Mass romance novel publisher going all in on e-books
E-books are becoming more popular by the minute thanks to devices like the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, but major dead tree publishers have been hesitant to go all in—until now. Dorchester Publishing, which describes itself as the "oldest independent mass market publisher in America," has decided to ditch its mass printing business to go digital- and print-on-demand only.
Unsurprisingly, Dorchester had a little nudge in that direction: the publisher said that sales of its books had declined a whopping 25 percent in just the last year, while its e-book sales are expected to double in 2011. The company specializes in romance, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels and sells directly to major retailers like Wal-Mart.
"It wasn't a long, drawn out decision, because we've been putting in the effort but not getting the results," Dorchester CEO John Prebich told the Wall Street Journal.
Amazon recently said that Kindle book sales had surpassed the company's sales of hardcover books in the last three months—a trend that many expect to continue now that the Kindle is even cheaper than before. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos even made the bold prediction that Kindle book sales might eclipse paperbacks within the next year.
Though some consider that prediction to be just short of delusion, it's clear that e-books are (at least) on a positive trajectory. Whether that trajectory will enough to overcome the apparent drop in traditional media sales for Dorchester is another story, but the company says it expects to make big savings from cutting out printed books. It's unclear, however, whether that expectation includes some of its partners walking away: "It's been a good run, but if they aren't publishing mass-market paperbacks, we'll have to decide what to do," said Charles Ardai, owner of Hard Case Crime, which distributes its books through Dorchester.
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New flexible aerogel can be used as magnetic sponge
Cellulose may have been around for millions of years, but that doesn't mean it can't teach a modern substance like aerogels a thing or two. A group of researchers have found a way to use cellulose to make a new type of aerogel that can be made flexible and absorbent like a sponge, or crushed into a sheet of "magnetic nanopaper." The aerogel's creators think both materials could find use in microfluidic devices.By now, aerogels are sort of old news in the materials science community. Invented in 1931, the solids are famous for being light like styrofoam, but also highly porous and extremely rigid, capable of bearing weights many times their own. Although current forms have many uses, a group of scientists decided that overcoming their characteristic stiffness could open up a whole new range of uses.
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Google's count of 130 million books is probably bunk
Google's core Internet search technology famously grew out of a grad school project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to index the world's books, and the modern Google Books Project actually touts itself as the part of Google that carries on the founders' original vision. So, when GBS, which has thrown high-powered computers, brilliant engineers, and millions of dollars at digitizing the world's books, claims to have come up with a reasonable count of the number of books in the world, who are we to disagree? "After we exclude serials, we can finally count all the books in the world," wrote Google's Leonid Taycher in a GBS blog post. "There are 129,864,880 of them. At least until Sunday."
It's a large, official-sounding number, and the explanation for how Google arrived at it involves a number of acronyms and terms that will be unfamiliar to most of those who read the post. It's also quite likely to be complete bunk.
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The Prius won't fry your brains (but watch your ankles!)
Wireless devices, which broadcast a steady stream of electromagnetic signals in order to perform their function, have always made a certain segment of the population uneasy. Claims of cellphone sensitivity and WiFi allergies abound, and fears of cancer risks have persisted despite a lack of evidence for the negative health impact of electromagnetic fields (EMF). Even though Ars has tracked these issues carefully, we were completely unaware of another supposed EMF threat until this week: the menace of hybrid vehicles. If you're worried about EMF radiation, then worrying about hybrids might make a degree of sense. After all, just about any electrical device, including a car, creates EMF as part of its function, which is why (for example) running a microwave tends to play havoc with pre-N WiFi hardware.
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Mac gaming renaissance coming in 2011, powered by Steam
Valve's Steam for Mac has boosted developers' interest in releasing Mac versions of their games, but according to Valve, that interest won't translate into more new Mac releases until next year. Still, Valve believes that 2011 will mark a sort of renaissance for Mac gaming.Valve director of business development Jason Holtman said in an interview with GamesIndustry that, while hard numbers weren't available to share, there are plenty of Mac users on Steam. Even users with both PCs and Macs are using the Mac to buy games, instead of thinking of their PC as the sole machine for gaming.
