Tag: reading

The shape of our future book

The current surface forms for digital books are far from perfect, but they work and are getting better with each device and software iteration. So, in my opinion, many of the critical future questions digital books designers will have to address don’t directly involve pure content layout. Future-book design is not merely about font sizes and leading. Instead, our hardest (and possibly most rewarding) problems will involve the intermingling of content and data.

Craig Mod – The shape of our future book.

Is this the end for books?

So, even if they now seem natural, the lengths and formats of books are but cultural accidents.

Sam Leith – Is this the end for books?

We just want to read

How many people are subscribers to The New Yorker iPad app that don’t actually read for whatever reason? If the app were easier to use and quicker to access, then you’d have users, not just subscribers. And users tell their friends about the recent article they read; users read the app in front of their co-workers during lunch break; users actually get invested in the app. If you can garner the attention of your subscriber base, and not just their money, then your road to growth gets significantly easier.

Shawn Blanc – We just want to read.

More photos and a reading list

I’ve meant to set up a photo blog for a while now. I made a quick photo theme a while back but it was really just a dirty hack of this theme and I never got around to setting it up. This time I decided to eat my dog food and set it up on WordPress.com.

This way I can use the iOS app even more and maybe hammer on post by email some as well. I got that set up last night so head on over and take a look.

I also have wanted to start tracking more information through my domain. I started off simple by just writing a basic reading list feature into my theme. It’s a digital bookshelf stream of sorts.

I’m hoping things like length of time reading and page count will, in aggregate, show some cool data after a year. I still have to figure out how to track length with Kindle texts though.

There are some rough edges, author and genre pages for example, but I’ll clean up the loose ends and then make it all available on the existing Github project.

Reading isn’t just viewing content in reverse chronological order

Reading isn’t just viewing content in reverse chronological order.

Daniel Bachhuber – Status.

New reading for the week

Picked up The Information by James Gleick this weekend at Powell’s. I’m already 3 chapters in and it’s solid; a really great read.

Weekend Reading

Picked up The Elements of Content Strategy to read for this weekend. Looking forward to it.

Kitteh and Kindle

Have been feeling pretty sick the last few days. A day off combined with a kitten and good reading cures all. The new Quick Photo mode in WordPress for iOS is pretty cool too. 🙂

What Books Will Become

We’ll debundle books into their constituent bits and pieces and knit those into the web, but the higher level organization of the book will be the focus for attention — that remaining scarcity in our economy. A book is an attention unit. A fact is interesting, an idea is important, but only a story, a good argument, a well-crafted narrative is amazing, never to be forgotten.

Kevin Kelly – What Books Will Become.

Infamous Scribblers

New reading for this week. Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism by Eric Burns.

Last week I finished up Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford. It’s a really wonderful book that has some thought-provoking reflections on life, work, and the meaning of it all.