AUTHORS

Disruptomatic
Angela Natividad
Angela Natividad is a freelance copywriter, journalist and strategist based in Paris. She co-founded AdVerveBlog.com, a blog and podcast about ads and design, and writes MarketingProfs' “Get to the Point!: Social Media” newsletters. She likes people and animals, but not as much as books.
Tweet her @luckthelady.
James Martin
James Martin is the community manager of music & TV tradeshows midem & MIPTV/MIPCOM. He edits their respective industry news & trends blogs (blog.midem.com & mipblog.com) and also covers video games and technology for French cultural weekly A Nous Paris
Tweet him at @jamesmart_in
Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge is a freelance journalist based in the UK. He writes about digital music for Music Ally, and about apps and mobile for The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Appside, as well as his own Apps Playground site.
Tweet him @stuartdredge
The New Yorker Curates Crowdsourced Kraftwerk Here’s some easy ingenuity. Last week, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote an awesome New Yorker article about German band Kraftwerk’s performances at the MOMA. As often happens at concerts of epic style and breadth (eight whole nights!), official photographers were confined to a few choice but restrictive spots.  What’d The New Yorker do? It sifted through Instagram, Facebook and Flickr, where the audience — free to photograph at will, wherever they were — uploaded a diversity of concert shots. Here are three by Steve Milanowski, Daniela Stigh and Stephanie Zussman; visit the site for a complete slideshow. This material is just as good as pro photog work. It adds value to The New Yorker’s coverage and also valorises the people who were present (readers or not). Also, as readers of the magazine and the site, we have a richer perspective of the Kraftwerk shows. Nice!The New Yorker Curates Crowdsourced Kraftwerk Here’s some easy ingenuity. Last week, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote an awesome New Yorker article about German band Kraftwerk’s performances at the MOMA. As often happens at concerts of epic style and breadth (eight whole nights!), official photographers were confined to a few choice but restrictive spots.  What’d The New Yorker do? It sifted through Instagram, Facebook and Flickr, where the audience — free to photograph at will, wherever they were — uploaded a diversity of concert shots. Here are three by Steve Milanowski, Daniela Stigh and Stephanie Zussman; visit the site for a complete slideshow. This material is just as good as pro photog work. It adds value to The New Yorker’s coverage and also valorises the people who were present (readers or not). Also, as readers of the magazine and the site, we have a richer perspective of the Kraftwerk shows. Nice!The New Yorker Curates Crowdsourced Kraftwerk Here’s some easy ingenuity. Last week, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote an awesome New Yorker article about German band Kraftwerk’s performances at the MOMA. As often happens at concerts of epic style and breadth (eight whole nights!), official photographers were confined to a few choice but restrictive spots.  What’d The New Yorker do? It sifted through Instagram, Facebook and Flickr, where the audience — free to photograph at will, wherever they were — uploaded a diversity of concert shots. Here are three by Steve Milanowski, Daniela Stigh and Stephanie Zussman; visit the site for a complete slideshow. This material is just as good as pro photog work. It adds value to The New Yorker’s coverage and also valorises the people who were present (readers or not). Also, as readers of the magazine and the site, we have a richer perspective of the Kraftwerk shows. Nice!

The New Yorker Curates Crowdsourced Kraftwerk

Here’s some easy ingenuity. Last week, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote an awesome New Yorker article about German band Kraftwerk’s performances at the MOMA. As often happens at concerts of epic style and breadth (eight whole nights!), official photographers were confined to a few choice but restrictive spots. 

What’d The New Yorker do? It sifted through Instagram, Facebook and Flickr, where the audience — free to photograph at will, wherever they were — uploaded a diversity of concert shots. Here are three by Steve Milanowski, Daniela Stigh and Stephanie Zussman; visit the site for a complete slideshow.

This material is just as good as pro photog work. It adds value to The New Yorker’s coverage and also valorises the people who were present (readers or not). Also, as readers of the magazine and the site, we have a richer perspective of the Kraftwerk shows. Nice!

Microsoft Banking Big on Barnes & Noble’s Nook

Since Amazon changed the rules of the game with Kindle, it seems you can’t be a big box book dealer without having your own e-reading device. Still, if you’re competing with AMZN as a brick and morter company, you’re at a massive disadvantage.

Barnes & Nobles may be able to fend off the repo men a wee while longer, having just announced a “strategic partnership” with Microsoft for its e-reading device, the Nook. For a 17.6% stake, Microsoft will invest $300 million in a subsidiary dedicated to Barnes & Nobles’ digital and college businesses, currently dubbed “Newco.” Educational operations will be crucial to Newco’s development, with Nook Study software for students and teachers getting serious push.

But the most visible and immediate change resulting from the partnership will be the Windows 8 Nook application. A test version of Windows 8 was released to the public in February, equipped with a storefront containing some 100 apps. (Contrast that with the over 585,000 apps for iPhone and iPad.) The test also featured Amazon’s Kindle app for e-books; no word on whether it will remain once integration with Nook happens.

Microsoft’s Andy Lees says Barnes & Nobles’ ”complementary assets” will  ”accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices”, adding, “We’re at the cusp of a revolution in reading.”

The cusp of a revolution? It’s happened. And it’s kinda been awhile, at least in the tech world, where yesterday is roughly 50 years ago.

The ‘Net: Tough on Publishing, Great for Literacy

“Remember the good old days when everyone read really good books, like, maybe in the post-war years when everyone appreciated a good use of the semi-colon? Everyone’s favorite book was by Faulkner or Woolf or Roth. We were a civilized civilization. This was before the Internet and cable television, and so people had these, like, wholly different desires and attention spans. They just craved, craved, craved the erudition and cultivation of our literary kings and queens.”

It turns out this is a total misconception. Gallup surveys find that despite — or because of — insta-publishing and our now endless media options, people are actually reading more, not fewer, books. (That Amazon’s now punting more Kindle books than real ones is great evidence-in-action.)