Google has announced a low-cost competitor to Apple TV – a “dongle” device called Chromecast.
The dongle is plugged into a television’s HDMI port, and allows users to stream media from smartphones, tablets and computers.
Launching immediately in the US, the device will cost $35 (£23). There is as yet no word on international launches.
via BBC News – Google launches Chromecast low-cost TV dongle.
I’m posting this but its not really new ‘news’ for libraries.
See the full article: Amazon vs. your public library | Fortune Tech.
Could Amazon (AMZN), tech’s behemoth retailer, really be threatened by the neighborhood library — a centuries-old institution known for musty shelves, high school cram sessions, and “Shhhhhh. Quiet please?” The answer is complex. Much hinges on whether libraries and publishers can iron out differences that have limited the selection of e-books available for lending.
A new service scrapes your social network for books worth your time.
via BookVibe spies on social media to recommend reads | Crave – CNET.
Read the full story at the link below. The author’s story underscores the importance of libraries not just to the average person but those with disabilities, health issues and unique needs.
In April 2013 the genetic condition I suffer from, Ehlers Danlos type III, rendered me immobile. Unable to type, read, watch television, or work, I quickly exhausted my dwindling freelance earnings on spoken word stories. After several weeks of intensive physiotherapy I was allowed to add a gentle stroll to my day. Bored, in pain and lonely, I headed back to the library.
When I saw the aisles full of spoken word CDs, I nearly wept. The man at the information desk assured me I could also order any specific disc I wanted. Having been trapped in my home with little human interaction, chatting with staff about the books was a balm. Embarrassingly, I had to ask how to use the electronic checking-out system. I then had to be issued with a new library card: my original, solidarity-inspired one had never been activated. Shakespeare’s words rang through my head: “O, I have ta’en Too little care of this!’ But the library and its team weren’t concerned by my absence. There was no judgment. I was always welcome.
SEO is dead. Long live social media optimisation | Technology | guardian.co.uk.
Quotable: “A better model for today’s businesses is to consider what it means to be social-media optimised, with a focus on customer-centric interaction rather than merely setting up a web property in the hope that Google will deliver hits. Recommendations from friends count for more than a search engine algorithm will ever achieve.”
For the past few weeks, Mashable has been crowdsourcing a Digital Bill of Rights to highlight the digital freedoms and protections our readers feel each user should be guaranteed as a citizen of the Internet.
After hundreds of comments and contributions on the Google Doc and through social media, a Digital Bill of Rights by the Internet, for the Internet, has been created. The document, though, is a work in progress as more users from across the world continue to include their thoughts and additions to it.
The World’s Biggest Data Breaches in One Stunning Visualization | Mashable.
See the entire data visualization at Information is Beautiful.
Digital books and other texts are increasingly coming under the control of distributors and other gatekeepers rather than readers and libraries. Though you can read a book through, say, Google Books, or on a Nook or Kindle, it’s laborious to save what you see to your computer and truly make the book your own. With cloud-based services, one “master” copy of the book is always online, but that makes it vulnerable to manipulation or even deletion.
Quotable: “To meet these challenges, libraries should be given an opportunity to escrow copies of publicly available but still all-too-controllable texts. They can compare their own banked copies with what’s currently on offer to the public, looking for changes to the integrity of texts.”
See the full article: Jonathan Zittrain: ‘Digital books are under the control of distributors rather than readers’ (Wired UK).
Think 3-D printers can only make simple toys and trinkets? Think again. From amazing prosthetics to custom surfboards, here are the latest, most incredible things that enterprising engineers are building with 3-D printers.
via The Most Incredible 3-D Printed Things We’ve Ever Seen ⚙ Co.Labs ⚙ code + community.
infophile 