Category: News: Arts & Entertainment (Page 17 of 25)

In First Life, I’m at the Work Industries holiday party. I have my party dress on, the band is blaring in the other room and I’m in a storage space with the extension cord to a power outlet. Why? Because in Second Life I’m over at Crayonville attending CaseCamp.

True geekdom.

I got a Build-a-Bear ecard, and you can make your own here.

I liked this so much I had to share. Happy holidays.

In October I participated on a panel at Wordfest in Calgary. The discussion was called something odd like “The Blogger Blogs” and the panelists were scheduled to talk about blogging.

As J. A. McDougall points out in her post on The Canadian Writers Collective blog, “titling a session with the word blog is akin to inviting people to a meeting about computers.”

Thankfully we, the panelists, managed to keep up the witty conversation about our favourite blogs, why we blog, how we deal with spam and what our ideologies are when it comes to community and online tools.

J. A. does an excellent job of quoting each of the panelists and summarizing what we talked about.

Here’s the full post for those interested.

Check out the links to the panelists’ favourite blogs, there are some good ones.

And, of course, a huge thank you to J. A. for attending the blogging discussion at Wordfest. I appreciated all the insightful questions and comments. Many, many thanks.

Two big news items today in Quill and Quire.

Random House Canada has started selling books directly to consumers off its website and Indigo Books & Music (including Chapters and Coles) has started stocking self-published authors.

Why are these two things important?

Canadian publishers have been slow to enter the ecommerce game because booksellers see it as a betrayal. Traditionally publishers have sold titles to booksellers who then sell books to readers. Booksellers are the middleman in this model, and when publishers start selling directly to consumers it cuts them out.

In order to have a healthy industry, I believe publishers do need to support booksellers. At the same time, booksellers need to get with the program. Books are the #2 online purchase (travel is #1). Online booksales account for 1-5% of a publisher’s total sales.

On the one hand it’s big potatoes, on the other it’s not.

The trend I see is this: people are migrating online to discover new titles, they are no longer wandering into a store and looking for advice from the bookseller. The display tables and staff picks still work, but people are also using the internet to qualify book suggestions. For example, my friend recommends a book to me at a party. I think it sounds interesting. Instead of going to a bookstore, finding it on the shelf (when it may not be in stock), or talking to the bookseller, I google the title. I look at the author website or the publisher site or I look at Amazon. If I do decide to buy the book, I go into the store. This is how it works now. But booksellers aren’t supporting their websites, are doing little to capture the interest of their local community, and are losing the opportunity to draw people into their stores or to purchase titles from them online. This is why publishers are stepping into that space.

Indigo selling self-published authors.

This is interesting because the self-publishing market is expanding rapidly. There are lots of people out there with book ideas, publishers are slow to react in terms of turn-around time on a book, and publishers are highly selective in what they want to publish. Indigo stocking these titles is a huge step forward because as I mentioned above online book sales are still relatively small in Canada, in-store placement goes a long way. The interesting twist in this story is that Indigo is stocking self-published authors who have signed a deal with iUniverse: Americaís ìleader in supported self-publishing.î American, eh?

The suggestion is that Canadian authors using iUniverse will be the ones stocked in Indigo, but I wonder why Indigo isn’t supporting a Canadian company like Trafford instead of an American company. Perhaps more Canadians use iUniverse?

More likely, iUniverse has authors who are willing to pay a couple thousand dollars to get their books into Indigo–into Indigo and onto a display table. In traditional publishing, publishers pay for placement. It’s like a grocery store: end caps on the aisles, key placement at the front of a store, etc. If iUniverse can generate the funds from self-published authors, they can take a percentage of that and pass the rest over to Indigo as placement dollars. A good deal for both companies. I suspect that Trafford doesn’t see themselves in that game, but iUniverse is willing to capitalize on the relationship with a Canadian chain, which then sets the stage (if it isn’t already the case) and makes them look like a good partner to US chain stores (Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.)–much bigger dollars.

I don’t know enough about it to comment further, but I think it’s an interesting story to watch. If anyone has more details, fill me in.

Yesterday the CBC reported that it will cancel Canada Now and restore one-hour local news shows.

I remember being angry that local news shows were cancelled, but then I lived in Vancouver and Gloria and Ian were local hosts I was familiar with and Canada Now easily integrated itself into my expectations of a news program. That’s clearly not how the rest of Canada felt, according to CBC audience surveys. So they’ve reverted to local programming.

The other interesting addition to the story is that CBC will solicity public input:

Quote: Vancouver will also be the first CBC news bureau to pioneer “civic journalism,” in which citizens can upload video or images of news events to the CBC.

Details are vague but it seems like an interesting and progressive move.

I heart public broadcasting.

DavidCrow.ca has a posting for Indigo.ca. They are looking for an AJaX and UI developer. Indigo is really pushing to compete with Amazon.ca and they’ve made a number of internal changes to move in that direction. As a book reviewer, they’ve improved the reader review section of Indigo.ca quite a bit.

