Think Different

Adding this to my manifesto collection. It is a bit over hyped right now, but it fits into my collection.

From here

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Apple Inc.

via Think Different – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Soft Edge

I find it very hard to live on the soft edge. I crave order, but can’t really find it of course. I like the hard edge, everything in neat little boxes, with an index and rules for access et. etc. But it is no way to live… computers are forcing us too much in that direction. Developing more tolerance for the mess is important. Perhaps it is not a mess, it is all birth, becoming, framentation and death!

This outline meditation helps – it is in itself a hard edge form, to find the soft edge. This is so relevant to me right now as Kate seems to manage that soft space, and I freak out!

http://new-paradigm.co.uk/softedge.htm

From Richard Seel

Continue reading “The Soft Edge”

Back to Flickr



0023_dafodils_w, originally uploaded by Waltzzz.

Testing it here, but wanting to use this on In this moment… my art blog This is one of my early ThousandSketches

How and where to share photos remains a problem IMO. Flickr is rather wonderful but it is in the hands of yahoo, which is a gross company. I’ve hated them ever since they bought egroups and messed them up.

I have never managed the WordPress upload system well, perhaps that would be ok, but it is nice to have all my pix on a photo site that is social and public, yet not the blog. Zenphoto was ok, I had a series of rather nice albums. But it got out of date and let in the hack attack perhaps. Hard to maintain. There is a lot to be said for Flickr – WordPress, Facebook, twitter integration, slideshows, email sharing etc

Can New Zealand bookstores survive? | Stuff.co.nz

Content-Type: text/html;
charset=utf-8

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/6162356/Can-New-Zea=
land-bookstores-survive


First it was a trickle, then a flood. A few years ago, sales of e=
-books =E2=80=93 electronic versions of books that can be downloaded and rea=
d on a computer or handheld device =E2=80=93 were negligible.

These are glad tidings for online retailers. But might good=
old-fashioned high-street bookshops, locked into their traditional bricks a=
nd mortar, be swept away by this new tide?

Not if the book=
shops themselves have anything to do with it. It’s true that they would stru=
ggle to sell e-books by themselves, because of the prohibitive cost of apply=
ing the complex data protection technology needed to stop e-books being copi=
ed repeatedly.

But help is at hand across the Tasman. Aust=
ralian firm Read Cloud has developed a service that will allow people to buy=
e-books from independent bookstores and store them online in a “cloud” so t=
hat they can be read at any time. Title Page, a site created by Australian p=
ublishers, will offer a similar service.

Lincoln Gould, th=
e head of Booksellers New Zealand, says both services should be available so=
on after Christmas, although progress has been “a bit slower than everybody h=
oped”.

Discussions are also under way to provide independe=
nts with an e-book reader device to sell to customers, as an alternative to p=
roducts like the Kindle, which can only read Amazon’s e-books. “Once a Kindl=
e is in somebody’s hands, we have lost that customer,” says Tim Blackmore of=
Nelson store Page and Blackmore.

David Cameron, the owner=
of Christchurch’s Scorpio Books, says independents “do see” the need to emb=
race e-books, although the technology will not change his business “as quick=
ly as some of the technology pundits have predicted”.

Alth=
ough e-books sales here could hit NZ$35 million by 2014, according to an Aus=
tralian report earlier this year, Gould says “anecdotally, it’s early days”.=
But this Christmas may see e-book readers like the Kindle become popular pr=
esents, “so in 2012 you will start to see the real impact of e-books on the m=
arket”.

Cameron hopes to have his website ready to handle e=
-books early in the new year. But it’s not clear that customers will visit a=
bookshop’s website when they can buy from an online retailer =E2=80=93 and t=
he tide may be turning in the latter’s favour.

Around $100=
,000 of state money and book licensing fees has been spent making digital co=
pies of existing print titles for the soon-to-launch Great New Zealand E-Boo=
ks website. But as it stands, site visitors who want to buy the books will b=
e directed either to Japanese-owned online store Kobo, or to New Zealand-bas=
ed online retailers Wheelers and =E2=80=93 technical issues permitting =E2=80=
=93 Fishpond.

What about the bookshops? “That’s the millio=
n-dollar question,” says Paula Browning of Copyright Licensing Ltd, which is=
helping run the project. She is in talks with Booksellers New Zealand, whic=
h is thinking about “how that might work”. For his part, Gould says bookshop=
s will be involved, although he is not yet sure of the detail: “A lot of the=
se things are up in the air.”

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Scorpio’s David Cameron says it “wouldn’t go down very well”=
if bookshops missed out on Great New Zealand E-Books sales. But he is much m=
ore excited about design innovations =E2=80=93 such as textured and 3-D book=
covers =E2=80=93 that turn hardback books into desirable objects, further d=
istinguishing them from their electronic imitators.

And wh=
en e-books may be selling at $13 to $14, there is not much margin in it, esp=
ecially once Read Cloud or Title Page take their cut. Selling e-books is, in=
Tim Blackmore’s words, mostly about “servicing the local community” that wa=
nts to support bookshops. “At the moment,” he says, “we have immensely loyal=
customers. That may change. It will certainly change if we can’t come up wi=
th a solution.”

gre=
atnzebooks.co.nz

– =C2=A9 Fairfax N=
Z News


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