If you love comic books and love reading on your iPad, you’ve probably heard of comiXology. The company (and app) are responsible for bringing comic books into the digital age of online purchasing and reading content on a mobile device. So it was only a matter of time before it attracted the eye of the largest online source for purchasing reading material. ComiXology’s CEO, David Steinberger, posted the news on their web site Thursday afternoon that they had been purchased by Amazon.
In a session entitled “Confessions of an Apple Writer”, Ted Landau recounted his career writing about the Mac, which has existed practically as long as the Mac itself. He began the session by announcing that he was retiring as a Macworld/iWorld speaker and cutting back on his writing duties. As he reason, he offered, “Well, it’s just that time in my life.”. Currently a Senior Contributor at Macworld Magazine, he talked about his first “article” which was a submission to a Mac newsletter in which he described how to change the “Welcome to Macintosh” startup message using software called ResEdit.
Sessions have always been a big part of any Mac Expo, but especially in recent years in response to the absence of Apple’s Steve-notes and daily product demonstrations and tutorials. While I miss the Apple presence, as a power-user I welcome the fact that the bar for session topics has been risen. Past “standard” sessions (non-IT) focused primarily on the average consumer, giving tips on using iPhoto for organizing and improving the quality of photos, using standard utilities to execute basic maintenance, or creating ringtones with GarageBand. These are all worthy topics, and the average user is an important demographic for Mac, but it was frustrating that there were few opportunities for the average power-user to learn something new or push their learning experience to the next level. While there has been some improvement, I think there could be more done for power-user education, however, that is not to say there have not been some great additions to the session agenda to improve the experience for all types of Mac users.
On Tuesday, software company Delicious Monster released version 3.1 of the shareware favorite, Delicious Library. Delicious Monster allows Macs with webcams to scan the bar codes of any book, movie, music CD or video game, then creates an archive based on background information from the Internet. Additional features help keep the library organized and reseller’s tools allow for items to be quickly posted for sale online.
The new version, an 80.7 megabyte download, adds the following fixes and changes:
– Localizations for: Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish.
– Added support for Amazon China.
– Table view size is controlled by the slider in the “View” menu.
– Significant performance improvements for collections with thousands of items and many of smart shelf rules.
– Search is *much* faster and more responsive.
– Delicious Library supports custom user templates for printing and publishing.
– Other improvements and bug fixes.
Delicious Library 3.1 retails for US$40 and requires OS X 10.8 or later to install and run.
If there’s something nifty about to happen in the publishing world, it might as well happen in the heart of New York.
Per TechCrunch, reports have emerged of an Apple media event in New York City later this month, one insider has claimed that the event will feature industry-related announcements for publishers about the iBookstore platform.
The website reported on Monday that a source had independently confirmed plans for the end-of-January event, which was first noted by All Things D.
“According to the source the event will not involve any hardware at all and instead will focus on publishing and eBooks (sold through Apple’s iBooks platform) rather than iAds,” report author Alexia Tsotsis wrote, adding that attendance would be “more publishing industry-oriented than consumer-focused.”
The tipster also said Apple would take the wraps off of new improvements to its iBooks platform at the event, though the source described the announcement as not “major.”
Given that the original report had claimed that Apple Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue will play a part in the event, speculation had arisen that the event would be related to either advertising or publishing.
Apple made minor improvements to the iBooks app last month with the release of version 1.5. The updated software added a night reading theme, full-screen mode and new fonts.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.