused on delivering and optimizing the best consumer experience.
The Problem With Klout? It Has None
Therein lies the real problem with Klout. While its Topics feature is an intriguing attempt to add a much-needed contextual layer to its linear scoring and might have some long-term potential (most likely as acquisition bait, to complement PostRank or Radian6?), overall, it’s a pretty useless, Foursquare-style gamification of the worst aspects of Social MEdia.
The Truth About Disruption in Publishing
In publishing, every day it seems there’s a new upstart or three that’s going to disintermediate (or even better, KILL!) traditional publishers, but with the exceptions of Open Road Integrated Media and, possibly, Ruckus Media Group — notably, both are run by major publishing veterans and have partnerships with a variety of “traditional” publishers — you’d be hard-pressed to name too many others that have had any truly notable impact to match the hype surrounding them.
Do Publishers Still Need Authors?
Just as many entrepreneurs no longer need venture capitalists to launch their companies, authors no longer need publishers to publish. Mark Coker, Do Authors Still Need Publishers? Picture this: In the future, as the risks of publishing shift from the publisher to the author, publishers will be able to invest in technologies that allow them
The Most Fantastic Genre
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZGqSRtDbEw] PopCultureShock posted this great little clip about the new Blue Beetle — Mexican-American Jaime Reyes — and Junot Diaz’ Oscar Wao, wherein Diaz notes: “The most fantastic genre can’t keep up, or refuses to keep up, with how much our country has changed. And so people can dream about aliens, and they can dream
Poetry: Where Your Vote Really Counts
Tired of the never-ending Democratic Primary and annoyed that, in the end, your vote might not really count anyway if the Super Delegates opt to nominate the candidate not in the lead when all is said and done? As in many other aspects of life, poetry offers a much-needed alternative. Blogsboro.com is running an election
Go see Liberty City
I went to see Liberty City last night, April Yvette Thompson’s multi-layered, one-person account of her upbringing in the infamous Miami neighborhood during the chaotic 70s, told against a backdrop of the rise and fall of the Black Power movement, the Crack epidemic and the Liberty City Riots that led to Miami being declared a disaster area, literally and figuratively. Co-written