Hearst Launching Kindle Competitor and Platform "By Publishers, For Publishers"

The Hearst Corporation has announced their intention to launch an e-reader competitor to Amazon's Kindle and a supporting store and platform that is much more "publisher friendly." More details are available form their official press release this morning. "Launching in 2010, Skiff provides a complete e-reading solution that includes the Skiff Service platform, Skiff Store and Skiff-enabled devices. Skiff will sell and distribute newspapers, magazines, books, blogs and other content. Skiff gives periodical publishers tools to maintain their distinct visual identities, build and extend relationships with subscribers, and deliver dynamic content and advertising to a range of dedicated e-readers and multipurpose devices."

Comments

Re:great for publishers?

[daVinci1980]

Here's my slightly offtopic rant for you slashdotters that think it's funny or clever to replace an 's' with a dollar sign.

I get it. You think that the entity being referred to is greedy. Here's what you don't seem to get. It's childish, and it does one of three things:

1) It gives the impression that your rhetoric wouldn't be strong enough to stand on its own--therefore you need a gimmick to ensure that people really get your message.
2) It's unrelated to your rhetoric, and therefore distracting from your overall message.
3) It makes you seem to be an uninformed, out of touch individual who has no concept of how things work in the real world.

I'm going to offer a bit of free advice, whether you want it or not. Spelling and presentation matter. And do you know why they matter? They matter because you're trying to convey a message. Your readers and listeners only have so much concentration they can or will devote to understanding your message. If we have to spend effort translating your spelling or grammatical errors, or we have to perform in-place symbol substitution, that is distracting us from the point you are trying to make. Do yourself a favor, and give up on these childish devices.

Here's a short list of the slashdotisms that need to die:

- Substituting '$' for 's'
- ^H (acceptable for Funny posts only)
- Calling Microsoft employees or users Microserfs