Category: Jon’s Online Currents Articles

By Jon. For Online Currents 17 (9/10), 18 (1) 2002-2003

By Jon: First published in Online Currents – 20 (7) September 2005

Many years ago, at university, I overheard a snippet of conversation between two female students: “I’ve heard of garlic bread,” said one, “but I’ve never tried it.”

Many people feel the same way about macros.  They know that it’s possible to automate repetitive processes on the computer by creating macros, but it all seems too complicated.  There are too many decisions.  Local or global?  Relative or absolute?  Keystroke or toolbar button?  Also, how to create a macro that involves two or more programs?   read more

By Jon. For Online Currents

Online Currents 2004 – 19(8) 25-27

When the World Wide Web appeared in the early 1990’s, many users, myself included, assumed that most people would soon do their reading on-screen and that printed documents would slowly become a thing of the past. We soon learnt how wrong we were. Despite continuing improvements in screen displays, many users continue to print documents for marking up, for reference, and simply for reading. It is in order to serve this group that Adobe developed their Portable Document Format (PDF) in 1993. Since then PDF has gone through several versions, but it retains the same fundamental goal: to provide a way of electronically distributing documents that look the same and print the same. read more

By Jon: First published in Online Currents 2005 – 20(3) 6-7

Metabrowser Authoring Tool (also known as Tag Tool) is a program, for viewing and editing metadata on websites. It comes with support for twelve standard metadata schemas, including DC, the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS), the New Zealand Government Locator Service (NGLS) and the Australian Justice Sector schema. New schemas can also be developed and saved by the user.

Metabrowser is an Australian product and is available for download fromhttp://metabrowser.spirit.net.au. The current version is 1.8101. There is a thirty-day trial period after which the application can be registered online for $AU162.82 (discounts for multiple installations). The authors also support a metadata server which facilitates website searching, and provides consultancy and other assistance in establishing metadata. read more

By Jon. For Online Currents

By Jon. For Online Currents

By Jon: First published in Online Currents 2003 – 18(4): 10-12

In this series of 3 articles I first summarise the current state of the e-book market in general and then look at the situation for non-fiction e-books. I give some reasons why non-fiction books are not sharing in the rapid growth of fiction titles and examine several models for non-fiction e-book distribution: free downloads; paid downloads; paid distribution on CD or other media; and ‘library’ systems which sell access to texts but not the texts themselves. read more

By Jon: First published in Online Currents 2003 – 18(5): 12-14

In a previous article I indicated that the fledgling e-book market has matured and settled down for some steady growth, largely driven by an increase in the use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) with e-book display capabilities. Although fiction is by far the more popular, there are increasing amounts of non-fiction material finding their way into e-book format. In this article I look into sources for downloading non-fiction e-books, while the concluding article will describe e-book ‘libraries’ and CD distribution systems. read more

Online Currents 2003 – 18(6): 23-25

In two previous articles I discussed the current state of eBook development and looked at online sources of downloadable eBooks. Here I want to describe two other distribution models – the supply of eBooks in bulk on CDs, and the use of an ‘elibrary’ model to permit limited-time access to eBooks while online.

All businesses mentioned here can be found online at www.nameofcompany.com; e.g. ‘www.samizdat.com’, etc.

CD Sales

There are two major sources of free out-of-copyright eBooks on CD, Samizdat and BlackMask Online. Both appear to be run as one-man businesses: B & R Samizdat Express, by Richard Seltzer and BlackMask by David Moynihan. Both carry out their marketing through websites; Blackmask also provides its texts for free download. Both derive most of their material from Project Gutenberg, which was discussed in the previous article. Both attempt to provide answers to the question ‘Why should I pay for something I can get online for free?’. The differences between them are mainly a matter of price, classification and emphasis. read more