beyondwords » digital

Posts Tagged ‘digital’

Everything is a Remix: System Failure

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

“System Failure”, the final installment of the Everything is a Remix video series, is now available.

Our system of law doesn’t acknowledge the derivative nature of creativity. Instead, ideas are regarded as property, as unique and original lots with distinct boundaries. But ideas aren’t so tidy. They’re layered, they’re interwoven, they’re tangled. And when the system conflicts with the reality… the system starts to fail.

Created by Kirby Ferguson, the four-part series is a fantastic overview of the history of remix and what that means for creativity and innovation now. If you missed any of the first three parts, catch up here.

Tags: copyright, creativity, digital, intellectual property, remix
Posted in Technology, Web | Comments Off

Choose your own appventure, publishing edition

Thursday, September 16th, 2010

Actor and comedian Stephen Fry is proving his love of technology with the release of volume two of his autobiography, The Fry Chronicles, as a hardback, e-book, iPhone app, and audio book.

Why the variety of publishing platforms? Jeremy Ettinghausen, digital publisher at Penguin, explains:

“We’ve created the perfect format for dipping in and out of and exploring books in a more playful way. […] the design and technology have allowed us to create an experience that would not be possible in print, and discover a new way to present an author’s work.”

The iPhone app, dubbed myFry, includes the entire autobiography, but has a color-coded index so readers can read sections in any order. The app and the e-book also include additional photos and eight videos of Fry discussing events in the book.

Fry isn’t the first writer to take advantage of digital publishing. In July, Japanese author Ryu Murakami announced a deal with Apple to release his new novel directly to the iPad — bypassing his traditional print publisher completely. A Singing Whale (Utau Kujira in Japanese) will include video content set to music by Academy Award-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. And in August, marketing entrepreneur and author Seth Godin announced that he’s no longer publishing his books the traditional way.

“[…] my mission is to figure out who the audience is, and take them where they want and need to go, in whatever format works, even if it’s not a traditionally published book.”

It is yet to be seen how many writers will choose to follow Murakami’s and Godin’s lead. After all, these are two established authors (Murakami has published more than 15 novels, Godin has published 12) with devoted audiences, so their decision isn’t as risky as it would be for a lesser-known writer. But the number of authors experimenting with digital publishing will only continue to increase given the interactive content options and the demand for books on both e-readers and mobile devices. It will be interesting to see which of the four platforms will be the most profitable for Fry — numbers that I’m sure other authors will be watching closely as they consider the future of their own publishing endeavors.

Tags: digital, ebooks, publishing
Posted in Technology, Web | Comments Off

Gourmet lives on in new app

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Condé Naste made headlines last fall when it announced the closure of four magazines, including Gourmet. The oldest culinary magazine in America, which ceased print publication and moved entirely online, is now making another move in the digital publishing world with the launch of the Gourmet Live app.

Gourmet Live will bring together the usual print content—articles, menus, and photos—with interactivity such as videos, social networking, location-based technology, and monetization structures typical in gaming. While Gourmet Live won’t launch until later this year, Condé Naste has already released a preview of what’s to come.

President and CEO Charles H. Townsend had this to say about the new digital content:

By focusing on a new way to meet consumer needs, tap into our deep branding, and approach our content differently, we came up with a product that reimagines Gourmet and revalues engagement. We approached this like a tech company, utilizing the rich assets of a media company, keeping Condé Nast at the forefront of content innovation.

Part of that revaluation of engagement is the rewards concept of the new app. Tagged as “your reward for exploring great food and good living,” the app will be a free download with paid content options. Users will also be able to earn rewards by connecting and sharing the content with their friends via sites like Twitter and Facebook.

This app is pretty daring when you consider that just nine months ago, Gourmet was following a fairly traditional publishing model. At the time, Townsend said, “We know that we have to be more than simply a magazine publisher.” It looks like Condé Nast is doing just that, starting with Gourmet Live.

