Modular Magazines

After modular books, now this:

Google may soon begin to offer users the ability to create customized, printed magazines from Internet content. And print ads included in the magazine would be customized, too.

The future is modular.

W(h)ither Blogging?

Here's a thoughtful post:

Somehow it seemed that blogging just isn't that hot anymore. The feeling has been exacerbated by the latest slow down in news. My feeds just do not update that often these days. Can it be that the digestion phase applies to blogs just as it applies to startups? In this post we'll investigate whether the blogosphere is going through a digestion phase.

I find this particularly interesting because my impression is exactly the reverse: I find more and more interesting stuff in my feeds. Not only that, but I find this humble little blog is also attracting more attention, particularly among the PR crowd. I've noticed a distinct change in attitude among the latter - unspoken, but clearly there - from regarding blogs as vaguely interesting but not very influential, to seeing them as just as important as traditional media.

I'd go further: the blogs seem to be taking over. At a time when more and more (dead-tree) newspapers and magazines are closing down, or going purely online, and when more and more online titles are starting to run bloggers as part of the mix, it seems to me that the barycentre of digital publishing is mostly certainly moving deep into the heart of the blogosphere.

Of course, the acid test will be during the next downturn, but I'm optimistic. Unlike the publishing excesses of dotcom 1.0, where magazines blossomed with the manic marketing of no-hoper startups, only to wilt themselves when that, er, fertiliser dried up, blogs are predicated on lean and mean. The only ones that will suffer seriously are those that are beginning to bloat towards the condition of traditional, inefficient publications. No names, no packdrill.

Ubuntu, The Magazine

For the distro that has everything, its very own mag. More details on its associated wiki.

Eclipse - the Magazine

I know, I know, magazines are so twentieth century. This one is different - it's a PDF magazine (OK, so that's worse). But at least it's entirely devoted to the world's favourite IDE: Eclipse. As a result, it tells you rather more than you might want to know, but it's good for skimming. (Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog.)

The Digital Sum of Human Knowledge

Most of us think of open access as a great way of reading the latest research online, so there is an implicit assumption that open access is only about the cutting edge. This also flows from the fact that most open access journals are recent launches, and those that aren't usually only provide content for volumes released after a certain (recent) date, for practical reasons of digital file availability, if nothing else.

This makes the joint Wellcome Trust and National Libary of Medicine project to place 200 years of biomedical journals online by scanning them a major expansion not just to the open access programme, but to the whole concept of open access.

It also hints at what the end-goal of open access must be: the online availability of every journal, magazine, newspaper, pamphlet, book, manuscript, tablet, inscription, statue, seal and ostracon that has survived the ravages of history - the digital sum of all written human knowledge.