Author Solutions and Barnes & Noble Strike a Deal for eBook Content

Author Solutions has signed a deal with Barnes & Noble to distribute its eBook content.

Under terms of the agreement, e-book formats of all new ASI titles published through the AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, and Xlibris imprints will be made available for purchase through the B&N website on its nook reader. A default price of $9.99 will be set for every title, but each author will have the opportunity to set his or her own price.

E-book distribution through bn.com and nook will be included as a free service for all new black-and-white ASI titles.

Found at TechCrunch

Too true to be funny......

Trackur - now a free way to monitor what is being said about you on the interwebs

Trackur is an online reputation & social media monitoring tool designed to assist you in tracking what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web pages--including news, blogs, video, images, and forums--and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords that interest you.

Using sophisticated social media monitoring and filtering technology, Trackur is your online reputation guardian. It does the heavy-lifting for you--scanning the web for any mention of your name, brands, and products--so you don't have to.

Today, the company is introducing an entirely free version of the Web-based software suite, giving marketers and small business owners a compelling reason to want to check it out and see why basic Google Alerts simply may not be cutting it anymore.

Found via TechCrunch

2010 Tournament of Books

Today, The Morning News Selection Committee announces the contenders for the Sixth Annual Tournament of Books, the one and only March Madness battle royale of literary excellence. For those of you who are new to the Tournament of Books, it’s literary awarding gone ferocious, March Madness-style.

Each spring they take 16 celebrated novels from the previous year and seed them into a competitive bracket like the kind used in the N.C.A.A. basketball championship. A group of judges is enlisted, and the tournament plays out over the course of five rounds of matches in March. Each match sees two books battling head-to-head in brutal combat, with a judge explaining how he or she has chosen to move one of them to the next round.

This above was taken directly from their site. Sounds fascinating! You can read more here.

This makes it even more interesting!

Each year at this time we also note that we were drunk when we came up with this idea. It’s true: We were in the pool room of a small, dark bar in Brooklyn six years ago, and the next day we decided that this stupid, silly, dare we say profoundly necessary idea still sounded fun. It’s been a blast every year since, and we can’t wait to welcome you to this year’s tournament once it gets underway on Tuesday, March 9, 2010.

The path to 10,000,000,000 iTunes downloads

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Found at gigaom

How Millenial are you?

Take a short 14 question Survey from the Pew Research Center and see how you compare to "The Silents", "The Baby Boomers", The Gen-Xers" or "The Millenials".

Google Books will apparently scan anything

Enjoy: Google Books

Top 10 mostcommonly mispronounced foodie words

From the Chicago Tribune

Top 10 Mispronounced Foodie Words

1. Bruschetta (broo-SKEH-tah)
2. Gnocchi (NYOH-kee)
3. Gyro (YEER-oh)
4. Huitlacoche (wheet-lah-KOH-chay)
5. Pouilly-Fuisse (poo-yee fwee-SAY)
6. Mole (MOH-lay)
7. Paczki (POONCH-key)
8. Pho (fuh)
9. Prosciutto (proh-SHOO-toe)
10. Sake (SAH-kay)

The Diagram Prize - oddest book title of the year

The prize, which celebrates the oddest book title of the year, received a record number of submissions in 2009, with 90 books suggested to 2008’s 32. After an intensive judging process, the "Very Longlist" was whittled down to a more palatable six by The Bookseller’s diarist and prize custodian Horace Bent.

Voting has opened on the six books at www.thebookseller.com. The winner will be announced on 26th March. Voting buttons are on the left about two-thirds down the page.

The 2008 Diagram Prize was won by Professor Philip M Parker’s unforgettable The 2009–2014 World Outlook for 60mg Containers of Fromage Frais, while other previous winners include: If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs, and Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers.

The contenders:

* David Crompton's Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter (Glenstrae Press)

* James A Yannes' Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich (Trafford)

* Daina Taimina's Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes (A K Peters)

* Ronald C Arkin's Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots (CRC Press)

* Ellen Scherl and Maria Dubinsky's The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (SLACK Inc)

* Tara Jansen-Meyer's What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua? (Mirror)

Found at boingboing

Joke book of 1600 year-old jokes

Jokes from the turn of the fourth century compiled by that irrepressible byzantine pair, Hierocles and Philagrius.

