• For those who didn't make it to #toccon I've posted a video of Qualcomm's #Mirosal dis­play tech (a #eInk killer): http://​bit.​ly/​b​XeWOM #
• Thanks @iupress @MIT­Press! – Neutra Face: An Ode On A Type­face http://​ow.​ly/​1dhlX <- I'm sure #RIT #typo peeps have already seen this… #
• Look­ing for well grounded argue­ments against #drm See @kirk­biglione's bril­liant TOC pre­sen­ta­tion: http://​ow.​ly/​1cRYe #
• @ljc – our cats have turned over garbage and chewed through things. But stewie ate a toub of cucum­ber face­wash!? Is he ok? #
• RT @nprmon­key­see: Yay! Sarah Wen­dell/ @Smart­Bitches presents: Romance Titles Empha­size Hus­bands And Cow­boys. No, duh. http://​bit.​ly/​c​1zCyX #
• RT @juliaroy: Hook­ing up Google Ana­lyt­ics on our Face­book Page. What, what! http://​bit.​ly/​8​XC4FI (<- Man that is bril­liant and useful) #
• Man, I wish this pile of papers would grade it self! Where's the app for that? #
• RT @EFF: Viacom Will Sue Blog­gers Who Post Unau­tho­rized "Daily Show" Clips http://​bit.​ly/​a​rUiOy <- So much for the con­cept of fair use. #
• Color #eInk coming next year – Good! It's going to be static only – bad! Video capi­ble eInk is 3 years out – #fail – http://​bit.​ly/​9​z2J1M #
• RT @akvbroek: It's a comic about Levi-​Strauss because I am that big of a nerd. :) http://​bit.​ly/​9​ghv4K <-Definitely of inter­est to #anthro #
• A great exam­ple of savvy social media use: RT @sleek­ness: New post: Dis­cov­er­abil­ity + Author Follow-​Up = WIN! – http://​is.​gd/​9Gl8S #
• RT @mike­cane Books in the age of the iPad http://​bit.​ly/​9​zu77y <- Incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful and thought­ful #
• Mir­crosoft Courier is being com­m­mer­cial­ized and will be avail­able q3/q4 – the year of the #tablet con­tin­ues – http://​bit.​ly/​a​O4DqS #

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One of the many tech­nolo­gies on dis­plays at this year’s TOC was Qualcomm’s new Mirosal dis­play tech­nol­ogy. This and Pixel QI’s tech will prob­a­bly kill the eInk reader. Both tech­nolo­gies are low pow­ered, “quick” refresh­ing (though not as quick as a tra­di­tional LCD, color dis­plays. While they do con­sume more power than eInk, my under­stand­ing is that they are far lower draw than a tra­di­tional LCD. That means that the bat­tery on an eReader (or tablet) pow­ered by this tech­nol­ogy should be able to easily last between rou­tine charges. Note that all of the smaller dis­plays in the back­ground are demo­ing Mirosal as well.

Qual­comm Mira­sol Color Dis­play from Matt Bernius on Vimeo.

A couple points of clar­i­fi­ca­tion. The hand­held unit run­ning the video-​loop is not an eReader. Nor is Qualcomm/Mirasol get­ting into the eReader busi­ness. They are, at this point, just pro­vid­ing the dis­plays. The Qual­comm rep con­firmed that we would see Mira­sol on an eReader by years end, but could not con­firm the manufacturer/marketer. My guess, based on Qualcomm’s pre­vi­ous rela­tions and the desire to make a big splash with this tech­nol­ogy, is that it will either be a Sony or Kindle reader. I don’t think there are other play­ers big enough out there to com­pete with those two for the technology.

As far as it’s com­peti­tor, PixelQi… we will see that pre­mier on Notion’s Ink Adam tablet (pic­tured above) later this year. The Ink Adam is a really inter­est­ing device that has the poten­tial to give the iPad a real run for its money in terms of feature/price set (see com­par­i­son chart below – click for higher res­o­lu­tion version).

(BTW, you get my nar­ra­tion in the video because I was not able to synch up with the offi­cial Qual­comm rep, and the nice fellow work­ing the booth isn’t allowed to be interviewed)

