Accept no substitutes

Month: February 2009

Carl Malamud for Public Printer of the USA

Carl == Data
Carl Malamud of Public Resource is running a net campaign for the office that many of us have never heard of but which is of great importance to our professions and to our country.

Potential Tweet:

We need @CarlMalamud of http://public.resource.org as Printer of the US http://is.gd/kQpz ! Read why and sign up here http://YesWeScan.Org

What Carl says:

For over 20 years, I have been publishing government information on the Internet. In 2008, Public.Resource.Org published over 32.4 million pages of primary legal materials, as well as thousands of hours of video and thousands of photographs. In the 1990s, I fought to place the databases of the United States on the Internet. In the 1980s, I fought to make the standards that govern our global Internet open standards available to all. Should I be honored to be nominated and confirmed, I would continue to work to preserve and extend our public domain, and would place special attention to our relationship with our customers, especially the United States Congress.

Access to information is a human right and the United States of America is the world’s leading producer of information. As the publisher of the United States, GPO plays a vital role in promoting useful knowledge, promoting the progress of science and useful arts, and promoting and preserving the public domain.

[more at http://yeswescan.org ]

UNC Law Cyberspeech Symposium – New Keynote

Kevin Martin has given in to the pressure of labor. Not organized labor but the biological labor of his wife and soon to be born child. I wish them all well.

In an effort to find the person least like Martin to stand in as keynote speaker, the First Amendment Law Review asked me to speak up and speak tomorrow at the UNC Law School at the Cyberspeech Symposium— schedule here:

9:00- 10:00: Registration
10:00- 11:15: ISP Liability Panel 11:15- 11:30: Break
11:30- 12:45: Cyber-Bullying Panel
12:45- 1:45: Lunch
1:45- 2:45: Keynote Speech by Mr. Paul Jones
2:45- 3:00: Break
3:00- 4:15: Network Neutrality Panel
4:15- 4:30: Closing

Panelists:
Susan Brenner – NCR Distinguished Professor of Law and Technology at the University of Dayton School of Law
Clay Calvert – Co-Director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at the Penn State University,
John and Ann Curley Professor of First Amendment Studies at the Penn State University College of Communications
Robert M. Frieden – Pioneers Chair and Professor of Telecommunications and Law at the Penn State University
Leslie Harris – President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology
Dawn C. Nunziato – Associate Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School
John Palfrey – Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School
Robert Richards – Co-director of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at the Penn State University, Distinguished Professor of Journalism and Law at the Penn State University
Hannibal Travis- Professor of Law at the Florida International University College of Law
Alfred C. Yen – Professor of Law at the Boston College Law School

The State of Jones and Federal Computer Week

Frank Stasio
I’ll be on WUNC‘s The State of Things on Monday February 16 at noon (EST). I’ll probably be talking with Frank Stasio about:

ibiblio.org !!!!!

And upcoming things from or involving me and ibiblio:

*International World Wide Web Conference 2010 (April 10) in Raleigh
*18 happenings in 6 parts a revisioning of Alan Kaprow’s piece 50 years later for the CHAT festival at UNC to happen in February 2010
*extending radio on the net (which was invented at sunsite/ibiblio)
*cloud computing for virtual computing labs (working with NCSU and IBM)
*intrahealth.org/open open source and open music for african health programs promoted by free remix downloads based on Youssou N’Dour’s contribution.
*launchpad at renci with entrepreneurship program
*North Carolina Writers Network
*Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 – Present and my poetry in general (see sidebar to this blog for some)

*classes on changes in journalism and in emerging tech and life.

*reference stuff and older interviews:

Send ibiblio $$$$ and LOVE

On the print/electronic text front, I added a bit to a story in Federal Computer Week‘s February 10th issue in an article called “CEOs seek review of government applications” written by Doug Beizer. I had quite a bit to say, but this sorta sums my response up:

“That said, open-source solutions probably should compete on their merits, which are many,” Jones said.

