Weblogs as a Bridging Genre    

Weblogs (blogs)--frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence--are the latest genre of Internet communication to attain widespread popularity, yet their characteristics have not been systematically described. This paper presents the results of a quantitative content analysis of 203 randomly-selected weblogs, comparing the empirically observable features of the corpus with popular claims about the nature of weblogs, and finding them to differ in a number of respects. Notably, blog authors, journalists and scholars alike exaggerate the extent to which blogs are interlinked, interactive, and oriented towards external events, and underestimate the importance of blogs as individualistic, intimate forms of self-expression. Based on the profile generated by the empirical analysis, we consider the likely antecedents of the blog genre, situate it with respect to the dominant forms of digital communication on the Internet today, and suggest possible developments of the use of weblogs over time in responsgenres.

Herring, Susan C., Scheidt, Lois Ann, Wright, Elijah, and Bonus, Sabrina. Information, Technology and People (2005). Articles>Publishing>Online>Blogging

What are eBooks Good For?

The internet and e-book technology gives you the power of independence-the power to create your own e-books and sell them online.

Van Buren, Chris and Jeff Cogswell. Design, Typography and Graphics (2004). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

What Happened to Usability Interface

User Interface has been on sabbatical, but I am happy to announce that we have returned. Starting with this issue, the newsletter is online and ends our traditional newsletter format.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>Publishing>Online>Usability

What Shall We Do With the Publications?

Publications pages are often among the most popular pages on web sites, particularly government sites. But this handy convention has turned into a problem.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2004). Articles>Web Design>Publishing>Online

White Paper on Electronic Journal Usage Statistics  

Electronic journals represent a significant and growing part of the academic library's offerings. As demand for e-journals increases, librarians are faced with a new set of decisions related to acquisitions and services. Must libraries retain both print and electronic copies? Is the price of the electronic copy justified by its use? Do usage patterns show that some journals will be as heavily used -- or more so -- in 20 years as when they are published? Answers to these and other questions require statistics on usage, and in the electronic realm, such statistics must come from the publishers.

Luther, Judy. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2001). Articles>Publishing>Online

"Why Would You Want to Do That?" Online Publication for Graduate Student Scholars, Ethos, and the Middle Ground

Explores the intersection between peer-reviewed print journals and online publications, and then examines two hybrid publications, one outside the discipline of professional communication and one inside, to determine whether a middle ground is attainable, and whether it can provide the same enculturating experience without hampering the development of professional ethos.

Search, Matthew. Orange Journal, The (2005). Articles>Publishing>Online

A Wiki Situation

Admit it: You sometimes consult Wikipedia. Scott McLemee wonders if you should write for it, too.

McLemee, Scott. Inside Higher Ed (2006). Articles>Publishing>Online>Wikis

World Wide Words: A Rationale and Preliminary Report on a Publishing Project for an Advanced Writing Workshop  

Publishing articles on the World Wide Web in established webzines edited for love or money by people who take their tasks seriously offers a possible remedy to the problem of inauthenticityor pseudotransactionality in student writing.

Sands, Peter. Academic.Writing (2003). Articles>Education>Publishing>Online

Writing a Collaborative Book in Cyberspace  

New software is released. The same day, a 1,000 page book is released that 'unleashes' the hidden secrets of the software. How did the book get there so quickly? This paper takes an insider’s look at a case history — the writing and publishing of the Lotus Notes Unleashed series of books — to show how the Internet is being used to provide more timely and accurate information on technical subjects. The described case includes assembling the writing team, writing the book, the editing process, and publication of the book, all done using the Internet and computers as a primary medium.

Child, Don. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Publishing>Collaboration>Online

Writing and Publishing in the Boundaries: Academic Writing In/Through the Virtual Age  

Increasingly, online publications are vying for prominence and acceptance in the academy. Questions about their validity and quality are raised alongside debates about the effects that these publications will have on academic scholarship. Despite all the hype around e-journals, few have carefully analyzed what differences actually exist between online journals and print journals. In this article, I undertake a comparative analysis of two key journals in the specialty field of computers and composition—Computers and Composition: An International Journal for Teachers of Writing, primarily a print journal, and Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, an e-journal.

Peterson, Patricia Webb. TWI (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online

Yours Authentically...  

As electronic documents gain ascendancy, the authenticity of the author and the integrity of e-mail documents, which most of us usually take for granted, may become major stumbling blocks for ecommerce, e-learning, online training, and technical communication in the future. How can we be certain of the authenticity of electronic documents? While this problem exists equally for paper-based documents, given sophisticated scanners, software, and color printers, electronic documents are especially prone to tampering, mismanagement, and outright fraud.

Archee, Raymond K. Intercom (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online>Security

Eliminating the 'End Game' from Electronic Deliverables

Once you start looking at your publishing process separately from your content and style considerations, you will have identified how your “End Game” impacts your production process. Then, you can take the necessary steps to eliminate it.

