Not a lot of news this week, with the possible exception of the
FREE TODAY ONLY offering from Microsoft of some of its technical manuals:
Few things are more wonderful than free books. Today, for your continuing education pleasure, MSDN is offering this huge collection of free Microsoft ebooks covering Office 365, SQL Server, SharePoint, Visual Studio, Windows Azure, Windows Server, and more.
- IT World
There are sixty different ebooks available, and you can find them
here.
The Apple trial continues in New York this week, with the DOJ's smoking gun failing to ignite much real heat, but providing a bit of the absurd, according to CNN Money/Fortune, in the trial.
Steve Jobs wrote a series of email drafts discussing negotiations with the publishers for terms on selling books via the new iBookstore. Within the final draft, which was unsent, Jobs wrote:
"I can live with this as long as they move Amazon to the agent model too for new releases for the first year."
"If they don't, I'm not sure we can be competitive." The Amazon note appears to be the last draft email in the series, said Cue. It is also the only one in the series signed by Jobs.
The court was then sidetracked into a discussion of timestamps and email drafts and what they could all possibly mean.
What made the whole detour into the provenance of Jobs' e-mail so absurd was that the thing wasn't really a "smoking gun" at all. Cue had already testified that he and Jobs had originally planned to get the publishers to move Amazon from the wholesale model (where Amazon was selling New York Times bestsellers for $9.99) to the agency model (where the book publishers could set their own, higher prices).
- CNN Money/Fortune
The trial is ongoing in New York. The basic outline of the case can be found in an
earlier diary.
Digital Book World is soliciting entries for the 2014 award:
NEW YORK – June 18, 2013 – The Digital Book Awards (formerly known as the Publishing Innovation Awards), founded in 2010 and produced by The Digital Book World Conference + Expo, recognize innovation, creativity and excellence in all aspects of digital book publishing. Each year, award winners and finalists in 15 categories demonstrate fresh thinking, inspired design and bold technology integration, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in this constantly evolving industry. Winners will be showcased at the 2014 Digital Book World Conference and the Digital Book Awards evening gala. Entries for this year’s competition are now being accepted. For more information, go to: www.digitalbookworld.com/the-digital-book-awards/
In yet another attempt to track book piracy, a German firm has come up with a tweak on the watermark. Instead of a specific watermark that appears on all books, the program will slightly alter some aspect of vocabulary or punctuation in every copy of a book sold.
While the storyline of an ebook would remain intact, the DRM would change some words around, as well as insert synonyms, change the paragraph format, or alter the punctuation just a tad. A good example is that some copies could come with “don’t” instead of “do not,” or “that’s so pathetic” instead of “that’s pathetic.”
- Slash Gear
While I am not a professional writer, I choose the words I use carefully and would not be especially happy to have a computer consult Roget to determine what I meant to say and how I meant to say it.
Random House is introducing a series of enhanced cooking ebooks for the iPad. And providing me with fodder for next week's diary as I take one for a spin. See you then.
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