Announcements
The Open Publishing Lab's presentation files are now available for download from the Tools of Change website .
Lab Sponsors
Excellent Podcast Series on Publishing and Informatics
Submitted by Matthew Bernius on Tue, 04/21/2009 - 8:58pmHere at the OPL we're spending just about all of our time preparing for the RIT Innovation Festival next weekend. But once we get done you can bet we will be checking out these excellent podcasts of lectures given at the University of Toronto on Publishing and Informatics. Topics include David Weinberger on “Knowledge at the End of the Information Age” and Paul Nelles on “Books, Communication and Exchange: The Frankfurt Book Fair and Early Modern Print Culture”. For those of you not familiar with it, the Frankfurt Book Fair was essentially the Napster of the 16th century.
Tim O'Reilly answers the question "Why Open Publishing?"
Submitted by Matthew Bernius on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 10:44pm
O'Reilly Tools of Change 2009: Tim O'Reilly makes the argument for Open Publishing from Open Publishing Lab @ RIT on Vimeo.
The title (and Tim) really say it all. Drawing upon his real world experiences, Tim O'Reilly shares his thoughts on Open Publishing, why its a good idea, and how to make it work. We are extremely grateful to Tim for so eloquently answering this question at the recent Tools of Change for Publishing 20009 conference in New York City.
For more information on Tim O'Reilly (and why he knows what he's talking about), head to oreilly.com/ or follow him at: twitter.com/timoreilly
You can read (and download) the What is Web 2.0 article at:
oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
If you are experiencing playback issues, try viewing the video on Vimeo.
OPL TOC slides (and video of the RIT Presentation) are now available for download
Submitted by Matthew Bernius on Sun, 02/22/2009 - 8:04pmThe slides from our TOC presentation are now available for download from the Tools of Change website .
Also, while video of the presentation at TOC isn't currently available, we gave a similar presentation earlier in February at RIT Library's Faculty Scholar lecture series. Video from that presentation is now available online as a podcast and as a (BIG) download.
Please note that the podcast will automatically open iTunes
2009 Imagine RIT Festival: OPL in the WOW Center
Submitted by Matthew Bernius on Tue, 02/17/2009 - 4:07pm![[Imagine RIT Logo]](/sites/default/files/images/imagine-url.png)
It's official! We just found out that for the second year in a row, the Open Publishing Lab will have a booth in the Wow Center at the Imagine RIT Festival. Imagine RIT, held on Saturday May 2nd, is designed to demonstrate what can be accomplished when, as RIT President Bill Destler likes to say, “the right and left brain collide.” The RIT campus opens itself to the public, showing off the innovative work of our students and faculty. Last year's visitors witnessed a robot that serves hot dogs, a concrete canoe that floats and dozens of musical and theatrical performances (all of it covered by the iNews).
Imagine RIT has a special meaning for the OPL. Last year's festival was our first public event and iNews and the Social Networking Game premiered there!
As for the Wow Center, that's the location for the most interactive exhibits, so it's an honor to be there again this year. As far what we will be doing, the iNews and SNG will both be back and joined by the premier of our Page2Pub application!
For more information on Imagine RIT, visit the website (www.rit.edu/imagine) and subscribe to the twitter feed (twitter.com/Imagine_RIT)! And be sure to book May 2nd from 10am to 5pm on your calendars!
TOC 2009: Readius and PressDisplay Video Demo
Submitted by Matthew Bernius on Tue, 02/17/2009 - 12:49amIn addition to the Plastic Logic, the supercool Readius and the iRex (in the background) eBook readers were also on the floor of the 2009 O'Reilly Tools of Change Publishing Conference. These two units were hanging out at the PressReader booth, and Igor Smirnoff of PressReader was good enough to give us a quick demo of the Readius.
O'Reilly Tools of Change: Readius eReader (and PressDisplay) Demo from Open Publishing Lab on Vimeo.
As you can see this reader has a neat fold out screen, taking advantage of eInk's flexible qualities. In fact, the screen is larger than the core body of the reader. Note that (in a possible design trade off) the screen isn't touch sensitive, and browsing is controlled by buttons on the side of the body. Also, according the the Readius website it currently doesn't support as many eBook formats as the Digital Logic (though more could be enabled before launch).
In the video Igor mentions in the video that it's also a phone. While the Readius is a Tri Band/3.5G HSDPA device, it doesn't appear to have a built in voice2voice telephony app. That said, it will definitely be able to download content over the network (including from PressDisplay's service -- more on that in a moment).
The reader is expected to launch later this year in Europe. No word yet on price or when it is coming to the US. Note that because its a Tri Band/3.5G HSDPA device when it does make it to our shores it will only work on AT&T and TMobile networks. Visit readius.com for more details on the reader.
The service/software that Igor is demoing on the Readius is PressDisplay -- an online newspaper publishing and reading platform. From a publisher's perspective it allows newspapers to push their daily edition to the web and maintain a "paper style" browsing experience without losing such online features as reflowing text. It also provides an e-commerce engine for buying individual issues and subscriptions. For readers, the site aggregates newspaper content from around the world, and allows users integrate it into a custom newspaper that can be read on screen and mobile devices. For more information on PressDisplay check out their website pressDisplay.com and their blog blog.pressdisplay.com.
The other eReader in the video is an iRex irextechnologies.com/irexdr1000
More videos are on the way...
