Garfield Minus Garfield: From Web Sensation To Book In Less Than A Year
by Sarah Perez on August 7th, 2008
What About Copyright Issues?
With today's obsession with our "culture of ownership," where everything from the music we listen to the photos used in blog posts to the blog comments themselves are "owned" by someone and have varying rights of use associated with them, you would imagine that such a creation as "Garfield Minus Garfield" would have been shut down by the copyright cops long before it had a chance to create an online following.
However, that was not the case and the reason is because Jim Davis, who pens the original strip, was actually intrigued and pleased with the concept. He even went so far as to thank Walsh, saying: "I want to thank Dan for enabling me to see another side of Garfield. Some of the strips he chose were slappers: 'Oh, I could have left that out.' It would have been funnier."
Now, the online strip will make the move to the printed page. Thanks to Davis' involvement and admiration for the Walsh's version of the comic, Ballantine Books will soon be publishing a book inspired by "Garfield Minus Garfield." In the book, readers will see both the original strip and the one in which Garfield has been removed. Walsh will contribute the forward to the book.
Allowing Art To Flourish
Something about this news brought to mind a recent Wired article on an entirely unrelated subject - the Personal Genome Project. There was a quote from George Church of Harvard Medical School, which was about openness as it related to technology: "sharing technologies by distributing them as widely as possible with minimal restrictions on use encourages both the adoption and the impact of a technology."
Arguably, sharing with no restriction on use has implications far beyond just technology - it can impact art as well. Whether or not you want to classify "Garfield Minus Garfield" as "art" is up to you, but by not clamping down on the copyright, Davis allowed a whole new creation to come into existence...and one I read with enthusiasm every day.
Will Davis' respect and willing embrace of the modified strip have any greater ramifications in our society as to change our perceptions about what it means to own a thought, idea, or creation? Will it affect our opinions on when that ownership should or should not be restricted? Sadly, probably not. The belief that because you created or thought of something gives you control over it is instilled so deep into our communal thinking, especially here in the U.S., it will take more than a new comic to retrain our thoughts on the subject. It only speaks to what could be.
The Garfield Minus Garfield book will be published simultaneously with the Garfield 30th anniversary book in October of this year.
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Mainstreaming RSS: Regator is Now in Public Beta
by Frederic Lardinois on August 7th, 2008
We first wrote about the mainstream RSS reader and blog directory Regator in early July. At that time, Regator was still in private testing, but today, it has opened up its doors for a public beta release. Since we first covered Regator, the developers have made some important changes to their service, including the ability to upload OPML files. Even with this feature, though, Regator still remains a highly curated service, where every new entry in its blog directory has to be approved by the editors.
Regator is a very well designed RSS reader and blog directory. Every blog listed on Regator has been categorized and approved by the editors, which has allowed them to create a very extensive catalog of high quality blogs and news sites. As we pointed out in our initial review, Regator does an especially good job at handling posts with embedded media files. The layout of the site is very distinct from other RSS readers like Google Reader, Bloglines, or Newsgator. In some ways, with the focus on categories and comments, Regator almost looks more like a blog than an RSS reader.
Bring Your Own OPML
One of our main issues we had with the earlier incarnation of Regator was that you couldn’t import your own OPML files, which seemed to restrict it quite a bit as an RSS reader for more advanced users. While Regator now allows you to upload your own OPML files, your imported feeds will only be visible to you because of Regator’s approach of personally vetting all feeds shown on the site. At the same time, Regator will look at every imported feed and consider them for inclusion in the general index, which turns uploading your OPML file into a recommendation mechanism.
New Features
Also new in this release is the ability to share post via Twitter, Facebook, and email. Besides this, Regator spent a lot of time polishing and tweaking the service, as well as adding a few minor features. For the near future, Regator is also expecting to give its users a unique page for shared posts akin to Google’s Shared Items pages.
What About Advanced Users?
In our earlier review, we said that Regator was a great resource for mainstream users and maybe even a good introduction to RSS in general. With the ability to upload custom OPML files and the soon to be released Shared Items pages, Regator is now closer to being worth a second look for more advanced users as well. What does hold it back for power users, though, is still the fact that it only displays summaries of articles and doesn’t display any images in those summaries. There are good reasons for that, including the fact that the folks at Regator want to give traffic back to those who write the content, but it does make the site just a bit less useful in comparison to a regular RSS reader.
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New Issuu Platform Raises the Bar for Creating Beautiful Publications
by Doriano "Paisano" Carta on August 7th, 2008
Issuu will be releasing a new publishing platform that could very well change the rules of the game when it comes to creating online publications. The platform will be a place where developers, designers and companies work together in collaboration to customize their Issuu distributed publications such as magazines, newsletters, etc.
New Tools
They will also release the documentation for their IML (Issuu Markup Language) which will be used to control the viewer’s theme. The custom themes or skins are hosted on your own website (you just point to that location in the URL), so basically anyone who knows how to upload a file to a Web server can use it. This means that hardcore developers and designers will have the ability to create all kinds of new things for the Issuu viewer. More details on using their full API will be coming soon too.
Customization Crazy
Besides changing the theme, you will also be able to customize your publications even further by adding your own logo, background, buttons, and other elements.
To Flash or Not to Flash
Issuu provides two radically different ways to customize the viewer. You can either use the industry standard Adobe Flash or any image editing software that you prefer. This is a smart move on their part because the last thing you want to do is limit the options that you provide your users. It would’ve been detrimental to cram just a Flash option down everyone’s throats. It’s also an Iphone friendly decision.
Recent Improvements
Before releasing the new Platform, Issuu was wise enough to resolve their existing technical issuus ..er…issues. They fixed several problems and improved their service by listening to their core users.
Here’s what they took care of last week:
Presentation mode
Combined with their full-screen mode it now provides a rich choice of presentation modes. It can be a handy backup when presenting and getting feedback for listeners. It’s also ideal for photo-presentations.
Paper mode
This is an innovative online PDF reader that works entirely without Flash. Built with the Ajax framework, this viewer will replace swf content with jpegs, if Flash isn’t installed. Obviously, this was created with iPhone users in mind.
Closer means faster
The most important improvement has been performance, always the biggest complaint for any online service. Issuu accomplished this by serving files from a server that is geographically closer to the user.
Other important features
Issuu provides some key features to keep in mind such as crisp vector graphics, true full-screen mode, three zoom modes: Free move, Hand tool, Read mode and strong Google indexing.
Mashable View
Here’s a sample publication created on the new Issuu platform for a Mashable article. Notice the slick new look and feel. Everything is extremely customizable and easy to change.
Conclusion
While all of this coolness comes free at this time, there will be a Pro version somewhere down the road which will offer many more bells and whistles. This premium edition will provide businesses with the tools needed in order to produce and distribute proprietary content in a more secure and professional manner. In the mean time, anyone can start taking advantage of a free publishing tool that used to cost an arm and leg.
The online publishing space is a hot arena these days with players like Scribd, Yudu, DocStoc and others. The Issuu Platform will definitely raise the bar.
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