On this episode of Spark: Blogs get unplugged, photos get real, and government gets visible
- Ben Terrett prints blog posts on newsprint in Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet (full interview)
- Dan Pacheco enabled citizen publishers with Printcasting
- Elizabeth explains print-on-demand photo technology like this photo frame from Prinics
- André Bosman reinvents Polaroid instant film with The Impossible Project
- Andy Kaplan-Myrth promotes government transparency through visiblegovernment.ca
- Nora mentions her full interview with Mark Kuznicki, one of the organizers of Changecamp
This episode features Creative Commons music and sound effects:
- “Wadidyusay?” by Zap Mama
- “The Album Leaf,” “Squirrel Commotion,” “Flutterbee,” “The Speed of Life,” and “Moodswing” by Podington Bear
- flash.wav by edwin_p_manchester
- Polaroid1.wav by SpiderJerusalem
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For the last 2 years, instead of doing a "Christmas Letter" I've done a yearly Almanac for my family. Inspired more by Nicholas Felton's Annual Report (http://www.feltron.com/index.php?/content/2008_annual_re...target=”_blank”>http://http://www.feltron.com/index.php?/content/2008_annual_re...Iassemble my favorite blog posts, online articles and data feeds (like my last.fm charts and metacritic's top movie lists) into a book form printed at Lulu.com.
You can see a shot of the book here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rowdyman/3121127995/“target=”_blank”>http://http://www.flickr.com/photos/rowdyman/3121127995/In theory you could even sell such a thing through Lulu (who will even issue an ISBN for your work – um copyright issues aside).
I currently work for a company that plans to sell books chapter by chapter -like iTunes songs – within the next month (shortcovers.com is the url). As a logical extension to this you could imagine buying chapters of a travel book (say of California) + chapters of a Steinbeck novel set in California and combine them into a wholly unique travelogue that you could re-sell (sharing revenues with the source publishers).
Rather than the end-of-print, print on demand represents an entirely new thing. Kodak has apparently worked with the Chicago Tribune to print their paper in community additions with geographically specific advertising. Wired has reported the New York City library will run a trial whereby if you sign out a copy of a public domain book you actually get a freshly printed copy – to keep! You can imagine the possibilities of subscribing to a weekly or monthly magazine that includes your favorite "most popular" blog posts (why not print all those RSS Feeds you subscribe to?), articles and stories from your favorite online papers and magazines along with interesting data (reconfigured a la Harper's index) and you could even choose between a paid subscription or an entirely ad driven model. The value of knowing someone's unique tastes could generate highly specific targeted marketing.
The Printed Web awaits. The only thing in the way of this utopia? DRM.
Thanks for the program.
Peter Rogers
Toronto
Hey Peter, shortcovers looks very cool. Any chance we can get an invite to preview the site?
Holy crap, you know I've never thought of selling books by chapter before, and in a way it reminds me of how Valve (a video game developer) continues the story of one of their games by delivering downloadable episodic content.
I'll look into it.
Peter
Just thought this video was a bit relevant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ
Enjoy,
Big Fan of the show
-Christian Delahousse