Snapshots of Provence

The Provence, France tourist board has launched a wonderful interactive website featuring a wide collection of photographs and sound bites from the region. It is beautifully executed and fun to explore. Enjoy!

The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny…'" -Isaac Asimov

Successful research often leads through reasonable yet unsuccessful approaches and unexpected discoveries. Indeed the history of science is rife with examples of important discoveries arising from such results. In particular, two of today's most fruitful areas of research, computational sciences and life sciences, have no major venues in which such intermediate results can be discussed. Now there is a forum for and dialogue on serendipitous and unexpected results in these areas will provide valuable insight and inform modern research practices.

The Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results (JSUR) is an open-access forum for researchers seeking to further scientific discovery by sharing surprising or unexpected results. These results should provide guidance toward the verification (or negation) of extant hypotheses. JSUR has two branches, one focusing on computational sciences and the other on the life sciences. JSUR submissions include, but are not limited to, short communications of recent research results, full-length papers, review articles or opinion pieces.

Pictory - A story told in a single image

Pictory is a showcase for people around the world to document their lives and cultures by submitting one large, captioned image to each of Pictory’s editorial themes. Editor, designer, and founder Laura Brunow Miner, then selects a few dozen of the best items from each theme to appear in each showcase.

Beautifully and lovingly done, the site is a delight. Below is a sample from "Life Before Your Eyes"....

inkpop - a social network for teen writers

inkpop is an online community that connects rising stars in teen lit with talent-spotting readers and publishing professionals.
Its social networking forum spotlights aspiring authors and the readers who provide the positive springboard for feedback. inkpop members play a critical role in deciding who will land a publishing contract with HarperCollins.

Susan Katz, President and Publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books, said: “Teens are a key consumer group with significant financial impact. Teen fiction is one of the most robust and fastest-growing categories in publishing today.”

Since its "soft-launch" debut in November 2009, inkpop has attracted more than 10,000 members, who have submitted close to 11,000 novels, poems, essays, and short stories. HarperCollins says visitors are teens ages 13 and older, from 109 different countries and territories, though the site is only available in English.

HarperCollins says it will announce partnerships throughout the year that will further enrich the inkpop community experience for teen members. The publishers says it’s working on bringing other formats such as photography, video and artwork sharing to inkpop, in order to enhance projects and promote additional forms of creativity.

2010 Wallpaper Design Awards

Wallpaper design in association with HTC has picked out the best of everything in design from 2010: from beds and breakfasts through to jeans and genes. With 66 exhaustive categories they have pretty much covered everything. It is all here including a slideshow of the Judge's awards. The rest of the winners are listed in the article with links to photos


Life-enhancer of the year: The High Line, by Friends of the High Line, James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofido + Renfro .



Best domestic design: Slowcooker, by Margriet Foolen, for Royal VKB

Best new restaurant: Kaa, Sao Paulo, Brazil, by Studio Arthur Casas

Great advice from very cool people

Humble Pied originally started as a crowd-sourced AIGA student presentation, with friends and peers alike offering their words of wisdom within the creative industry. This site was created to house all of the great bits of advice, and to stimulate dialogues along the way.

All chat sessions were held with iChat video and recorded with ScreenFlow. Each interview was cleaned up and edited with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects. The site is powered by WordPress and developed with Coda. The videos are hosted on Vimeo Plus. The fonts are Georgia and Lucida Grande

The Museum of Online Museums

I just discovered the Museum of Online Museums Museum of Online Museums over at my new favorite site, Coudal Partners. It is a fairly comprehensive list of links to fascinating museum sites across the web - from Duke University's Rare Book Collection to the Rijksmuseum, to the Museum of Fred.

On the MoOM main page you, will find the current exhibitions. The main collection is in the center column, divided into three subsections. On the left you'll find the five current featured exhibitions. The MoOM is updated continuously with major updates coming once each quarter.

An archive of previously featured exhibitions is available for browsing.

Hundreds of films available at Canada's Film Board Archive

Canada's National Film Board, a publicly funded body charged with promoting the cause of Canadian filmmaking, has put its archives online most are embeddable,streamable and can be added to your personalized home page, or viewed on your iPhone.

The way coolest MacBook case ever!

The way coolest MacBook case ever! Available from Twelve South. And, no, I do not get a cut.

