Group items tagged

The Internet Archice is now offering over one million items as peer to peer BitTorrent downloads. While in one sense it is only a different download method for materials that are copyright and royalty free, it is Torrents have been controversial as they are often used to download pirated movies and software. However, the Internet Archive does have a point in that it improves access for users with limited bandwidth. Downloads include 1.2 million books and 9,000 videos and movies.

Now, this took place in the European Union, not the United States (where software is still "licensed" instead of actually sold), but what it means is that people who pay a fee to have software distributed to them now have right of first sale to that license-- that is, they can redistribute it to another person, just as I can give a book I purchased to someone else.

This is great - thanks for posting.

THOMAS is the website the Library of Congress uses for keeping an online record of bills. As the author notes it's not easy to get a picture of what Congress is working on by looking at one bill at a time. It's possible to get a more overall picture by downloading the data and number crunching it, but it looks like the site will not allow bulk downloads of data, only scraping information by way of scripts.

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. 

Interesting project in Austria. They placed 70 QR codes around the city each leading to a particular ebook or mp3 that can be downloaded for free.  The blog states, "This project is in effect giving digital content a finite location, thus removing one of the key aspects that separates paper books from ebooks". 

I wonder if the posts are in places with literary or historical significance-- e.g., a QR code near the former home of a famous author, leading to excerpts or readings from his or her books. I can see a huge potential for museums here, actually. For example, at the Old Courthouse in St. Louis, a QR code can be posted to information or collections on the Dred Scott Decision. Or here in Columbia, QR codes posted in the Red Campus can pull up copies of historical documents on the 1892 fire.

The ALA Digital Content and Libraries Working Group published an "Ebook Business Models for Public Libraries" report August 8. You can read more about the process, or jump right to a PDF download of the report.

HP is offering a service to create magazines and other serial publications in the "cloud." What is interesting is both print and digital publishing is offered. Some of the publications listed do use an ISSN number, but it looks like it's up to the author to obtain it. Print options include worldwide shipping and direct mail, while it looks like the digital version requires a MagCloud account to read the material, although it is available as a downloadable PDF. What I find most interesting is how this service effectively replaces a traditional publisher altogether, although some of the features a publisher can offer--such as marketing and industry contacts, are missing. Digital prices to the consumer are substantially less than print, but I can't find anything about pricing to the user without signing up for an account.

Features Full accounting (general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, bank reconciliation) Fully integrated CRM (incidents, to-do list, address book, opportunities, projects, vendors) Superior inventory control for manufacturers, distributors, professional services Rich API built with PostgreSQL database views, encapsulates all business logic and data integrity Fully integrated OpenRPT report writer to customize reports, Qt Designer to customize screens

Neat!

Move over OverDrive here comes 3M. Here is my favorite quote : "They're (patrons) able to do it (download books) on their own. [3M] is doing something right." This is huge as someone who worked at B&N for 4 years usability is a big deal. B&N is where people came to troubleshoot and the biggest headache was OverDrive (I hear its easier now). Also it'll be nice having someone else in the e-book market for libraries.

This works amazingly well. The javascript we use to send text messages in the webpacs went from 8.5k to 4.3k. Also this works to combine multiple scripts and optimize them all together.

E-Textbooks | News Georgia College Produces Student-Written E-Textbook Nine graduate students in an Advanced Technology for Teachers course at Georgia College have published their own e-textbook, Using Technology in Education, through Apple's iBookstore. The free, downloadable textbook is available on the iPad via iBooks.