“How do you prefer to read, with an eReader like a Kindle or Nook, or with an old school paperback in hand?”

This has been an oft-asked question in recent years. My answer is simple: paperback all the way. Like other bloggers, I find the eReading experience to be too artificial. eBook producers try so hard to replicate the reading experience of old, yet what book lovers love most – the feel, the smell, and the beauty of the book – cannot be replicated in digital form.

This, of course, hasn’t stopped eBooks from reaching an unbelievable popularity. Their ease of use – the ability to have hundreds or thousands of books in your back pocket – has helped sales soar. Last year, eBook sales were higher than those of hardcover books. These sales are typically copies of print books in .pdf or other formats. There will always be “old school” readers who hold out against them. What eBook producers need to do to secure this market is to offer a completely new digital product: something that doesn’t merely copy the beloved book and, more perhaps importantly, something that cannot be copied by booksellers in turn. eBooks should deliver, if you’ll pardon the pun, a novel reading experience. While digital texts seem very much to be “the future” of literature, there is still a place for the book. But eBooks can and should expand in ways that print texts cannot.

One way to approach this is to publish hypertext eBooks. While you might simply know hypertext as the language that lets you jump around from website to website through traditionally blue, underlined “links”, hypertext can be – and has been – used for fiction-writing purposes.

In the (highly recommended) class on Digital Literature I took last year, hypertext was the first digital medium we studied. We used Eastgate Systems’ Storyspace software to read Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson and Victory Garden by Stuart Malthroup. Both of these texts were written in the 1980s – early days, as far as dig-lit is concerned. However, despite the primitiveness of their technology, both Jackson and Malthroup ably and effectively used hypertext to create elaborate storyworlds in a way that writers of print texts cannot. The writers inserted hyperlinks which branched the story off in different directions, telling a different story – or a different side to the same story. They created “webs” of stories, as opposed to the traditional, sequential page-turner. Of course, these hypertexts were only available on computers. eBooks are perfect for telling portable hypertext stories and the technology is already out there.

From Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl

Some writers are already composing hypertext stories specifically for eReaders (see “Innovation and the Future of Books” by John W. Warren). eBooks can also incorporate multimedia in the tale. No print book can have additional audio, video, or animations. These enhanced books are perfect for demonstrating the capabilities of the technology and the benefits of using a digital reader. No longer should eBooks merely mimic the tried-and-tested method of storytelling; they need to include the medium in the story in order to win over an audience well-accustomed to the intricacies of digital technology. At this time, unfortunately, these kinds of eBooks are few and far between.

So to return to the original question, I still prefer the experience of reading a book in physical form. But the book, like the record did before it, will eventually fall to a newer technology. I hope that when this happens, eBooks will provide something more than just a book. They can and should expand in ways their print counterparts cannot. I look forward to a day when an eBook is not merely a .pdf reader, but a new reading experience that takes full advantage of their digital medium.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics plays with:

The types of traffic sources.

On the Internet there are only two real traffic sources, direct and reference, no longer exist.

Direct Traffic: Because, typing a URL in the address bar of your browser, you can directly access the desired web page, no more. It is the most recommended way to get traffic to any business, because the more we increase that half the percentage of the total, means that we reduce dependence on third-party references, such as advertising campaigns, search engines, blogs and newspaper articles, etc..

The only way to increase our direct trade is to increase our brand awareness and the user does not browse our web page in search engines, or expect to find that someone mentioned it in place, he shared in a social network or mailed to us. But on the other hand, remember our names, and even the domain extension, and enters typing and pressing enter. Brand awareness is achieved only with branding, positioning our product properly in the consumer’s mind.

Reference Traffic: Internet is based on hyper-textual language HTML, which essentially adds the link to the text element, making you jump from one page to another to surf the web. So if another page put a link to yours can cause end his visit on your site, that’s what we call referral traffic and do not care if the source comes from a blog, a newspaper, directory, social network shift or a search engine, or whatever.

Then .. Why have Google Analytics in addition to these two real categories, both in the menu and in the overall pie options Campaigns and <Searche engines? Are they two different sources and additional level with the above? Because for all what they seem.

The first source of traffic: Campaigns (most recent inclusion on the menu), being a sub category: referral traffic, is well placed to encourage, to any web site owner or business, look so outstanding, that to suggest that there is a way to get traffic, which is becoming even not get the traffic that should have.

The second source of traffic: searches (which I believe is included since birth Google Analytics) and is also a sub category: referral traffic, thereby highlighting it, is like saying that users will come by the form, not because the form is found in the Internet, but because Google brings you directly to the reference range. When actually only true for 50% of the equation, because Google does nothing more than a reference either to your website, if the user searches for your name, or any of the possible keywords (keywords) related to your business, or someone you have referred to you.

Play with ORGANIC traffic sources

Because as has been said several times by various experts to come to light this issue, if the user searches for something, then go alone to the web, Google Analytics is targeted on both himself, telling that comes with numbers Google’s search engine visits. Thus, get manipulate our perception of reality to the point that we depend on, and we have to rely even more on Google every day, because all our traffic, that is, views, and therefore purchases, and / or benefits depend Google, as it is not, at least not to the extent that we would want to believe, and least to the extent that “we have left” we tell him.

Play with us and our business

In this article I intend only to alert those being Google Analytics a free tool most used, think they do not pay a PRICE for it, and the price they pay is rather expensive, believe misrepresented data that result INFLUECE OUR DESICIONS and give more power to the monopoly that grows by the second, thanks to gullible as many of us.

And as a private company, they do what they want in their products, or misrepresents information in your analytics tool could be quite irrelevant, but when it is the most used, becomes a general problem and an abuse of power, one over many of the new Microsoft.

Bush then goes on to suggest tiny cameras with tiny film taking tiny pictures that could free up the arms of researchers. He also talks about the “arithmetic machines” of the future that will be electrical in nature. When Bush muses on the technological specifics of the future, his conclusions—in terms of the mechanics—seem ridiculous to the modern reader. This is because Bush was limited to thinking of analogue mediums of recording and processing; his ideas were ultimately limited by the knowledge of his time.

Eventually, Bush comes to his ultimate machine, “the memex,” and illuminates the ultimate problem: “Thus far we seem to be worse off than before—for we can enormously extend the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it. This is a much larger matter than merely the extraction of data for the purposes of scientific research; it involves the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge” (Bush 8). Bush’s solution to the problem of information consultation is a device called the memex. The memex is essentially a desk with two screens on it, switches and leavers, and magnetic tape for recording and storing data. Technical specifics aside, the brilliance of the memex and how it tackles the problem of information access is by way of associative indexing “whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another” (Bush 11). Basically, Bush conceived of a machine that worked in much the same way the world wide web does by way of associations and hypertextuality. By creating “trails” of associated information, one could create and share collections of connected data which would not only be more intuitive, but would rapidly increase the speed and depth of research and information sharing.

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic. July, 1945. Web. 3 Feb. 2013. (link to full text).