Links

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

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

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

3D printers are likely to explode in variety in 2012

Ultimaker: There’s a New 3D Printer in Town

Yet another option in fabrication beyond the Makerbot, 3D printers are likely to explode in variety in 2012. The Ultimaker looks like a promising entry into the increasingly competitive field.
Check out the Ultimaker blog for more information.

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

IBM is building the largest data drive in history, a storage unit that will hold 120 Petabytes of information. For those who might not recognize the prefix, a Petabyte is 1,000 Terabytes, or 1,000,000 Gigabytes. Using every librarians favorite measure of information storage the “Library of Congress”, the new IBM storage unit could hold over 12,000 copies of the entirety of the Library of Congress.

IBM Builds Biggest Data Drive Ever

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

Google’s recent entry into social networking, Google+, is beloved of the technorati, but hasn’t gained a lot of ground generally. But features like this really push the service in interesting ways…Google now has sharing between Google Books and Google+, so that you can seamlessly share details, highlights, etc from Google Books into your Google+ Circles.  Very well done, and when they finally launch Google+ for businesses/organizations, the ability for a Library page to share this sort of information easily could be very interesting. Well done, G+!

Inside Google Books: Share Your Favorite Books

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

Some evidence that 3D printing is becoming a customer-facing business that makes sense, as a variety of big name tech industry investors (including Jeff Bezos of Amazon) are putting $10 Million into Makerbot Industries.

All-Star Lineup Invests in MakerBot « MakerBot Industries

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

It appears that the HP Touchpad isn’t do so well at retail. 

Ouchpad: Best Buy Sitting on a Pile of HP Tablets

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

Amazon just launched a completely web-based version of their Kindle software, called Kindle Cloud Reader. This allows you to read your Amazon library from any Chrome browser (including Chromebooks), Safari, or mobile Safari on the iPad.

Kindle Cloud Reader

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

Interesting article about the economic changes and impacts of 3D printing. However, the quote:  “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: most households will not purchase and run a 3D printer to produce their own products,” Terry Wohlers, the president of Wohler Associates, recently wrote. Average consumers might have small inexpensive printers for making children’s toys, but he thinks most people will lack the skills, interest or financial commitment needed to routinely make their own products. To me, that sounds an awful lot like: “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”    — Ken Olson, president/founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

3D Printing and The Replicator Economy | Txchnologist

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

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

Categories
Release_Candidate Uncategorized

Amazon just announced the availability of textbook rental through their Kindle service, which allows students to “rent” a textbook for any device that runs the Kindle software. The rental length can be between 30-360 days (you pay on a sliding scale depending on how long you need it) and can be extended after the original rental if needed.  In conjunction they now have a Textbook portal for searching out what you need, including the ability to search an entire list of ISBN numbers at once.  It will be interesting to see how popular this service becomes as we move into the start of school in a few weeks.

Kindle Textbook Rental launches