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Newspaper Nostalgia « Collections 2.0

Newspaper Nostalgia « Collections 2.0.

Newspaper Nostalgia
Posted by: Steven Harris | June 26, 2009

When I was a kid we had a Sunday morning family ritual. After breakfast we would all take coffee or tea and adjourn to our favorite spot, 2 adults and 4 kids lounging around the livingroom and kitchen with sections of our Sunday newspaper and a hot beverage. (Yes, we drank coffee and tea from a young age.

I’m sure it stunted my growth. I’m only 6 feet tall.) My brother was usually on his belly on the livingroom floor. I was lounged on the couch with my legs draped over the arm. Mom and dad in chairs. Sisters here and there. Sometimes the dogs would have a lick or two of coffee from a cup sitting on the floor. It was a good time. And we learned about the world, as reflected in our local paper, which wasn’t all that good, mind you.

Online catalogue of books is the library that never closes | Technology | The Guardian

Online catalogue of books is the library that never closes | Technology | The Guardian.

The library that never closes
The Open Library hopes to unite the net and the printed word by creating a web page for every book.

by Bobbie Johnson, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 July 2009 18.15 BST, Article history

The internet's relationship with books, it is fair to say, has been a tumultuous one. Ever since the digital revolution started changing our relationship with information, the printed word – one of the most successful technologies in history – has been on the back foot.

Amazon has altered the face of the industry twice – first in the 1990s by changing the way books are sold and then, more recently, the way they are consumed, with its Kindle electronic book reader. Google has caused its own earthquake in the print world with its Book Search scheme – a plan to suck the text of millions of books into its search engine that has raised the hackles of publishers and authors alike.

Talk to workers at either of these technology companies and there is a feeling of technological inevitability: that the printed book is a stepping stone in the evolution of information, and now lies ready to be devoured by its hi-tech successors. Not everybody thinks that way, however, including the Open Library – a project with an audacious goal that it hopes can bring the web and books closer together.

First look: Firefox 3.5 released, ready to "upgrade" the Web

First look: Firefox 3.5 released, ready to "upgrade" the Web - Ars Technica

First look: Firefox 3.5 released, ready to "upgrade" the Web

Mozilla has officially released Firefox 3.5, the next major version of its popular open source Web browser. Ars takes a close look at the new version and evaluates its enhancements. Support for HTML 5 video and other important emerging Web standards make this one of the most significant Firefox releases ever.

By Ryan Paul | Last updated June 30, 2009 10:20 AM CT.

ResourceShelf » Blog Archive » Resource of the Week — Fast Facts Anyone? A Brief Users Guide to Wolfram|Alpha

ResourceShelf » Blog Archive » Resource of the Week — Fast Facts Anyone? A Brief Users Guide to Wolfram|Alpha.

Resource of the Week — Fast Facts Anyone? A Brief Users Guide to Wolfram|Alpha
By Gary Price, Chief/Founding Editor

As of 10:34 PM EDST on Friday, May 15, 2009 the site is live.

Since Wolfram|Alpha, (W|A) — a new fact/answer engine (the company calls it a “computational knowledge engine”) — was preparing to go live over the weekend of May 15-17, we decided to give it a try. Thanks to the Wolfram team for the the early access. Here’s our brief report and hopefully some other useful information for future W|A users.

With E-Readers Comes Wider Piracy of Books - NYTimes.com

With E-Readers Comes Wider Piracy of Books - NYTimes.com.

Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web
By MOTOKO RICH, Published: May 11, 2009

Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction writer, was perusing the Web site Scribd last month when she came across digital copies of some books that seemed quite familiar to her. No wonder. She wrote them, including a free-for-the-taking copy of one of her most enduring novels, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”

Neither Ms. Le Guin nor her publisher had authorized the electronic editions. To Ms. Le Guin, it was a rude introduction to the quietly proliferating problem of digital piracy in the literary world. “I thought, who do these people think they are?” Ms. Le Guin said. “Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?”

This would all sound familiar to filmmakers and musicians who fought similar battles — with varying degrees of success — over the last decade. But to authors and their publishers in the age of Kindle, it’s new and frightening territory.

Google Killer Killed - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Google Killer Killed - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com.

