Timeline trouble

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in My general observations

≈ Leave a comment

I once looked for decent timeline software, back in 2007. But the software then available was all rubbish, and so I decided it was easier to do a big Web timeline in html and javascript. Which was successful.

It’s now 2013 I’m now looking for new Windows software that can do a big side-scrolling desktop timeline with hundreds of items hanging off it. But the software on offer is still rubbish, producing ugly timelines that either look or act like they were designed by a lesser Microsoft intern circa 1987.

Can no-one really make a large-scale timeline desktop software, that’s easy-to-use and which outputs beautiful timelines for the Web?

Search Visualiser

21 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Spotted in the news

≈ Leave a comment

A neat new search-visualiser tool, being developed just down the road from me at Staffordshire University… demo shown from 1:00 onwards.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXQ2aJkN9xs&w=560&h=315]

The possibility of restricting a search to only “peer reviewed journals” seems likely to corral students into the commercial systems, and may block out a lot of open ‘scholarly society’ journal articles in the arts and humanities.

Humanities ebooks and librarians

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Official and think-tank reports

≈ Leave a comment

“Perception Analysis of Scholarly E-Books in the Humanities at the Collegiate Level” (March 2013)…

* There does not seem to be a consensus among academic librarians regarding what is desirable in terms of humanities book offerings.

* Many librarians do not distinguish scholarly titles from academic titles. Librarians seem to lean toward known brands (e.g., EBSCO, JSTOR), irrespective of the content that these aggregators offer.

* Most libraries are still in the early stages of developing an e-book strategy, and many are unsure of which direction they should take.

* …there is no agreement amongst librarians as to which humanities content is considered necessary, which collections are essential, which aggregators to use or what fields to cover

* Most librarians surveyed believe that the various aggregators and publishers all offer the same (overlapping) content

That last one is pretty amazing.

Inkling free for academics

13 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Spotted in the news

≈ Leave a comment

Inkling is making its $30m digital publishing platform, Habitat, available free to everyone. There’s even a special academic version, with tight Google Search integration. Inkling takes a 30 percent cut of each sale via the Inkling store, but waives that if you’re a bona fide academic.

It seems Inkling is going free in order to compete with Amazon — Inkling only has around 400 titles in its store and so obviously needs more if it’s going to match Amazon. Might be worth a look if you need to create ePub and HTML5 publications with…

“interactive e-books with HD video, interactive features and 3D content”.

The drawback seems to be that the DRM sounds ferocious, and there’s no mention in the FAQ of the ability to produce a DRM-free ePub. Which seems to imply that you get locked into Inkling as your sole distribution system?