• RT @julia­likes­books: 75.11% of sur­veyed read­ers felt pub­lish­ers do not care about them as e-readers #toccon < this is a very key point #
• @kirk­biglione @ #toccon #DRM Lit­i­ga­tion won't stop the future. Myth: DRM pre­vents piracy. Real­ity: Piracy requires just 1 PHYS­I­CAL copy. #
• #toccon – Read­ers using eRead­ers are at the mercy of meta data. What do pub­lish­ers #fail at? Meta­data. What does #DRM pro­tect? Bad Meta­data. #
• #toccon – Pirates are the best at get­ting eBook meta­data right because they care abuot the con­tent & that it works in their col­lec­tion #
• @ben­van­der­berg – eBook pirates are dif­fer­ent than other pirates… in reply to ben­van­der­berg #
• $%!##@ – The frick­ing bus left with out me. Early. Lit­er­ally drove by me and splashed me with rain­wa­ter as I was waving for it to stop. #
• @JoAn­nAt­ti­son TNX — I have a room, just more pissed than any­thing else. in reply to JoAn­nAt­ti­son #
• I appre­ci­ate that @tim­o­r­eilly is asking Ray Kurzweil on a number of his points far more than most inter­view­ers ever do at #toccon #
• @tostina: It was like a bad movie… really. the bus I was sup­posed to be on splashed me! in reply to tostina #
• @tostina – Catch­ing the same bus tomor­row. And they are cur­renty trying to charge me full price for another ticket. in reply to tostina #
• #toccon — does anyone know the source of that Infor­ma­tion Har­vest­ing quote? #
• RT @shanakim­ball: @andrewsavikas Huzzah! Great #toccon no.4! <- I totally send this point! #
• RT @eschipul: "The more value you create for your com­mu­nity, the more value they will create for you"- @tim­o­r­eilly #tocCon #pub­lish­ing #
• A friend is putting together an #MLA2011 panel on Social Media and #Post­colo­nial Theory. Here's the CFP: http://​bit.​ly/​b​vWB9i #CFp #
• Thanks to @bri­anoleary for a thought­ful post on @Digi­dave 's com­ments from our #toccon Jour­nal­ism & Open Source Panel: http://​bit.​ly/​b​iVjLu #
• @CMc­Grana­han – I vote Fortun and a promise of pub­licly engaged anthro­pol­ogy #
• RT @rkref: Sun­light Foun­da­tion is stream­ing #HCR Summit live, every time a speaker begins, shows his/her major donors! http://​bit.​ly/​9​v9IEv #
• A new Johnny Cash album?! I thought Amer­i­can V was the very last. He's giving Tupac a run for the posthu­mous money. http://​bit.​ly/​9​Q6LVP #
• Sug­ges­tion to twit­ter users: change your twit­ter pass­words every now and then. I've gotten 3 spam DMs from folks in the last 24 hrs. #
• Posted a short entry on the new Johnny Cash Album with a down­load of the title track: Ain't No Grave – http://​bit.​ly/​d​hl74I #
• #toccon #fol­lowfri­day @andrewsavikas @liza @kirk­biglione @bri­anoleary @Kat­Meyer @jane_l @R_Nash @book­square @Smart­Bitches #
• Fol­low­ing up on #toccon I pub­lished a post of The Six­ty­one and lessons for Social Read­ing from Social Music sites: http://​bit.​ly/​9​PW5rg #
• @kishizuka:There was gender diver­sity @ #toccon On racial div, it depends on who pro­poses what- O'Rielly would def take a racial div panel #
• Inter­ested in help­ing bring even more diver­sity to the next #toccon Here's what you can do: http://​bit.​ly/​4​K30o5 – O'Rielly lis­tens! #
• Thank you @jayrosen_nyu for tweet­ing Tuchman's "objectivity as strate­gic ritual" (http://​bit.​ly/​c​gnbzU) – it really helps my #anthro work #
• @mike­ha­tora is main­taing a "Scorecard for Publishers" twit­ter list based on #TOCCON 2010. Follow it at: http://​bit.​ly/​a​3DxoX in reply to mike­ha­tora #

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Track 1: Ain’t No Grave (MP3)?

Amer­i­can VI: Ain’t No Grave: CD on Amazon, MP3 Album on Amazon

Amer­i­can VI is sup­posed to be the last Cash Album (As I remem­ber, Amer­i­can V made the same claim as well). It’s as haunt­ing as the pre­vi­ous Amer­i­can albums.

One of the great things about attend­ing O’Reilly’s Tools of Change, or any good con­fer­ence for that matter, is that you get the chance to kick dif­fer­ent ideas around with really, really, I-mean-really bright people. In talk­ing with folks from BookG­lut­ton, Har­le­quin (yes that Har­le­quin… you know, the pro­gres­sive pub­lish­ing com­pany – see pre­vi­ous post on their read­ing exper­i­ments), and others, I’m more con­vinced than ever that social read­ing is the next killer app, espe­cially as tablet com­put­ing goes mainstream.

By social read­ing, I mean plat­forms that allow people to inter­act with each other through read­ing. In a per­fect world, it con­nects authors with read­ers, and read­ers with each other.

Sounds simple enough, right? But how do you make the expe­ri­ence so com­pelling that people want to join, return to, and par­tic­i­pate in the com­mu­nity? And equally impor­tant, how do you find a way to make it into a sus­tain­able business?

