Lecture 10: Its near the end of the year - time for an overview

Yep, it's getting on for christmas time - that time of year when everybody starts making 'top 10s' of the year, so here's one of sorts. But inbetween all this retrospective thinking get Spotify, theres a sign-up form here so you don't need an invite. Music streaming is blatantly the future.

Lulu, blogging, interactive fiction, P.O.D - they all need things without which they couldn't possibly operate (and thankfully humans are still one of them). If we're getting deep then lets start with words, but I'm not awake enough for that much though so lets fast forward slightly. Lulu and blogging - you may never be able to buy a copy of this blog bound and printed but they're more similar than they first seem. Both need word processors, both need html and xml coding,both need encryption, both require e-commerce (although this is more like a collection of technolgies if you want to be picky) - the list could go on ... and on. They could have practically have been seperated at birth. Having said this their mechanics do work slightly differently, here is someone who probably had too much time on thier hands - but it does show all the magic behind blogs. Blogs also need RSS feeds to build their lists and notify people. And by their very nature depend on hyperlinks - but then again hyperlinks are more a stylistic and referencing tool so are more of a convention. Tricky buisness this for 20 to 12 on a Sunday night. Seperated at birth, maybe, but Lulu clearly went to a different school when it was growing up in internet land because its a whole world of seriousness. In order to function Lulu needs e-commerce, a nice easy term for a collection of technolgies, so websites can stock its books and people can run the website. As importantly as this however Lulu depends on the PDF, this allows it texts lovingly created by someone to be stored in an unchangeabe way and sent off safe in the knowledge that despte the really really obscure font everyone will see it as you intended. Speaking of printers - thats a whole other can of worms that Lulu depends on.

Speaking of printers, printing on demand is another publishing form that depends on them to make its little world go round (its ok you can say it, smooth right?:) ). Like Lulu P.O.D also needs databases to operate, boring but essential like wheetabix. These make sure every text is waiting and ready, and importantly not lost when the vanity press comes calling. PDF's also play a big part in P.O.D, telling the printer what to print out. Lulu, blogging and P.O.D aren't a million miles from eachother in terms of their core technology but interactive fiction stands alone ... you'd think. And to be fair in some respects it does, it depends on programming language to make it work - but in the same way the word processor is development platform needed by Lulu and blogs, Inform or its counterparts are need by interactive fiction writers to even dream of creating things. In the e-publishing class interactive fiction is the kid who turned up in year nine, learnt most of the same things just with a different take in them. Interactive fiction needs the interent (itself a collection if technologies) just like all other forms of e-publishing, and just like all other e-publishing needs a set of distribution technolgies. However blogs like this show the potential for the core technology in interactive fiction to change and evolve - something true in all e-publishing.

Right, essentially all you need to know is that most e-publishing share their core technology with a few variations here and there. But now its sleep time, but as well as that its christmas so heres a festive video - funny stuff :) Nos da, come back soon for podcasting.