http://www.themillions.com Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:36:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The rustle of textbook pages turning, the hasty unzipping of oversized book bags hardly disrupts this venue’s overflowing intellectual energy. The pounding clatter of fingers pressed against greasy laptop keyboards – a soothing symphony to knowledge, it seems – fills the second-floor air, redolent of fresh Starbucks coffee. College ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/02/cooped-up-in-a-bookstore-just-to-stop-reading.html Apple's launch last week of the iPad has ushered in a new era of competition in the publishing industry as tech giants expand their footprint in the oldest of old media, books. Interestingly, at least among serious readers and industry watchers, a skirmish on the margins has taken the spotlight. ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/amazon-ebook-pricing-battle-gets-ugly.html For several years, it seemed as though the book industry was getting a reprieve. As the music industry was ravaged by file sharing, and the film and TV industry were increasingly targeted by downloaders, book piracy was but a quaint cul de sac in the vast file sharing ecology. ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/confessions-of-a-book-pirate.html I. Apple's tablet will be unveiled to the planet via a special event on January 27. Industry watchers and gadget hounds have been tracking news of an Apple tablet for years now and will likely incite a frenzy of analysis as they attempt to parse the meaning of the new ... http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/in-tablet-battle-amazon-and-apple-could-slight-readers.html After three years of wrangling, Google is pushing closer to a digitized future for books. Even as the U.S. Justice Department continues to review a newly released, modified version of a settlement with groups representing authors and publishers, Google's plans still contain within them the blueprint for a seismic ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/11/googles-future-for-books-inches-closer.html In a recent issue of The New York Times, Tina Brown explained the rationale behind her nascent Book Beast project thusly: There is a real window of interest when people want to know something. . . . And that window slams shut pretty quickly in the media cycle. As a diagnosis, this ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/tina-brown-goin-rogue-and-the-limits-of-timeliness.html If Dan Reetz didn't exist, it would be necessary for Cory Doctorow to invent him. I met Reetz at New York Law School's D is for Digitize conference over the weekend -- two days devoted to the Google Books settlement and its future. It was a room filled mostly with lawyers ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/bringing-book-scanning-home.html It's not uncommon for a website based in Russia or Italy or Venezuela to link to The Millions. Keeping up with these mentions and trying to figure out how somebody in Milan or Caracas is reacting to an essay or review of ours has made me a frequent user ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/adventures-in-machine-translation.html Today represented some kind of personal tipping point. As if by prearrangement - or super-stealthy guerilla marketing plan? - the Kindle was everywhere I went. First: a faculty meeting. More than one colleague praising the seductions of the e-Reader, as opposed to the good old book. Except who am I kidding? ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/08/the-post-kindle-world.html It was a battle between an evangelizing visionary and a sage defender of the past, perhaps the first big tussle in the great sorting out of publishing's new look in the digital age.This was 2006, when Wired Magazine technology evangelist Kevin Kelly wrote about the helter skelter future of books ... http://www.themillions.com/2009/07/revisiting-literary-throwdown-zombie_27.html