Dear Japan,

Please stop exploring your sexuality.

It really creeps us out.

Thanks,
America

In addendum: wow

Amazon buys rights to use British Library’s Bibliographic info
From the article:

“The deal gives Amazon the right to use the British Library’s bibliographic catalogue, which contains 2.55 million books. Crucially it includes 1.7 million produced before the introduction in 1970 of the International Standard Book Number (ISBN), a 10-character code that uniquely identifies any modern book.

Amazon will open a new online market where buyers and sellers can strike deals for some of the world’s most expensive literary creations. ”

Story originally from BoingBoing.

Not sure if any Ibiblio-philes read this thing…but even if you’re not directly affiliated, what do you think of this:

Music, UNC, and the First Year Student

It’s a portal designed for INLS180 concerning how to instruct first year students here at UNC what you can and can’t do on the network, and more importantly where to go if you want music. Plus, I threw in a forum, where hopefully students can discuss where to get music legally and the problems with current copyright law.

So…the question is: is it good enough to propose to Ibiblio for inclusion into their collection? Would it be a good thing to promote to the students here at UNC? Is it needed? What say you all?

Evidently Maytag thinks someone does. The Skybox Personal Beverage Vendor is evidently available for pre-order at Amazon. For just $499, you can have the satisfaction of….pushing a button to get a drink instead of opening the refrigerator door.

I’m speechless with the concept.

But I would love to have a home soda fountain.

Should have known…which Buffy character are you?

You are

Giles

"You should never be cowed by authority. Except, of course, in this instance, where I am clearly right and you are clearly wrong."

What "Buffy" Character Are You?

Not any surprise here…seen on ESR’s blog originally.

William Gibson wrote your book.
Technology terrifies and delights you.

Which Author’s Fiction are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

….it’s my first piece of blogspam. Isn’t it cute? I think I’ll name it George.

It looks like George is from Israel, and George is a ADSL user in Petach-Tikva. Or at least, that’s what this search shows…. if you were curious, “Petach Tikva is located in the center of Israel, seven miles east of the Mediterranean Sea. Petach Tikva is the country’s fifth largest city and its most highly industrialized area. ” It is also a sister-city to Chicago, all you Windy City types out there….say hi!

Perhaps George works at Intel. In any case, I think he’s cute…maybe I’ll keep him. None of the links seem active, and there’s no whois info on the URL’s in them…so I’m not quite sure what the point is. Anyone? Just someone with a fetish for odd prose and trademarked names of drugs?

And letting the whole blogsphere know JUST how he feels about CSS, and how he feels about WordPress among his other outspoken views. ESR never fails to entertain, and speak from the hip.

AND he’s hosted by everyone’s favorite digital library: Ibiblio

…if someone is linked to my Old Blog, please update your links to the blog you are reading.

Thank you.

🙂

So here’s my latest revelation about iTunes: it isn’t the Store, or the media playing capabilities. No, no, no. It’s all about the metadata. The usefulness of it comes almost entirely from the complete and utter ease of applying data about the songs to themselves, and then being able to use said data to organize and search your media.

MP3’s have supported metadata (id3 tags) since the standard’s inception, but most media players only use this metadata for informing the user: what song is playing, what song is coming up. They didn’t let you interact with the data, apply your own info to it, and search and sort based on it. This is really the strength of iTunes…from being able to set the “style” (rock, pop, rap) to being able to “rate” the songs with a star count, to being able to attach cover art to a song (as easy as dragging and dropping from a browser…I just search Amazon for the album cover, then yank it).

So that you, Apple, for finally allowing my metadata and media to mix. I love it.