Tags: digital, magazines, publishing
Posted in Technology, Web | Comments Off

The Digital Landscape

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

If you’re interested in how journalism is being affected by the digital space, check out Nieman’s “The Digital Landscape: What’s Next for News?”

From Editor Melissa Ludtke’s introduction:

It’s a place where game playing thrives and augmented reality tugs at possibilities. It’s where video excels, while the appetite for long-form text and the experience of “deep reading” is diminished, and it’s where the allure of multitasking greets the crush of information.

The digital library includes articles about digital storytelling, community journalism, and online readability, just to name a few. You can browse by titles here.

Tags: digital, journalism, resources
Posted in Web | Comments Off

The preservation of Twitter

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

It doesn’t matter if you’re a person talking about drinking coffee, a celebrity promoting new work, or a politician announcing a historical victory—your tweets are now permanently saved. Today the Library of Congress announced, via Twitter, that it will archive all public tweets. Twitter soon followed with its own announcement:

Since Twitter began, billions of tweets have been created. Today, fifty-five million tweets a day are sent to Twitter and that number is climbing sharply. A tiny percentage of accounts are protected but most of these tweets are created with the intent that they will be publicly available. Over the years, tweets have become part of significant global events around the world—from historic elections to devastating disasters.

It is our pleasure to donate access to the entire archive of public Tweets to the Library of Congress for preservation and research. It’s very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history.

Now, not only am I an avid Twitter user, but I am also married to a history buff who has repeatedly denounced Twitter as a “waste of time” because the data wasn’t being stored for research purposes. But Twitter’s API has limits on how many of your tweets you can personally archive using applications such as Tweetbook. The fact that now all future and past data from the social networking tool will be publicly archived is a huge step forward in terms of scholarly research.

But that’s not all—Google also announced Google Replay today.

Tweets and other short-form updates create a history of commentary that can provide valuable insights into what’s happened and how people have reacted. We want to give you a way to search across this information and make it useful. Starting today, you can zoom to any point in time and “replay” what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter.

While Google Replay currently only searches tweets from the past few months, it will soon allow real-time search of the entire Twitter archive. As for the Library’s archive, Twitter says, “Only after a six-month delay can the Tweets be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation.”

It’s still unclear as to why the Library of Congress has to wait and Google doesn’t, but that’s just one of many questions raised by Twitter’s digital preservation—like what my husband’s excuse for not tweeting will be now.

Tags: archives, digital, twitter
Posted in News, Technology, Web | Comments Off

The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP)

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

If you’re a student doing digital writing projects for class, check out The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP).

thejump

Launched by the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, TheJUMP will feature students’ work and promote discussion on the rhetorical decisions made in the creative process.

No longer are the best multimedia works from our undergraduates doomed to fade to oblivion, doomed to be lost forever in digital storage, filed under the archival category of “class-projects-never-to-be-heard-from-again.” They can now find scholarly home at TheJUMP, which will showcase the digital and rhetorical talents our students develop in courses across disciplines, from coast to coast, and which will give rise to a discursive community committed to examining and exploring the potentialities for multimedia rhetoric in the digital age.

The first issue will be published in March, and TheJUMP is currently accepting digital video projects for the second issue. This is a great chance for students to share their work with a larger audience and see what others are doing with multimedia. To get involved, make a submission and join the discussion.

Tags: digital, journal, multimedia
Posted in Design, Rhetoric, Technology, Web | Comments Off

Great Lakes THATCamp

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Are you interested in studying, supporting, teaching, researching, creating, or otherwise shaping digital humanities? Great Lakes THATCamp (The Humanities And Technology Camp) is a user-generated “unconference” on digital humanities for those who want to show, tell, collaborate, share, and get inspired about the intersection and integration of the humanities and technology. The event will be held at Michigan State University’s Residential College of Arts & Humanities on March 20-21, 2010.

Inspired by the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University, this isn’t your typical academic conference where you read or are read to. Sessions will range from software demos to training sessions to discussions of research findings. As an “unconference”, you also won’t have to pay the average conference registration fee — $25 covers your meals (breakfast and lunch) and a THATCamp t-shirt.

