| 489 Bucks? Daaaaaannng! |
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The wraps are now off of the bigscreen Kindle, the Kindle DX. Here’s the new stuff that its older sib doesn’t offer:
Coverage via Engadget, Wired, CrunchGear, and TechCrunch. Four hundred and eighty-nine dollars? Daaaaaannnnnnng. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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Comments (0)April 29, 2009
| Boy, Ya Gotta Jump Through a Lotta Hoops To Become a Monopoly [UPDATED] |
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The proposed Google-Authors Guild settlement is back in the news again. The DoJ, which has decided it really doesn’t care for Google’s attitude, thank you very much, has notified everyone that they have decided to look into various and sundry antitrust issues related to the settlement. At the same time, Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. Federal District Court in New York has given authors and other interested parties 4 more months to opt out of the settlement and/or file briefs about it. This means that the approval process for the deal will drag into at least October, one year after the settlement was announced. UPDATE, 4/30: The response on Google’s own Public Policy Blog. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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March 18, 2009
| Everyone Has a Blindspot |
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TechCrunch reported yesterday about how major publishers are now posting full novels to document-sharing site Scribd. It was a wake-up call for me. In my CLE classes I’ve been limiting my discussions of electronic texts to Amazon, Google Books, and the Jenkins catalog. I’ve ignored Scribd, as well as other eBook sites such as Project Gutenberg and Penn’s Online Books Page. [insert mea culpa here] Anyway, I poked around Scribd for a good example. Here’s one: |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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March 4, 2009
| A Library Blog Post About — Wait For It — Books |
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The eee-lectronic kind, that is: (1) Yesterday Amazon launched a Kindle application for the iPhone. You may remember that I blogged previously about how Amazon said that “Kindle 2 will also sync with a range of mobile devices in the future.” So the future is now, at least for iPhone users. No word on an app for Android phones, like my T-Mobile G1. (Have I mentioned recently how much I like it?) (2) Speaking about the iPhone, guess what’s the fastest growing category in the iTunes app store? You betcha: books. (3) The NY Times reports on the “comically sweeping” lengths Google has to go to notify every living author of their intent to digitize every book on the planet. This is part of the settlement of the Author’s Guild lawsuit: “So far, more than 200 advertisements have run in more than 70 languages: in highbrow periodicals like The New York Review of Books and The Poetry Review in Britain; in general-interest publications like Parade and USA Today; in obscure foreign trade journals like China Copyright and Svensk Bokhandel; and in newspapers in places like Fiji, Greenland, the Falkland Islands, and the Micronesian island of Niue (the name is roughly translated as Behold the Coconut!), which has one newspaper.” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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February 12, 2009
| WSJ to Close its Library |
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I’m a librarian, so I’m fatalistic. I realize that library budgets get cut all the time. But when an organization like the Wall Street Journal decides to close its research library, I have to shake my head. I realize that journalists are intelligent, and they can do their own research. But they’re not trained information professionals. And we have to remember that if they make a mistake, a company could lose millions of dollars of valuation. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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February 10, 2009
| Open-Sourcing the Kindle |
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Yesterday ZDNet’s Open Source blog called for Amazon to open up the Kindle: “… so far Amazon seems to think it’s going to be the Apple of eBooks, not the Google. Be the Google. While Apple made a ton of money selling iPods, the big bucks here are in the blades, not the razors. They’re in the books, not the players. The only way this works is if the technology becomes as ubiquitous as, well, books. It should work inside any device you have, any device you want, any device you can imagine, or what anyone else can imagine. If it’s stuck in this squarish, plainish, plastic case it’s not going to fulfill its potential.” I snorted and moved on. No way that’s gonna happen, I thought. Then last night I read this article from Computerworld: “The introduction of ‘Whispersync’ technology may well be the bigger technology news from Amazon.com Inc., which announced its Kindle 2 e-reader today in New York. Not much was said about Whispersync by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos during today’s announcement, but the official Amazon.com press release defines Whispersync as technology that ‘automatically syncs Kindle 2 and the original Kindle, which makes transitioning to the new Kindle 2 or using both devices easy for customers.’ What has caught the interest of industry analysts, however, is the next sentence from Amazon: ‘Kindle 2 will also sync with a range of mobile devices in the future.’ The statement suggests that a Kindle 2 user could start reading a book on the e-reader and finish reading it on an iPhone or an Android phone, analysts noted.” This’ll make the author of the first article above feel pretty happy. As a test, I decided to see how painful it was to read a book on my Android phone. I chose Flatland from Google Books Mobile. I admit I didn’t read the whole book. But what I did read was surprisingly easy-on-the-eyes. Scrolling didn’t make me scream. It could work. So maybe Amazon SHOULD be the Apple of eBooks. They can produce a nifty gadget that’s a design icon. And like Apple’s (finally) doing now, they can also sell content that can be played on a wide range of devices. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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February 9, 2009
| Kindle 2 Unveiled |
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CrunchGear live-blogged the 10:00 news conference. Here are the relevant specs:
Want more? The K2 page is up on Amazon. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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January 27, 2009
| Kindle 2 Coming Next Month? |
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John Biggs of CrunchGear reports that Amazon has scheduled a press conference on February 9 at the Morgan Library & Museum in NY: “… unless they’re announcing a Bezos-themed amusement park in the Ukraine, I’m pretty sure we’re going to see the Kindle 2.” You may remember that back in November Amazon delayed the launch on the Kindle 2 until the first quarter of 2009. I haven’t gotten all frothy-mouthed over the Kindle that way I did over the iPhone and then the T-Mobile G1. But I’ll still sit up and pay attention on the 9th. I’m open to anything Amazon wants to show me. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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November 25, 2008
| No Kindle 2 Under The Tree This Year |
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Apparently Amazon has delayed the release of the Kindle 2 until 1Q of 2009. If the leaked images of the next-gen version that made the rounds in October are real, it looks much more polished that its predecessor. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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November 21, 2008
| If You Build It, They Will Come |
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And then you’ll have to build it again. The architects of the new Europeana digital cultural library designed the site to handle 5 million hits (to oversimplify, think “visits”) per hour. They got 10 million instead, so the site’s now down a day after it launched. They hope to have Europeana back up by mid-December. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Internet Librarian
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