I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little weary of all the Amazon-generated hype about the Kindle, its proprietary eBook reader (described by Amazon as a “revolutionary wireless reading device [emphasis mine]). We’re told incessantly how “visionary,”exceptional,” and, yes, “revolutionary” this little device is, but we’re not told why (with regard to features [...]
Given its stuffy name, The Economist, and its stuffy image as a turgid journal featuring dry analysis of economics and politics, I find this publication a remarkable source of data for many of the entries on this site. Being The Economist it is generally authoritative without being windy. Economist writers (never identified with a byline [...]
I bet you didn’t observe it with a special ceremony at your company (nor, privately, at home), but April 23rd was UNESCO’s annual World Book Day (coinciding with Shakespeare’s birthday). I learned about this on the website of German media giant Bertelsmann. With sales approaching $30 billion annually, it is easily one of the largest [...]
There are perhaps few readers of this blog who also read The New York Review of Books. That would be understandable, as the current issue features reviews of the first volume of a biography of Ezra Pound, then of a 615 page book that examines just the last year of the war in Japan (1944-1945), [...]
On April 15th the Wall Street Journal, in its own Buzzwatch blog, offered a report and a background interview on what’s really going on when people read blogs, and what keeps them doing so. (The Wall Street Journal online is offered by subscription only, but the blogs don’t require a subscription, so the URL attached [...]
The ever-reliable New Yorker checked in late last month with a long analysis on the fate of the newspaper industry. Entitled “Out of Print: The death and life of the American newspaper,†author Eric Alterman sounds no more cheerful than the rest of us as to where newspapers are headed. Early in the article he [...]