March 31, 2009, 2:31 pm
Google Killer Killed
By Miguel Helft

When Jimmy Wales, the driving force behind the hugely successful Wikipedia, rolled out Wikia Search, a community-built search engine, 15 months ago, he said that his goal was to build a “Google-quality search engine” over time.

On Tuesday, Mr. Wales announced on his blog that he was pulling the plug on Wikia Search.

The end of Wikia Search is only the latest reminder that building a search engine, let alone a Google killer, is far from easy. Dozens of companies have tried to offer alternatives to the big search engines but none has managed to attract a large audience. Indeed, over the years Google has increased the size of its user base, sometimes at the expense of the other large search engines like Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com, by a far larger amount than the total audience amassed by any search start-up.

Microsoft closing the book on Encarta | Beyond Binary - CNET News

Microsoft closing the book on Encarta | Beyond Binary - CNET News.

March 30, 2009 1:10 PM PDT
Microsoft closing the book on Encarta
by Ina Fried

Microsoft has quietly confirmed that it is getting out of the encyclopedia business, ending its long-standing Encarta product.

As noted by Ars Technica, the software maker says it will discontinue all its online Encarta products by October, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will run through the end of the year. It will also stop selling Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium, paid software products that included the online encyclopedia.

In a posting on its Web site, Microsoft said that the move reflected the change in the way people use reference material. It didn't mention Wikipedia by name, but I think we all know the biggest change to encyclopedias to come around in recent memory.

"Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years," Microsoft said. "However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft's goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today's consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business."

Search EFF's FOIA Documents | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Search EFF's FOIA Documents | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Search EFF's FOIA Documents

EFF's Freedom Of Information Act project has gathered thousands of pages of material. These shed light on controversial government surveillance programs, lobbying practices, and intellectual property initiatives.

You can use the EFF FOIA Search Engine below to search and examine the documents' contents.

If you find something you think is significant, send us an email: foia@eff.org. The search engine is still in 'beta testing,' so results may not yet be complete or error-free.

Is it the end of the desktop PC? | Technology | Reuters

Is it the end of the desktop PC? | Technology | Reuters.

Is it the end of the desktop PC?

By Kelvin Soh TAIPEI (Reuters)
Wed Jan 7, 2009 1:20pm EST

The age of the desktop PC appears to be over as its more portable cousin, the laptop, surges ahead with consumers clamoring for light-weight computers in funky designs for use at home, in cafes and on the train to work.

Not a single desktop model figured on online shopping portal Amazon.com's top 10 selling PC and hardware list the weekend before Christmas, while seven laptop models made the list.

It was yet another sign that the former dominance of desktop PCs is fading as wireless advances and lower prices make laptops the preferred option for millions of PC users around the world.

makezine.com: About MAKE

makezine.com: About MAKE.

About MAKE

MAKE Magazine brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. MAKE is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. We celebrate your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.

Published as a quarterly since February 2005, MAKE is a hybrid magazine/book (known as a mook in Japan). MAKE comes from O'Reilly, the Publisher of Record for geeks and tech enthusiasts everywhere. It follows in line with the Hacks books and Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks, but it takes a highly visual and personal approach.

Our premiere issue showed you how to get involved in kite aerial photography — taking pictures with a camera suspended from a kite — and how to build an inexpensive rig to hold your camera. We've also shown you how to make a video camera stabilizer, a do-it-yourself alternative to an expensive Steadicam® and how to create a five-in-one cable adapter for connecting to networks. Some projects are strictly for fun, others are very practical, and still others are absolutely astounding.

Is There Life in Second Life?

Is There Life in Second Life?

Is There Life in Second Life?
Matteo Varvello†⋆, Fabio Picconi†, Christophe Diot†, Ernst Biersack⋆
† Thomson, Paris, France
⋆ Institut Eurecom, Sophia-Antopolis, France
{matteo.varvello,fabio.picconi,christophe.diot}@thomson.net, ernst.biersack@eurecom.fr

