incorrectPWHow to kill the password: Don’t ask for one – Read/Write Web

Streamlined blogging platform Medium rolled out a new login process…that throws the trusty old password out the window. Instead, you simply enter an email address or phone number, and a temporary login link lands in your inbox or phone—just like password reset or account verification links used by sites when you first sign up.

The TeleRead take: For something as sensitive as an e-mail account, I’d still feel safer with a user name, a password and two-step verification. That said, yes, for less important kinds of accounts, I love the idea of doing away with passwords in one way or another. Meanwhile many people may want to use password managers such as Dashlane or LastPass to make up for the limits of human memory and deal with the Catch-22 here. The hardest-to-crack passwords are the most complicated—the very kind that humans have the most trouble remembering and using. So, TeleReaders, what’s your own take on this? How do you address the PW issue at the personal level?

The top publishers in the world are foreign owned – BookMarketingBuzzBlog

I’m not sure why the Big 5—Penguin Random House, S&S, Macmillan, Harper Collins, and Hachette—are called that when they are neither the top 5 in the world or as American companies.  Penguin Random House ranks fifth globally, Hachette is eighth, Scholastic 11th, Wiley 12th, Harper Collins 16th, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 17th, and Simon & Schuster 30th.

The TeleRead take: “Foreign,” of course, is in the minds of the beholder—perhaps 40 percent of TeleRead’s visitors are outside the U.S., and two of our five regular contributors are not U.S. citizens. We’re richer for this diversity. That said, could big-time U.S. publishing be suffering from lack of more investment from the domestic side? Or is the question irrelevant because smaller U.S. publishers and indie authors are competing? Actually it’s more complicated than you think. Some kinds of books requiring extensive travel and other research expenses may be done better on occasion by big publishers offering big advances. Meanwhile,  it’s fascinating to see that the so-called Big Five are not. For more complete information, see Publisher’s Weekly, which lists the Pearson (UK-owned) at the top, followed by ThomsonReuters (Canada), RELX Group (UK-Dutch-US), Wolters Kluwer (Dutch) and Penguin Random House (German).

A Blockbuster San Francisco Conference: ALA 2015 – Publisher’s Weekly

Some 845 companies were on hand to exhibit at the event this year, and attendance was the highest in five years, with 23,545 total attendees, up from 19,889 last year in Las Vegas. The turnout even surpassed the 22,696 who attended the 2013 conference in ALA’s hometown of Chicago, where attendance is usually highest. Total attendees (excluding exhibitors) was up a hefty 20% over 2014, with 3,375 more attendees than in 2014. Exhibitor attendance was roughly flat.

The TeleRead take: A highlight was a keynote by a lawyer who successfully fought the Defense of Marriage Act. Here’s to LGBT rights! That said, the library world is a diversity disaster if you consider the underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities. And David Faucheux, a blind librarian whose podcast TeleRead hosted in the past, thinks the profession also could do a lot better in its treatment of people with disabilities.

Photo credit: CC-licensed and created by Lulu Holler.

 

2 COMMENTS

  1. I like the password article, obviously we’d need our email accounts more secure. But getting people to keep one account super super secure seems way more easier than keeping dozens of other accounts secure (or realistically, mostly un-secure)…

    The biggest issue that I see is what happens when your e-mail address changes and you can’t log in that way anymore.

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.