MediaWeek (V7, N47): Pearson CEO Fallon, Amazon Storage Underground, Rough Trade, Maigret, USB, EdX & MIT + More

John Fallon, CEO of Pearson plc was interviewed in London's Evening Standard last week.The new buzzword is efficacy: not just selling study programmes to schools or parents who want their children to get ahead but setting targets and measuring how they improve performance and help learners advance their careers, from Pearson’s South African university students to the millions being taught English...

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Photo Paris Eiffel Tower

In Paris this week (for less than 24hrs) but he's a strange view of the Eiffel Tower taken in 1996.  Safe to say, the tower is still there....

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Judge Chin Decides and Everybody Wins

About eight years ago I was one of the group at the Association of American Publishers that voted to file suit against Google for the unauthorized copying of upwards of 10million books (and other bound stuff) from the collection of five large academic libraries.  It wasn't long after the vote that I wished I had missed the meeting.If nothing else, the passage of time since that suit was filed...

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MediaWeek (V7, N45): End of Music Compilations? How Students Perform, Intel buys Kno, 60mins Debacle + more

Now that's what I call pure proft.  There's still life in compliations: in a word curation.  (NewStatesman)The brand has also taken the digital landscape head on and embraced the new realms of digital music platforms with a Now Spotify Channel, Now You Tube Channel and a Now iPhone app. In a new era where people have switched from CD to MP3 and digital downloads,...

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Photo: Lausanne Switzerland

Public art in Ouchy Switzerland where I spent many weeks in the early 1990s.  Pretty place.  Never been ba...

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Books, What are they good for?

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Responsive Web Design Session - CONTEC Frankfurt Bookfair

Slide 1: Good Morning and welcome to this session on Responsive Web Design at Contec Frankfurt. I am Michael Cairns from Publishing Technology and I am joined by Michael Kowalski from web consulting firm Contentment. We are going to speak to you today about Responsive Web design (RWD) – what it is, how it works...

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MediaWeek (V7, N44) Amazon Data Mining and new Literary Journal, McKinsey Business Strategy, Association Publishing + More

Amazon mines data for the next hot hit (WSJ)Amazon Studios ramped up in earnest this year when the pilots were posted online in April. Users were able to rate pilots with up to five stars and offer comments, just as they would for a book or a George Foreman grill on Amazon’s site.The pilot data was sliced in various ways—the percentage of five-star ratings, for example. Users also could fill out...

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The Red Door Galway

In the early 1990s, I got to travel to Ireland frequently for work.   This is a house somewhere in Galway where I spent a few weekends explori...

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