Mois : août 2009

Les ventes mondiales de mobiles ont totalisé 286,1 millions d’unités au T2-2009, soit une baisse de 6,1% comparé au 2ème trimestre 2008 tandis que les ventes concernant le segment très profitable des smartphones / terminaux mobiles ont progressé de 27 %.

The growth of paid online services under the Financial Times banner shows that the paper was right to maintain pay walls at a time when other media companies were yielding to the Silicon Valley mantra that “information wants to be free,”

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printvsdigitalFor higher education students who spend an average of $702 per year on course materials, mostly textbooks, the prospect of going digital is an appealing one. Among the theoretical benefits of digital textbooks is the possibility of significant cost savings due to lower overhead costs — bits are cheaper than printed pages, after all. Unfortunately, students shouldn’t chuck their backpacks any time soon; there still exist some major hurdles that digital textbooks must overcome before they widely replace traditional, printed textbooks on college (and high school) campuses.

In the last year, H.P.’s sales of printers and related supplies like ink have tumbled. The major cause for the decline remains the weak global economy. Businesses have spent less on printing products, and with unemployment high, fewer workers are around to hit the ink-burning Print button on their computer screens.

When the settlement was announced last October, Google and the groups representing authors and publishers who had originally sued the company hailed the agreement as a public good. Readers and researchers would have access to millions of out-of-print and rarely seen books online, libraries nationwide would gain access to new volumes in electronic form and authors and publishers would have new ways to profit from digital copies of their works.

Cell Press and Elsevier have launched a project called Article of the Future that is an ongoing collaboration with the scientific community to redefine how the scientific article is presented online. The project's goal is to take full advantage of online capabilities, allowing readers individualized entry points and routes through the content, while using the latest advances in visualization techniques. We have developed prototypes for two articles from Cell to demonstrate initial concepts and get feedback from the scientific community.

I’ve reviewed the proposed settlement in the Google Book Search case, along with its fourteen appendices. I’ve also talked with a number of my favorite smart people, some in Google’s pocket, some opposed to all things Google. I offer the following as a set of guiding principles (numbered P0 to P5 and in bold) for the court as it considers whether to approve the settlement, and for the public to help in thinking about the effects of the settlement. Interwoven with them are more specific recommendations (numbered R0 to R15 and in italics): concrete changes the court ought to make to the settlement.