Reading in the 21st Century part 2: keep taking the tablets

Posted on by John Helmer
Ancient Urartian Tablet

Ancient Urartian Tablet

It’s over a year since Apple launched the iPad, since when sales of the device have outstripped analysts predictions by a factor of five. Tablet device shipments as a whole are now predicted to experience 66.5% annual growth until 2014 (source: Onswipe via Mashable). For many publishers, this latest addition to the burgeoning family of web-enabled devices upon which their publications can be read will have added yet another aspect to an already multi-faceted problem. But are the problems presented by this jostling of new devices and form factors completely new? Once again, the Discovery blog delves fearlessly into the historical record to provide fresh perspectives on the challenges of today. Continue reading →

Plagiarism, disintermediation and a busy future for digital publishers

Posted on by Megan Toogood

There simply must be a blog post in here somewhere, thought Marjorie as she reached for another scotch egg.

Of all the tasks I perform as Semantico’s marketing executive, curating our presence on LinkedIn is my favourite. I never know how the thousands of people who read the blog pieces we put up are going to react, but I know they’ll always give me something unexpected. So it was with our recent post on discoverability and robot waiters. In the Publishing Professionals Network group the discussion moved quickly from discoverability to plagiarism and it became clear that for some, publishing anything in the digital arena is fraught with risky danger. While, personally, I tend to think of users as researchers and professionals with legitimate access, I realise that others see only a seething mass of plagiarists and pirates out there, just waiting to sink their teeth into the innocent little ebooks. Continue reading →

Integrating taxonomies with search

Posted on by Richard Padley
We’re all familiar with the difficulty of finding relevant information inside huge sets of search results. The sheer scale of many information resources forces us to iteratively refine and adapt our search queries until either we find the information we need or we abandon our search. Using taxonomies, thesauri or ontologies to tag our information resources allows us to help users find information more quickly. This in turn leads to increased usage, driving renewals and additional sales of information at the point of discovery. Abandoned searches are clearly a failure in this context! Here are the four most important techniques for improving search by leveraging taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies. Continue reading →

Reading in the 21st Century: implications for publishers of the revolution in mobile content delivery

Posted on by John Helmer
Preparing a talk to be delivered at Online Information last year (a talk that never actually took place due to the strong antipathy that exists in this country between railways and snow) led me to reflect on what reading actually is. Is this what first flashes into your mind when you hear someone use the verb ‘to read’ – someone alone and at rest, completely absorbed in the text? Well maybe it does if, like me, you’re an English graduate. When you come to look at it more objectively, however, you notice that reading covers a huge spectrum of activities, only some of which involve quite this level of immersion and ‘dwell time’. Continue reading →

Mobile Delivery Options: An Overview, from TOC Frankfurt

Posted on by Megan Toogood
Semantico’s MD Richard Padley recently gave a presentation at the second Tools Of Change Frankfurt. This one-day conference brings together innovative people, companies and organisations from the fields of publishing and technology to discuss compelling new business models and the strategic objectives of an ever-changing industry. Richard contributed an introduction to one of the hottest topics of the Frankfurt Book Fair, mobile delivery (abstract here).  If you couldn’t be in the room but would like to know more you can watch Richard’s presentation now … Continue reading →