|
Search for digital content
Browse Marketplace
|
|
What is digital content?
Defining Digital Content?
Digital content quite simply is any form of data or information in digital form (i.e. an electronic file) rather than physical form.
Examples of digital content can be anything from a simple poem to photos, graphic art, research papers, articles, reports, statistical
databases, business plans, engineering designs, e-books, multimedia (music and movies), etc. In other words, digital content is any type
of content that happens to be in bits and bytes.
Why is Digital Content Different from Regular Content?
Digital content has special traits when it comes to storage, classification, publications, access, and reproduction.
- Storage: Digital content-unlike, say, printed content- is stored in bits and bytes (those zeros and ones that we all keep hearing about).
Today�s technology allows for storing trillions of these bits and bytes in a very small space, which keeps on getting smaller.
A 100GB hard disk can fit in the palm of a person�s hand and yet can contain tens of millions of pages of digital content.
This allows digital content to be stored in massive quantities, and perhaps be replicated for safety.
- Classification (Indexing): Regular content is not classified- or at best partially so. If I walk in the morning by a newspaper stand,
I physically have to look all over the stand with my naked eye to find the publication I am looking for. However, if I were looking for
any publication with an article say on TidWiT in the same newspaper stand, the best I can do is ask the bewildered person behind the counter,
or look through every single publication myself- a time consuming task to say the least, and one likely to get me in trouble with the newsstand.
Digital content, however, can be classified in a variety of ways, the most common of which are metadata or the content itself. Metadata is a
fancy name for simply the data that describes the content. For example, a digital photo�s metadata could be its size, resolution, photographer,
and perhaps some keywords. Therefore, if I wanted to find a photo on Mount Kilimanjaro taken by Jane Doe in 1970, all I have to do is do a
digital search for digital content using the following criteria �Kilimanjaro �, �Doe�, and �1970�, and voila! Some types of digital content
allow for classification using the content itself, in which case, I could search all documents that contain within their actual text the words,
�nano-technology and clothing�. Through the above sorts of classifications, digital content becomes easily searchable,
and much more easily accessible, to which we turn to next.
- Access: So once digital content is stored and classified, access becomes the next differentiator, which perhaps is the most important. So far, a person might say, well a library can store and classify content, so how much value add, is this digital aspect bringing? When one looks at access, one begins to see the disparity between the physical and the digital content world. The Internet itself has been the greatest example of giving worldwide access to information. Supposing I happened to be doing some research in New York on the spread of Aids in Africa, and in particular in Zimbabwe. I could have ready access to the New York Library system, or perhaps the US library system through inter-library content loaning agreements. But if the content that I need is in Zimbabwe. Do I have to go there to get it? What if I am doing a regional sub-Saharan comparative analysis, would I have to go to every single nation to look for studies, reports, and statistics? Is there anyway for me to be able to access them from New York?
- Publishing & Reproduction: Of course, publishing digitally is much cheaper than otherwise. Anyone with a home printer can print reports, photos, or if they have Internet access and a site on which to publish, upload their digital content. If the content happens to have an error, then they can do the correction and upload it in a matter of minutes- very different from say print publishers who have a lead-time, upfront marketing costs, shipping costs, etc. Reproducing digitally for better (but sometimes also for worse) becomes very quick and easy.
How Can TidWiT Help You With Your Digital Content?
In the 1990�s, the Internet was revolutionary in that it created a worldwide-accessible platform for digital content. Anyone, anywhere, at anytime could get access to digital content. This, however, brought its own problems, because with the hundreds of millions of pages on the Internet, a typical search yields thousands of hits, most of which may be irrelevant for a person searching for a specific piece of knowledge or content. Therefore, what the Internet has not done is create an efficient marketplace for digital content to be purchased and sold. While many publishers do indeed sell their digital content on-line, they continue to follow the traditional publishing model. Therefore, those who have digital content that they believe others may have a need for, would like to receive something for it- for whatever reason including further research, hobby funding, or just simply an income supplement- and yet who cannot afford to own their website or create enough traffic for people to find them still have a problem. It is with this in mind that TidWiT was conceived.
TidWiT is the world�s digital content marketplace. It is the place where anyone in the world can store, classify, and sell their digital content easily and at an affordable cost. It is the place where potential digital content buyers go to in order to search, buy, and access affordable digital content that they could not have easily found elsewhere. TidWiT is the place where digital content buyers and sellers come together in a community setting to discuss topics, help and assess one another and the content.
|
Blogger Zone
See how TidWiT can help Bloggers market their Content
|