Posts tagged Books at Switched

Posts with tag books

Google to E-Publish Out-of-Print Books Online

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 11th 2008 at 8:42AM

Google Strikes Deal to Sell Out of Print Books Online

Google Book Search, while an impressive tool, has faced numerous roadblocks and lawsuits that have prevented it from reaching its full potential. Many books that have no existing copyright are available from the search giant's library, as are textbooks from many universities.

Things may finally be turning around for the company, which has a stated goal to index all of the knowledge in the world. Last month, Google settled its long-standing lawsuit with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers for $125 million. Now, Google has struck a deal to offer electronic versions of copyrighted books that are out of print.

This means that the contents of the New York Times Best Seller List still won't be available for free perusal via Google, but many hard-to-find books that have fallen out of print will once again be available for sale.

The landmark deal is still awaiting approval from the courts, but seemingly overnight Google Book Search has gone from a good (if naive) idea, to what Neill Denny (editor of trade publication The Bookseller) called the largest bookstore in the world. [From: New York Times]

Augmented Reality Brings Pop-Up Books into the 21st Century

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 3rd 2008 at 7:16PM

Children at the Frankfurt Book Fair were treated to an unexpected surprise last week when they swung by a booth run by ArsEdition and Metaio. A book called 'Aliens & UFOs' was being shown off that uses "augmented reality" technology from Metaio.

Metaio's Unifeye software uses a standard-issue Webcam and a Windows-based PC, and the system is able to render real-time 3-D images that float above the pages on your computer screen. This 21st century update of the timeless pop-up book requires no special markings or paper to function -- instead, the software uses the camera to recognize the specific dimensions and images on a page and renders the appropriate models and animations. Moving the book around causes the 3-D rendering to follow the pages around, but only as long as they stay within the field of view of the camera. We know, it sounds kinda zany, but it makes sense immediately when you see the video after the break.

Metaio hopes to extend this technology beyond children's books to catalogs and presentations for designers. Imagine picking up an IKEA catalog and being able to see photo realistic 3-D renderings of the furniture in a room, allowing you to get a better sense of its dimensions.

Continue reading Augmented Reality Brings Pop-Up Books into the 21st Century

Unofficial ' Harry Potter' Encyclopedia Banned, Thanks to JK Rowling

by Tim Stevens, posted Sep 12th 2008 at 9:47AM

JK Rowling Wins Lawsuit, Unofficial Potter Encyclopedia Banned

Copyrights are frequently mysterious and sometimes crippling things. Creative minds obviously need to protect their rights to their creations, but as the RIAA and MPAA have shown again and again, it's quite possible to push the boundaries of copyright into the ridiculous. Sometimes, though, the boundaries are a little less clear-cut, as was the case regarding an unofficial encyclopedia about the Harry Potter universe that series author JK Rowling has prevented from publication, being ruled "not a fair use of the Harry Potter works" in a New York court.

The encyclopedia was written by Potter fan Steven Vander Ark, a school librarian who ran the 'Harry Potter Lexicon' fan site. Rowling originally supported the site, but when Vander Ark announced plans to sell a book based on the site's contents for profit, Rowling recoiled. As of the legal ruling, the site seems to have been taken offline as well, leaving Potter fans unfortunately out in the cold.

For her part, Rowling indicated that the lawsuit was not about money, but rather to protect her interests from the sale of a book she called "wholesale theft." She had earlier plans to write a similar encyclopedia and give the proceeds to charity, but as of now it sounds doubtful that even an official tome will see publication. [From: BBC News]

'Moby Dick' Shows Up on Twitter -- 140 Letters at a Time

by Tim Stevens, posted Jul 28th 2008 at 2:09PM

Twitter, the social networking site/service with a strict, 140-character limit for status messages (known as "tweets" in Twitter-speak), has sprung to huge popularity lately as more and more people want to share what they're up to right this minute. We've also seen how the service/site has helped some people to share information about disasters, but now one Twitter user has come up with a rather interesting use for the service: He is twittering the entirety of Herman Melville's classi novel 'Moby Dick' -- 140 characters at a time.

'Moby Dick' clocks in at a little over 200,000 words. Each tweet (a single Twitter post) is coming in at around 20 words or so, meaning something like 10,000 tweets will be required before (spoiler alert!) Ishmael and the whale have their mighty confrontation. No Cliff's Notes here. [Source: Twitter]

Tivo and Amazon Selling Books, CDs, and More on Your TV

by Darren Murph, posted Jul 22nd 2008 at 6:01PM

Back in May, TiVo's VP of product marketing got all of our hopes up that the next announcement involving it and Amazon would include HD Unbox content. As you can very clearly see, this is most certainly not the case. Instead, we have the immense pleasure of informing Internet-connected Tivo Series2, Series3 and TiVo HD owners that they can now buy wares from Amazon without leaving their couch.