"They're not thinking about their PC and Mac being separate anymore, they're really thinking about both of them being together and the platform just being there," Holtman said.
That behavior is driving new interest in delivering Mac versions of current game releases from publishers, as opposed to considering ports after the Windows version has shipped. "Developers who weren't thinking about the Mac a year ago are coming to us and saying, 'Wow! How could I make a Mac version of my game?'" said Holtman.
Graphics performance is still an issue on Mac OS X, though, and so is OpenGL coding for developers more accustomed to DirectX. Apple still has plenty of work to do to support newer versions of OpenGL and better optimize graphics drivers to achieve performance parity with Windows. But to help developers accelerate development schedules and work around these issues somewhat, Valve is making code it has developed for the GL layer available to Steamworks partners.
Those developers "will have access to some of the hard work that we do to get our games up on Mac, and they'll be able to incorporate that into their games," Holtman told GamesIndustry. "And our hope is it gets them there faster."
Even with Steam for Mac making a great distribution platform and Valve providing OpenGL graphics tools, though, Mac gamers shouldn't expect a bunch of simultaneous releases from other top-tier developers just yet. For games already in the development process for 2010, adding a Mac version could ruin current schedules and cause release delays. Valve vice president of marketing Doug Lombardi said that publishers are instead looking at releases planned for 2011, and looking at how to incorporate making a Mac version from day one.
"The interesting thing we're seeing from publishers and developers alike is… they aren't thinking about porting their games to Mac," Holtman said. "They're thinking, 'I need to write for a Mac. I'm not going to do a port six months later or maybe a year later, I should bring that in and do that now because there's a fair amount of people out there.'"
While gaming has never been one of the Mac's strong suits, Valve's efforts to bring more developers to the platform and generate interest in first-class Mac OS X versions of top-tier games is certainly welcome.
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It only delays: the frustrations of Sony's PS3 firmware
When it comes to high definition, multiplatform console games, you have a choice: you can go Sony or you can go Microsoft. Frankly, I'm starting to think even Sony wants you to choose Microsoft. Why does it feel like I'm being punished every time I try to play a game on my PlayStation 3?The last time I tried to play a game on the console, I was forced to download a mandatory update, which added a feature I didn't care about. (The update gave Sony the ability to suggest things to me. Gee, thanks.) The process took 30 minutes.
Then I had to actually download the game from the PlayStation Store, which took an amazingly long time compared to what I'm used to from Xbox Live or Steam. When I saw just how slowly the download was moving, I was tempted to buy it on the Xbox 360 with my own money instead of using the review code supplied to Ars, but I persevered.
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Private browsing: it's not so private
Research by Stanford University to investigate the privacy of the "private browsing" feature of many Web browsers suggests that the tools aren't all that private after all, and that many kinds of information can be leaked by browsers when using the mode. The paper is due to be presented next week at the USENIX security conference."InPrivate Browsing" in Internet Explorer, "Incognito mode" in Chrome, and "Private Browsing" in Firefox and Safari all strive to do the same two things: make it impossible for users of the same computer to figure out which sites the browser has been used to visit, and make it impossible for sites to know whether or not a particular user has previously visited them.
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Weird Science keeps its pants on while sunbathing
There's not much point in suntanning naked: Turns out, some parts of the body just won't get with the program. Apparently, studying tans has faced a great technical obstacle: any UV light exposure that can induce a tan will also induce redness due to changes in blood vessels induced by the inflammatory response. Some breakthrough research involved finding a way to measure the redness separately, allowing it to be removed from the figures on tanning.Ninety-eight subjects received "a single exposure to a range of doses of ultraviolet B irradiation on the buttock and the lower back," after which measurements indicated that the site of exposure had a greater impact on tanning than skin type. (We're guessing the buttocks came in with low values.)
Of course, the study was done in Edinburgh, where the sun doesn't make much of an appearance anyway; this may have skewed the results.
Lay off the cigarettes if you've had a nipple pierced: That's the message of a study that looked into some of the risk factors associated with breast abscesses. Both piercings and smoking showed significant associations with the development and recurrence of abscesses, and multivariate analysis suggested that this isn't simply the result of those with nipple rings being more likely to light up. Other risk factors, like obesity and diabetes, were way behind.
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