Invasion of the Amazons
| by Sam Vaknin | September 30, 2003 | |
The last few months have witnessed a bloodbath in tech stocks coupled with a frantic re-definition of the web and of every player in it (as far as content is concerned). This effort is three pronged: Some companies are gambling on content distribution and the possession of the attendant digital infrastructure. |
The Disintermediation of Content
| by Sam Vaknin | September 29, 2003 | |
Are content brokers - publishers, distributors, and record companies - a thing of the past? In one word: disintermediation. The gradual removal of layers of content brokering and intermediation - mainly in manufacturing marketing - is the continuation of a long term trend. Consider music for instance. |
The Miraculous Conversion
| by Sam Vaknin | August 19, 2003 | |
The recent bloodbath among online content peddlers and digital media proselytisers can be traced to two deadly sins. The first was to assume that traffic equals sales. In other words, that a miraculous conversion will spontaneously occur among the hordes of visitors to a web site. |
Seamless Web
| by Sam Vaknin | August 18, 2003 | |
The Internet started off as a purely American phenomenon and seemed to perpetuate the fast-emerging dominance of the English language. A negligible minority of web sites were in other languages. |
Bright Planet, Deep Web
| by Sam Vaknin | August 18, 2003 |
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www.allwatchers.com and www.allreaders.com are web sites in the sense that a file is downloaded to the user's browser when he or she surfs to these addresses. |
The Fall and Fall of the P-Zine
| by Sam Vaknin | August 17, 2003 | |
The circulation of print magazines has declined precipitously in the last 24 months. This dissolution of subscriber bases has accelerated dramatically as economic recession set in. But a diminishing wealth effect is only partly to blame. |
The Idea of Reference
| by Sam Vaknin | August 16, 2003 | |
There is no source of reference remotely as authoritative as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.There is no brand as venerable and as veteran as this mammoth labour of knowledge and ideas established in 1768. |
The Affair of the Vanishing Content
| by Sam Vaknin | August 16, 2003 | |
"Digitized information, especially on the Internet, has such rapid turnover these days that total loss is the norm. Civilization is developing severe amnesia as a result; indeed it may have become too amnesiac already to notice the problem properly." |
Jamaican OverDrive - LCD's i LDC's
| by Sam Vaknin | August 15, 2003 | |
OverDrive - an e-commerce, software conversion and e-publishing applications leader - has just expanded an e-book technology centre by adding 200 e-book editors. |
Deja Googled
| by Sam Vaknin | August 14, 2003 | |
The Internet may have started as the fervent brainchild of DARPA, the US defence agency - but it quickly evolved into a network of computers at the service of a community. |
