Pearson shares hit by profit warning – Pearson, the company that owns the behemoth that is Penguin Random House, issued a warning that its profits were down 5% over last year, and the warning in turn triggered an 8% drop in shares. In addition to the £130M restructuring in the wake of the merger is going to take, the company apparently took a hit in educational sales, as well, especially in North America (I’m guessing mostly in the US), based on diminishing state education budgets. Pearson is set for £865M in operating profits, as opposed to the £900M analysts had forecasted.
“On the plus side, Pearson said it had seen “good profit growth” at the Financial Times, with strong growth in digital subscriptions offsetting weak advertising sales and lower print circulation.” BBC News
Adobe Cracks Down on Piracy with New ePub and PDF DRM – Oh, look; Adobe is doubling down on DRM. Because we all know DRM discourages piracy. #not
“The new set of DRM for ePub files has been pushed out to Adobe Digital Editions 3.0 and Adobe Content Server. Adobe has been working with their publishing and hardware partners, such as Sony, to refine the code before they released it to the public. This time around Adobe wants to keep the source code under lock and key to prevent people from writing decryption tools and plugins for popular conversion software like Calibre.” Good E-Reader
Can reading make you smarter? – Dan Hurley was a late bloomer when it came to reading. He still could not read at 8, and his teacher at the time designated him as a “slow learner.” At 9, Hurley discovered comic books, especially Stan Lee’s Spiderman, and two years later was a straight A student with a tested IQ of 136. He was also writing comics, and wondered if reading and writing that genre had actually increased his intelligence:
“In part to answer that question, I spent three years interviewing psychologists and neuroscientists around the world, reviewing their studies and testing new methods they claim can increase intelligence. Bookworms, after all, rarely emerge from their literary cocoons in order to become social butterflies. And while nobody would ever call reading a “new” method for improving the mind, recent scientific studies have confirmed that reading and intelligence have a relationship so close as to be symbiotic.” The Guardian
‘Flowers In The Attic’ Earns Best Lifetime Ratings Since 2012 – Argue all you want about the morality of the portrayal of incest in Flowers in the Attic, but the story’s enduring popularity is indisputable. 6.1 television watchers tuned in to Lifetime’s movie adaptation on January 18th. Now, apparently, there will be a sequel. And if you missed the first airing last week, you can catch the film when it re-airs this weekend. Huffington Post
8 Vintage Mac Reviews Thatll Make You Appreciate Modern Tech – Besides explaining to me the logic behind casting Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs, this piece is a pretty fascinating explication of how much — and how little — has changed in the world of Apple technology.
“Critic John C. Dvorak was harsh about the first Mac, as well PCs in general. In his Feb. 19, 1984, review of the first Mac, he wrote that he liked the computer, but didnt think it was a hit: ‘The nature of the personal computer revolution is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple or anyone else, for that matter. Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?”‘” Mashable