[writing disclaimer: I am responsible for only one “said” in that sentence – pj]

[Note: This article was almost immediately commented on by Katherine McGuire, Vice President of Government Relations for the Business Software Alliance, a closed source, pro-DRM, organization. Prior to joining BSA, McGuire served seventeen years in the U.S. Senate in various unelected capacities]

Riddling on the Kindle on Marketplace

Kindle the First
Took a call from Janet Babin of NPR’s Marketplace to speculate on the upcoming Kindle announcement and to talk about how the Kindle fits into publishing and reading. Will air, if it does, on Monday.

But like many opportunities to opine, the data came in after the recording. Yikes! Almost as soon as I got off the phone with Janet, the ever alert Woody Hartzog sent me a breaking story.

I had said to Woody, in preparing to talk with Janet, that the upcoming battle isn’t so much between e-book readers — Kindle is the only one that seems at the moment to have momentum — but between the Kindle and smart phones. Google had just 24 hours earlier announced that the books from their Book Search would become available on a variety of smartphones — only iPhone and the T-Mobile G1 immediately though. This was a move that in part was meant to chill the Kindle announcement a bit, but also to show some movement in the phone reader area. Up til Thursday, Mobipocket which is owned by Amazon was the major “ebook on phone” application.

So far I had a take on that: real reading as I have seen being done on the Kindle wasn’t happening on smartphones because of the form factor. Too small on the phone for the kind of scanning browsing reading that recreational readers practice whilst in transit. Kindles have been most successful among folks who are reading on the airplane, waiting for the airplane, stuck in a hotel room or lobby, or on vacation. In short transit reading, reading books that would probably not be kept in a personal library for all that long. Add reading in bed to the mix plus vacation reading — both of which I would call transit reading — and the Kindle is a great choice. Plenty of books in a one book form factor, you never lose your place, the lighting is convenient and not obtrusive, more books are available with only a short wait. Not free exactly. Libraries provide that service. Not building your personal or business library — but that may be something reserved for boomers and beyond any way.

Bottom line. Kindle has a niche that phones won’t quite fill. But look for a battle there.

Sure enough. The article that Woody sent shows Amazon firing back at Google. Amazon announced that there would be Kindle reader for smart phones. Not time line and no specific phones and no direct reference to Mobipocket either. I assume this is mostly a press release battle leading up to the Monday announcement at the Morgan Library by Amazon.

Yesterday, I ran in to an editor for a University Press. He has a Kindle and he loves it! But his press, while they offer Kindle versions of their books sell only a few. Whew! As this supports my claim that Kindle is for transit reading nd recreational reading.

But here is how he uses his Kindle: He reads manuscripts on it. Book manuscripts for academic books run easily to and over 350 pages. 8 or 10 of those and you are talking serious bulk and weight. But the Kindle is happy to hold those and more whilst keeping his place and keeping all the pages together! A limited marketplace to be sure, but a very appropriate and smart way to use the device. Too bad I learned of this too late — but in a brief radio story it wouldn’t and shouldn’t have been included. (still a good story for here).

I’m afraid I wasted a lot of time talking about how the Thor Tool decision changed publishing by creating tax pressure on inventories (while not taxing those inventories directly) [yes it is complicated], leading to the pulping rather than the storing of slow selling books. Authors and publishers hate the decision that took books from storage. Instant publishing and publishing on demand have held out hope for slow sellers but until the promise of direct digital sells there was really no respite for writers who wrote other than blockbusters or quick sales titles. I care, but that’s too much for the Marketplace marketplace to take in it seems.

Speaking of marketplaces. We didn’t talk that much about price. $360 for a device to read? Yikes! There are netbooks below that price for sell on Amazon now.

Fearless and unfounded prediction for Monday’s announcement:
Kindle will have video viewing capability and a partnership with Hulu (if not others). Anything less will be anti-climatic.

UPDATE: The radio show and the Kindle announcement are now out. My discussion with Woody above is closer to what got air on Marketplace than my fearless and unfounded and completely wrong prediction on this blog. On air, I said:

The question that you have to ask is, how much reading do you want to do on your phone, or do you need a separate device to do that reading. That’s really about to be answered in the marketplace.

Always good to mention the product or show name in your quote ;->

The Kindle announcement was anti-climatic
. Nice to have a slimmer, longer lasting device with a simpler interface, but the price is still the same — in the netbook range. And except for text to speech, which I have to hear to evaluate, there isn’t much additional innovation presented. Still black and white.

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