2010

Just as the iPad has proven to be a boon to magazine publishers, newspapers have flocked to the device too. All of the major western newspapers have an iPad app now: the New York Times, Wall St Journal, Guardian, USA Today, Financial Times, and others. There are also new forms of news services that have … Read more

When the iPad was launched earlier this year, one of the big talking points was that the iPad might be the savior of magazines. By now many magazines are available on the iPad, either in their own standalone app or in a virtual magazine store. In this post we look at how magazines are using … Read more

SpringerLink is a platform for eBooks, journals and reference works totalling over 4.8 million documents. The service has just launched a re-design, with new semantic linking features that enable users to access related content across eBooks and journals. The semantic linking feature displays links to related content from SpringerLink’s archive. It’s similar to the ‘see … Read more

One of the emerging trends of 2010 has been the Internet of Things, a term for when real-world objects get connected to the Internet. One of the key aspects of this trend is the data explosion that will occur when millions of objects send data to the cloud – mostly via very small sensors. Just … Read more

Ultimate Chart is a new type of music chart for the Internet age. It doesn’t just measure music sales and radio play, as Billboard has traditionally done, but popularity over a variety of online services – YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, MySpace, MTV.com, and many more. But does Ultimate Chart live up to the hype its … Read more

This coming Monday, application boxes will disappear from your Facebook profile or fan page and you’ll be told to use application tabs instead. In a nutshell, this means that third party content – such as Flickr photos or YouTube videos – can only be displayed on a Facebook profile page or fan page (the equivalent … Read more

Last week we looked at the pros and cons of eBooks vs traditional paper books. For the consumer market, eBooks are still at the early stage of adoption – but becoming more popular due to the iPad and the price point getting lower for eReaders like Kindle. Another market where eBooks have a lot of … Read more

As Facebook becomes more and more popular, the social network giant is putting more emphasis on the real-time feed. In other words, the activities of your friends displayed in reverse chronological order on your Facebook homepage. In the old days of Facebook – and indeed traditionally with social networks like MySpace and Friendster – you’d … Read more

In a blog post over the weekend, Facebook announced that it will remove application boxes from its service on August 23. As we explained recently, boxes enable Facebook users to display third party content on their profile pages. Examples include a list of the books you’re reading, the latest movies you’ve watched, tweets you’ve made. … Read more

Xerox PARC famously invented the graphical user interface (GUI) for modern computers, then just as famously failed to capitalize on it. Now called “PARC, a Xerox company,” it continues to innovate to this day in a variety of domains – including web applications. PARC (which stands for Palo Alto Research Center) tackles large computing problems … Read more

Yesterday we gave you 5 reasons why you should read your next book on an eReader device. Needless to say, many paper book fans protested in the comments. And with good reason. Paper books have many things going for them and it’s still early in the evolution of eBooks. This is a technology blog. However, … Read more

Recently I began to buy eBooks for the Kindle application on my iPad. While I still love paper books, the digital wiles of eBooks are looking increasingly attractive to me. Below are five eBook features that may tempt you to buy electronic books too. I should note that I wasn’t a hold-out on eBooks for … Read more

It’s fascinating to track the changing dynamics of how artistic content is delivered and promoted on the Web. Last week we looked at how the band Arcade Fire released its latest album ‘The Suburbs’ via the Web, using social media like Facebook and YouTube. Today we check out how a web site in the backwaters … Read more

A few weeks ago I wrote that we’ve moved to an era of the Web that is beyond social. My contention is that successful services of this era of the Web will be ones that filter, structure and personalize the vast amount of data coming onto the Web. An example of this kind of application … Read more

Earlier this week I complained that Facebook widgets are a mess. Widgets (a.k.a. “boxes”) enable Facebook users to display third party content on their profile pages. Examples include a list of the books you’re reading, the latest movies you’ve watched, tweets you’ve made. Alert readers pointed out that in fact Facebook plans to completely scrap … Read more