Sleepless is a collaborative project between London's Great Eastern Hotel and the students from the Royal College of Art's Design Product department. The goal of the project is to enrich the experience of the hotel's guests and make their stay more than just a place to spend the night.Tiago da Fonseca's contribution is a multi-layered experience titled Bedtime Stories."Once upon a time there was a blanket. This blanket had several sheets containing a traditional bedtime story. Each "page" adds a layer of linen making you warmer (or cooler) and comfier hopefully guiding you and your partner into a pleasant night's...
Craig Does Like Newspapers. A Brief Chat with the Founder of Craigslist
Newmark started Craigslist 12 years ago in his San Francisco apartment where he created an online platform for his friends to basically help each other out. Now there are people helping each other out in 450 cities in 50 countries claiming over 7 billion hits a month.In a previous post I responded to a few comments made by Newmark at the recent Newspaper Association of America annual convention in New York. One of the comments was that he has a ""great deal of sympathy for people who run the printing presses. They are screwed." Based on the current state of...
The Gotham Incident
I can't wait to get the whole story on this one. It already sounds like one of the worst bookstore endings on record.Here are the gorey details of the court-ordered Gotham Book Mart auction:-It cost $1000 just for the right to attend-The auction started an hour late-There was no catalog of the items-There were no lot numbers-Prospective buyers had less than an hour to look through a bookstore that has been around since 1920!“You buy them blind,” is how one of auctioneer employees put it-Right before the auction began most of the prime material was pulled from the sale-Finally, the...
Reader in the Tub
You hear it all the time from us traditional book defenders and many times it is the first arrow we throw. Margret Atwood threw it at the recent London Book Fair.- You can't read an e-book in the bathtub!Well maybe you can.Chris Steib has recently undertaken "the Ultimate eBook Experiment"His contestants: A paperback copy of Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 and A Sony Reader.Steib puts each through a rigorous 6 step program that runs from "functionality" testing to submersion in water dressed in GLAD Cling wrap. The clear winner:The Sony Reader. The Reader would have swept the competition if...
Biblio-Ceramics: The Work of Steven M. Allen
Allen's medium of choice is recycled newspapers and magazines that are mixed with a slurry of reclaimed clay.He then turns these newly formed newspaper pages into pages of books, globes, mechanical components and human figures. From these four recurring elements his work is born and Allen's exploration of the "impact of information, technology, knowledge and globalization on both individual and universal levels" begins. His goal is to "recontextualize contemporary issues inspired by articles in the same recycled newspapers and magazines."In his work one can see how books form the foundation of Allen's attempt to make sense of the world.New WorldFruits...