Tag Archives: news

News: Books & Publishing, Music & Film

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Books & Publishing

‘City on Fire,’ a Debut Novel, Fetches Nearly $2 Million | TNYT
Donna Tartt’s novel “The Goldfinch” has 771 pages. “The Luminaries” by Eleanor Catton, winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize, is 834 pages long. And then there is “City on Fire,” the 900-page debut novel that took the publishing industry by storm last week. It was even more evidence that the long novel is experiencing a resurgence, as a dozen publishers competed for the rights to release the book, set in New York City in the 1970s.

Music & Film

Hey MPAA, Why Are PG-13 Movies More Violent Than R-Rated Ones? | Flavorwire
A new study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center finds something more disturbing: though initial PG-13 films contained about as much gun violence as G or PG-rated pictures, “since 2009, PG-13-rated films have contained as much or more violence as R-rated films” (emphasis mine). And hey, funny story, that rise matches gun violence off-screen too.

News: Education & Technology, Librarianship

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Education & Technology

Twitter had its IPO today. Twitter’s Strong IPO Leaves The Company More Richly Valued On A Per-User Basis Than Facebook At Its Debut | TechCrunch. You may also like: Post-Twitter IPO: Time to fret about a new tech bubble? | CNET and 14 Moments That Defined Twitter | FastCompany

Did your Adobe password leak? Now you and 150m others can check | theguardian
Leak is 20 times worse than the company initially revealed, and could put huge numbers of peoples’ online lives at risk. Direct link to the Adobe leaked credentials checker.

How Pinterest Plans to Woo the Rest of the Internet | FastCompany
Unlike social media platforms like Twitter that capture the here and now, Pinterest is for dreaming of what’s ahead, says CEO Ben Silbermann…“People use Pinterest every day to get ready for and excited about something in their future–what they’re going to make for dinner, what they’re going to teach their classroom of students. If we can create a set of connections between things that they’re interested in, we can help them plan for that future.”

Librarianship

News: Books & Publishing, Music & Film

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Books & Publishing

Amazon signs up for ‘future of streaming’ ORBX | CNET – Amazon becomes the first major partner to agree to use lightweight new technology from Mozilla and OTOY for streaming games, video, and software. More Amazon news: Amazon employee rebukes wife over Jeff Bezos biography | the guardian. Also: Amazon Offers Kindles, Cut of E-Book Sales to Indie Bookstores | PCMag – another take: Amazon’s New Kindle Offer Rejected by Indie Bookstores | WIRED.

Confessions of a Booker Prize Judge | BookRiot
Stuart Kelly…offers Book Riot some insights into the pressures and the joys of choosing a Booker winner, why a graphic novel should win it one day, why The Luminaries changes what the novel can do, and what impact the Americans will have under the redrawn eligibility criteria for the prize.

Agatha Christie and Poirot scoop best ever status from Crime Writers | Telegraph
The Crime Writers Association crowned Agatha Christie best ever author and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd best ever novel, while Scandinavian crime missed out

Music & Film

Swedish Theaters Now Using Bechdel Test To Rate Films On Gender Bias
A group of four movie theaters in Sweden have adopted a new rating system to expose gender bias–if a film passes the Bechdel Test, it gets an A rating. Qualifying films must a.) have at least two women with names, who b.) talk to each other and c.) talk about something other than a man. The paradox of this test is that it seems simple enough to meet these requirements, and yet countless films fail to do so each year.

News: Education & Technology, Librarianship

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Education & Technology

Web inventor Berners-Lee sounds alarm on mass spying | CNET
Sir Tim Berners-Lee says the activities of the NSA and its UK counterpart, the GCHQ, could warp his baby, making the Internet vulnerable to attack and depriving humanity of a “safe space” for problem solving.

The Amazingly Unlikely Story of How Minecraft Was Born | WIRED
Excerpt from new book.

Librarianship

Mom Complains About Library’s Porn Policy | NBC Chicago
A suburban mother is demanding the Orland Park Public Library ban pornography on its computers. More scandal: Library book overdue in Texas? Go directly to jail | Teleread

News: Books & Publishers, Music & Film

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Books & Publishers

Forgotten Books, Discovered | HuffPost
Pacing through the website of Forgotten Books, an online library with hundreds of thousands of titles, is like walking through the aisles of a favorite bookstore.

The Library Vending Machine | BookRiot
Changing demographics and difficulty securing new funds for new libraries, The Pioneer Library System in Norman, Oklahoma decided to to use technology to meet its patrons needs. So last week, it opened the first 24-hour library vending machine in the United States. Built by EnvisionWare, this fully automated machine will be able to to dispense more than 400 pieces of media (books/DVDs/audiobooks) and store more than 1000 returned items.

Music & Film

News: Education & Technology, Librarianship

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Education & Technology

Startup Gives Free Stuff to Student Influencers | Mashable
Sumpto, a startup that identifies top social-media influencers at colleges across the country, sends students free gifts from brands in hopes that they will tweet, post and share photos of the free swag on their social-media accounts.

Twitter strives to explain itself to the public | CNET
A new “About Twitter” page attempts to describe the social network and explain how and why people tweet.

