Since fall 2008, Magellan Media has monitored pirated copies of O'Reilly Media titles circulating on illegal download sites--releasing some interesting results today at BookExpo America.

GalleyCat caught up with William Johnson, the New York University grad student who actually collected the data--cruising file sharing sites every day since the study began. This video interview contains practical advice for publishers looking to monitor pirated books on file sharing sites.

The company just released its findings as a new report entitled "Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales."

Highrise is the best way to keep track of who you talked to, what was said, and what to do next. Twitter integration allows you to have an even better view of what’s on a person’s mind, what they’re saying right now, and what their current interests are.

Now you can check your previous communications history as well as what they are tweeting right now. Tweets are great conversation starters that show you’re paying attention to what’s going on in their world.

Here’s a video to show you how easy it is to add Twitter info for a contact:

We really hope you like this feature (and be sure to follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/37signals).

In an email exchange with Malcolm Gladwell, ESPN’s Bill Simmons wonders why NBA teams rarely, if ever, take chances — specifically: Why don’t more underdogs try full court pressing opponents? The conversation then extends to the NFL too.

Gladwell’s response:

Is there any other industry in the world (well, outside of Detroit) so terrified of innovation? I went to see a Lakers-Warriors game earlier this season, and it was abundantly clear after five minutes that the Warriors’ chances of winning were, oh, no better than 10 percent. Why wouldn’t you have a special squad of trained pressers come in for five minutes a half and press Kobe and Fisher? Worst-case scenario is that you exhaust Kobe, and make him a bit more vulnerable down the stretch. Best case is that you rattle the Lakers and force a half-dozen extra turnovers that turn out to be crucial. And if you lose, so what? You were going to lose anyway…

I feel the same way about the attitude of professional football teams toward the no-huddle offense. Right now, great teams (such as the Colts and Patriots) use the no-huddle selectively, as a way to maximize their dominance. But why don’t bad teams use it? If you were the Lions, why not run the no-huddle this season? Why not put together a lighter, better-conditioned offensive line and a radically simplified playbook and see what happens? It’s not as if you are risking a Super Bowl if it backfires. Your offensive line is lousy anyway, so there’s no harm in tearing it down, and your fans aren’t going to turn on you if you get killed while you work out the kinks. Last I checked, your fans have already turned on you. On the plus side, maybe the no-huddle exhausts the other team’s defense so much you slow down their pass rush in the second half. And maybe giving your quarterback a bit more autonomy helps develop his knowledge of the game, and his leadership skills.

The consistent failure of underdogs in professional sports to even try something new suggests, to me, that there is something fundamentally wrong with the incentive structure of the leagues.

Obvious parallels to the business world here too. (“No one ever got fired for buying IBM” anyone?) Sometimes the riskiest thing to do is not take any risks. If you’re outmatched by the competition, isn’t it silly not to take a chance? If you’re an underdog in your niche, the Warriors or the Lions of your industry, playing it safe and imitating the established players will probably doom you to failure.

One or two-person businesses that think they need to follow “common sense” advice that’s worked for the big guys are missing the point. When you’re small and risking less, you don’t need a business plan. You don’t need a board of directors. You don’t need to study the techniques of Fortune 500 CEOs. You don’t need to know Six Sigma ideas. The strategy that’s right for heavyweights has nothing to do with how welterweights should fight.

Related pieces on underdogs who use innovation to compete: “How David Beats Goliath” is Gladwell’s piece in the New Yorker about the topic. Michael Lewis wrote about the unorthodox success of Texas Tech’s football team in “Coach Leach Goes Deep, Very Deep” [NY Times]. When Texas Tech reached the No. 2 ranking in college football last year, Lewis followed up with a piece that discussed how Leach knew he had to be different to have a chance.

To appreciate what he’s done you have to appreciate how hard it is to get players—he gets third or fourth bite of apple down there. He’s working with everyone else’s rejects. Generally, he’s doing so much more with so much less.