Porter, Alan J. TechCom Manager (2007). Articles>Publishing>Online>Workflow

Mediatization or Mediation? Alternative Understandings of the Emergent Space of Digital Storytelling    

This article reviews the social potential of digital storytelling, and in particular its potential to contribute to the strengthening of democracy. Through answering this question, it seeks to test out the relative strengths and weaknesses of two competing concepts for grasping the wider consequences of media for the social world: the concept of mediatization and the concept of mediation. It is argued that mediatization (developed, for example, by Stig Hjarvard and Winfried Schulz) is stronger at addressing aspects of media textuality, suggesting that a unitary media-based logic is at work. In spite of its apparent vagueness, mediation (developed in particular by Roger Silverstone) provides more flexibility for thinking about the open-ended and dialectical social transformations which, as with the printed book, may come in time to be articulated with the new form of digital storytelling.

Couldry, Nick. New Media and Society (2008). Articles>Web Design>Publishing>Online

The Publishing House: An Exploration of the Internet Publishing Revolution

This paper will discuss the state of new media before describing solutions to the problems introduced by instant publishing. Two prolific sources of information, news articles and research, are the focus of this paper.

Mercurytide (2005). Articles>Publishing>Online

How to Publish Without Perishing

One could imagine the book, venerable as it is, just vanishing into the ether. It melts into all the other information species searchable through Google’s most democratic of engines.

Gleick, James. New York Times, The (2008). Articles>Publishing>Online

Paid Versus Free Content Is Back in The Headlines

Earlier this year Chris Anderson, who is best known for his book The Long Tail, wrote an article in Wired Magazine called ‘Free’. As the title suggests it is about the “inevitable move towards a price point of zero for content and services on the web.”

SubHub (2008). Articles>Publishing>Financial>Online

The Real State of The Blogosphere 2008

A few weeks ago Technorati came out with their annual State of the Blogosphere 2008 numbers. They revealed that 133 million blogs have been setup since January 2002. That means, on average, over 72,000 blogs have been setup every day since the blogging phenomena started. Staggering numbers!

SubHub (2008). Articles>Publishing>Online>Blogging

The Emergence of Intelligent Content: The Evolution of Open Content Technologies and Their Significance  

This paper traces the history of open content technologies in an effort to understand the nature and significance of intelligent content. What is illustrated is that a common thread runs through SGML, HTML, XML, Web 2.0, the Semantic Web, DITA, and OOXML and that the evolution of open content technologies has enabled the emergence of intelligent content and with it a new form of organizational agility. This whitepaper has been prepared as a corollary to the presentation “Content Fusion: There’s a Piece of Data Lodged in my Document” at Intelligent Content 2009, Palm Springs CA, January 29-30, 2009.

Gollner, Joe. Rockley Group, The (2009). Articles>Publishing>Online>Open Source

Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content

The failure of micropayments, both past and future, illustrates the depth and importance of putting publishing tools in the hands of individuals. In the face of a force this large, user-pays schemes can't simply be restored through minor tinkering with payment systems, because they don't address the cause of that change -- a huge increase the power and reach of the individual creator.

Shirky, Clay. Shirky.com (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online>Micropayments

Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing

A lot of people in the weblog world are asking "How can we make money doing this?" The answer is that most of us can't. Weblogs are not a new kind of publishing that requires a new system of financial reward. Instead, weblogs mark a radical break. They are such an efficient tool for distributing the written word that they make publishing a financially worthless activity. It's intuitively appealing to believe that by making the connection between writer and reader more direct, weblogs will improve the environment for direct payments as well, but the opposite is true. By removing the barriers to publishing, weblogs ensure that the few people who earn anything from their weblogs will make their money indirectly.

Shirky, Clay. Shirky.com (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online>Blogging

What Colleges Should Learn From Newspapers' Decline

Newspapers are dying. Are universities next? The parallels between them are closer than they appear. Both industries are in the business of creating and communicating information. Paradoxically, both are threatened by the way technology has made that easier than ever before.

Carey, Kevin. Chronicle of Higher Education (2009). Articles>Education>Publishing>Online

University Publishing In A Digital Age

This paper argues that a renewed commitment to publishing in its broadest sense can enable universities to more fully realize the potential global impact of their academic programs, enhance the reputations of their institutions, maintain a strong voice in determining what constitutes important scholarship, and in some cases reduce costs.

Ithaka (2009). Articles>Research>Publishing>Online

Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship    

Online journals promise to serve more information to more dispersed audiences and are more efficiently searched and recalled. But because they are used differently than print—scientists and scholars tend to search electronically and follow hyperlinks rather than browse or peruse—electronically available journals may portend an ironic change for science. Using a database of 34 million articles, their citations (1945 to 2005), and online availability (1998 to 2005), I show that as more journal issues came online, the articles referenced tended to be more recent, fewer journals and articles were cited, and more of those citations were to fewer journals and articles. The forced browsing of print archives may have stretched scientists and scholars to anchor findings deeply into past and present scholarship. Searching online is more efficient and following hyperlinks quickly puts researchers in touch with prevailing opinion, but this may accelerate consensus and narrow the range of findings and ideas built upon.

Evans, James A. Science (2008). Articles>Research>Publishing>Online

Bantamweight Publishing in an Easily Plagiarised World

Bantamweight publishing is popular among those who feel brevity is a virtue. But when an entire work of art is bounded in 140 characters, even brevity has its limits. Sometimes, squeezing in a proper attribution through editing content can change the original meaning, when the edits unwillingly shift from cosmetic to substantive.

Drapeau, Mark. O'Reilly and Associates (2009). Articles>Publishing>Online>Plagiarism