Portrait d'Emile Bernard à Florence. Indistinctly stamped with the initials PS, tempera on canvas, 73 x 56.5 cm, 1893, Paul Seruisier
Daily Thoughts 03/27/2012
Last night, I read some more of
No Shelf Required 2. There are some interesting ideas like how do you preserve e-books? What are the criteria for weeding e-books? and How do you circulate e-readers?
I especially liked the section on enhanced e-books. There was even a reference to an open source annotation system on the web
http://www.openannotation.org
This morning, I spent some time watching training videos on Lynda.com for Dreamweaver, resume writing, and effective meetings. I also read a little bit more of
The Consent of the Networked. I like how the author describes Facebook as the kingdom of Facebookiana where no one is anonymous and we all share our public identities.
I also spent some time relaxing in the afternoon.
I am planning on going to the New York Tech Meetup tonight. Hopefully, it will help me understand things a little bit better in the startup world. Every night, I learn a little bit more about this kind of thing.
I spent a few minutes looking at the online brochure for the NYU School of Publishing. It is very well put together.
http://www.pageturnpro.com/New-York-University/31303-MS-in-Publishing/index.html#1
Mediabistro has an Intro to Multimedia Journalism package for $1500 which consists of six classes.
http://www.mediabistro.com/Intro-to-Multimedia-Journalism-crs7209.html
I spent a little time looking over the Mediabistro courses and compared them to the NYU School of Publishing. The courses which seemed to cover digital publishing are HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver, Online Writing, Blogging, Social Media, Multimedia, Wordpress, Digital Project Management, SEO, Analytics, Digital Content Strategy, Content Management Systems, Adobe InDesign, InCopy, Illustrator, and Photoshop.
I went back through Lynda.com and found that a lot of the things listed as classes being taught at New York University and on Mediabistro are available as online courses. It may take me a while, but I think I can get a lot of the equivalent training.
I went to the New York Tech Meetup simulcast at New Work City. It was different than I expected. It was a series of people presenting new businesses that they were interested in. The sponsors were Microsoft, Google, Bloomberg, and Tumblr.
As part of the opening remarks, there was a video encouraging people to come work in New York in startup by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It was a bit surprising.
Most of the startups were very straightforward ideas with a single product. There was a gentleman who was presenting a product called The Birdy which was a way to manage your finances through a daily email, a restaurant reservation system that worked through Foursquare called Reserve My City. Another service was called Spotless City which was a drycleaning reservation system.
The startup presentation I found the most interesting was a curated music application called Songza.
http://www.songza.com I am listening to Round Midnight by Mel Torme as part of a playlist. I like the idea of curation. I can see a website with curated Kindle singles or other short form nonfiction e-books.
There was a short break aftward where people got a chance to talk. It was different than I expected.
On the way home, I finished reading
No Shelf Required 2. The book showed that there are still issues with e-books and how they are distributed to schools and libraries. However, it also showed that e-books are not going away. More people want them and are buying them.
While I was reading through the Tools of Change for Publishing group on Linked In, I came across this book,
http://book.pressbooks.com/
It seems to go well with Eric Ries's comments about the publishing industry.
Web Bits
SXSW Six New Ventures
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/trade-shows-events/article/51192-sxsw-six-new-ventures.html
A huge competitive advantage awaits bold publishers
http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/03/lean-startup-publishing-eric-ries.html
