Optimism on e-books at Online Information 2008

Exhibition floor, Online Information 2008

Exhibition floor, Online Information 2008

If there was a dominant theme out on the floor of this year’s Online Information 2008 show at Olympia, it had to be the continuing rise of e-books. I conducted a brief survey of opinions from the stands and, even discounting for the tendency of suppliers to talk up their own market, it was an optimistic view that emerged. The last year has seen barriers to adoption both financial and attitudinal subside. New tools coming into the marketplace have dramatically reduced the cost of producing e-books. Apprehensions about issues such as back-file access – if you cancel a subscription where does the e-book go? – have noticeably dwindled, according to Ebsco’s John Reid. So which are the sectors that are adopting fastest?

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Macrovision sells eMeta

DRM giant locks doors to publishing clients

With the sale of eMeta, announced on Monday, Macrovision completes the disposal of what it has already described as a discontinued operation. In reality the eMeta offering never fitted well with the Macrovision portfolio. At first glance, their access management and content monetisation platform seemed a good fit with the Macrovision DRM and copy protection portfolio, but clearly this has not been the case. Continue reading

E-book readers are doomed

I’ve tried hard to like the current crop of e-book reader devices. I wanted to believe that e-ink was the next big thing in readability and usability of screens. And I needed a rationale for explaining the resurgence of interest in all things ebook. I just can’t do it. I’ve lived with the iRex iLiad for a year now, and despite my best attempts to integrate it into my daily routine its just not happening for me. The biggest thing is that I just can’t handle carrying another device. And I think that’s going to be an issue for many other people too. I’ll call it device fatigue, for want of a better name. Continue reading

Semantico launches Discovery Blog

Electronic publishing is at a fascinating stage in its development. Since the Information Industry began migrating online, products, service and processes that were once physical world activities have become digital and virtual. We have seen that information does not behave in the same way it once did. New disruptive business models emerge, seemingly out of nowhere. IP is harder to protect, and the old rules don’t seem to apply any more. And that’s just the start of it. As organisations struggle to grapple with the changes brought about by so-called Web 2.0 technologies, another wave of change is coming up over the horizon, one with huge implications for all information providers. What will an information business look like in this new world of intelligent agents and semantic search? These constant upheavals make for a chaotic, uncertain landscape – but one full of opportunity for those who can understand the implications of the changes and seize the initiative. The future is ours to write. We’ve started this blog to be a place where we can monitor and debate these changes in a collaborative way. In being a collective company blog, the work of many hands rather than a CEO soapbox, it perhaps stretches the form a little – but we think that’s no bad thing. Watch this space!

Highlights from the DPA Conference

Impressive quality of presentations at this year’s DPA Conference, held recently in our home town of Brighton. Standouts for me were: Chuck Richards of Outsell telling us that B2B users today are spending more time on search than research, clear indication that things are going badly wrong on the usability front. Publishers are paying more attention to this now than previously, but we still have a fair way to go, clearly! Continue reading