November 2009
24 posts
Revised Google Books Settlement Filed
Google, the Authors Guild, and the Publishers Association have filed a revised settlement with the court hearing the Google Books case. From my quick first reading the main changes include: placing the orphan works registry in the hands of an independent trustee which will oversee funds generated from their sale; allowing third party companies to license and resell the entire database; providing...
Book Lending at Twitter Speed: Thoughts from Josh...
Based in part on ideas raised during his appearance on the latest episode of Digital Campus, Josh Greenberg (@epistemographer) speculates on the future of book lending under the doctrine of first sale in a digital economy where access to copyright material can be lent, returned, and logged at Twitter speed. Assuming a “hyper-efficient distribution system,” if a given book only ever...
Jono Bacon on Roadmaps for Successful...
Ubuntu Community Lead, Jono Bacon, knows something about building communities of collaboration. In this post, he provides some specific guidance (and wiki templates) for using structured “roadmaps” to help manage collaborative projects.
The Story Behind NYPL's New Logo
The New York Times City Room blog sheds some light on how cultural heritage institutions are thinking about branding in the digital age with a nice little piece on The New York Public Library’s choice of a new logo.
Google Programming Language: "Go"
Not sure if this is new or I just missed it somehow, but Google has released an open source systems programming language called “Go.” Noting that languages like Java and C++ are years (decades, even) old, the Go team aims to make the new language friendlier to today’s problems and styles of coding. Hat tip @n8agrin.
Mrs. Washington Meets Omeka
CHNM and George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens are proud to announce the launch of a new website chronicling the life of Martha Washington. The site includes a rich archive of primary sources, a biographical exhibit, and three teaching modules. In addition to being a tremendous resource in its own right, the site is a powerful example of Omeka’s capabilities.
MediaWiki How To
Lifehacker provides a step-by-step guide to customizing MediaWiki, the open source wiki platform that powers Wikipedia. The guide is written by Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani, who recently used MediaWiki to publish a “book-in-progress,” The Complete Guide to Google Wave. Useful reading for anyone thinking about self-publishing his or her next book online.
The Open Source Professor
Mark Sample has posted slides and audio for his provocative recent talk, “The Open Source Professor.” Sample’s talk is part of MITH’s excellent Digital Dialogues series.
Amazon Editors' Picks for 2009
Amazon.com has released its editors’ picks for the 100 best books of 2009. The “nearly unanimous choice” for the best book of the year is Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann, which I haven’t read yet. But I can vouch for #7, Steig Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire, the sequel to his The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, both of which are excellent. In general,...
E-Books More Popular than Games Among iPhone App...
Twenty percent of new applications in Apple’s iTunes App Store are books, according to a survey summarized at ReadWriteWeb. That compares to thirteen percent for games. I guess app developers disagree with Steve Jobs’ 2008 assessment that reading is dead or his more recent contention that the iPod Touch is a gaming platform.
More from ArchivesNext on NARA's Digitization...
ArchivesNext has some excellent commentary—indeed, original reporting—on the National Archives and Records Administration’s digital partnership agreements, such as the ones it has entered into with Footnote.com. Written partially in response to some poorly thought out comments here at Found History, ArchivesNext provides (as usual) a well considered, well balanced discussion of the issues at...
Top Ten Disruptive Technologies
Although it’s 18 months old, Gartner’s Top Ten Disruptive Technologies for 2008 to 2012 stands another look. Most of the entries are familiar and sound about right, but I’ll have to read up on a few, including “fabric computing” and “contextual computing.”
Net Neutrality: Pro and Con
Two Op-Eds in The Wall Street Journal present two sides in the debate over the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) proposed net neutrality guidelines and some very different ideas about the meanings of words like “neutral,” “fair,” and “open.” Supportive of the FCC’s proposals are Mitchell Baker and John Lilly of Mozilla. Opposed are...
DOD
The United States Department of Defense has put open source software on an equal footing with proprietary software, reports ReadWriteWeb. That’s a big deal, but DOD isn’t first U.S. government agency to make this move. IMLS and NEH, for example, started favoring open source software in their grant making guidelines a couple years ago, which puts the digital humanities and cultural...
The End of Student .edu Email
Citing a study by Educause, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog reports that as many as 25% of institutions of higher education are considering eliminating support for student email addresses.
October 2009
37 posts
Prep School Library Drops Books in Favor of...
Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Massachusetts (not far from where I grew up) is in the process of deaccessioning the books in its library in favor of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader. According to USA Today (hat tip @BryanAlexander), instead of checking out books, from now on Cushing’s students will check out Kindles, pre-loaded with the books they require. Interesting, but I can’t...
Ubuntu 9.10
The latest release of the Ubuntu Linux distribution (Version 9.10 “Karmic Koala”) is now available for download. Among the new goodies: 2 GB of free online file storage for syncing through Ubuntu One. I know what I’m doing this weekend.
Verizon Droid, Android 2.0, and Why Early Adopters...
Anyone who has read this blog or listened to the Digital Campus podcast knows that I’m an Android fan and optimist. I know I should be cheering the release of the Motorola Droid for Verizon, which—with the help of Android 2.0—looks like it’ll give the iPhone a run for its money. Unfortunately, it looks like the original Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, of which I am a proud (if not...
Big Copyright's History of Anti-Innovation
Ars Technica has an interesting account of the movie studios, music companies, and other large content owners’ historical antipathy to new content delivery mechanisms. Some of the new technologies on the list: the player piano, the television, the .mp3 player, and the digital video recorder.
What the $%@! is Net Neutrality?
Confused about the “net neutrality” issue. The Public Knowledge website has a good intro video. Via @james3neal.