All 66 Mac/PC ads in one place!

I love Apple's "Get a Mac" ads with John Hodgman and Justin Long. So, here are all 66 TV spots (plus the 90-second version of 2008's "Sad Song") that have aired since the campaign launched on May 2, 2006. All 66 ads were directed by Phil Morrison of Epoch Films for TBWA Media Arts Lab.

Dewey Music: 1,158,926 FREE Public Domain Songs by 10,253 Artists

DeweyMusic is a new interface for Archive.org's wonderful public domain music library.

You can listen to, download, remix, and share anything you see on this site legally and for free.

Found at The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian

Recommended inappropriate books for kids

I stumbled upon a delightful blog called Curious Pages that features outrageous and obscure but outstanding children’s books from the 1800s all the way up through today. Take a few minutes and enjoy

DAILY MEDIA USE AMONG CHILDREN AND TEENS UP DRAMATICALLY

With technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth, according to a study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today. And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today.


Click to enlarge

The full report is available in PDF format here.

The dumbing-down of the History Channel

A nice little pie chart that points out the sad state of programming over at The History Channel.

Found at TYWKIWDBI.

2010 Horizon Report from Educause

The annual Horizon Report is a collaborative effort between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). Each year, the report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within three adoption horizons: a year or less, two to three years, and four to five years. The areas of emerging technology cited for 2010 are:

Time to adoption: One Year or Less

• Mobile Computing
• Open Content

Time to adoption: Two to Three Years

• Electronic Books
• Simple Augmented Reality

Time to adoption: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based Computing
• Visual Data Analysis

Each section of the report provides live Web links to examples and additional readings. The findings for the 2010 Report resulted from the work of the 47-person Advisory Board, with experts from ten countries.

Amazon introduces 70% royalties on Kindle publications

Amazon has announced that it will soon introduce a new 70 percent royalty option in the program that will allow them to to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell.

For each Kindle book sold, authors and publishers who choose the new royalty option – will will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option – will receive 70 percent of list price, net of delivery costs.

Amazon says the new 70 percent royalty option will become available on June 30, 2010 and be restricted to books sold in the United States at launch.

Authors usually receive royalties in the range of 7% to 15% of the list price for their physical books, or 25% of the net that publishers receive from retailers for their digital books.

The new royalty option aims to increase the revenue earned from book sales for publishers and authors, but there are certain requirements they have to meet in order to qualify, on top of the requirements books receiving the standard royalty rate have today:

• The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99


• This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest price for the physical book


• The title is made available for sale in all regions for which the author or publisher has rights


• The title will be included in a set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text to speech


• Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices

Full press release here.

Knots illustrated using earbuds

Click image to enlarge

Found at Gizmodo

The evolution of Crayola crayons

Crayola’s crayon chronology tracks their standard box, from its humble eight color beginnings in 1903 to the present day’s 120-count lineup.

Handy YouTube hacks

To easily download any YouTube video to your computer, in the video's URL substitute the number 3 for the Y in Youtube to get download options.

For even more options, type the word "kick" with no quotes in front of Youtube in the URL to launch kickyoutube and download in any of eight differrent formats.

I need my teacher to learn. Teaching 3.0

A few months ago I posted a little graph depicting smartphone usage by students and was shocked to see that almost 20% of K - 2nd grade students owned a smartphone and smartphones in the upper grades are almost ubiquitous. Students are more connected than ever and have become so accustomed to using technology in their daily lives to stay connected and to get things done that it is placing a lot of pressure on educators to reevaluate their teaching methods. Smartphones also blur the distinction between a traditional cellphone - the use of which is prohibited in many schools - and an internet device - the use of which is often allowed in class. This short music video eloquently and entertainingly engages that issue. Enjoy...

6 types of ideas - "Fail faster to succeed sooner."

From Tom Fishburne's Brand camp

Giuseppe Arcimboldo - faces from objects

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a 16th century painter who used everyday objects to portray the human face. There are many more at the link....fascinating and quite cool.

Thanks to TYWKIWDBI for the post.

eBooks from the Library of Congress

The Internet Archive is providing free access to over 60,000 full text electronic books which were scanned from the holdings of the libraries of the Library of Congress. They cover all subject areas from the humanities, social sciences and physical sciences and include many historical out of print items. According to Celia, strengths include historic American government publications, books on the economic, social and political and legal history of the United States and the American civil war. It is possible to search the website or browse. Copyright and technical information is displayed. It is possible to set up an RSS feed of new items added to the online collection.