Lewis also covered similar ground in Moneyball, which analyzed the Oakland A’s success despite its limited payroll.

Dutch practice NL Architects have transformed the brutalist facade of the Slovenská Národná Galéria (Slovak National Gallery) in Bratislava into an upside-down highway with road markings and cars. (more…)

Industrial designer Karin Ehrnberger and interaction designer Loove Broms of the Interactive Institute in Sweden have designed a series of household objects highlighting energy consumption in daily activities. (more…)

Our favorite maker of design-savvy, eco-friendly home products has chosen a new leader. San Francisco-based Method announced today that Drew Fraser will take over as president and chief executive officer of the company. Formerly a senior vice president at Whirlpool, Fraser will replace interim CEO Dan Swander starting June 15. Before joining Whirlpool in 2004, Fraser spent ten years working at Clorox and previously held sales and marketing roles at Procter & Gamble. Privately held Method was founded in 2000 by Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan, who enlisted designer Joshua Handy to create the curvy (and 100% carbon neutral) packaging that has become a company signature.

Previously on UnBeige:

How much modern design-themed fun can you squeeze into a weekend? Find out next month in Los Angeles when our friends at Dwell host the three-day design extravaganza that is Dwell on Design (the cool kids refer to it as DOD, not to be confused with the Department of Defense). Among the attractions: an exhibition, home tours, a movie night, and a design conference featuring keynote speaker Daniel Pink. UnBeige editor emertius Alissa Walker has been writing up a storm about DOD on Dwell's website and recently interviewed Pink. The author, design advocate, and manga fan—who is himself in the throes of a Dwell-style home renovation—gave Alissa a sneak preview of his DOD talk, which will address motivation and creativity. "The people and the organizations that really flourish prize autonomy, the sense of doing something out of self-direction rather than being pushed by somebody else—the sense of mastery, which is the desire to get better and better and better at something, and also the sense of purpose, which is about doing something that outlasts yourself, in the service of a cause larger than oneself," said Pink. "And in a lot of ways these three keys to true motivation are embodied by architects and designers very strongly." Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr. Pink, and special codes will get UnBeige readers discounted tickets to DOD. We've posted them after the jump.

continued...

Email: tickets@unitytheatre.co.uk

Tickets: £6 / £5 concessions and £4 for students of Liverpool Community College.

“We Are Englan is a unique play that has been realised through dedicated research. With an exciting fusion of comedy, physical theatre and verbatim a serious issue is addressed without degradation of entertainment value. The production aims to highlight the intense struggle for survival and freedom that takes place out of sight around the world every day and gives credence to the belief that every person has the right to make a better life for themselves. We Are Englan is a play that shows the human spirit at its best and contempt for human life at its worst.”

Micheal Jackson as Pharoh! I LIVE!

Kanye is mad for Ambush. Pharell is mad for Ambush. I'm nowhere near their spending league but I'm mad for Ambush too.