ABSTRACT

Social virtual worlds such as Second Life are digital representations of the real world where human-controlled avatars evolve and interact through social activities. Understanding the characteristics of existing virtual worlds can be extremely valuable to optimize their design. In this work we perform the first extensive analysis of Second Life. We have crawled around 13000 Regions over one month, and gathered information about objects, avatars, and server state. The analysis of our traces shows several surprising results. We find that 30% of the Regions are never visited during a six day period, whereas only few Regions have large peak populations. Moreover, the vast majority of Regions are static, i.e., objects are seldom created or destroyed. Interestingly, avatars interact similarly to humans in real life, gathering in small groups, visiting the same places and meeting the same avatars again, showing a highly predictable behavior. Based on these observations, we discuss several techniques to enhance Second Life or other similar social virtual worlds.
...
Also found online via Goggle Scholar at http://www.thlab.net/tr/CR-PRL-2008-07-0002.pdf

Library of Congress Blog » Library Releases Report on Flickr Pilot (Library of Congress)

Library of Congress Blog » Library Releases Report on Flickr Pilot (Library of Congress).

Library Releases Report on Flickr Pilot
Posted on: December 11th, 2008 by Matt Raymond

In January, the Library embarked on something that took the online community by storm. In conjunction with Flickr, we loaded a few thousand images from the Library of Congress’ vast collections and asked the user community to get involved: Give us your tags, your comments, your huddled masses …

We were essentially conducting an experiment to see how crowdsourcing might enhance the quality of the information we are able to provide about our collections, while also finding innovative ways to get those collections out to people who might have an avid interest in them.

As we’ve said again and again, we’ve been bowled over by the response. Now, the Library has released its report on the Flickr pilot. (The full report is here; a summary is here. Both links are PDFs.)

After the jump is an account of some of our findings, as adapted from a piece intended for the Library of Congress Gazette, our in-house newsletter.

Official Google Blog: Search and find magazines on Google Book Search

Official Google Blog: Search and find magazines on Google Book Search.
Search and find magazines on Google Book Search
12/09/2008 09:47:00 AM

The word "magazine" is derived from the Arabic word "makhazin," meaning storehouse. Since Daniel Defoe published the world's first English magazine back in 1704, millions of magazines catering to nearly every imaginable taste have been created and consumed, passed from person to person in cafes, barber shops, libraries, and homes around the world. If you're wondering what cars people drove in the eighties or what was in fashion thirty years ago, there's a good chance that you'll find that answer in a magazine. Yet few magazine archives are currently available online.

Today, we're announcing an initiative to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles from titles as diverse as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony. Are you a baseball history fanatic? Try a search for [hank aaron pursuing babe ruth's record] on Google Book Search. You'll find a link to a 1973 Ebony article about Hank Aaron, written as he closed in on Babe Ruth's original record for career home runs. You can read the article in full color and in its original context, just as you would in the printed magazine. Scroll back a few pages, for example, and you'll find a two-page spread on 1973's fall fashions. If you'd like to read further, you can click on "Browse all issues" to view issues from across the decades.
...

See also the article at SearchEngineLand.. inset above is one of my screenshot images from today, showing how the search feature in Google Books, set for magazines, searches even the ads and advertising content of the magazines...

The Best Free Photo Software - Reviews by PC Magazine

The Best Free Photo Software - Reviews by PC Magazine.

The Best Free Photo Software
12.03.08 - Make the most of your point-and shooter's output with these great tools for editing, managing, and sharing your digital images, by Michael Muchmore

If you're a PCMag.com reader, it's a good bet you own a digital camera that you'll be making plenty of use of this holiday season. You may not be a digital darkroom junkie who spends hours tweaking adjustment layers in Adobe Photoshop, but you want your pictures to look good, and you want an easy and inviting way to share them with friends and family. Luckily, there's no dearth of tools that let you do just this—many of them free. Here we gather our latest reviews of the major free consumer photo editors to help you decide which to use.

TED | TEDBlog: Second Life, where anything is possible: Philip Rosedale on TED.com

TED | TEDBlog: Second Life, where anything is possible: Philip Rosedale on TED.com.

03 December 2008
Second Life, where anything is possible: Philip Rosedale on TED.com
Posted by TED Staff

Why build a virtual world? At this year's Serious Play conference, Philip Rosedale talks about the virtual society he founded, Second Life, and its underpinnings in human creativity. It's a place so different that anything could happen. (Recorded May 2008 in Pasadena, California. Duration: 28:31.)

Watch Philip Rosedale's talk from Serious Play on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 300+ TEDTalks -- including more talks about community.

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