Found over at Celia's blog.

Amazon opens Kindle store to Europe

Amazon.com announced this morning that it is expanding its self-service Kindle Digital Text Platform worldwide. This will give even more authors and publishers the chance to sell books in English, German and French to customers around the world through the Kindle Store.

Until today the service was only available to authors and publishers based in the United States. Amazon says additional language options will be added in the coming months.

New imprint from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Publishers Weekly just announced a new imprint for the venerable publishing house of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. After serving extremely capably at FSG for the past three decades, most recently as the publisher and editorial director at FSG Books for Young Readers, Margaret Ferguson will be heading the new line.

Ferguson's imprint will "publish approximately 15 titles per year, across all age ranges and formats." Great news for an industry under seige and in need of a boost.

During her time at FSG, Ferguson has worked with such authors as Brock Cole, Alexandra Day, Uri Shulevitz, David Small, Sarah Stewart, and Judith Viorst. The division has won the Newbery Medal and two National Book Awards under her direction, in addition to numerous other awards and honors.

Amazing new Intel Reader

Intel has released a new text to speech reader that is absolutely amazing. It will take a photo of any print - book, newspaper, magazine...whatever, convert the image to text, and then read it to you. It also saves each piece of this process, the photo, the text file, and the audio all of which you can access through your computer.

The device is quite portable as it folds into a small satchel. It sells for about $2000, complete. I can easily see libraries acquiring these for in-house use and even possibly check-out. Below is a video demonstration:

LocalBooks iPhone Application

Library Thing has released their first iPhone application, a free application called "Local Books."

Local Books resembles popular dining apps like LocalEats or UrbanSpoon—but for book lovers. It shows you local bookstores, libraries and bookish events wherever you are or plan to be. Local Books is powered by LibraryThing Local, the LibraryThing member-created database of 51,000 bookstores and libraries around the world. Events too are drawn from LibraryThing Local. Notably, since last night we've had a four-fold increase in events, as we started pulling in events from Barnes and Noble, Borders, Waterstones and Indigo/Chapters, as well as IndieBound.

Features include:

• Search for venues (bookstores and libraries) as well as events near your current location using the iPhone's built-in location features.
• Search for venues and events at any location or by name.
• Venues can be sorted by distance, name, or type.
• Venues are color coded, following the maps on LibraryThing Local (colors correspond to the colors used on maps in LibraryThing Local).
• Each venue has a detail page with a map. Tap it to jump to the iPhone Maps application.
• Venues often sport a description, clickable website and phone number links, events, and a photo.
• You can favorite locations and events, and there's a "Favorites" list where you can find them.

2010 U.S. Statistical Abstract just released

The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published since 1878, is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. Robert Samuelson of the New York Times said in a recent article that he often starts a column in the Stat Abstract because it substitutes evidence for speculation. That is a great idea and here are a few gems from the most recent issue:

Food is cheaper here than almost anywhere else. In 2007, only about 6.9 percent of U.S. consumer spending went for food at home; Germans spent more (11.4 percent), as did Italians (14.5 percent) and Mexicans (24.2 percent). Low food prices may contribute to Americans' obesity. In 2006, about 34 percent of U.S. adults were judged obese, triple France's rate (10.5 percent) and four times that of Switzerland (7.7 percent).

Three-quarters of Americans (76.1 percent in 2007, to be exact) get to work by driving alone. Only 10.4 percent carpool, while 4.9 percent use public transportation and 2.8 percent walk. On average, Americans spend 25.3 minutes commuting each way.

Americans commit suicide at fairly low rates, 10.2 for every 100,000 people in 2004, less than the 11.9 average for all industrial countries or Japan's 20.3 and France's 15.1.

Smoking has declined, from 25.3 percent of adults in 1990 to 19.7 percent in 2007. Five-year survival rates for cancer are up: from 62.4 percent in 1990-92 to 69.1 percent in 1999-2005 for whites; and from 48.2 percent to 59.4 percent for blacks.

Among young adults (18 to 29), Internet usage is almost universal: 92 percent in 2009, up from 72 percent in 2000.