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I am not a gamer.
I do not consider myself a gaming enthusiast, I do not belong to any kind of "gaming community" and I have not kept my finger on the proverbial pulse of interactive entertainment since my monthly NES newsletter subscription ran out circa 1988.
Save a few momentary aberrations--a brief fling with "Doom" ('93), a torrid encounter with "Half-Life" ('98), a secret tryst with "Grand Theft Auto III" ('01)--I've worked to keep my relationship to that world at arm's length.
Video games, I'd come to believe, had not significantly improved in twenty years. As kids, we'd expected them to evolve with us, to grow and adapt to culture, to become complex and sophisticated like the fine arts; rather, they seemed to remain in a perpetual state of adolescence, merely buffing-out and strutting their ever-flashier chops instead of taking on new challenges and exploring untapped possibilities. Maps grew larger, graphics sharpened to near-photorealistic quality, player options expanded, levels enumerated, and yet the pastime as a whole never advanced beyond a mere guilty pleasure.
Every time a friend would tug my sleeve and giddily drag me to view the latest system, the latest hyped-up game, I'd find myself consistently underwhelmed. Once the narcotic spell of a new virtual landscape wore off, all that was left was the same ossified product game producers had been peddling since 1986. Characters in battle-themed games still followed the tired James Cameron paradigm--tough guy, funny guy, butch girl, robot; stories in "sandbox" games were as aimless and hopelessly convoluted as ever.
This is to say nothing of the interminable interludes that kept appearing between levels, clearly designed by wannabe action movie directors. Fully scripted scenes populated by broad stereotypes would go on for five or even ten minutes at a time, with the "camera" incessantly roving about, punching in, racking focus, jump-cutting., as though an executive had instructed his team to "make it edgier, snappier, more Casino."
Where was the modern equivalent to the Infocom games, those richly imagined text-based worlds that put to shame any dime-a-dozen title from the Choose Your Own Adventure series? This isn't nostalgia talking. Infocom, like its predecessors in BASIC, put out games written by actual authors; not only did they know how to construct engaging stories and fleshed-out characters, they foresaw the opportunities presented by non-linear narratives and capitalized on their interactive potential.
Was it me, or had "refinement" in the subsequent years become a dwindling pipe-dream, like accountability in broadcast journalism?

Recently, however, I had a change of heart. On a trip upstate to visit a friend, I was somewhat reluctantly introduced to the latest installment of the "Fallout" series, third in the sprawling, post-apocalyptic trilogy, only to emerge three days later, transfigured.
Here's the gist: your character has been born into an alternate reality, one in which nuclear war has ravaged the planet at some point immediately following World War II. Subsequent generations have grown up inside elaborate subterranean fallout shelters where culture, if not technology, has remained frozen in the 50s--faded pastel colors and lollipop iconography share space with rusting robots and exotic weaponry, almost as a form of collective denial. Those that have ventured out into the radioactive wasteland have cobbled together ersatz settlements from the ruins, a la Mad Max, in which they are able to form intimate, scavenger communities subsisting on scraps. You enter the game as an infant, grow up in an underground vault, and eventually embark on a journey that takes you deep into the perilous outdoors.
So far, a familiar, setup. But a few things set the game apart from the standard fare. For one thing, the relationship between the player and the character is mediated by something called the "pip-boy"--a digital interface strapped to the character's arm which holds all the information relevant to your status: health points, radiation levels, weapons & ammo, etc., plus a working map of places you've explored and the details of your current quest.

As far as I know, this is the first time a game has come up with anything like this. The pip-boy acts as a bridge between the 'diegetic' and 'non-diegetic' worlds, a thing rooted in and motivated by the artificial construct of the game, yet positioned w/r/t the player such that he has a lifeline to the virtual realm at all times. This simple step--providing an internally-justified means of communication between player and character--makes a crucial psychological difference. It's a bit like having a "Dungeon Master" along with you, only this time it's not an extremely annoying child.
The overall effect on one's consciousness is unnerving. That strange, not-quite-real sense of space that follows a day spent in a museum, or even an amusement park, permeates the outside world for long stretches of time.
Broadly speaking, this is something we ask of all art: to tweak and enrich our subjective experience of reality. (Good stuff does this for a day; great stuff does it for a lifetime.) But we also ask it introduce us to concepts, to construct microcosms that allow ideas to take shape and find a sort of aesthetic cohesion--and this is where video games, indeed all games, have historically fallen short.
"Fallout 3" is a totally different animal. It's a game, yes, but only insofar as it adheres to a set of specific gameplay rules; beyond that, it's a nest of integrated narratives more in keeping with Julio Cortazar 's novel, Hopscotch, than, say, a game of hopscotch.
Indeed, the playing of the game is merely the entry point, a framing device that allows you access to a furiously detailed world. Is this in-itself new? To some degree, the same could be said about last year's "Grand Theft Auto"--the player enters the alternate New York as Nico Belic, a Slavic thug just in from Eastern Europe, and the story unfolds more or less according to the manner of one's choosing. Missions are accepted or denied, bad guys are mowed-down or spared, items are acquired or neglected.
The difference is that the game "doesn't care." Like "The Sims," "Grand Theft Auto" does not offer meaningful consequences to irrevocable actions. Getting a prospective girlfriend to invite you upstairs after a date simply results in an opportunity for another date; outrunning a cop means only that you will no longer be chased by him.
Conversely, a particular course of action in "Fallout 3" actually affects the way in which the story is told. Defusing a bomb in the center of town doesn't just award you with karma points, it opens doors in the story while closing others. Enslaving a citizen doesn't just turn a once-friendly community against you, it puts you in good standing with the slavers you encounter later on, which in turn enables a set of otherwise unavailable choices. The game "cares" what you do, though it does not "judge" you--again, like a Dungeon Master.
In Aristotelian terms, the dramatic action ultimately takes precedent over the "obstacles." No matter which choices you make, or in what order you make them, the game is predicated on an ingeniously organized narrative architecture that presents a nested series of dramatic events and corresponding consequences, the constellation of which determines the "plot points" of your particular quest. Like life, what you do is who you are.
Which is not to suggest that we begin judging games by the standards of drama proper. Equating the two raises the same red flags we find ourselves facing when we start calling jazz "America's classical music" and comic books "graphic literature." Neither idiom seems to benefit from the association. On the contrary, it suggests that we continue evaluating them on their own terms, for what they can accomplish given their own advantages and constraints--only with the bar set much, much higher.
It also means that those of us too snooty to accept certain terms for ourselves might have to buck up and swallow our pride.
Hell, I'm a gamer.

