|
 |
Monday, May 06, 2002 |
"Antiquated, shmantiquated. Yiddish, once on the verge of oblivion, is passing a 21st-century milestone on Monday. As a result of a four-year digitization project and print-on-demand technology, a literature that thrived from 1864 to 1939 will suddenly become proportionally the most in-print literature on the planet.
Readers will be able to go to a Web site (www.yiddishbooks.org) and order any of 12,000 titles in Yiddish. The contents of the book will be retrieved from an electronic database, printed, bound in paperback and shipped within a few days. Members will pay $21.75 per book, nonmembers $29....
'We have really high hopes, because for the first time what had been a discarded and unavailable literature is available to all,' he said. But, he added: 'Making the books available was the first step. The second step is to encourage people to read them.' " [NY Times: Technology]
What a truly wonderful project. My only quibble is that the titles are (apparently) not available as ebooks (especially since they are already digitized).
11:53:12 PM Permanent link here
|
|
"Jazz musicians who enjoy freeform improvisation may soon be using computer software to accompany themselves. A team at University College London has written a program that mimics insect swarming to 'fly around' the sequence of notes the musician is playing and improvise a related tune of its own.
The Swarm Music program is the creation of computer scientists Tim Blackwell and Peter Bentley, who study how natural processes can be modelled in software. The pair believe that improvised music is self-organising in the way swarms of insects and flocks of birds are.
Their software works by treating music as a type of 3D space, in which the dimensions are pitch, loudness and note duration. As the musician plays, a swarm of digital 'particles' immediately starts to buzz around the notes being played in this space - in the same way that bees behave when they are seeking out pollen.
Periodically, the position of each particle is translated into musical notes or chords which are played back to the musician a beat or so later. Just by following a few very basic insect-like rules, such as 'move towards the centre of the swarm" and "do not bump into any other members of the swarm,' the software plays music that the inventors say 'is hard to believe is not of human origin.' " [New Scientist]
For Bruce, my Dad, and Ernie!
11:27:27 PM Permanent link here
|
|
"Like so many of these visual search engines I find this one to be a tad silly, and it requires a separate download- but it's always interesting to explore. This one appears to display results as a grid color-coded by top level domain. For google, some sites appear taller than others- now if only I could work out what that means. Finally it appears to have a "report" function which exports search results as a text or HTML file." [Library Techlog]
Ditto on all fronts. I find this fascinating, although I'm not convinced of the usability of results as blocks.
11:22:49 PM Permanent link here
|
|
"The Harry Potter magic was just an illusion. In spite of the success of J.K. Rowling's best-selling books, children are reading less, according to a new survey. For the fourth year in succession, fewer books have been bought for children....
'The received wisdom is that the Potter trend has done amazing things for the children's market, but the truth is that Harry Potter did amazing things for Harry Potter only,' said Steve Bohme of Book Marketing Ltd, whose company found that while UK spending on children's books held steady at £425 million last year, the number of copies bought for children fell for the fourth year, from an estimated 109 million in 2000 to 104 million in 2001.
'Everyone looked at sales of children's books around the release of each Potter title, saw the millions of Potter books sold and quite naturally concluded that the series must be having an enormous impact on the market as a whole,' said Bohme.
'The reality is that sales of Potter books have done nothing to increase the volume of books sold to their target audience, children aged seven to 14,' he added....
Bohme also believes that the price of the Potter books inhibits families from buying more books for their children; the average price paid for a children's book rose from £3.90 in 1999 to £4.10 in 2001, yet the hardback edition of Goblet of Fire costs up to £15.
He found that because of the length of the Potter adventures, children had less time to read other works, a problem exacerbated by the fact that children tend to read the Potter books over and over again....
According to the survey, while 71 per cent of Harry Potter books were bought for eight-to 14-year-olds in 1999, by 2001 this share had fallen to 36 per cent, with readers aged from 15 to 34 accounting for the rest.
'This widening of audience is yet another reason why the industry got it so wrong about the impact the Potter books would have,' said Bohme. 'It is true millions of Potter books are being sold, but the reality is that they are being sold to adults....'
'It was just simplistic to believe one author could save the whole children's industry.' " [Guardian Unlimited, via bOing bOing]
11:15:00 PM Permanent link here
|
|
Eric Maynard scores big points for clue-ing me in to What Libraries Need, a discussion of how to integrate ebooks into libraries that sounds suspiciously like what I wrote yesterday.
