Kindle News & Articles

This week, online newspapers focuses on mobile, Amazon enriches the Kindle, and MSNBC.com ditches pageviews in a new redesign.

This week in web publishing, e-Reader prices get lowered, the Economist examines the viability of mobile news apps and WordPress launches version 3.0.

They say desperate times call for desperate measures. Whether it’s a need for more revenue, better access or more space, this week in web publishing brings you several innovative solutions.

This week, web publishing lends itself wholly to digital media. From iPads to handbooks about implementing digital initiatives to daily video news programs, it’s becoming clear that digital media is catching on.

Last year, Mobifusion, a leading mobile value-added services provider and partner for media and publishing companies, released its Mobiviewer 2.5 multimedia platform. This month, the company has announced the imminent release of its new MOBIeReader.

There are indications that e-books and the reading devices, like Kindle and the Nook, are becoming more mainstream and as a result they are having an interesting impact on the way we interact with content, both online and in print.

ADAM (news, site) raises private capital to expand its growth and develop new markets, including the opening of a US office.

In May we profiled the self-publishing site Klatcher, which allows authors to self-publish anything online from words to a rich media publication and start selling their best content.

Like most anything in the web-o-sphere, a lot can happen in six months and Klatcher is no exception. Johannes Bhakdi, CEO and a visionary of the web publishing world caught us up to date on where Klatcher has been and where it is going.

The twists, turns and tips you need for staying up-to-date by the water cooler.

Highlights of the Week

• Autonomy Leads Search and Discovery Market According to IDC. A recent IDC research report shows Autonomy is leading the search and discovery market in terms of both revenues and market share.
• Amazon EC2 Customer Hammered by DDOS Attack. Amazon may be one of the 200 lbs information gorillas in the cloud, but it's not immune to taking a good beating, as this unfortunate customer story shows.
• Alfresco Achieves DoD 5015.02 Records Management Certification. Alfresco has become the first open source product to demonstrate compliance with the DoD 5015.02 STD spec.
• Microsoft Creates FUSE Labs for Social Media Research. Reorganization strikes again! General Manager Lili Cheng is set to head the new FUSE Labs for Social Media Research at Microsoft, an apt title as the group will fuse members of the Creative Systems Group with the Rich Media and Startup Labs.
• e-Spirit CMS Gets More Serious About Content Re-use. e-Spirit, the makers of FirstSpirit CMS, released a new module called Database Pool that goes on top of the core content management platform.
• eXo Takes Its Enterprise CMS and CEO to the US. Another European company has announced that it is opening a US office. This time the location is San Francisco and the company is open source solution provider eXo.
• Yooba Adds Content Only Editor to Flash Web CMS. We've already expressed the growing interest around Flash-based content management systems this week, so let's get straight down to business with Yooba announcement about a cool little content editor for integration with existing CMS platforms.

Most Popular Articles

And these are the articles you couldn't get enough of during the past week -- if page views are anything to go by, anyways. So, what was your fancy? Twitter, CMS, iPhone and Google.

• Crowd Fusion, a Web Publishing Platform for Topic based Websites. One of the newest web content management platforms to come our way is Crowd Fusion CMS. Although only in private beta testing at this time, it is getting some notice.
• Top 5 Best Twitter Tools for Business. Endless analysts, "social media experts" and pundits are telling you that it's imperative that you develop your Twitter presence. Yes, yes, yes… As for the tools, here are what we consider the top 5 twitter tools worth some of your precious time.
• Google Goes After SharePoint with New Sites API. With the introduction of Google's new Sites API -- and some tools that explicitly pull stuff out of SharePoint and place it into Google Sites -- the real heat between Redmond and Mountain View is finally starting to build.
• Ektron Snaps Up Former Interwoven CMS Evangelist. With the M&A activity in the content management space not dwindling down despite the economic crisis, it’s only natural to see the content management industry talent hop around. At times, that happens in a fashion resembling the game called “A Cold Wind Blows.”
• Social Media Minute: Employers Ban Social Media, Twitter Finally Gets Revenue Deals. According to a study from Robert Half Technology, a little more than half of U.S. workplaces are banning their employees from viewing and interacting with social networking sites.
• Jive Wants to Socialize Your SharePoint Enterprise Content. Jive Software has a new strategy designed to extend SBS across an organization's content silos. The plan? Take enterprise content stored in your Enterprise CMS and socialize it within SBS.
• The Great Flash for the iPhone Fake Out. Yes, Flash has been brought to the iPhone. No, you can't view Flash-based Web content on the iPhone. Kind of a rough deal, right?