Writers, academics, developers, students, designers — the list of those who should attend Great Lakes THATCamp is as broad as the field of “digital humanities” itself. If you’re interested in attending, please submit an application before February 10 — but don’t wait too long because there are only 75 openings.

For more news, announcements, discussions, and general hype about the event, follow @GLTHATCamp and the global THATcamp hashtag (#thatcamp) on Twitter or visit the event website.

To find out about THATCamp events in your area, visit thatcamp.org.

Tags: conference, digital, humanities, Michigan, Technology
Posted in Events | Comments Off

DCE call for submissions: Beyond ‘new’ literacies

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Digital Culture & Education (DCE) is now accepting submissions for a special May 2010 issue, Beyond ‘new’ literacies. Guest-edited by Dana J. Wilber, the issue will focus on the diverse roles digital literacy practices play both online and offline, asking:

How might the idea of new literacies be expanded through examinations of specific literacy practices with particular tools or technologies like social networking, digital games, and multimodal design?
How can new perspectives, practices, and theories — such as feminism, Queer, and gaming — provide additional insights around the congruencies and tensions between literacies and digital technologies across contexts?

DCE is looking for submissions from scholars, researchers, and practitioners working in areas such as literacy and education, gaming, new media, sociocultural studies of technologies, literary theory and technology, fan studies, adolescents and digital media, and media and identity. Submissions from research groups working in projects like video games research, digital storytelling, and mobile learning are encouraged.

The deadline for manuscript submission is March 1, 2010. For more information about the journal or the submission process, visit the DCE website.

Tags: digital, education, literacy, media, Technology
Posted in Rhetoric, Web | Comments Off

5 Resources for Digital Rhetoric & Writing

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

What do you think of when you hear the word “rhetoric”? Many may first associate rhetoric with politics, but what about the rhetoric of a design, or a video game? Rhetoric is about understanding how and what is communicated through language, whether oral, written, or visual. In fact, the study of rhetoric teaches students to speak and write effectively, which makes it a natural part of professional writing programs.

Today I want to share five resources for digital rhetoric and writing that are collaborative and interactive. These resources are rooted in academia, but are very accessible to anyone with an interest in rhetoric as applied to a variety of areas such as education, creative writing, new media, and technical communication.

Kairosnews: A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy

Kairosnews is a discussion community for educators interested in how rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy intersect. The community was developed for rhetoricians to publicly discuss topics such as blogging, intellectual property, and copyright that relate to academia and composition studies.

Computers and Composition Online: The Blog

Computers and Composition Online is the online companion journal to Computers and Composition: An International Journal. The blog is an online resource for scholars and teachers interested in the impact of new and emerging media upon the teaching of language and literacy, and offers features, announcements, and community resources to promote exchange of the latest and best work in the field.

Digital Culture & Education

Digital Culture & Education (DCE) is an international, peer-reviewed online journal for those interested in digital culture and education. DCE looks at the impact of digital culture on identity, education, art, society, culture, and narrative within social, political, economic, cultural, and historical contexts.

The Blogora: Rhetoric Society of America

The Blogora connects rhetoric, rhetorical methods and theories, and rhetoricians with public life. It is an initiative of the Rhetoric Society of America and is hosted by the Computer Writing and Research Lab, part of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at The University of Texas at Austin.

Digital Humanities Now

Digital Humanities Now is a real-time publication generated from Twitter feeds of scholars that follow the journal on Twitter at @dhnow. These tweets are then processed through Twittertim.es to show articles, blogs, projects, tools, collections, and announcements that are relevant to and open to discussion by the digital humanities community.

I am always thrilled to learn about new resources, so if there is one (or several) that you use for learning about and engaging in digital rhetoric and writing, please share in the comments.

Tags: composition, digital, humanities, literacy, pedagogy, Technology
Posted in Rhetoric, Web, Writing | Comments Off