Rather than pon­der­ing “how do we create a “Facebook” for readers?”, I think we can find answers to the first ques­tion by look­ing at a “parallel” expe­ri­ence: social music sites. In par­tic­u­lar, I’m going to use one in par­tic­u­lar, The Six­ty­one, as pos­si­ble model for a social read­ing experience.

Brief dis­claimer: In Jan­u­ary of this year, The Six­ty­one went through a site redesign that was not par­tic­u­larly well received by mem­bers of the com­mu­nity (both artist and lis­ten­ers). For the pur­poses of this write up, I’m choos­ing to not engage with that debate. You can read a brief sum­mary of it here.

The Sixtyone

The Six­ty­one, named after the US high­way, wants “to enable the cre­ative middle class, pro­vid­ing tal­ented artists the oppor­tu­nity to make a living making music.” Artists upload their music to the site, along with sup­port­ing infor­ma­tion such as lyrics, band pic­tures, and tour infor­ma­tion. Users can browse, listen to, and com­ment on songs, create playlists that other mem­bers can view, share their music of choice via social net­work­ing sites, and pur­chase MP3 downloads.

What dif­fer­en­ti­ates The Six­ty­one (or “t61″ for short) is the fact that it also builds gaming into the expe­ri­ence. Lis­ten­ers and artists are able to earn “reputation” by com­plet­ing dif­fer­ent tasks. The more rep­u­ta­tion you have, the more you are capa­ble of influ­enc­ing aspects of the web­site, such as which songs are pro­moted to the homepage.

Let me give you an exam­ple: each time you return to the site you gain a cer­tain number of rep­u­ta­tion points. You also gain a number of hearts. Hearts are used to mark songs that you like. The more hearts a song acquires, the higher it’s rank on the site, the more chances that the song will be seen by people and receive more hearts. Plus, if a song per­forms well after you heart it, you’ll earn rep­u­ta­tion points for pick­ing a winner.  Players can also earn addi­tional rep­u­ta­tion and hearts by com­plet­ing quests such as the fol­low­ing one:

At the time I wrote this, I’d tal­lied up some 555 rep­u­ta­tion points, play­ing over 50 songs, and com­plet­ing a number of quests. That ranks me as a level 3 user, on the way to level  4. Right now, I’m not able to do much more than heart a song once. After I reach level 5 I’ll be able to go back and give those songs an addi­tional hearts, let­ting me get even more rep­u­ta­tion from those songs if they get popular.

BTW, to pre­vent gaming, you need to listen to a song for at least a minute before heart­ing it. This prompts the lis­tener to spend time learn­ing about the artist, check­ing out other songs that they have, and get­ting rec­om­men­da­tions on sim­i­lar artists.

Once I have enough rep­u­ta­tion, I can start spend­ing it to influ­ence the site. The pri­mary way is by pro­mot­ing a song to the home page. Every three hours there’s a rep­u­ta­tion “auction”, where people make bids to “revive” a song. For exam­ple, at this moment, 724photography (level 10) is will­ing to pay 14,652 rep­u­ta­tion points to move Iron and Wine’s Boy with a Coin to the homepage.

Artists also have to play the rep­u­ta­tion game. The number of songs that they can post is tied to their amount of reputation.  So rather than dump­ing one’s entire cat­a­log onto the site, artists have to pick and choose (and pro­mote) songs that they thing are strong enough to build up their rep­u­ta­tion. Oth­er­wise, they can’t add more material.

Lessons to Learn (aka the Whuffie Model)

The first is to make sure you are focus­ing on the right verb. It’s easier to explain this by exam­ple. t61 is about music. So rather than focus­ing the expe­ri­ence on dis­cussing music, it builds every­thing around lis­ten­ing to music. I don’t think the impor­tance of this can be over­stated. There are lim­ited dis­cus­sion capa­bil­i­ties built into the site, but they are not forefronted.

If you’ve read Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic King­dom, the rest of the lessons that can be learned from the site should be more than a little rem­i­nis­cent of the Whuffie System described in the novel:

• Give par­tic­i­pa­tion value—Ok, so in the post Far­mville world, you don’t need to be a rocket sci­en­tist to know that gaming can drive par­tic­i­pa­tion. How­ever, what dif­fer­en­ti­ates t61, is that by play­ing, I get the chance to influ­ence the site by paying to pro­mote music (which may, in turn, can help me gain more rep­u­ta­tion). Like­wise, for artists rep­u­ta­tion has a direct influ­ence on how many songs they can have on the site.
• Influence/Reputation only has value if you can lose it— Paying means paying. If I bid 14K of rep­u­ta­tion to move a song to the home­page and I win, I lose that hard earned rep­u­ta­tion. I may gain it back if a lot more people heart that song while it’s on the home­page, but there’s no guarantee.
• Find­ing the right quests— Align the goals of users and the site. Part of what makes t61 work is that it pays me to do what I already like (listen to music). Most of the quests revolve around lis­ten­ing to new songs or ones with low heart counts. This lets me get more rep­u­ta­tion through com­plet­ing the quest and by help­ing pro­mote good songs before they get big. Both actions reward me for shar­ing music I like.
• Don’t make it too easy—I need to listen to a song for at least one minute before you can heart it. A minute is a long time to sit through a song that you don’t like. Like­wise, you only get X number of hearts to dole out during a 24 hour ses­sion. Once they are gone, they’re gone. You either have to earn more through a quest or wait for them to refresh.

