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Amazon just reduced the price of their Kindle 3G with Special Offers to $139…this is a MASSIVE steal for lifetime 3G connectivity that works globally.  

Kindle 3G now $139

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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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Here’s yet another example of how we are currently living in the cyberpunk future that William Gibson warned us about…networks are now inserting new advertisements into reruns/existing video products. This is a great argument for libraries owning content and acting as archives for preservation purposes. Future research on advertising/fashion/video production could be rendered impossible if there’s no saved version prior to digital manipulation. When streaming is the norm, there may BE no “canonical” version of a broadcast, since each stream could be individually tailored to the recipient. 

Living in the cyberpunk advertising age

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If you ever wondered to yourself “This 3D printing is interesting and all, but what if I need to print out an alligator skull…can that be done?”  The answer is now “Yes, it can.”

Printing complex organic shapes with a Makerbot

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A design firm creates a challenge for itself: create 30 different coffee cups in 30 days and sell them online via 3D printing. Each of these is printed directly to ceramic, glazed, and then shipped off to the buyer.

30 Days 30 Cups

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Todd made a cube similar to the one seen in Paramount Pictures’s Super 8, ordered it off of Shapeways, and got a Cease & Desist from Paramount for his trouble. This is part of the first wave of intellectual property lawsuits regarding 3D printing…expect many, many more.

Cease and Desist over Super 8 cube

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Given that Deathly Hallows was available as an ebook online before it was even for sale in print form, Rowling has certainly taken her sweet time on this. But it will be good to have “official” versions of the books electronically. My favorite quote from the article: Henwood said: “We want to make sure anyone who buys it, can read it on any device, we are talking to the Kindles, the Apples, the Googles, Barnes & Noble to make sure they are compatible. At the books are now available on The Internets.

Rowling to finally allow official Potter ebooks

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Eliza’s 3 and a half!




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Originally uploaded by griffey

Don’t know where the time has gone, but Eliza is now turning the corner toward 4.

She’s still really into dress up (as you can see in this pic from the Renaissance Fair). She loves kitty cats, real or stuffed. She is really into Scooby Doo movies and watches at least one every day. And she has developed a hilarious sense of humor. There’s nothing like her smile to light up the whole world.

She has taken dance class, swim lessons, and had play dates, stayed with Nana and Pop Pop for extended periods of time, and traveled to many fun places. She’s quite the big girl now, as she likes to remind us.

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ICANN, the international organization responsible for coordinating the Domain structure of the Internet, just voted to allow generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) to be created. This means that instead of being stuck with .com, .net. .org, etc…organizations can request and be granted the ability to oversee their own TLD. A group of automakers could band together and register .car, for example, and you could have ford.car, honda.car, and so on. On the other hand, Ford could theoretically register .car, and prevent other companies from using it. The methodology that ICANN is going to use to prevent this sort of meta-cybersquatting isn’t really apparent at this time. The Draft version of the application guidebook is now available, and among the details is the application fee. It will cost $185,000 to apply for a new gTLD…a fee which ICANN will keep, even if your application is denied. Even with that, I think that serious thought should be given by ALA and IFLA to a joint application for a top level domain of .lib or .library (I did not know that there was already a TLD for .museum). Given the relative failure of the use of non-standard TLDs, I’m not sure a .library TLD would be used. But it’s far better that ALA and IFLA control it than Microsoft or Google. 

ICANN approves custom Top Level Domains

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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