Garbage per person has stabilized; it was 4.5 pounds per day in 1990 and 4.6 pounds in 2007.

In 2007, nearly two-fifths of all U.S. births were to unmarried women, double the share in 1980.

The share of children under the federal poverty line in 2007 (17.6 percent) was almost the same as in 1980 (17.9 percent).

Since 1970, the student-teacher ratio in schools has declined dramatically, from 22 to 1 to 15 to 1 in 2007, with little effect on test results.

By 2050, the U.S. population is projected at almost 440 million, up from 304 million in 2008.

Almost one-quarter of elementary and high school students are immigrants or have immigrant parents.

In 2007, the average American spent 1,613 hours watching TV, the equivalent of 67 days.

What if Shakespeare Had Written "The Big Lebowski"?

An absolutely brilliant retelling of The Dude's odyssey done as if Shakespeare had written it!

Room Atlas

So much more than bringing up a Google map and searching for hotels! Try RoomAtlas. Type in the destination city and get a map with hotel locations and color-coded pricing in USD, Euro or Pounds. You can filter for amenities and click on a link to see brief TripAdvisor reviews, or book a reservation. What a wonderful service!

Great 2010 Book Preview

The Millions has published a preview, by month, of anticipated fiction for 2010. They say, "There’s something for every lover of fiction coming in 2010, but, oddly enough, the dominant theme may be posthumous publication. Roberto Bolaño’s relentless march into the canon has inured us to the idea of the bestseller from beyond the grave (and of course, for as long as there have been literary executors, this has been nothing new), but beyond the four(!) new books by Bolaño we also have have potentially important works by the likes of Ralph Ellison and Henry Roth, intriguing new books from Robert Walser and Ernst Weiss, a guaranteed bestseller from Stieg Larsson, and, looming in 2011, the final, unfinished novel of David Foster Wallace. Perhaps, amid all this, it is a relief to hear that we have many exciting books on their way from those still with us, including Elizabeth Kostova, Joshua Ferris, David Mitchell, Jennifer Egan, Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, Yann Martel, and many others.

A lengthy and intriguing list with comments on most every title.

Seasonal Food Chart

Click to Enlarge

Since this blog is about information delivery, I thought this graphical representation of the seasonal availability of foods worth posting. Found over at The Guardian

Ten Technology "Game Changers" for 2010

Eric Schonfeld over at TechCrunch has penned an interesting and predictive article enumerating his top ten "game changers" for 2010.

1. The Tablet: It’s the most anticipated product of the year. Why do we need yet another computer in between a laptop and an iPhone? We won’t really know until we have it. But the answer lies in the fact that increasingly the Web is all you need. As all of our apps and data and social lives move to the Web, the Tablet is the incarnation of the Web in device form, stripped down to its essentials. It will also be a superior e-reader for digital books, newspapers, and magazines, and a portable Web TV.

2. Geolocation: The combination of GPS chips in mobile phones, social networks, and increasingly innovative mobile apps means that geolocation is increasingly becoming a necessary feature for any killer app.

3. Realtime Search: After licensing realtime data streams from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and others, Google and Bing are quickly ramping up their realtime search. But realtime search is still treated as a silo, and is not regularly surfaced in the main search results page. In 2010, I expect that to change as the search engines learn for what types of searches it makes sense to show Tweets and other realtime updates. In the meantime, a gaggle of realtime search startups such as Collecta, OneRiot, and Topsy will continue to push the ball forward on the realtime search experience. Realtime search will also become a form of navigation, especially on Twitter and Facebook. The key will be to combine realtime search with realtime filters so that people are delivered not only the most recent information but the most relevant and authoritative as well.

4. Chrome OS: In November, Google gave the world a sneak peek at its Chrome operating system, which is expected to be released later this year. The Chrome OS is Google’s most direct attack on Windows with an OS built from the ground up to run Web apps fast and furious. Already a Google is rumored to be working on a Chrome Netbook which will show the world what is possible with it a “Web OS.” It sounds like it would be perfect for Tablet computers also (see above). Chrome is a risky bet for Google, but it is also potentially disruptive.

