Agent/author Richard Curtis has a superb overview on the publishing industry: Had the plethora of mergers and acquisitions that shrank the number of publishers to a handful of behemoths achieved a literary renaissance, perhaps we could rationalize that it was worth all the turmoil. But it did not. After each consolidation the patient continued to… Continue reading

Jef Raskin has passed away, at only 61.

Real Networks is having a hard time exciting Wall Street. When RealNetworks founder and chief executive, Rob Glaser, pitched his stock yesterday at the Goldman Sachs Technology Symposium, the room was half empty and only a handful of investors stayed around to ask questions. Digital media is hot, but RealNetworks apparently is not, at least… Continue reading

Power of the iPod Dept. It ain’t just for music.…

Rafat Ali gives an update on the ever-evolving portable media players market: The considerable and constant morphing of portable media players and mobile phones into swiss-army-knife devices is taking its toll on PDAs. Sony already had pulled back on the elegant but high-priced Clie in its overseas markets but now is halting development in Japan.… Continue reading