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Thursday, 18 April 2002 |
“Blogging is changing the media world and could,
I think, foment a revolution in how journalism functions in our culture,” says Sullivan.
He also iterates something I have been thinking about for several years now. “Why not build an online presence with your
daily musings and then sell your first book through print-on-demand
technology direct from your Web site?”
And this: “Why should established writers go to newspapers and magazines to get an essay published, when they can simply write it themselves, convert it into a .pdf file, and charge a few bucks per download?”
Andrew Sullivan’s website cum weblog apparently turns a profit, although I would like to know precisely how it does so. Is it the site itself, or his book sales through the site? Or his Tipping Point donations section? Of course it helps that Sullivan is already a famous commentator. And as for online publishing, Stephen King tried publishing a novel in parts on the web, but pulled it prematurely when people just were not forking out the cash.
It usually takes time for a new trend to take hold, though, especially when it means a change in buying habits.
4:48:18 PM 
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“A quarterly state of the industry report for the creative professional.”
4:17:50 PM
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“A site dedicated to examining the nature of branding and the issues encountered in managing and shaping brands.”
4:14:53 PM
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This font foundry is a division of a much larger firm—Jack Yan & Associates—that appears to have begun life in New Zealand. A blurb on the JY & A website states that “In Australia and New Zealand, JY&A Fonts is as much a national brand as Linotype is to Europe.” I had not come across them until now.
The parent firm describes itself as “a global media and communications company that seeks to provide its clients with elegant, practical and ethical solutions with the strongest awareness of integrity, rights and freedoms.” They have offices all over the planet.
The firm also has its own online fashion magazine, Lucire, and a marketing, design and branding online magazine, CAP Online.
3:50:20 PM
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These people have a large number of freely downloadable fonts available. Variable quality, but there are some good ones in there. Click on the Grab link at left.
3:40:45 PM
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Whenever I am researching a particular type designer or font foundry, this web page often comes up in Google. It might not be the most comprehensive list on the Web, but the author’s comments can be quite informative.
3:36:01 PM
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Two old scans from my photography project on Perth, titled
A Poverty of Desire. The whole thing needs to be rescanned now. Good thing the desktop scanners you get nowadays are so much better than before.
10:28:02 AM
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As Radio UserLand keeps gaining new features on a regular basis, almost weekly, it is proving necessary to constantly keep up with all the tutorials and documentation.
Here is a good overview of what is currently available.
10:11:09 AM
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A great little article on the Apple website on director Steven Soderbergh relaxing by shooting a new movie with a Canon XL1 and editing it with Power Mac G4s and Final Cut Pro 3. The film is Full Frontal and the budget, despite the star-studded cast, was minimal.
“The look of MiniDV is spectacular,” says Soderbergh. These are great days to be making independent films now that you can go fully digital.
9:47:42 AM
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A profit of $40 million for the quarter, with revenues for the quarter of $1.5 billion. International sales accounted for 45% of the quarter’s revenues.
9:44:36 AM
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The ThinkSecret website has been devoting quite a bit of coverage to Macromedia MX matters since the beginning of this year.
Here is what they say about the coming MX releases.
9:37:49 AM
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Photoshop 7 has finally been released, and those designers who have been holding out on switching to Mac OS X due to the lack of a native version of their most-used application no longer have a good reason.
Unless, of course, they are heavy Quark XPress users. But InDesign 2 is also Mac OS X native, and so many designers, art directors and publishers have already converted from XPress to InDesign, or are about to do so, that Quark’s Mac OS X foot-dragging counts for less than you might think.
Adobe traditionally offers good prices on their software Collections, and many designers of my acquaintance, who have been doing some work in Mac OS 9 and some in Mac OS X, have been waiting for the new Collection that best suits them. A typical Adobe Collection comprising a number of programs is priced lower than one copy of Quark XPress.
My ideal Collection, if I had a faster machine able to run Mac OS X better, would be a combination of the Design Collection and the Web set, consisting of Illustrator 10, Photoshop 7, InDesign 2, GoLive 6 and LiveMotion 2. Acrobat 5 would be optional. Despite the enormous client-consultant collaboration potential of Acrobat, so far I have not been able to persuade any clients to invest in a copy. As a result I have not even begun to explore that potential.
InDesign is in there because, even though I am so concerned with the Web, I have a real need to create good-looking PDF documents for download and printing from, with font outlines embedded.
I dislike Word and the way the look of Word documents can range from adequate to awful on different computers, depending on the fonts installed on each machine and the version of the software. I also don’t appreciate the way that Word tries hard to be a desktop publishing product when it clearly isn’t. Better to use a real DTP program, and give people documents with design that is terrific instead of merely acceptable.
I have included GoLive 6 and LiveMotion 2 because even though Flash MX is here now and works on X, and Dreamweaver MX is coming, I am concerned about the ongoing situation of Macromedia’s lack of support for PHP and MySQL. The company seems to be about to push ColdFusion even more than they have been in the past. GoLive 6 supports PHP, has a great wired sprites QuickTime editor built in, directly competes with the much more expensive Dreamweaver UltraDev 4, and of course the integration between all Adobe’s programs is excellent now.
I will also continue to use and recommend Macromedia products, of course. It is just that the ColdFusion versus PHP thing is a worry. ColdFusion hosting is still uncommon and expensive while PHP/MySQL hosting is ubiquitous and cheap, and the language is so easy to learn even I can use it.
9:22:25 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Karl-Peter Gottschalk.
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