5. HTML5: The Web is built on HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and the next version which has been taking form for a while is HTML5. Already browsers such as Firefox and Google’s Chrome (the browser, not the OS) are HTML5-friendly. Once HTML5 becomes more widespread across the Web, it will reduce the need for Flash or Silverlight plug-ins to view videos, animations, or other rich applications. They will all just be Web-native. HTML5 also supports offline data storage, drag-and-drop, and other features which can make Web apps act more like desktop apps. A lot of Websites will be putting HTML5 under the hood in 2010.

6. Mobile Video: With video cameras integrated into the latest iPhone 3GS and other Web phones, live video streaming apps are becoming more commonplace—both streaming from phones and to them. As mobile data networks beef up their 3G bandwidth and even start to tiptoe into true broadband with 4G (which Verizon is heading towards with its next-gen LTE network), mobile video usage will take off.

7. Augmented Reality: One of the coolest ways to use the camera lens on a mobile phone is with the increasing array of augmented reality apps. They add a layer of data to reality by placing everything from photos to Tweets to business listings directly on top of the live live image captured by the camera. Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera, Layar, GraffitiGeo and even Yelp are examples of augmented reality apps.

8. Mobile Transactions: As mobile phones become full-fledged computers, they can be used for mobile commerce also. One area poised to take off in 2010 are mobile payments and transactions. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s latest startup Square turns the iPhone into a credit card reader. Verifone has its competing product, as does Mophie. The idea is that any mobile phone can become a point of sale, and those mobile transactions can tie into back-end accounting, CRM, and other enterprise systems.

9. Android: Last year saw the launch of nearly two dozen Android-powered phones, including the Verizon Droid. In a few days, Google’s Nexus One will launch as the first Android phone which can be unlocked from any given carrier (it is launching with T-Mobile). Android is Google’s answer to the iPhone, and as it reaches critical mass across multiple carriers and handsets it is becoming increasingly attractive to developers. There are already more than 10,000 apps on Android, next year there will be even more. And other devices running on the mobile OS are launching as well.

10. Social CRM: We’ve seen the rise of Twitter and Facebook as social communication tools. This year, those modes of realtime communication will find their way deeper into the enterprise. Salesforce.com is set to launch Chatter, it’s realtime stream of enterprise data which interfaces with Twitter and Facebook and turn them into business tools. Startups like Yammer and Bantam Live are also making business more social.

Physical Tagging for Books!

Haarlem Oost is a branch library in the Netherlands that wanted to encourage visitors to add tags to the books they read. To do this, the library didn’t create a complicated computer system or send people online. Instead, they installed more book drops and return shelves, labeled with different descriptors like “boring,” “great for kids,” “funny,” etc. (not quite like above, but a photo of the real system follows)

Physical tagging! Such a super idea, But the library has now abandoned the system because people were using the system so seriously that it took them a lot of time per book to decide where to place it. That caused some logistic problems in the (small) building, especially as they have some peak times.

Nonetheless, what a great idea and a fun concept!



Found over at Nina Simon's Blog

Graphics representation of a resumé

Having perused dozens, perhaps hundreds of resumes over the years I can truthfully say that most got about 20 seconds of attention, at best. Fast Company today offered an interesting take. Offer a clear representation of your education and experience in an attractive, easy to follow and grasp infographic. Short article here.

NYT Year in Ideas

NYT Magazine brings an eclectic look at the Year in Ideas. The attached image is the display ina bus shelter that changes by using face recognition software to make the point: domestic violence happens when no one is watching. It's a unexpected but clever use of that technology. Other ideas, like the fact that cows with names give more milk, development of weapons of moquito destruction and more are accessed by clicking on the appropriate A-Z letter at the top of the page

iPhone allows local access to Gale Databases

New from Gale, a new iPhone app, AccessMyLibrary, uses your global position to point you to libraries within a 10-mile radius of your location. You can then select a library and obtain access to all its Gale electronic resources. Among the offerings are:

• Health care - discover dependable facts


• Environment - track the latest findings


• Biographies - from history and today’s headlines


• Career choices – step-by-step


• Car repair - locate a diagram or how-to directions


• Literature – track a bestseller or write a term paper


• Science - Study current, credible research


• Hundreds of sources for Home, School or Business


• Discover dependable health care facts


• And more

H.P. Lovecraft's complete catalog online

The complete works of H.P. Lovecraft are available online at The H. P. Lovecraft Archive.

The fragility of knowledge over time

So much of the knowledge and history generated and recorded these days is "virtual" and may prove to be quite fragile over time. We are accumulating so much information so fast that it is simply impossible to catalog it all, much less assign it merit or value.