From the jokes:

A student dunce orders a lamp from the silversmith. "How big a lamp do you want me to make?" asks the man. "Big enough for eight people to see by," responds the dunce

Someone said to a senator, "I'd really like to see you when you are free for a moment." The senator responds, "And I'd like to see you when you're blind and crippled!"

A young husband asks his wife, "Honey, what shall we do? Have lunch or have sex?" She replied, "By the way, we don't have a thing to eat!"

Delightfully funny, even if they are 1600 years old!

First Lines: tumblr of first lines from your favorite books.

First Lines, is an interesting tumblr blog comprised exclusively of first lines from books.



Found at TYWKIWDBI

Kobo - eBooks for almost any device

Kobo is a global eBook retailer backed by Indigo Books & Music, Borders, REDgroup Retail, Cheung Kong Holdings, and other leaders in technology and retail. They believe consumers should be able to read any book, anytime, anywhere, and on the device of their choice.

The site offers almost 2 million actual book books and over 250,000 PDF. Whether you’re on an iPhone or Blackberry, Mac or PC, Sony Reader or a device they don’t even know about yet, Kobo is geared toward helping book lovers enjoy eReading anytime, anyplace, on any device.

Unless You Will vol. 4

Unless you will, curated and founded by Heidi Romano, is an online journal that showcases a vision within photo-based art. Its goal is to bring together a collection of notable photographers from around the world and present their work.

Sometimes a photo can evoke high feelings of emotion or nostalgia and in a roundabout way it becomes a means of expressing ourselves as photographers. UYW strives to showcase photographers who add layers of meaning and capture these feelings. Their images are a happiness measurement, they give us pleasure, rekindle a memory, or trigger other emotions of their own. UYW's aim is to showcase these talented artists without too many frills, who work with the notions of play, honesty and craftsmanship.

It is a wonderful magazine and well worth a visit. Below are some images taken from the Carlos and Jason Sanchez piece in the fourth issue:

The Future of the Internet

The Pew Research Center has completed an online survey of 895 stakeholders' and critics' expectations of social, political and economic change by 2020. Among the opinions offered are:

• Google won't make us stupid


• Reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge will be improved


• Innovation will continue to catch us by surprise


• Information will continue to flow freely online, though there will be flashpoints over control of the internet


• Anonymous online activity will be challenged, though a modest majority still think it will be possible in 2020

The complete 48 page report is available in PDF format here.

Reading

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Found at TYWKIWDBI

Curling explained

The Times of London has produced an infographic, designed by Ciaran Hughes, which explains the sport. In the interest of information science, it is offered here:


Click to enlarge
Found at Fast Company

Vintage Book Covers

Tons here, here, here and here.

150 covers of Nabakov's "Lolita"

Dieter E. Zimmer's Covering Lolita presents 150 book and media covers from 33 countries and 54 years. It is fascinating how a country's morés affect the way she is portrayed.

Electrolux plans to revolutionize your kitchen

Electrolux plans to change the way we experience our kitchens - for good.

When you want to cook something using Elecrolux's "Heart of the Home," you simply press down on the surface, and it creates a hole. You can make the hole bigger or smaller by pressing down on a larger or smaller area.

Then you place your ingredients right into the hole you created. No pots and pans needed. The area heats up with a few touches from your fingers.

And it gets better. When you put the food onto the surface, Heart of the Home analyzes the ingredients and offers recipe suggestions.

The company says the design was inspired by "the person driven by culinary curiosity using new technology without removing the essence of cooking."

Not available yet, but I can't wait.

Augmented Reality on Steroids

Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the architect of Bing Maps, gave a neat demo of an augmented-reality map at TED2010. Flickr photos are integrated into street level views, which can result in interesting "time travel" historical views. He also shows how live videos can be added into the maps as well. Every time I see this stuff I am more amazed.