---

Alex Rose is a co-founding editor of Hotel St. George Press and the author of The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales. His work has appeared, most recently, in The New York Times, Ploughshares and Fantasy Magazine. His story, "Ostracon," will be included in the 2009 edition of Best American Short Stories.

About two years ago, Dan Visel ended a thoughtful post on the New York Public Library's newly-installed Espresso Book Machine by proposing: "There's a discussion here that needs to happen."

In light of the second version of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) coming out here in England, I'd like to take up his proposal.

First, a little bit about the machine and how it's improved over the last two years. The machine, produced by OnDemandBooks, put simply, is a device that allows individuals to print books from a digital catalogue on demand. The original idea was to facilitate customers' access to books on backlist, or, in its more ambitious conceptualization, to function as a vending machine that provided books in places lacking the space in which to store them (think cruise ships). As Dan Visel noted in his original post, the version installed in the NYPL was a hulking contraption that took a long time to produce books outstanding only for their poor quality:

"Holding my copy of Faulkner in my hands, the overwhelming feeling was one of cheapness: the book had been reduced, finally, to being a disposable consumer object, available as easily as a latte at Starbuck's. The books that the Espresso was putting out every twenty minutes existed for demonstration purposes...I sensed that the books probably wouldn't be read."

Since then, ODB have made the size of the machine itself more compact (it still looks like a photocopying machine), decreased the printing time, and significantly widened the material available. As Blackwell's CEO put it upon the EBM's installation in its Charing Cross store two weeks ago, "It's giving the chance for smaller locations, independent booksellers, to have the opportunity to truly compete with big stock-holding shops and Amazon." Put bluntly, the unique selling point of the EBM from the perspective of book store owners is that the breadth of titles immediately available will lure customers away from sites like Amazon and back into their bricks-and-mortar shops.

Also since then, a lot has happened in the publishing industry. Not the least of which is Kindle 2, as well as the iPhone, Apple's imminent Kindle-Killer, and the expansion of GoogleBooks' content (which includes magazines as well as books). Instantaneous access to limited, but rapidly-expanding, content is now expected and easy in numerous digital formats.