Centuries from now when our descendants are perusing our history, will they get it right? Do we really have a clear idea of what life was like 1000 years in our past, or have we been a bit too careless with "filling in the blanks?"

Offered here is a somewhat silly, but nonetheless though-provoking little film:

Google announces camera-based Web search

Google on Monday unveiled "Goggles" software that lets people search online using pictures taken with cameras in mobile phones based on its Android operating system.

"When you take a mobile phone camera and connect it to the Internet, it becomes an eye," Google mobile search vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said while demonstrating Goggles in Mountain View, California.

"Google Goggles lets you take a picture of an item and use the picture as the query."

An experimental version of Goggles will be available for people at Google Labs website. Goggles already recognizes books, wine labels, CD covers, landmarks and more, according to Gundotra.
Story continues below...

He demonstrated by taking a picture of a wine bottle label with a smart phone and almost instantly getting reviews, pictures and other Internet data about the vintage in a Google search results Web page.

"It is our goal to visually identify any image," Gundotra said.

"It is in Google Labs because of the nascent nature of computer vision. In the future, you will be able to point (a camera phone) and we will be able to treat it as a mouse pointer for the real world."

Google on Monday also added Japanese to a voice-based search service first rolled out about a year ago.

People can now speak Google search subjects into smart phones in English, Mandarin, or Japanese.

"In addition to voice search, Google has huge investments in translation," Gundotra said. "Our goal at Google is nothing less than being able to search in all major languages of the world."

The California Internet colossus is aiming to deliver a translation service to mobile telephones some time in 2010, according to Gundotra.

People will be able to speak into a mobile telephone to have sentences translated into other languages and delivered back quickly in text and audio forms, Gundotra said while demonstrating an early version of the service.

He also showed a "near me now" feature that uses global positioning capabilities in Android-based smart phones to customize map results to show shops, attractions, restaurants or other offerings that are in easy reach.

"In the future, there will be many different ways of searching," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience.

"We really foresee a world where you can search and find your answer where ever it exists and whatever language it is in."

Cool Google promo:


Blatantly stolen from my friend Bill and The Raw Story

outlook problem solved

I had invited people to a meeting in Outlook and wanted a list of those who had responded to the Outlook invitation and how they had responded. After poking at Outlook for a while, I realized it was not willing to tell me this information in a very useful way. A search sent me to Jazzerup. I followed the step-by-step instructions and was rewarded with a sortable Excel output. Slick!

Mplayit iPhone app directory on Facebook

Mplayit’s Facebook-based directory of iPhone and mobile apps includes all 100,000 plus iPhone apps and a few for other platforms, as well. Applications have a dedicated page displaying videos of the app, a detailed description and reviews. You can also click to buy the app from Apple’s App Store.

There is also a "Pandora-like" feature that recommends apps based on the ones you have previously viewed. The site also displays in real-time what is happening in the app stores, such as Apple’s, to show users what apps are receiving the most downloads, reviews, etc.

Cool stuff.

Google Books drops foreign texts

Bowing to powerful legal pressure, Google Books is dropping foreign texts from the archive. In concession to the numerous foreign governments and bodies that have been asking for changes to the deal Google pushed through the courts, Google Books will contain only texts published within the U.K., Australia, Canada, and those that fall under U.S. copyright. Named plaintiffs in the settlement now include authors in the U.K., Australia, and Canada, who'll gain representation by the Book Rights Registry Board in order to acquire their share of cash from Google. The Rights Registry is also required to actually seek out authors "who have not yet come forward" from now on--it's amazing that this wasn't the case beforehand. The modified deal even adds a legal representative for unclaimed or "orphan" books; the rep is charged with protecting author's rights. Also in the deal is more scope for authors who want their books to be available for free (rather than sold via Google's partner companies) and who wish to tag them with creative commons or other licenses.

Google's original plan effectively gave them the authority to do what ever they wished with millions of published texts. That it was a U.S.-based settlement that covered books published everywhere raised objections from authors and rights bodies outside the U.S. This "settlement" should appease those interests, but will also result in many useful and valuable foreign texts being excluded from Google Books.

Happy 40th Anniversary Sesame Street!

