MOBIUS Libraries

An interesting web vendor that is offering interactive textbooks, which is in some ways the repackaging of the original "multimedia" CD-ROM's of the early 1990's, but now offered as a "book." They claim to be partnered with McGraw-Hill and Pearson, and it looks like a user needs to have a perpetual account to use their material although offline access is allowed. Some features such as streaming video and music are separate from the book so they are not true stand alone files, and purchasing a book as an app is currently only for a handful of titles. The list price of several of the books is very steep, and my main concern is how well the multimedia is integrated with the text and if there is any ability to share or transfer a license, which I can't find listed in their website FAQ.

Wile not particularly new, the gesture technology here uses ideas inspired by devices such as the Kinect motion capture for the Xbox. While interesting I agree with some of the comments that performing gestures for hours on end would be physically fatiguing, along with the impreciseness that a gesture will always be read by the machine correctly. What I would be more interested in seeing is interface design that would offer an improvement over how today's materials are organized on a computer's file system or desktop.

"A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden."

"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."

FREE Virtual Conference! October 18-19, 2013 One of the speakers is our teacher from the MOOC (David Lankes). I'll be attending! The dates are set for the Library 2.013 Worldwide Virtual Conference. The third annual global conversation about the future of libraries is scheduled for To be kept informed of the latest conference news and updates, please Altogether, there will be eight conference strands covering a wide variety of timely topics, such as, MOOCs, e-books, maker spaces, mobile services, embedded librarians, green libraries, and more!

This was another session which showed that with community spaces if you build it they will come. I interviewed at this library in 1996 right after graduate school and it was and still is a large warehouse type building in 70's style. One of the substantial changes to Chattanooga since then is it is known as the "Gig City" for large deployment of gigabit Internet which has brought may Internet developers to the area. The development of the attic into a community space stressed the importance of community outreach and feedback as a sort of ecosystem to keep a project viable.

This was an interesting session about using Apple Configurator to maintain a pool of iPads for circulation to autistic students. The good side is customization can be done and quickly, the downside is a one-to-one ratio for apps licenses and iPads, a steep learning curve to the Configurator software, and being limited to what apps Apple provides.

This was a concept that I wasn't too sure if it wasn't ready for prime time or was simply a bad idea. Library patrons could sign up for a "Cloud" account and be given a thin client laptop that would access a Windows 7 image via Citrix which is "their" computer to install programs on or use as needed. However the initial outlay was $300,000 with $5,000 a year ongoing maintenance costs and considerable bandwidth requirements to stream an HD Windows desktop. Further it was limited to only laptops used in the library with a maximum base of 160 users. I honestly couldn't see this as a good idea because of the cost and limited use. It would be cheaper to rent out laptops and re-image when they are returned.

On vacation and forgot your book? Go to the library on the beach.

New stories inspired by books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games people love. Welcome to Kindle Worlds, a place for you to publish fan fiction inspired by popular books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games. With Kindle Worlds, you can write new stories based on featured Worlds, engage an audience of readers, and earn royalties.

Here is more info. about Kindle Worlds. I'm surprised authors are ok with this- it seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Though this could turn into a cool library program. . . or at the very least a lively copyright conversation.

In the final books of The Wheel Of Time series, a few of the characters seemed to behave a bit differently than they had in the previous entries. Some fans responded that they were happy to see emotional complexity added and flowery descriptions give way to salient plot.

I'm not sure how I feel about Kindle Worlds. I some how seems wrong to capitalize on fan fiction. I blame 50 Shades of Grey.

An interesting article on analyzing the use of keywords in American novels. The author acknowledges that the "American English" subset only examines reading materials middle readers would typically purchase, but I also note context is completely missing, and only so much can be inferred from the existence of words as opposed to how they're used.

A somewhat comic but correct history of typing and typography.

India has shut down it's telegram service, which ran continuously from 1851 until now. I 1985 the service sent 600,000 telegrams a day and as recently as 2008 had 22,000 employees. At the shutdown it had a staff of 968 in 75 offices handling maybe 5,000 a day.

A federal judge ruled that Apple "conspired to raise the retail price of e-books" in a civil lawsuit brought by the Justice Department.

Vodafone Romania, in collaboration with a publishing house Humanitas, launched an ambient advertising campaign, which is simply fantastic. A Victoria Square metro station was turned into... a digital library. The walls are being covered with large format posters, from top to bottom. Bucharest commuters who enter the station suddenly discover that they're in an impressive library.

@Sharla can we use this to promote the new Ebsco ebook purchase. . . we just need a big wall!

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.

An interesting article about some of the strategies Jeff Bezos used in building Amazon. I this example he only wanted to order the specific book he needed, but most vendors had a minimum order of 10. He found that by ordering 1 book and then 9 copies of an obscure book on lichens he knew the vendors didn't carry that the order would be fulfilled for the 1 book. I'm a little surprised, however, that vendors didn't clue in or change their rules that books had to be ordered that were in stock.