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Eliza in repose



IMG_4341, originally uploaded by griffey.

We’re all having a great summer, and Eliza has become a really terrific toddler…it helps that she LOVES vacations. If there’s novelty involved, Eliza is all over it.

This is a shot from our trip to Rock Island State Park here in Tennessee, an awesome trip with our favorite friends and their toddlers.

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I wish I had the cash to jump on this before it sold out…a 3D printer for $500! Love, love this stuff. It’s sold out now, but I’m sure it’s the first of many examples of these dropping in price.

eMAKER Huxley 3D printer kits = $500

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Firefox extension that will display ePub files right inside the browser. I want this for Chrome….pretty please? Great addition to library systems, even if it won’t be able to deal with DRM.

EPUBReader – Read ePub in Firefox!

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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

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The former tablet manufacturer Kno released it’s iPad app last night, giving the iPad the largest collection of textbooks yet seen on the platform. Very interesting to see if schools respond to this availability, and if the textbooks in question are up to date/popular. 

The Kno Textbook App Hits The iPad

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Absolutely stellar review of the new Nook Simple Touch eReader, with pretty much the same conclusion I would espouse.

Nook Simple Touch vs Kindle 3

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A journalist covering 3D printing has a blog with some really interesting interviews and coverage. Take a look.

3D printing blog

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Along with announcements about Lion (the next incarnation of OSX) and iOS 5, Apple will announce details of their upcoming cloud services offering on June 6th during the WWDC Keynote. Speculation is rampant about what iCloud means, but almost assured is some form of cloud music service to compete with the recent Google and Amazon products. Other possibilities include a more robust syncing service (a la dropbox), network-based wireless syncing of your iOS devices, and a potential new API service for app developers to use for data synchronization between Apple devices.  We’ll see what Apple has up it’s sleeves in less than a week!

Apple to announce iCloud June 6th

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Today Google announced a new feature, the Google Wallet for near field communication devices. Similar to Mastercard’s PayPass (and compatible with it), it will allow you to simply wave your phone to authorize payment at merchants, including Radioshack, Subway, Foot Locker, CVS, and more.  Can you see libraries taking overdue and lost payments with something like this? 

Google Wallet announcement

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Amazon moved their advertising model that brought you the $114 Kindle Wifi over to the 3G. Now you can get always-on Whispernet service over 3G for only $164, which mirrors the $25 discount given for turning your homescreen over to Amazon for advertising. Still, $164 for a 3G Kindle means this is a hot week for eReaders.

Kindle 3G now with Special Offers