Today is the 40th Anniversary Sesame Street! Enjoy this video in which the Cookie Monster visits a library. Of course libraries offer much more than books nowadays. Perhaps the Cookie Monster could even get milk and cookies with his books.

The Florida Digital Newspaper Library

The Florida Digital Newspaper Library provides access to the news and history of Florida. All of the over 800,000 pages of historic through current Florida newspapers in the Florida Digital Newspaper Library are openly and freely available with zoomable page images and full text. The Florida Digital Newspaper Library builds on the work done in microfilm within the Florida Newspaper Project.

The Florida Digital Newspaper Library includes:

• Current Florida newspapers, digitized from 2005 - present


• Historic Florida newspapers


• Historic News Accounts of Florida
  
  With the exception of the East-Florida Gazette in the 1780s and a small press at Fernandina in 1817, Florida had no colonial newspapers. Even in the immediate aftermath of cession in 1821, only a few newspapers served Florida. Historic News Accounts of Florida consists of stories and reports about Florida gathered together by the Goza and Mickler families and donated to the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History. All are from non-Florida newpapers and cover events in Florida from 1762 - 1885. The articles pre-dating the Territorial Period help to "fill in" the journalistic record at a time when there was no Florida press, while the articles from after 1821 both complement and supplement news published in Florida.

The Complete Guide to Google Wave: Free downloadable eBook

Google Wave is a new web-based collaboration tool that's notoriously difficult to understand. This guide will help. Learn how to use Google Wave to get things done with your group. Because Wave is such a new product that's evolving quickly, this guidebook is a work in progress that will update in concert with Wave as it grows and changes. Read it here.

You might also like 7 things you should know about Google Wave from EDUCAUSE.

Woopra: web analytics you can use

Woopra is a comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. It delivers a rich library of visitor statistics through an innovative desktop application. Woopra’s revolutionary server architecture, combined with its intuitively designed client software, enables seamless tracking of visitors. Webmasters can track over 40 different statistical events and analytics on multiple websites and blogs.

Woopra breaks the Web statistics mold by allowing lightning quick search functionality along any data point in the system. What information do you need to help you manage and develop your site? Specific user names, IP addresses, geographic locations, user browsing data, visitor history, visitor paths, arrival and departure points – what do you want to know?

Here is an introductory video:

In October iPhone eBook apps outpaced even games

From Flurry

In October, one out of every five new apps launching in the iPhone has been a book. Publishers of all kinds, from small ones like Your Mobile Apps to mega-publishers like Softbank, are porting existing IP into the App Store at record rates. Flurry first evaluated the iPhone as an eBook reader in its July Pulse ("You Trying to Swindle my Kindle?") where it looked at consumer demand for eBooks. In that report, we observed that during the month of August 1% of the entire U.S. population was already reading a book on the iPhone. Now, with books shipping in droves, we are seeing the supply-side explode.

The sharp rise in eBook activity on the iPhone indicates that Apple is positioned take market share from the Amazon Kindle as it did from the Nintendo DS. Despite the smaller form factor of the display, we predict that the iPhone will be a significant player in the book category of the Media & Entertainment space. Further, with Apple working on a larger tablet form factor, running on the iPhone OS, we believe Jeff Bezos and team will face significant competition.

Feature Creep

Thanks to Tom Fishburne, The Management Cartoonist

gmail addressing tips

I found two gmail tips on Everyday Loopholes. I think they're pretty clever. I found another on Google's website.

One is that you can append things to your gmail address. An email addressed to validgmailaddress+anythingyouwant@gmail.com will reach the valid google email address. Here's the link to "Gmail Address + Anything You Want" at Everyday Loopholes.

The other is called "Google Twofer" on Everyday Loopholes. It points out that signing up for gmail actually means an email address that ends in gmail.com and another that ends in googlemail.com. Both go to the same mailbox.

Lastly, dots are meaningless in Google address names so all of these emails go to the same address:
homerjsimpson@gmail.com = hom.er.j.sim.ps.on@gmail.com
homerjsimpson@gmail.com = HOMERJSIMPSON@gmail.com
homerjsimpson@gmail.com = Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com
Google explains it here.

You can see the results of test messages by clicking on the "show details" link in the Google mail message. As Everyday Loopholes suggests, it might be useful to use some of these alternatives when signing up for email at websites and then filtering if necessary.