Day: July 8, 2010

The Arcadia Project Blog: Context and meaning in search

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Some good thinking this!

I suppose the point of all this is that context gives language meaning. Which is all very well if you’re building a house, buying some cabbages, throwing a party etc. But what about when you “speak” into a search box. Where do you get your context from then? Do you have to play around with clever search modifiers so the interface understands that when you search Google Images for “bondage” you’re looking for pictures of serfs?

via The Arcadia Project Blog: Context and meaning in search.

What Publishers Can Learn From The Godfather

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Great post by Dan Blank on publishing and the Godfather!

One interesting example, as usual, is Apple. They created entire economies around their products that encouraged new companies and new products to come into being. Their App Store is indicative of this – it is a new form of marketplace. Apple even designs their gadgets with tons of room for third-parties to develop accessories for them, such as iPhone cases. It’s as if Apple deliberately designs products that are easily scratched or shattered, and offers incredibly poor cases of their own, specifically so that third parties can offer “solutions” and inventive cases and accessories.

via What Publishers Can Learn From The Godfather.

VAT is bad news, but we have to accept it

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

An excellent defence of a position that even the author accepts is somewhat inconsistent!

Lastly and most significantly, we don’t want to attract too much attention to the VAT-free status of books at a time when seemingly any kind of taxation or expenditure is up for grabs. On the positive side fear of the newspapers helps us. It’s not such a leap though to think that the sacred aura of books may rapidly wear off in a double dip recession, and that complaining now will not help us later. We don’t want to agitate the Treasury into action.

via VAT is bad news, but we have to accept it.

Author-functions and work-functions « Snarkmarket

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Much more of value in this post, you should read it!

Maybe being the author of a blog is a new ver sion of being an author of a book. I started (although I’m not the only author of) Book futurism because I started stringing together a bunch of work that seemed to be about the future of reading; through that, my writing here, and some of the things I wrote else­where, I became a kind of authority on the subject (only on the internet, but still, I like who links to me); and maybe I’ll write a book, or maybe I’ll start a blog with a different title when it’s time to write about some thing else. I don’t know.

via Author-functions and work-functions « Snarkmarket.

Call to pool cultural resources – The Irish Times – Thu, Jul 08, 2010

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Nothing to argue with here. in fact I think Irish publishers should heed this most of all. Our native companies are too small to compete properly as trade publishers and unprepared for the changes being wrought by digital technologies.

“We’re very much a small sector and we stand to lose out to other greater economic interests . . . if we don’t come together in the form of coherent strategies to support our industries,” she said.

Call to pool cultural resources – The Irish Times – Thu, Jul 08, 2010.