There are a lot of very smart people who work at Indigo. I think, like any big organization, there’s some red tape and the typical hazards of employment, but if you like Toronto, like books, and know your stuff, check out the posting.

Quote: From the job posting:

A book store? Hardly an inspiring place for an ambitious web technologist? Nothing could be further from the truthÖ

Weíre Indigo Books & Music, Canadaís largest booksí retail chain and also one of North Americaís leading eCommerce web sites, situated right in the heart of Torontoís downtown entertainment district. Our online business is expanding rapidly and we urgently need outstanding, creative individuals to help us achieve our goals.

Everythingís going digital these days and so are we. Do you want to be part of this new wave of leading edge technology? Do you want to build the next-generation of beautiful, dynamic user interfaces that can also scale for millions of users? Are you someone for whom every pixel really does matter?

We love Web Standards (no table-based layout dinosaurs here, thank you) and weíre proud of our designs, constantly updating our User Experience to stay ahead of the competition. Therefore a true passion for user interface design & development will be essential.

There are big, beautiful snowflakes falling outside my window and I can’t take a photo because James and my camera are in Squamish.

Thank goodness for Flickr.

Giles Slade, author of Made to Break, who I’ve talked about more than once, was on the cover of the Richmond Review on November 18.

To see his mug and interview, check out this link.

There’s also a tie-in to our boil-water news:

Quote: Tap water the grandchildren of his generation drink might be poisonous. Chalk it up to a disposable culture.

ÔøΩThis is going to make Walkerton look like kidsÔøΩ stuff. This is a continental issue, the Americans dump this stuff into their water, thereÔøΩs no fence to keep it out of our water.ÔøΩ

SladeÔøΩs book, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, zeroes in on repetitive consumption and how the United States changed consumerism.

For a creative use of breakable stuff, check out “iPod iBreak” on Magpie and Cake.

The Penguins have arrived!

Check out the latest animation feature from Warner Bros., Happy Feet.

Who cares what the storyline is. Savion Glover does the tapping for the lead penguin, Baby Mumbles.

Opens today.

John Ibbitson’s Globe and Mail article “The Internet Is Turner’s Perfect Medium” is a fine example of the anxiety newspapermen feel towards the internet.

The basic premise is that the internet is for the young. Blogs are for loners and losers. Turner and the internet are a perfect match because neither is of real importance to the political world.

Get over yourself John.

Do you think you’re legitimate because you’re in print? How are those declining newspaper sales going? Isn’t legitimacy your ability to engage with your readers?

Ibbitson’s article is about MP Garth Turner who was tossed out of the Conservative caucus for breaches of confidence on his blog. But it’s not really about that, the article is about undermining Turner and suggesting that the support he trumpets due to his blog is irrelevant.

Turner has chosen to sit as an independent so that he can speak out on the issues he and (presumably) his constituents deem important, rather than conforming to Harper’s political desires.

Ibbitson suggests that Turner wants to derive his legitimacy from the internet rather than from political party affiliation. He fluffs the article with a short history of technological advancements and politics, noting that “the old hierarchy reasserts itself” regardless of grassroots’ successful attempts to oust “party bosses in favour of new structures that truly capture of the will of the membership.” A sad state of affairs, for sure, but not one Ibbitson wants to reflect on. Instead Ibbitson seeks to denounce social networking as “an electronic populist movement that seeks to weaken party discipline and encourage free thinking in the House of Commons.” Heaven forbid that that should be the case. But Ibbitson is confident that nothing will change.

Quote: “First, in any populist movement, there are cranks, kooks and lonely souls. Their unhappiness has less to do with political than with personal frustration. Read the online comments to any blog, including Mr. Turner’s. More than a few of the correspondents need to get out more. To that extent, Mr. Turner is simply conducting a high-tech dialogue with loners and losers.”

Nice way to write-off all commentors on Turner’s blog. The few cranks suddenly represent all bloggers and commentors?

Ibbitson seeks to further undermine Turner’s blog by saying Turner “claims” that many thousands of voters read and comment on his blog. He doesn’t need to claim it, you can go to the website and see all the comments. And the majority do not appear to be the loners or losers that Ibbitson presents in his article. Oh, wait he doesn’t actually present any examples.

But Ibbitson doesn’t want to write-off Turner entirely. He says, “whatever else the internet is, it is emphatically generational.” What? Ibbitson believes (based on what, his sample size of one) that “the young” navigate the internet with ease, but “the older you get, the harder it gets to keep up.” His conclusion is that successful political parties need to exploit the web because that’s where the young voters are, then in the same breath he suggests that it’s irrelevant where the young voters are because they don’t actually vote.

Quote: “Successful politicians and successful parties must learn how to exploit the web, because young voters–who, in fact, are less likely to vote, and to read newspapers, and to participate in any of the institutions of political life–are found there, and if they are to be reached, that is the medium for reaching them.”

Unlike John Ibbitson’s Globe and Mail article, Garth Turner’s blog is open to the public.