If browsing through Amazon's extraordinarily huge store with just a remote sounds appealing to you, you're in luck (and mildly insane). Also of note, the new Product Purchase feature will enable advertisers to "market products sold through Amazon on any broadcast or cable network, any TV show, or via any of TiVo's extensive interactive advertising features." In other words, next time you see Dwight using that iconic shredder, you can buy that bad boy right then and there. Take that, Staples. [Source: Tivo via Zatz Not Funny]

'High Fidelity' Author Nick Hornby Sounds Off On Kindle and eBooks

by Tim Stevens, posted Jul 7th 2008 at 5:02PM

'High Fidelity' Author's Doom and Gloom for eBook Readers

Since its release last year, Amazon's Kindle has surprised many by taking the market a bit by storm. The electronic reading device sold out quickly, and racked up some ridiculous highs on eBay (we were smitten after spending a little time with one.) Eight months later, we still love reading on the thing, but author Nick Hornby isn't quite so thrilled with the concept, and he has posted a lengthy diatribe over at the Penguin Blog about why he thinks eBooks still aren't destined for huge success.

Hornby, author of 'High Fidelity' and 'About a Boy,' lists a number of reasons as to why he doesn't think eBooks will be successful, including the belief that book readers are not early adopters (we think those outrageous eBay prices say otherwise). He also mentions that eBook market and experience can't simply be compared to the iPod: you can't rip your existing library of books like you can with music. But, he makes an interesting point on why eBooks aren't a particularly hot business model: People on average only buy seven books per year, and 34-percent of adults don't even read books.

Of course, eBook readers also display newspapers, magazines, and blogs, so we don't think he's entirely hit the mark, but it's safe to say that it's going to be a long, long time before e-reading devices like the Kindle even start showing the same sales figures as Microsoft's Zune, which means they've got a looonnnng way to go. [Source: The Penguin Blog via Shiny Shiny]

Scientist Uses Internet to Write 200,000 Books

by Will Safer, posted Apr 16th 2008 at 8:43AM

A California computer scientist and linguistics expert has developed a system that allows him to produce books on almost any subject, automatically, and to date has published more than 200,000 of them, any of which can be bought on Amazon.com

Philip M. Parker, of San Diego, programs computers to use complex algorithms that scour the Internet and produce books on everything from skin rosacea to rug patters.

The books are printed on demand, and cost anywhere from about $25 to about $500.

Parker, a professor of management science at INSEAD (an international business school) , explains his process in a YouTube video here.

Besides books, he produces video games and crossword puzzles. Next up on his list? Romance novels.

From New York Times.

HarperCollins Offering Free Books Online

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 11th 2008 at 3:11PM

Shopping online is incredibly convenient, but shopping in a physical store has some perks. When shopping for books, all you have is reviews and maybe an excerpt or two to help you decide which new paperback to pick up. But at a book store, you can sit and read the first few chapters, or the whole book. HarperCollins, a major publishing company, is hoping to increase sales by allowing visitors to its Web site to read some of its more popular books for free.

Books such as 'Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes and Making the Impossible Easy' by Food Network star Robert Irvine, 'I Dream in Blue: Life, Death and the New York Giants' by Roger Director, and 'The Undecided Voter's Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from and How You Can Choose' by Mark Halperin are available in their entirety for perusal on the HarperCollins Web site.

Books available through the Browse Inside program will only be available for one month and will not be downloadable for offline viewing or printing.

It seems that this experiment would work best for reference books (like the aforementioned cookbook) with lots of pictures and big type, since reading novels and the like on a typical computer screen can be irritating to the eyes and plenty tiring.

From the New York Times

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Mobile Novels Take Over Traditional Books in Japan

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Sep 26th 2007 at 11:04AM

They say kids these days don't read. In Japan, however, teens are back into reading novels big-time with one major difference: They're reading them on cell phones.

Mobile novels (called "keitai" in Japan), books written for the cell phone screen, have taken off with startling success in the east. These serial-based novels are delivered in read-on-the-corner byte-sized chunks on a regular basis to hungry young subscribers. Most are written by young authors in their teens and 20s, and are penned in a comic-like shorthand script.

Several titles have seen huge success, especially when compared to how traditional novels have been selling lately. One such novel, written by a 27 year-old woman named "Chaco", receives over 25,000 readers per day. When a book company begged her to turn the mobile novel into a real book, it sold 440,000 copies. Meanwhile, a relatively new online community for cell phone novels called Maho i-Land has over six million members.

Possibly more shocking is the fact that the authors of these books usually write them using just their thumbs and cellphones. Talk about a bad case of BlackBerry thumb!

From textually

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How To Embed Book Snippets in Your Site

by Tim Stevens, posted Sep 7th 2007 at 2:15PM

Google Lets Scholarly Bloggers Embed Book Snippets

Sure, you can embed YouTube Videos in your Web site or blog, but now you'll be able to embed images of scanned books, thanks to Google.

Since 2004, Google Book Search has allowed users to search through thousands of books, many of which can be downloaded in the commonly-used PDF format. Now you can draw a box around a region of text and stick it right into a blog post or Web site, just like we did here with a bit from Hugo's classic 'Toilers of the Sea' (which was down-sized to fit, but you can click here to see the full thing).

Unfortunately, you can only do this with those books that are fully in the public domain, which tend to be those old classics. If you want to spoil the ending of 'Harry Potter' for your readers, you're going to have to wait a few years.

From TechCrunch

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