Category Archives: Technology

LibraryReads Book Discovery Program Launches Fall 2013

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Every day library staff share books they love with their users. Now, you can reach beyond the library walls to tell the rest of the country about the books you can’t wait to share.

LibraryReads – a new program, launching this fall [in the U.S.], harnesses the value of “library staff picks” into a single nation-wide discovery tool, a monthly list of ten newly released must-reads. via LibraryReads.

LibraryReads has launched a website, with areas for library staff, publishers, sample recommendation list and a comprehensive FAQ. Also sign up to join the program and receive the newsletter.

See the press release.

See also: LibraryReads Book Discovery Program To Launch | ALA Annual 2013 | Library Journal

LibraryReads

For the First Time, You Can Actually Own the Digital Comics You Buy | Underwire | Wired.com

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — If you’ve ever bought a digital comic book, your experience probably went something like this: You opened up an app like ComiXology, paid around $1.99 to $3.99 — likely, the same price as a print issue — but never downloaded the file for the comic to your hard drive. That’s because you don’t really own it — you’ve simply licensed the right to look at it in someone else’s library.

It’s a digital sales model that has been adopted by every major U.S. comics publisher and was inspired by fears that piracy of digital copies could hurt not just digital but also print sales. It has also essentially prevented the comic book readership (or at least, the legal comic book readership) from truly owning any of the books they buy. At least until this morning, when comic book publisher Image Comics announced that it will now sell all of its digital comics as downloadable via its website for both desktop and mobile users, making it the first major U.S. publisher to offer DRM-free digital versions of comics.

See the full article: For the First Time, You Can Actually Own the Digital Comics You Buy | Underwire | Wired.com.

Why Genre Rules e-Books, and What the Big Publishers Are Doing About It | Wired

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One of the biggest success stories in U.S. publishing in recent years has been the continued growth of digital book publishing. Last year, total revenue for e-book sales in the United States reached $3.04 billion, a 44.2% increase on 2011′s numbers and a figure all the more impressive when you realize that growth is additive to the print publishing industry. Even more surprising, publishers have focused much of their attention on genres like sci-fi, fantasy, mystery and romance fiction – markets that have traditionally lagged behind “literary fiction” in terms of sales.

See the full article: Why Genre Rules e-Books, and What the Big Publishers Are Doing About It | Wired

40 Great Apps for Mobile Reference and Outreach | American Libraries Magazine

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The desire to learn about useful mobile apps is widespread among librarians, judging by the overflow crowd at Sunday’s Conversation Starter [ALA Conference 2013], billed to deliver “40 Great Apps for Mobile Reference and Outreach.”

via 40 Great Apps for Mobile Reference and Outreach | American Libraries Magazine.

The Millions | Save the Languages

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Researchers at Comanche Nation College and Texas Tech University are creating a digital archive to reconstruct the Comanche language before its 25 remaining speakers die out. Meanwhile, researchers from Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences have recorded audio and video footage of twenty isolated Alaskans who speak a unique form of the Russian language. (Bonus: An Australian researcher recently uncovered a whole new Aboriginal dialect.) via The Millions | Save the Languages.

How a Lone Coder Cloned Google Reader | Gizmodo

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When Google Reader announced it was shutting down a few months ago, most of us stamped our feet, panicked, and went running into the arms of another RSS reader. But Matt Jibson is different. Unlike most of us, he can crunch code. So he built a Google Reader of his very own own.

And last week, the effort paid off. Last Thursday, just weeks before Google was set to pull the plug, Jibson flipped on the lights to Go Read, his open-source response to Google abandonment. He posted the project on Hacker News and his code on GitHub. 

See the full article: via How a Lone Coder Cloned Google Reader | Gizmodo.

go read rss reader

14 Pinterest Doppelgängers for Visual Inspiration | Mashable

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14 Pinterest Doppelgängers for Visual Inspiration | Mashable

The article reviews:

  1. Foodgawker
  2. Dribble
  3. Notcouture
  4. Svpply
  5. Designspiration
  6. Dwellinggawker
  7. Behance
  8. Liqurious
  9. Notventures
  10. The Book Cover Archive
  11. Editorial Design Served
  12. Fonts in Use
  13. Baubauhaus
  14. siteInspire

“Game Consoles” Are the Final Key to Digital Domination | Gizmodo

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Game consoles have historically been their own little colony off to the side of technology. For a while that’s because they were seen mainly as an expensive kids’ toy, and later because they weren’t germane to the music sales or laptops or iPods battles of the time. Now, though, as we’re digitizing everything in our lives, that TV-connected box in the middle of every family’s living room is suddenly looking pretty important.

Google, Apple, and Microsoft want to be your one-stop digital shop. All three have a desktop OS and a mobile OS. All three are making their own hardware now. They all have stores where you can buy movies and music, and they all have their own music streaming service. They are all branching out, increasingly, into more and more parts of your life. Apple’s in your car. Google’s on your face. Microsoft is already in your living room. But their offerings are too spread out, too fragmented.

The ultimate for all of these companies, and for you, is One Device. It’ll control your music system and TV, and it will shepherd all your messages and access all of your photos and movies. It will also probably play your video games.

See the full article: “Game Consoles” Are the Final Key to Digital Domination | Gizmodo.

A Computer To Teach You Not To Act Like A Computer | Co.Exist

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Technology enthusiasts who spend their days playing with computers and robots often have the amount of social graces of the machines they’re programming. So it’s either a brilliant or incredibly off-base intervention that an MIT graduate student has designed computer software to attempt to teach the socially-maladjusted how to be more sociable, via a Siri-like virtual conversation coach.

The program, called My Automated Conversation Coach (MACH), “uses a computer-generated onscreen face, along with facial, speech, and behavior analysis and synthesis software, to simulate face-to-face conversations,” according to a press release. “It then provides users with feedback on their interactions,” for example, how good was their eye contact, which words did they emphasize, how did their voice rise and fall.

via A Computer To Teach You Not To Act Like A Computer | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation.

Coursera under fire in MOOCs licensing row | The Conversation

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A prominent member of the open education movement, former Open University Vice-Chancellor Sir John Daniel, has criticised online education provider Coursera for not making its materials available under creative commons licensing.

Coursera is one of the largest providers of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses – which allow students to take university courses for free online from anywhere in the world.

Quotable

“While MOOCs have open enrolment, many of the MOOCs offered through commercial partners do not have open licences,” he said.

“It would be a pity if MOOCs were to act as a brake on the open education movement.”

via Coursera under fire in MOOCs licensing row | The Conversation.

See also: Coursera partners with 10 universities for online classes | CNET