LJ Interview with Harvard's OA Architect

LJ's Academic Newswire today features an interview with Stuart Shieber, In New Job, Harvard Professor Downplays the Role of “Revolutionary”.

Highlights:
He is fostering a relationship with Harvard University Press in an effort to support the mandate. HUP is in the process of starting up an "open-access, faculty-edited journal,The Journal of Legal Analysis.
Ambiguous quote: "Authors don't get underwriting help from the library when they publish in OA journals, while they do from publishing in subscription-based journals," he explains. To put OA and subscription journals on a "level playing field," he suggests, "you'd want to underwrite OA journals just as you do subscription journals." Wouldn't a library (or journal otherwise underwritten by readers) be a subscription journal? I realize advertising, author fees, and donations are also forms of underwriting, but I found the quote confusing.

Microformats -- Standards by Any Other Name

From WebMonkey (via Wired).

Apparently early reports from Mozilla suggested that Firefox 3 would support MicroFormatting--the ability for your favorite calendar, contacts, and other programs to read data from websites. Unfortunately there appear to be no standards (metadata or otherwise) for this yet, so no one is sure how to make it happen.

All I can say is please. This should be so awesome when it happens (presuming it is opt-in, and companies can only mine the data with permission).

Web Users "Selfish"

OnlineMediaDaily linked to this story from the BBC online: Web users 'getting more ruthless.' According to the story, Jakob Nielsen's research shows that people are distracted less by the traditional tools websites use to hold their attention.

I wonder if this isn't a function of the changing use of the web. It is no longer a novelty, and fewer of us spend time "surfing" for fun. "They" wanted the web used for commerce--"they" should not be surprised when people treat it like a business experience. Get in, get out, with as little time and money wasted as possible.

So, my lesson learned is to make it even easier for our customers to get what they want, and take a chance that they'll leave early, but satisfied, and possibly more likely to return.

From email to . . . ?

I have to admit I really don't "get" social networking sites. I understand their purpose, but at this point they still feel like toys rather than tools in my hands.

MediaPost's Online Media Daily has a report from the Email Insider Summit, Habeas: Email Remains Primo Communication Method, that seems to suggest my views are still in the majority, even among younger users. Habeas' research shows that people still prefer email, and will for the foreseeable future, though the reporter mentions one college student who attended the conference would be content to use Facebook solely in his next (first?) job.

They're too intimate. I remember at least one anthropology instructor commenting on research predicting how many "intimates" (close friends and family) one could mentally keep track of, explaining relationships in the classic circles of a Venn diagram. Myspace and Facebook, in their current incarnations, seem to encourage "intimates" circles the size of the Assembly Hall across the street, with only token nods to physical and mental realities.

I have one work contact without an email account, and only a few more intimates offline. I think, for most small businesses (including publishing) email will continue to be a sufficient means of communication indefinately.

Web Page Highlighter

School Library Journal features awesomehighlighter.com in their Saved By the Bell: Sixty Second Tech Tip section. This could be an excellent resource for adults, too, saving all that printing and copying of web pages for meetings (such as our Web Committee meeting tomorrow morning).

LJ @ IDPF

Library Journal has a short item today on the International Digital Publishing Forum meeting last week.

I blogged about the announcement last month about Digital Book 2008 (the name of the conference). It turns out that the .epub is XML based, to support page-readers, but will reformat depending upon the reader. (Obviously we'll have to give up page numbers as a reference point.)

Today Wendy Davis blogged on MediaPost's OnlineExaminer that Napster is opening a DRM-free music store.

I still hold with my earlier comments that most publishers need to jump in to the eBook with little or no DRM. I think us small fishes could end up shelling out money for scalable walls that should go towards creating better, viable online content.

Lessig weighs in on Orphan Works, NYTimes

In today's article Lessig offers what I think is a clearer explanation of the new copyright laws than I remember from others--presuming that the "14-year" rule is true (and I expect that it is).

I agree with him that the law should be simple and cheap, and favor the copyright owner. I'm not sure if this replaced the 90's "Mickey Mouse" law, or if this is an addendum that will only help big companies that have their own in-house experts, anyway.