moderation

Agent publishes 20 'modern classics' on Kindle, cutting out publishers

The Wylie Agency, which represents authors such as Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and John Updike, is publishing 20 books through its new Odyssey Editions imprint and making them available for sale exclusively in Amazon.com's Kindle Store for $9.99.

Andrew Wylie, the founder and head of the agency, has been locked in a battle with publishing houses over the digital rights to a number of modern classics and "backlist" titles. His new move makes a big statement to big-name publishers, which have been shut out of a potentially lucrative revenue stream. Because digital rights have only been included in more-recent book publishing contracts, the electronic rights to a multitude of famous books are held by authors.

Deals, such as this one with Wylie, have the potential of netting authors or their estates much higher royalties than if they'd signed an e-book deal with a major publishing house. … Read more

Apple defensive over Consumer Reports findings, deletes forum threads

The seemingly unending saga of the iPhone 4 antenna issues has grown yet again. After a negative report from Consumer Reports, Apple has apparently deleted all threads about the findings from its popular Support Discussions forums. As Kent German reported earlier today, Consumer Reports has issued its official stance on iPhone 4 and it can't recommend the phone.

Moderators for Apple's Support Discussions forums quickly deleted growing threads discussing the Consumer Reports articles. Though these threads are no longer viewable, you can read through cached versions via Bing.

Despite the generally positive reputation that Consumer Reports enjoys, many … Read more

Re-buzzing Google Buzz

Links to Thursday afternoon's episode of Loaded:

Google is in hot water for collecting "fragmentary data" around the world

Microsoft's Natal will cost $150 when it launches in October

YouTube adds Google Moderator to channels for more productive conversations

Google Buzz gets a "Reshare" feature

YouTube opens up its Moderator tool to all users

Google's Moderator service, which up until now has existed as a standalone product, is now available within YouTube and to all its users. Previously, YouTube had integrated it into the service for special events, and given access to a few select users.

The core of the service, which has users voting up or down on user-submitted ideas, began as a pet project of Google engineer Taliver Heath, who built it to help prioritize the barrage of questions asked during Google's company meetings and hosted lecture series. In its transition to YouTube it serves a similar purpose: bringing order … Read more

Twitter buzz gets a status update

Not only because a surgery conducted via Twitter made headlines the other day, Twitter is all the buzz (again). And it seems as if almost three years after its now-legendary debut at South by Southwest Interactive, the popular microblogging service has reached the second (or third) hype cycle, entering the business and media mainstream as the ultimate narrow--and broadcast--network.

As Joel Comm, CEO of InfoMedia and author of "Twitter Power," points out:

It's like the old saying, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." People who use … Read more

Manage WordPress blog comments in AIR

If you're keen on moderating blog comments in near real time and would prefer to do so without a browser window open, you should check out Moderator. It's a hybrid tool that uses both a WordPress plug-in and an Adobe AIR desktop application to keep you up to speed with the latest user chatter on your blog.

Once installed, you simply leave it running and it will update itself throughout the day, letting you approve or deny comments to go live. Because it sits on your desktop you can keep your blog comments lean and clean without ever … Read more