nele's blog

This is not iTunes: Why the Square Enix store is a step backwards for digital manga

(Crossposted from Fanfic Forensics)

A platform for the sale of digital content can impose restrictions upon customers, if customers get a great user experience in return. See iTunes. However, such a platform cannot impose baffling restrictions on how users are allowed to handle their paid-for digital content and make the whole experience of purchasing and consuming the content devoid of any user-friendliness on top of that. 

(Dutch) Article on cellphone manga industry published

For those of us who read Dutch, a new report on the state of the comics industry in Belgium includes an article by Haruyuki Nakano (author of Manga Sangyoron) on the spectacular rise and quite exciting possibilities of manga on cellphones in Japan and Asia. The article starts from page 49 of this rather large pdf version of the report. Published by SMartBe, translated from the Japanese by me.

Celebratory pat-on-the-back post: over 5000 items in the manga research knowledge base

It seems we passed the 5000 items mark in our manga research knowledge base while I wasn't paying attention. That's over 5000 links to all sorts of material relevant to anyone wanting to research manga -academic articles, research websites, blog posts, calls for papers, Japanese pop culture-related job offerings, and so on. Many thanks to everyone who's following the knowledge base and contributing to it!

Workshop presentation on Let's Manga project

On November 19, Hans Coppens gave a presentation about the Let's Manga project for participants of a workshop on the use of manga in the classroom. As promised during the workshop, you can find the presentation in prezi format at the bottom of this post, and here are some direct links to the various items shown in the presentation:

And in a random aside...

...we made our university newspaper. A whole page to ourselves in the print edition, too. Fame and glory are now ours. The newspaper article is in Dutch, but it seems an English version of it is probably going to appear in the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven's international magazine. We'll link to that when it shows up online.

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