Tag Archives: media

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Synthetic opals bring post-Kindle e-books closer

A team of chemist-entrepreneurs says it has developed a photonic ink (“P-Ink,” unfortunately) that changes color with the addition of a few volts of electricity.

Electronic inks are already used in commercial products such as Amazon’s Kindle reader. Most current technologies use an electric field to manipulate drops of oil or pigment particles. The presence or absence of a voltage makes pixels on the display appear light or dark, and most displays are confined to monochrome. P-Ink, however, can display any colour without using pigments. Instead, it relies on the same effect that generates shimmering colours in the semi-precious stone, opal.

(If you’re having Roxy Music flashbacks now, me too.)

(Large friendly letters on the cover from BBC)

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Journalism bloodbath

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The Arizona Republic‘s publisher, Gannett Newspapers, announced long-awaited layoffs of almost 100 people, including some of its long-time reporters. It’s part of a national epidemic. Who’s going to write the newspaper? Interns and journalism students, apparently.  Jon Talton has been blogging about the things he couldn’t say when he was a columnist for the paper:

I learned a few things, chiefly that Gannett is not really a newspaper company. Yet it will be remembered as the company that destroyed newspapers.

Gannett has its roots in small newspapers and it never could shake its inferiority complex. …Gannett didn’t believe it had anything to learn from excellent newspapers. A top executive used the word “metro-itis” to describe, and quash, any effort to do high-impact journalism, build superior reporting and editing staffs or develop sophisticated content.

To these leaders, who by this time were highly influential in the industry, small and “lite” papers had all the answers. Lite being the operative phrase.

So maybe it’s not just teh intramawebs that are killing newspapers. It may have something to do with content so fluffy you can finish reading your morning paper before your cereal has time to get soggy. More and better journalism, please.

[Dead Sea Newspaper, Wikimedia Commons]

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TV science-fiction: The origin of ‘Doctor Who’

For those of us who like to know where things came from, the BBC Archive Project has posted some amazing memos and reports revealing the thought processes that led to Doctor Who. Typewritten pages with skeptical scrawls reveal conversations with Brian Aldiss and Kingsley Amis. (Imagine such a consultation today.) Wondering if sf could work on tv at all, the network looked at stories like Poul Anderson’s Guardians of Time and C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born” as possible projects. They almost went with “The Troubleshooters,” about a consulting firm that dealt with otherworldly events. The archive also includes the initial proposal for the series, as well as the (mixed) audience reaction for the first episode of the series that (some of us) know and love.

[Story tip: SF Signal; William Hartnell as the first Doctor, BBC]

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Will the Phoenix rise again?

NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander - artist's impressionVia pretty much everywhere comes the news that NASA has pronounced the Phoenix Mars Lander “silent, presumed dead”. The Martian winter is settling in, and the resulting cold and darkness have put the plucky robot out of action, though there is a vague hope it might revive itself when the seasons change. [image courtesy NASA]

In addition to finally confirming the water-on-Mars matter, Phoenix has been a real (and much-needed) media success for NASA; they tapped into the right channels to keep the mission in the public consciousness, not just through a regular (but very sexy and content-laden) website, but through Twitter as well. It feels as if now, after two decades of disappointments, disasters and disillusionment, space is something to get excited about again. Let’s hope it stays that way, eh?

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Bookstore chains: What you can and can’t read

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A disturbing number of writers are apparently being effectively blacklisted by bookstore chains, even though some of these writers’ books sell pretty well. Gregory Frost witnessed this first-hand when good sales and repeat printings for his novel Shadowbridge weren’t enough to induce a U.S. chain to stock the sequel, Lord Tophet (actually the second half of what should have been one long single volume, but that’s another story). Greg rises above the level of rant to explore why this might be so:

The publisher is required by its owner to turn out bestsellers with assembly line regularity. The dying megastores need the extra income at the same time that they have begun to winnow other titles by those already handicapped authors. In the frenzy of rewards and discounts and product placement, the entire industry has completely lost sight of what it once was in business to provide: Good books. We the readers are the ultimate losers in this rigged game.

My solution is no different than all the writers who’ve shouted from the battlements before me: Buy your books from independent bookstores; the ones that have survived the onslaught, the ones that we hope will arise to fill the gap.

Writers pre-published and otherwise, of course, have an even better motive to support indies. The chains are not our friends. They limit your choices — and your purchases pour money into a dying business model anyway. Whatever chains may be today, they are not the future.

[In my next life, I’d like to be a cat in a bookstore by Glynnis Ritchie]