Group items tagged

Oracle is suing Google over the use of their Java API's in Android. This should be an interesting case. Google argues that while you can copyright a finished product, you shouldn't be able to copyright the computer language used to build the product - just like a novelist can copyright a book but nobody can copyright English. Oracle disagrees and says that if the language is unique enough, then it should be protected. They cite Klingon as an example. I read through Oracle's filing and it actually looks pretty strong. I didn't bother reading Google's because it's pretty clear that Google is missing the point that Oracle isn't upset that they used Java, but that they bundled all the extra API's. I really feel for the judge and jury having to hear this case. Oracle's brief isn't exactly light on the technical details...

I'm just learning of this today. Apparently they are only offering 1GB of free storage, which puts them at half of what Dropbox offers for free. That said, Dropbox is painfully slow at upload and download and Google storage is insanely cheap. I just bought 20GB of storage for my photo archive and it costs me a WHOPPING $5/year - and the extra storage is shared by all my Google apps which I'm guessing will include Drive. 

Google has a new site called Google Search Education with different lesson plans for picking the right search terms, understanding search results, narrowing a search, and evaluating credibility of sources.

If you don't already know what 2 factor authentication is - it's the use of a second out of band communication channel that is used in addition to your password. In the case of Google it means that when you go to log in they will send you a text message with a 6 digit numerical code that you'll type in as well. This means that would be hackers would need to not only know your password but also have physical access to your phone.  I've already enabled this feature for Google apps @mobiusconsortium.org - if you'd like to enable it for your account (it takes like 10 minutes to get set up and fix your applications) just let me know. 

Google seems to be in the news again. Article 1 of 2: Thousands of authors can sue Google in a class-action lawsuit over its plan to create the world's largest digital book library, a federal judge ruled on Thursday. U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan also rejected Google's bid to dismiss claims by The Authors Guild and several groups representing photographers and graphic artists, which would have forced their members to sue individually.

This article is about Google Cultural Institute. So far there are 42 exhibitions about 42 historical events. This article is pretty straightforward, but you should checkout the real deal : http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/#!home All of these are beautifully done and full of great detail. Would be perfect for school projects.

Review of Google's new Knowledge Graph search.

I think this is a cool and worthwhile improvement, but where the article makes a comparison to Wolfram Alpha I have to disagree. Google's knowledge engine is exactly the type of thing you get to do with the semantic web - and it's awesome - but it's not a *computational* knowledge engine like WA. If you google "The moon" you get some useful information about it including it's distance. But the distance there is just some number pulled from some resource. WA /calculates/ the distance to the moon at the exact moment of your search. Not to say WA is better - it's just different. WA has an entry for Leonardo da Vinci, and has a lot of the same facts as Google does - but it doesn't really have much of a capacity to show you anything related to him. Anyway, cool new feature that I'd noticed and used already but hadn't actually heard mention of. One of those things that Google just kinda slipped in that works.

More Google news, this one on censorship. Interesting how they are working to get around the censorship, I wonder how long it will take for China to stop it in some way.

"It was a confluence of magnificent proportions that led six agents from the joint terrorism task force to knock on my door Wednesday morning. Little did we know our seemingly innocent, if curious to a fault, Googling of certain things was creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history."

Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen recently returned from a trip to North Korea and discuss the role of the Internet in repressive countries.

A victory for fair use, with scanned materials that are used in the HathiTrust. The HathiTrust repository use materials scanned from the Google Books but he access is more restrictive, allowing full text searches only with the copyright holder's permission--but does allow full text for readers with print disabilities. A Federal judge ruled this is covered by fair use, while related lawsuits against Google continue.

I think I'd heard of the Digital Public Library of America; I wonder if it will be able to get past the issues Google faced.

I think the article is right that a non-profit organization will get farther than Google did. It will also be nice to have an organization outside of the ALA that will make a stand on the copyright issues involved in digitization.

An interesting although perhaps idealistic view of what could happen. The author contends that Google faltered in paying and making arrangements with publishers rather than defending Book Search as fair use, although I'd argue it led directly to the Google Play store for selling media including books. Libraries cooperating to make a Digital Public Library is to me a much more agreeable plan than getting materials digitized and put online by means of a corporation.

The Transparency Report is a report Google has recently made available that shows requests to remove copyrighted material from Google's search results but also requests from governments to remove information and inquiries from governments about Google's users. Unsurprisingly the U.S., is first in user data requests, but oddly followed by India and France.

Google is offering formal (free) courses about to power search, with lectures and tests, to be completed over several weeks. I imagine these are useful skills librarians should know and be teaching their patrons. (Apparently, it is more than an intensive Google ad. John's doing it, and has found some of it interesting.)

It's on now...

There are some MOBIUS members in the KC area that are highly considering dropping MOREnet if this actually comes to fruition.

I didn't know that, Sharla. I wonder how many people-- including MOBIUS institutions-- will jump to Google.

A somewhat concerning article about how if you visit an area of the world with a mobile device where your eBooks aren't licensed, the Google Play DRM will delete them. This is akin to traveling to another part of the world with a legally owned Region 1 DVD and device to play it on, and it still erases itself.

An online summary of the Google Books judgement.

A major victory for Google where the scanning of books has been justified as fair use, however it curious much of the case hinged on the scanning being "transformative" in the sense of the scanned material being used as a finding aid rather than a tool to read books, even though many books are entirely available to be read online.