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Good: A really thorough examination of copyright and books. Bad: The _only_ mention of libraries is the DPLA project.  Ugly: The author perspective he gets is Ursula Le Guin, not exactly the most balanced of voices on this subject. Would love to have had a counterpoint to her POV in the the form of one of the usual suspects (Doctorow et al). 

One Google Books To Rule Them All?

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Google is now providing resources to help you mobilize your website.

GoMo: An Initiative From Google

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I’m often accused of being an Apple apologist or fanboy. Truth is, I really like Android for the most part…but here’s why you won’t see me buying an Android phone. understatementblog: The announcement that Nexus One users won’t be getting upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich led some to justifiably question Google’s support of their devices. I look at it a little differently: Nexus One owners are lucky. I’ve been researching the history of OS updates on Android phones…

Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support

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Ars Technica on the Kindle/Overdrive experience. Two best quotes: “To see what’s available, visit your library’s website, which will likely display an obvious link to the OverDrive eMediaLibrary. Login to the system, usually by entering details like a library card number and PIN code, and you’ll find a website straight out of 2002.” and they clearly see what the future may bring: “For Amazon, this looks only like a first step. While the arrangement helps Amazon move more Kindle hardware and sell some books (checked-out books can easily be purchased for those who want permanent access), a far more compelling product might come from Amazon itself rather than a local library: pay a yearly fee and get access to millions of Kindle-ready books. Not surprisingly, Amazon is working on exactly this idea (and it already rents textbooks).”

Ars Technica on Kindle/Overdrive

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Really interesting take on design choices for devices…going to have to think about…

Really interesting take on design choices for devices…going to have to think about this for a bit.

Embedded Link

Hands Per Device (HPD)
Hands-per-device, or HPD, is an alternative approach to efficiently designing interactive content and applications for a today's multi-platform ecosystem.

Google+: View post on Google+

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Reading Rainbow for the iPad generation from the article: “LeVar Burton, a children’s literacy advocate and a former star of Star Trek: The Next Generation, plans to make an ambitious comeback, giving the once-loved Reading Rainbow brand a 21st-century upgrade. Burton’s for-profit venture, RRKidz, plans to launch an educational iPad app that lets children explore topics of interest—such as, say space—in a multimedia-rich environment, with voice-over-enhanced children’s books, familiar videos of Burton at real-life places (like NASA), and, of course, games.”

Reading Rainbow: The Next Generation

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For those who like their technology to look like fine, handcrafted books, TwelveSouth has produced this BookBook iPhone case. It looks beautiful, but I’m wary of the lack of camera access.

BookBook for iPhone

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Google announces the first eInk reader to integrate natively with Google Books, coming this Saturday, July 17th. The iRiver Story HD will retail for $140, and will be available at Target stores.

Google eBooks-integrated e-reader: iriver Story HD

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The British Library and Google today announced a partnership to digitise 250,000 out-of-copyright books from the Library’s collections. Opening up access to one of the greatest collections of books in the world, this demonstrates the Library’s commitment, as stated in its 2020 Vision, to increase access to anyone who wants to do research.

The British Library and Google to make 250,000 books available to all

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Fascinating read from the Internet Archive, who has decided to begin maintaining physical copies in archival storage of any book they have digitally. From the blog post: Internet Archive is building a physical archive for the long term preservation of one copy of every book, record, and movie we are able to attract or acquire.  Because we expect day-to-day access to these materials to occur through digital means, the our physical archive is designed for long-term preservation of materials with only occasional, collection-scale retrieval. Because of this, we can create optimized environments for physical preservation and organizational structures that facilitate appropriate access. A seed bank might be conceptually closest to what we have in mind: storing important objects in safe ways to be used for redundancy, authority, and in case of catastrophe. Really, really interesting…the Internet Archive is quickly becoming just The Archive. Their answer to storage is brilliant as well: Based on this technical literature and specifications from depositories around the world, Tom McCarty, the engineer who designed the Internet Archive’s Scribe book-scanning system, began to design, build, and test a modular storage system in Oakland California. This system uses the infrastructure developed around the most used storage design of the 20th century, the shipping container. Rows of stacked shipping containers are used like 40′ deep shelving units. In this configuration, a single shipping container can hold around 40,000 books, about the same as a standard branch library, and a small building can hold millions of books. Is it wrong that I want to work for Brewster? Such interesting, amazing projects that the Archive maintains…

The New Physical Archive of the Internet Archive