So, what has the EBM got that the digital formats haven't? One thing, really. Presence. While the cost of books printed by the EBM is low, swathes of online content is free, and e-readers will, like all technology, decrease in price in due time. On-screen readability has progressed impressively and may even have an advantage over the smaller fonts used in standard printed books. If the iPod is any indication, people are willing to pay a more significant amount up front in exchange for total and ubiquitous access to their personal catalogue--up until now, of music, but perhaps soon of books as well. Many music stores now allow customers to download music from in-store digital stations in order to avoid purchasing the physical CD itself. The EBM, with a comparable catalogue, suggests that the same will soon be available to people toting along their E-Books to the store. Plug in, download, read. All these factors would seem to spell a speedy end to the EBM.

So again, I ask, what has the EBM got that the digital formats haven't? And again the answer is Presence. If people are going to continue to purchase paper books, publishers have got to do for books what the music industry failed to do for CDs. While the CD-stand or -case was almost de rigeur in 1990s interior decor, people soon realized that a tower of transparent plastic was not the personality statement piece they imagined it could be. Yet vinyl records, despite their obsolescence, retain their appeal for many, from nostalgic Baby Boomers to cool-hunting teens. Perhaps it is, after all, the sound quality, but I'm willing to bet that the labor put into sleeves and liner notes is what has guaranteed their enduring appeal. Records are fetishized objects, while CDs are shiny detritus disks. At this moment in time, books seem poised to go either way.

How can the EBM and the publishing industry at large promote the permanence of the paper book? Capitalize on what already makes the book appealing. Its Presence. Looking at my own bookshelves at the moment, my eye is pleased to see three elegantly-designed paperbacks of Murakami's works leaning against one another, while lamenting that the fourth was produced by a publisher with a lesser eye for design and display. My Penguin Classics form a band of black crowned with a single red striation, and my cookbooks' spines flash an array of color that, frankly, makes me hungry.

Of course, all of these are mine. I chose them, I own them, I feel their presence in my home. But many, many other people also own them. They have what I have like the certain green-and-white paper coffee cups alluded to in the Espresso Book Machine's name. But what if, instead of being a customer, accustomed to the books that weren't customized to me, I were a patron? What if books, instead of being made more disposable, were restored their status of belonging? What if printing allowed us to imprint ourselves on the books that we've printed? All of this seems to oppose what printing inherently is and what it revolutionized, as Elizabeth Eisenstein argued. But it is easy to argue that standardization was not an inevitable end to a technologically-determined progression.

What if the EBM allowed us to design books the way we want to see them and want them to be seen? At present, the only choice allowed is paper color. And the desire to keep prices low--an appeal that Amazon and online content already have--demands that options be limited. But what if I could change the cover of that fourth Murakami book to a design more fitting with the other three? What if publishers commissioned more than one artist to produce cover designs that competed for our attention and won them pretty royalties? What if I could hide my Harlequin romance novel behind a cover bearing Kafka's name? What if I could expand the margins of pages in order to accommodate my written conversations with the text? What if I could append an index with a concordance of a single character's use of the word "phoney"? What if I could print up the journalistically-toned novels of Marquez in Courier font and the Iliad in Herculanum? What if I thought something as precious as Poe deserved octavo? What if I printed the Wife of Bath's Tale before the Knight's?

The what-ifs are many and obviously expensive. But what if we could bend and shift the standardization that is the essence of printing? What if we could change printing to be more present that it already is? Physical witness to a choice made now and in the present.

Its so very hard to pick just one! Image via www.wallpaper.com/sex-issue/tart-cards/

It's bound to be a collector's item methinks! And TI's favorite aspect of the issue, these Type tart cards are exactly what one would expect of Mr Saville. Love that he reminds us that sex and art are inseparable! For more details straight from wallpaper.com...jump!

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As one of the final events or the Climate for Change show at FACT there was a Sustainable Fashion show tonight in the gallery. In fact, there were two shows, both fully booked and very good, lots of inventive ideas and not too many bin bags in sight. Its given us a few ideas and Minako’s already sorting through that bag of old clothes thats been waiting to go to the charity shop for ages.  All the items were made by local designers from recycled materials and the show was introduced by Kirsty Doyle.

