The US Copyright Office has granted six DMCA exemptions, a few of which are great for libraries and universities, although they denied proposed exemptions, such as for region coding or backing up DVDs, that would benefit consumers.
Persons making noninfringing uses of the following six classes of works will not be subject to the prohibition against […]
Engadget has been reporting over the last couple weeks on the upcoming e-book reader from Sony. More details can be found in the BusinessWeek article. It will support PDF docs as well as e-books from the Sony Connect online store and will retail for about $300-$400. Engadget has some photos of the […]
Some might say moves like this are the future, but it sure seems awfully insecure in the long run, IMHO.
The library world has been buzzing for the last few days over an article in a small newspaper relaying a report from two UMass Dartmouth professors that a senior at the school claimed he was visited by, as the article put it, “two agents of the Department of Homeland Security” after getting Mao’s Quotations from […]
iRex Technologies has announced The Illiad, a competitor to the Sony Librie. According to the product specs it will have an 8.1-inch 1024 x 768 ePaper display, a 400MHz INTEL X-Scale Processor, about 224MB internal FLASH memory for content and will support PDF, XHTML, TXT and MP3 when released in April 06.
It looks like Sanger is finally putting his ideas for a more “authoritative” Wikipedia alternative to the test with Digital Universe. Sanger’s well-publicized criticisms of what he sees as Wikipedia’s lack of respect for expertise have contributed to widespread debate how the wiki model’s accuracy compares to traditional reference resources, particularly with respect to […]
Hot on the heels of widespread criticism of Wikipedia’s authority, Nature conducted a comparison and found that the difference in accuracy between science articles in Britannica and Wikipedia is not that big. See the Nature article for details.
However, as noted in the Slashdot posting, some folks at Wikipedia found that the Wikipedia samples used […]
With Musipedia you can use this applet to translate the whistle into Pasons Code and search the database for matching tunes.
Parsons Code is a neat way of encoding melodies:
Each pair of consecutive notes is coded as “U” (”up”) if the second note is higher than the first note, “R” (”repeat”) if the pitches are equal, […]
George Washington University’s Daniel J. Solove asks “What If Copyright Law Were Strongly Enforced in the Blogosphere?”
I think that it is a fair generalization to say that the use of copyrighted material is much more liberal in the blogosphere than in regular print publications. If I were writing something in print, for example, I would […]
John Seigenthaler tells his story.
The Yahoo! backed Open Content Alliance is planning to work with university libraries and other archives to create an open web library. From SFGate:
The Open Content Alliance, a project that Yahoo is backing with several other partners, plans to provide digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. Much of the material will […]
Yes, you read that right:
A public library in Holland has been swamped with queries after unveiling plans to “lend out” living people, including homosexuals, drug addicts, asylum seekers, gipsies and the physically handicapped.
The volunteers will be borrowed by users of the library, in Almelo, who can take them to a cafeteria, and ask them any […]
Abstract:
This paper looks at aspects of Wikipedia’s structure and process, with specific focus on its community (or organisational) learning. Learning is conceptualised as a collective, collaborative process, whereby multiple perspectives are shared and meanings are constructed. Fundamental to this learning are Wikipedia’s policies and the procedure of collaboration in an often conflicting environment. Conflict is […]
The director of the Valparaiso (Fla.) Community Library was suspended without pay in early August after city officials found that a registered sex offender had used library computers to access pornographic websites.
Read on at AL Online
Classrooms are crowded, and the all-too-familiar scenario of children sharing outdated textbooks is still very much in evidence.
However, in Class Five, things are just a little bit different. Fifty-four 11-year-old students are willing guinea pigs in an extraordinary experiment aimed at using technology to deliver education across the continent.
In the Eduvision pilot project, textbooks […]
In 2002, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sent an open letter to Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon.com, which has a market for used books in addition to selling new copies. “If your aggressive promotion of used book sales becomes popular among Amazon’s customers,” the letter said, “this service will […]
Ever have trouble getting your Internet Explorer-specific Web applications to work with Mozilla? This article covers common issues associated with migrating applications to the open source Mozilla-based browser. You’ll first learn basic cross-browser development techniques, and then develop strategies for overcoming the differences between Mozilla and Internet Explorer.”
read at IBM developerWorks
Most obvious problem: bad images. They even have really bad ones for manhattan! (Google’s image for comparison)
From Ars:
A new study published today claims that users who share and download music files online also buy four and a half times more music online than your average music listener, at least in the UK.
The Guardian article explains more…
Steve Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, has a great open letter to Sen. Clinton in the LA Times going over the benefits of video games. He makes a number of good points, including noting that video games are more intellectually stimulating […]