Bill Gates Believes Human Health Is More Important Than Tech | Mashable
In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, which focused primarily on his work to bring health aid to the world’s impoverished regions, Gates offers a glimpse into how much his views have changed regarding the importance of technology in our lives.

E Ink Looks Beyond E-Readers | MIT Technology Review
Facing a declining market for e-readers, E Ink’s new R&D facility is trying out some different ideas.

Lenovo pursued BlackBerry bid, but Ottawa rejected idea | Globe & Mail
[T]he Canadian government told the smartphone company it would not accept a Chinese takeover because of national security concerns.

Apple: “Our Business Does Not Depend on Collecting Personal Data” | AllThingsD
Apple published a formal report on federal government data requests and in so doing became the first tech company to disclose such inquiries by both account and device.

Librarianship

Museum of Science Fiction might be coming to DC | CNET
Trekkies and wanna-be Mars colonists might soon have a permanent brick-and-mortar site for sharing their love of all things science fiction

Illinois Library Comes Under Fire | American Libraries Magazine
“Sometimes libraries that are doing ‘all the right things’ pay a price for their excellence through uncivil attacks and attempts to dismantle their work,” Barbara Jones, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), told American Libraries. She is referring to Orland Park (Ill.) Public Library (OPPL) in south suburban Chicago, which has endured several intellectual-freedom challenges over the past few months.

MELSA, 3M Develop New Ebook Sharing Feature for Consortia | The Digital Shift

The Library Vending Machine | BookRiot
Changing demographics and difficulty securing new funds for new libraries, The Pioneer Library System in Norman, Oklahoma decided to to use technology to meet its patrons needs. So last week, it opened the first 24-hour library vending machine in the United States. Built by EnvisionWare, this fully automated machine will be able to to dispense more than 400 pieces of media (books/DVDs/audiobooks) and store more than 1000 returned items.

Pew Research

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Twitter a news source? Not so much | CNET
A new Pew survey shows only 16 percent of US adults use Twitter and only 8 percent use the social network for news. But these users tend to be young, educated, and wealthy.

The State of Digital Divides
Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, presented the project’s latest findings about who has and doesn’t have access to the internet, broadband, and cell phones. He noted that some of the factors associated with non-use of technology are age, household income, educational attainment, community type, and disability. He also cited findings about why people say they do not use the internet.

Alberta commits $85.8M to new library for Mount Royal University | Calgary Herald

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Construction on a desperately needed library and learning centre at Mount Royal University is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2014 following an $85.8-million commitment from the Alberta government and an undisclosed donation from Calgary’s Riddell family.

Staff are elated that construction will soon begin on the four-floor, stand-alone library, which, at 16,000 square metres, will be four times the size of the institution’s existing library.

Read: Alberta commits $85.8M to new library for Mount Royal University | Calgary Herald.

News: Books & Publishing, Music & Film

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Books & Publishing

Jeff Bezos’ Wife And Co-Workers Call Out Brad Stone’s Amazon Book As Inaccurate…On Amazon | TechCrunch
In what can only be seen as a moment of delicious cyclical irony, a new fairly negative review of the book has been posted by none other than Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos’ wife, MacKenzie Bezos. We’ve confirmed the identity of the reviewer, the only peson to leave a one-star reaction so far.

Readmill is my new Favorite eBook Reading App [Review] | Beautiful Pixels
One of the biggest problems faced while upgrading to the paperless world — at least when it comes to reading ebooks — is that the system is horribly fragmented. Some ebooks are available on one platform while some on others. Keeping track of all your purchases and syncing them with different devices is always a pain. Readmill wants to take some of that pain away from you.

New E-Book Services Borrow a Page From Netflix [Review] | AllThingsD
Review of Oyster and Scribd e-book subscription services.

Music & Film

News: Education & Technology; Libraries & Librarians; Publishing, Books & Film

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Education, Technology

Affordable mini Raspberry Pi monitor smashes funding goal | theguardian
HDMIPi Kickstarter project for affordable 9in high-definition monitors for the Raspberry Pi took just 50.5 hours to hit target

Google to Launch ‘Helpouts’ on Monday | The Wall Street Journal
A new video service from Google aims to connect people with teachers, personal trainers, doctors and other experts is expected to launch Monday evening, according to a recent planning email. The new service, called “Helpouts,” has been in quiet testing for months. There are few restrictions on who can sign up to offer services, though Google has been reaching out to professional organizations such as the language-learning company Rosetta Stone to fill in the ranks of experts.

Google Wants The Government’s Data On You | Forbes
Google’s president for the Americas urged government officials Friday to open all municipal data so Google can use it to become everyone’s perfect personal assistant—an invisible entity that knows what you want before you do.

Libraries, Librarians

OCLC and ProQuest work together to automate e-book collection management | OCLC
Collaboration will help library staff keep e-book information current, offer library users quick and easy access to e-books from ebrary and EBL.

State Library of South Australia to create new technology hub to attract more users of its resources | news.com.au
Will embark on an ambitious program of events and create a university-style hub in a bid to arrest a fall of almost 200,000 visitors last financial year.