If you are not aware of all internet traditions, you may not know about the "Downfall" parodies. You're missing out. The New York Times explained the phenomon back in October 2008:

On YouTube, we’re in a bunker, and the enemies are always, always closing in. The ceilings are low. The air is stifling. A disheveled leader is delusional.

This is the premise of more than 100 videos on the Web — the work of satirists who for years have been snatching video and audio from "Downfall," the 2004 German movie of Hitler’s demise, and doctoring it to tell a range of stories about personal travails and world politics. By adding new English-language subtitles, they transform the movie’s climactic scene, in which Hitler (played by Bruno Ganz) rails against his enemies and reluctantly faces his defeat, into the generic story of a rabid blowhard brought low.

The problem for "Downfall" artistes, however, is that not everyone likes being parodied, and the targets of such mocking (and the studio that owns the rights to "Downfall") sometimes send takedown notices to YouTube under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Parody, of course, is protected by the fair use doctrine in copyright law, but that usually doesn't stop YouTube from following through with the takedowns. It's cheaper and easier to just take down everything that the site receives a DMCA notice for than to review individual claims. Now the heroic Electronic Frontier Foundation has produced the ultimate meta-Downfall parody, in which Bruno Ganz' Hitler tries to send takedown notices for all the Downfall parodies. The result is amusing and informative:

In a world where post-grunge bands sell Snuggies, people prance around the beach in Wearable Towels, and mop up battered faces with ShamWows, we have to ask: Where will all these products be when our fickle-consumer preferences take a turn? You don't have to be a Freegan to come up with the answer.

3.5 Floppy Disc

Then: 1998 was the heyday of the cheerfully colored floppy disk. More than 2 billion were sold worldwide.

Now: External drives and CDs have usurped the 3.5. In 2007, PC World stopped selling the disks, and now the only place you can find a 3.5 drive is on Mother Jones intern computers.

Neither Gone Nor Forgotten: Turn boxes of old disks into handbags, pen holders, coasters, or spacey, Cubist artwork.

Pagers

Then: Invented in 1949 for the New York City Jewish Hospital, beepers didn't achieve popularity until 1974 with the release of Motorola's Pageboy. Popularized by doctors, drug dealers, and pimps, 61 million pagers were beeping in the U.S. in 1994.

Now: The cellular telephone killed the pager. In 2008, four billion cell phones were in use worldwide, connecting more than 60% of the world population to American Idol ringtones and creating fodder for the Texts From Last Night.

Neither Gone Nor Forgotten: Beepers still buzz for emergency personnel and doctors . In Britian, pages are popular with "twitchers," who pay for up-to-the-minute tips on where to spot rare birds.

Scrunchies (also scrunchy or scrunci)

Then: Rommy Revson patented the fluffy, fabric-wrapped hair ties in 1993. With styles that range from polka dots, to tie dye, to silk, suede, and faux fur, the scrunchie swept across the malls of this great country and into our hearts.

Now: In 1999 Revson sued her lawyer for fraudulent billing after he spent five years defending her patent. She lost the case and $670,000. In 2003, adding insult to injury, Carrie Bradshaw mocked the scrunchie in an episode of Sex and the City for being terribly out of fashion.

Neither Gone Nor Forgotten: The popularity of the scrunchie dwindled but never really left the big hair of the Bible-belt or the world of Olympic gymnastics. And, thanks to the purveyor of all things hip and ironic, American Apparel, the scrunchie is avaliable for purchase once again.

How many times have you begun to study for an exam and after 15 minutes get distracted and move on to doing something else. The Study Ball is a prison-style ball and chain that you can program to keep track of how much time you spend studying. Once you’ve selected the desired duration, you chain the ball to your ankle and the manacle won’t come off until the schedule study time is up.
A red LED indicator displays the “Study Time Left” and keeps you informed as to how much longer you’ve got to keep studying.
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Magazine hanger designed by Isaac Yu Chen.

In a gesture similar to inserting a bookmark, magazines are hung on their own weight, creating a graphic display.

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