Neil Young Expands Pono Digital-to-Analogue Music Service

"Beginning next year [2013], Pono will release a line of portable players, a music-download service and digital-to-analog conversion technology intended to present songs as they first sound during studio recording sessions. In his book out this week, Waging Heavy Peace, Young writes that Pono will help unite record companies with cloud storage 'to save the sound of music.' As Flea raves to Rolling Stone, 'It's not like some vague thing that you need dogs' ears to hear. It's a drastic difference.'

Pono's preservation of the fuller, analog sound already has the ear of the Big Three record labels: Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music. WMG - home to artists including Muse, the Black Keys, Common and Jill Scott - has converted its library of 8,000 album titles to high-resolution, 192kHz/24-bit sound. It was a process completed prior to the company's partnership with Young's Pono project last year, said Craig Kallman, chairman and chief executive of Atlantic Records.'"

(Patrick Flanary, 27 September 2012, Rolling Stone)

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The Future of the Book: design speculation

"The Future of the Book is a design exploration of digital reading that seeks to identify new opportunities for readers, publishers, and authors to discover, consume, and connect in different formats.

As more people consume pages in pixels, IDEO designers wondered why we continue to discover and consume the written word through the old analog, page-turning model. We asked: what happens when the reading experience catches up with new technologies?

The team looked at how digital and analog books currently are being read, shared and collected, as well as at trends, business models and consumer behavior within related fields. We identified three distinct opportunities - new narratives, social reading with richer context, and providing tools for critical thinking - and developed a design concept around each one.

The first concept, 'Alice,' turns storytelling on its head by making narratives non-linear and participatory. With Alice, the story world starts bleeding into the everyday life of the reader. Real-world challenges, like acting on a phone call from the lead character, or participating in photo based scavenger hunts, unlock new aspects of the story, and turn other readers into collaborators or competitors. Alice is a platform for authors to experiment with narratives, to allow their stories to transcend media, and to engage fans in the storytelling process.

The second concept, 'Coupland,' makes book discovery a social activity by allowing readers to build shared libraries and hear about additional texts through existing networks. Coupland makes it easy for busy professionals to stay on top of industry must-reads. Businesses can assign book budgets to their employees and build collective libraries through a group-licensing model. Personal recommendations, aggregation of reading patterns, and the ability to follow inspiring individuals and groups help ensure that Coupland users always are tapped into the latest essential content within and outside of the organization.

The third concept, 'Nelson,' connects books to commentary, critique, and contextual information, letting readers explore a topic from multiple perspectives. Nelson reinforces the role of books as carriers of knowledge and insight. Readers can explore polarizing material and see whose word currently has the greatest impact on popular opinion and debate. Layers of connected commentary, news, and fact-checking augment the core book content - providing greater context and encouraging debate and scrutiny.

Each concept features a simple, accessible storytelling format and a particular look and feel. We believe that digital technology creates possibilities, so our solutions truly adapt to the new environment, rather than emulate analog qualities onscreen. For example, we resisted any temptation to move books closer to the bite-sized character of other digital media, because longhand writing encourages immersion (deep reading) and reflection."

(IDEO, 2010)

Semantic Web: integration through abstraction and standardisation

"The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents. It is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing."

(W3C)

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The Creative Industries KTN: the future of digital content

"This document has been created to help people understand the radical transformation digital content will have on the creative industries, and to provide businesses with outline areas of opportunity where innovation is most likely to occur.

In the past decade, digital content has become a part of everyday life for all. Yet the changes that will occur in the next 5-10 years will be profound. They have the power to alter the way we live, work, play, learn and help us to live longer, more fulfilling lives. These changes will substantially alter existing business models and markets.

Many historical innovations such as new recording formats, more powerful consoles and new advertising media were incremental. They changed formats and created new opportunities, but they did not alter the industrial landscape. The changes taking place now are paradigm shifts that challenge the value chain as a whole.

These changes represent huge opportunities, or threats if not understood. For games designers, it may mean the migration from console platforms to cloud based applications and casual gaming communities. For TV programmes it may mean the end of broadcast, where their content must be found and consumed on numerous devices. For publishers it may mean the migration to new consumption platforms that radically alter distribution channels. For industrial designers, it may mean the need to move from object creation to experience creation. For all it means the need to radically shift their thinking.

The following pages outline the key areas highlighted by a project that has engaged with hundreds of key stakeholders across the creative industries and technology industries seeking to map the landscape of the future of digital content."

(Kelechi Amadi, March 2010)

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