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I was reading about the small window that opened the other day in the "Great Firewall of China" and then read this article. It bothers me that so many people seem to be ready to send printing presses to a junkyard and rely entirely on electronic distribution of information. First, there is still a HUGE demographic who does not have regular access to the internet. Secondly, what would happen if all of our information could be controlled with a filtering program? And finally, printed material still gets into places that a computer cannot. I read an opinion piece in the NYT before Christmas that discussed how an Afghanistan woman learned to read with the help of her young daughter and the newspaper pieces that wrapped her fish. Are we turning information into something elitist? Is there a parallel between a push to make everything electronic - so only people with Kindles and laptops can get information, and a time not-so-long-ago when literacy was a class distinction? DO WE REALLY WANT TO CREATE A NEW CLASS DISTINCTION BY RESTRICTING INFORMATION TO ONLY THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD ACCESS TO IT?

Fascinating points!!! The printed word has been responsible for the American colonists ability to read the words of the great Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin and perhaps be inspired to foment the continued revolt that brought us America. It brought the thoughts of the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and Adolf Hitler to the world. For good, and less so, the printed word has been a catalyst for change that has moved the world and impacted people around the globe. While there are many who have access to the Internet and PC, there are far greater numbers around the world who have no such access, for them even a phone is a luxury. Many represent the populations of the third world, but high numbers are the disadvantaged right here at home or in other developed nations around the globe. When oppressive regimes and less then optimal economic or geographic conditions prevent technology from bringing information via wire or air wave, the printing press will continue to spread the message. Education, found in the pages of textbooks, passed down from generation to generation or moved around the world, bring knowledge and potential to those who have no access to the Internet. Until, in some distant future when the earth is truly the global nation envisioned by some futurists today, the printing press will hold its place as a global facilitator of knowledge and information.

The Wylie agency signed a deal to exclusively distribute e-books of its authors through Amazon. Want to read Philip Roth, Dave Eggers, Saul Bellow in digital form?  Better get a Kindle. 

Does it make you uncomfortable knowing that Amazon has everything you've highlighted?  What else do they know?  And what do publishers know about how their books are being read?

Professor Rosen will be a keynote speaker at this year's SPI. Cohort 3 please read this.

This article is over a year old, and soon to be updated by Chris Anderson's book of the same title, but it's still well worth the read.

I think this is an excellent read on the rapid speed of the digital divide. Written about England, but applies everywhere.

The Washington City Paper had the key ingredients for a scandalous stink bomb of a story: Marion Barry, a sexual fling with an ex-aide and a scoop involving embarrassing voice mails.

Okay. I'm sure most of us have seen the City Paper for this week, or will see it after reading this story. I know they are supposed to be an "edgier" publication, but was this really necessary? We can all fill in the blanks and could've read between the lines to know what the headline said without seeing certain words clear as day. I'm not a prude, but that was a bit much. What do you all think?

Read the original article by Darnton first and then also see the full text of Courant reply on his blog at http://paulcourant.net/2009/02/04/google-robert-darnton-and-the-digital-republic-of-letters/

New book published: Drupal 5 Views Recipes News and announcements · Drupal 5.x mroswell - June 16, 2009 - 14:38 I'm looking at a fresh new copy of Drupal 5 Views Recipes. I wrote it, and I'm thrilled to see it in print. I have a mix of Drupal 5 and Drupal 6 sites out there. If you've got any Drupal 5 sites, consider this book. Appendices I'll start by mentioning the appendices, since I think that's one of the most information-rich sections of the book. (The rest of the book consists of 94 step-by-step recipes.) Appendix A - List of all default views available for Drupal 5 Appendix B - Comprehensive list of Drupal 5 field formatters, by module Appendix C - Comprehensive list of Drupal 5 style plugins, by module Appendix D - Views 1 hooks Appendix E - Modules included in recipe ingredients Appendix F - Additional resources and modules Appendix G - Selected noteworthy patches to Views, sorted by topic Appendix E can serve as an index to the recipes, and also includes a column indicating which modules are available for Drupal 6. Appendix G unlocks a whole host of functionality not available in Views 1 by default. Recipes Interesting content includes: - How to overcome the case of the missing term in taxonomy views - Views arguments - Proximity search (Find every trailhead within 6 miles of a Senior Center, for instance) - Views Bulk Operations (such as mass updates of taxonomy) - Views Fusion, and the Views Fusion Node Reference patch - Using !$ and Ctrl-U in command line editing - Detailed steps for upgrading the Date and Calendar modules from 5.x-1.x to 5.x-2.x - Three options for setting up cron - Grouped views with the Views theme wizard - Overriding themes_view_view - Table of debugging techniques, including the author's favorites - Browser plugin for searching the Contributions API page - A quick way to format SQL queries for easier reading

Not everyone will have access to this article but can read the first graph and get an idea of the issue.

How the reading experience differs between paper and screen.

Publishers fail again at basic fact-checking.  The assumption must be that the reading public doesn't care about the truth when something is called a memoir.

One December day last year, an email went out to a group of Google employees and contractors. The email explained how, just more than a year after Google acquired guidebook company Zagat, the division was going to be re-organized. One Google employee in the Zagat division read the email and then burst into tears.

Update: This post is part of a series. If you find this topic interesting, I recommend you read the two follow-ups as well: Apple has built its iBooks platform on the back of an open standard. With last week's introduction of iBooks 2.0 and the free iBooks Author software for Mac OS X, Apple is deliberately locking out that popular open standard.

Libyans are celebrating the freedom to read whatever they want in a post-Gaddafi world. Last week, bagpipers and VIPs congregated in the library of the Italianate Royal Palace for a ceremony marking the unbanning of books, the Toronto Star reported.

Here is some information about open access and the Public Knowledge Project. This piece generated a lot of comments, which are also worth reading.

Can Google continue to "Not be evil" and dominate the global market for search and user-generated content (YouTube, Blogger). Discussed how Google balances among free speech and privacy, the censorship demands of governments and its financial interests.

Deep into this story is a comment about how publishers and authors in the future might alter content of paragraphs, chapter titles, etc. in order to move books up in a Google search, thus ensuring more visitors to the online book.