So how to apply this to Social Reading?

Build­ing on t61’s exam­ple, I think that a Social Read­ing site has to be a read­ing expe­ri­ence first and a dis­cussing read­ing expe­ri­ence second (an some are already doing this). This is a the model lends itself to poetry, short and episodic sto­ries, and other con­tent that can be read in a single sitting.

In terms of quests & rep­u­ta­tion, I think those trans­late easily enough that I don’t need to go into detail.

What par­tic­u­larly jazzes me about this model, in terms of read­ing, is the playlist. I think that this has a lot of poten­tial, espe­cially in eco­nomic terms. I have to admit that I haven’t bought any­thing from t61 yet. Part of the reason for this is that I can easily access the song on the site, and while I’m logged in I can listen to it as much as I want. Read­ing is a little dif­fer­ent. When it comes to read­ing, I want to be able to have the con­tent at my fin­ger­tips (either elec­tron­i­cally or phys­i­cally). And while this may say more about my rel­a­tive inter­est in books versus music more so than the market, I’m will­ing to pay to take my books with me.

So where does the playlist come in? Imag­ine what hap­pens when we change the nomen­cla­ture from “playlist” to “edited edition.” I think there is a real pos­si­bil­ity that people would be will­ing to buy col­lec­tions of sto­ries assem­bled by other indi­vid­u­als within the com­mu­nity who they trust. Authors could even get involved – remem­ber that the iTunes store has been using this model for years. And, pro­vided that the con­tent is well tagged/structured, it’s entirely pos­si­ble to have both an elec­tronic dis­tri­b­u­tion model and a print-​on-​demand model as well.

Admit­tedly, there’s a lot that needs to be worked out here. For exam­ple, if one’s col­lec­tion gets bought, should she get rep­u­ta­tion points or a finan­cial cut? Based on some research I did years ago on YouTube rev­enue shar­ing, a finan­cial cut may not be nec­es­sary, espe­cially if the site is atten­tive to respond­ing to user’s desires. Like­wise there are ques­tions about own­er­ship and licens­ing of the content.

All that said, there’s a lot of poten­tial to use this type of model to create a really com­pelling (and prof­itable) user read­ing expe­ri­ence.  The real ques­tion is whose going to give it a shot?

For those who are not famil­iar with it, zotero is a free and insanely useful ref­er­ence man­age­ment pro­gram that inte­grates directly into Fire­fox. Among the new fea­tures of Ver­sion 2.0, which is just about to exit beta, is an improved anno­ta­tion tool that allows you to add notes to your bib­li­o­graphic mate­r­ial. Thanks to it, all of my read­ing notes now “live” side-​by-​side with the related arti­cles and books in zotero.

Since the anno­ta­tion tool is built using the Open-​Source WYSI­WYG TinyMCE editor, it also means that you can speed up entry by using key­board short­cuts. The only problem… fig­ur­ing out what the short­cuts are… So, to help, here’s a list of the ones I’ve dis­cov­ered through trial, error, and web searches:

Zotero/TinyMCE Keyboard Shortcuts

• ctrl+z — Undo
• ctrl+y — Redo
• ctrl+b — Bold
• ctrl+i — Italic
• ctrl+u — Underline
• ctrl+1 — h1 (head­line size 1)
• ctrl+2 — h2 (head­line size 2)
• ctrl+3 — h3 (head­line size 3)
• ctrl+4 — h4 (head­line size 4)
• ctrl+5 — h5 (head­line size 5)
• ctrl+6 — h6 (head­line size 6)
• ctrl+7 — p (paragraph)

Also in there, but not par­tic­u­larly useful are:

• ctrl+8 — div (note that you can insert DIV tags into the under­ly­ing HTML of a zotero not, but it really doesn’t do anything)
• ctrl+9 — address (an HTML tag used for tag­ging phys­i­cal address info — as in where some­thing is in the real world)?

I’ve been scour­ing the web for addi­tional short­cuts (in par­tic­u­lar I’d love to find indent and quote) but have yet to find any­more. If you’ve dis­cov­ered any other ones, please leave and com­ment and I’ll update this list.

• stock­ing up for the drive (@ Weg­mans) http://​4sq.​com/​c​mNaqf #
• get­ting chow for this weeks ethno work­shop (@ Weg­mans) http://​4sq.​com/​6​DSmSb #

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