The Economy is in the Dumps but Content Management is Booming

If you're looking to advance your career, or if your org has got empty seats in need of savvy CMSers, you're in luck. Catch the best fish of the season on our on our content management job board.

Featured Jobs:

• .NET Software Developer at Bridgeline
• Content Management Software Documentation Writer at pTools
• Content Management Application Developer (Reddot) at Quotient
• Inside Sales Representative at Flypaper
• Software Developer at Unicon
• Web CMS Admin at UC Davis
• Software Sales Engineer at Westbrook Technologies

Whether Traveling or Virtual, There are Events to Attend

Wondering how to spend your time in the next few weeks or months? Attend a conference or maybe just a webinar or two. Have a look at our Industry Events Calendar to see what's happening in your area.

Featured Events:

• Day Ignite Zurich 2009 -- Oct 14-Oct 15 (Zurich, CH)
• Open Text Content World 2009 -- Oct 25-30 (Orlando,FL)
• Day Ignite Chicago 2009 -- Oct 27-Oct 29 (Chicago, IL)
• How to Drive an Effective Governance Retention and Compliance Strategy -- webinar, Oct 29, 2009
• J. Boye Aarhus 2009 -- Nov 3-Nov 5 (Aarhus, Denmark)
• Sharepoint Symposium 2009 -- Nov 20 (San Jose, CA
• WordCamp NYC 2009 -- November 14-15 (New York, NY)

Move over Kindle, Sony is throwing its hat into the ePublishing ring. Sony Electronics, which sells e-book devices under the Reader brand, has announced that it will start selling digital books only in the ePub format by the end of the year.

By adopting open standards for ePublishing developed by the International Digital Publishing Form, which are already supported by a growing number of major publishers and a growing number of reading devices, Sony will end its proprietary DRM software (that restricts how often e-books can be shared or copied) in favor of technology from the software maker Adobe.

A wave of excitement shot through the Internet as bloggers suddenly noticed that Amazon (news, site) had posted the source code for each version of the Kindle.

However, the code is really just the GPL'd Linux libraries and drivers (Debian Linux is the common speculation), and it's been available since 2007. The e-book reader part is in no way part of the source package.

While no license file is attached, the folder the code unpacks into is called "gplrelease," which might be a massive hint. Not to mention all that's in there is what would be required for them to release legally for the GPL portions.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon had hinted recently at a conference that Kindle books and Kindle readers were, to him, two separate businesses. Releasing a Kindle iPhone app was certainly one hint that he was serious. Another was his statement that he intended to give the Kindle device team competition by making the Kindle books available on even more mobile and computing devices.

But entirely releasing the Kindle source doesn't appear to be the way they're going to do it just now. Who knows, maybe later if Amazon decides it would rather offer their content on more devices and get out of the hardware business.

Previously, we reported about Mediaspectrum’s (news, site) web-based content management platforms that have been widely used by the world’s newspaper publishers. This week, Mediaspectrum launched an update to ContentWatch, the editorial web platform for web and print publishers alike. ContentWatch 2.0 features new capabilities, including semantic search.

It's been a week or two since our last round-up of all things web publishing, and it is with pride that we announce that newspapers are still alive.

Setting Records

Earlier this week, newspaper pros gathered in Las Vegas for the Newspaper Association of America's first annual mediaXchange conference. Data from Nielsen Online was presented to indicate that average monthly unique audience figures for newspaper Web sites grew by over 7.9 million in January to 74.8 million visitors -- an increase of 11.9 percent over the same period a year ago.