Professional Development – Page 10

Second-Class Formatting?

March 6, 2011 by Steven Savage

Yes, once again I'm going to talk about my Amazon Kindle. No, this is not a case of me going on how great it is, how much I love it, ad nauseum. You've probably had enough of that as it is. Instead, I want to share an insight on the nature of e-books that I didn't notice until I began using the Kindle so much.

What have I noticed? I've noticed that, despite many of the e-books I'm reading coming from professional print sources, some of them have distinct formatting errors on the Kindle. I'd say easily two thirds of the books I've read on the Kindle have noticeable formatting problems, some of them quite distinct and incredibly annoying, such as unclear graphics, oddly placed titles, mashed words, and more.

It's as if Kindle books get a kind of "second-class" formatting.

Somehow, I don't think I'm alone in experiencing odd, strange, and outright painful formatting problems on books I'm reading on the Kindle. I'm quite sure other people are experiencing this as well; all those people on my daily trains reading Kindles doubtlessly are experiencing questionably–formatted books too.

So unless I'm the unluckiest reader in Amazon–land, everyone is experiencing formatting problems with their Kindle books now and then. So why aren't we complaining?

The Originality/Unoriginality Barrier: Gradual Evolution.

February 1, 2011 by Steven Savage

(Not done writing about originality yet. Regular poster Serdar noted that my ideas addressing originality suggested that highly original people can and should address using their ideas via gradual evolution, and that gradual evolution of media was an ideal. I want to address that).

I've been writing a lot about originality in media lately. This is entirely understandable because originality is a big topic in media – in an age of remakes and the shockingly innovative it's going to be something prominent in people's minds. It's also an important subject because people feel very passionate about it – as I noted there are many psychological/cultural factors to a love of originality.

My conclusions actually were that originality is actually not a prime driver in media consumption – socializabitility is. People's interests in media were often heavily influenced by what they can share with and enjoy with others. Originality, in turn, was most important when it helped with that social factor.

Socializing Your Media

January 26, 2011 by Steven Savage

The last two posts were pretty heavy ones on the nature of creativity. So I'd like to go back to the idea that spawned them all – the idea that people use media to socialize and that's why originality is not always a factor in their choice of media. With that conclusion, I want to close up this not-quite series with a look of ways people can make their media more "socializable."