"There are over 129,289 libraries in the United States.
Libraries could be 129,289 local outlets introducing e-books to readers.
Libraries can circulate the current e-book technology. Unfortunately, with the current technology, librarians can offer little more than a choice between reading on paper and reading on a computer screen. When presented this choice, most patrons and librarians select paper books.
When e-book technology can improve library service, librarians will more readily adopt e-books and promote them to patrons. Imagine, for example, a patron asking a librarian for a book not owned by the local library. After a quick search of the library's e-book vendor Web site, the librarian says, 'We can borrow a paper version of this book from another library within a week or we can download the e-book version and check it out to you in about ten minutes. Which do you want?' This choice gives librarians and patrons who never think of asking for an e-book a reason to do so."
This page is part of a larger presentation by Chris Rippel at the Central Kansas Library System that explores whether Can E-books Improve Libraries?, the whole thing of which you should read. Big thanks to Chris for expanding upon my thoughts before I even had them and committing them to binary, thereby saving me the time of having to do so!
The only thing I would add to this presentation would be a discussion of the opposite side of the question - Can Libraries Improve E-books? Of course, my answer is yes, but you knew that was a rhetorical question, now didn't you?
6:00:03 PM Permanent link here
|
|
"While Columbia Picture's new 'Spider-Man' movie was breaking box-office records over the weekend, Internet movie pirates were busily downloading free copies of the film on file-trading networks.
By Saturday, pirated versions of the comic book inspired movie were showing up in 'screener' format on the EDonkey, Kazaa, and Morpheus Internet file-swapping systems.
'Screeners,' also known as 'Telesyncs,' are digital versions of movies that have been filmed off a screen in a movie theater.
The boot-legged 'Spider-Man' was being offered in Windows AVI and MPEG file formats, with some versions of the complete movie exceeding 2 gigabytes.
Many Internet users apparently were undeterred by the huge file size of the pirated film. More than 12,000 copies of 'Spider-Man' have already been downloaded from a link at the ShareReactor.com site....
According to studio estimates, 'Spider-Man' grossed $114 million in the three days following its opening on Friday, surpassing the previous record set in November by 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.'
When Columbia releases the DVD version of the hit movie in coming months, pirates likely will begin swapping 'rips' or copies of the DVDs online. According to a description at ShareReactor, rips offer 'excellent video and audio quality. It's no guarantee though, but even the biggest idiots can't screw this up too much.' " [Newsbytes]
I guess I don't understand the big deal here. I'm sure you can also buy bootleg videocassettes out on the street, so how is this a new crime? In both instances, these copies are obviously made using videocameras, but I don't see any industry executives or legislators calling for draconian copy controls on these electronic devices. And when they catch the folks doing this, there are already existing laws outside of the DMCA under which to prosecute them. Let's face it - the DMCA certainly didn't stop these folks, now did it?
And this activity certainly didn't have an impact on box office receipts, nor do I expect it will make any measurable dent in DVD sales, either. So explain to me again why we need special laws, restrictive technologies, and reductions in fair use rights to safeguard Hollywood's products?
3:51:50 PM Permanent link here
|
|
"Saturday's annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner was a dressed-up Ozzfest with everyone from Sam Donaldson to Donald Rumsfeld to Dr. Ruth Westheimer caught up in the buzz about the hot MTV show star and rocker....
President Bush (or at least his speechwriters) knew he couldn't ignore the phenomenon at table 168. In opening his remarks, he addressed the 2,000 guests: 'Washington power brokers, celebrities, Hollywood stars, Ozzy Osbourne.' At that point, Ozzy stood on his chair, arms raised, fists high to wild applause.
'Might have been a mistake,' added Bush, shaking his head and smiling....
Drew Carey, the official entertainment of the night, followed Bush and mentioned Osbourne, too. 'Ozzy, what's up, bro?' Then he said, 'Ozzy and the president have a lot in common: Both are family men, both partied too hard when they were younger (Bush smiled), half the time you can't understand a word they're saying, and they can't make a move without their wife's approval.'
Carey, who recently had laser surgery on his eyes and was almost unrecognizable without his trademark black-rim glasses, continued with cracks about Earth Day and patriotism, then said, 'Ozzy. $20 million, man. That's barely gonna pay for your kids' therapy!...'
Osbourne was still the most sought-after guest. Close chatted with him and giggled afterward. 'He wanted my Percocet!' and held up her hurt arm....
Then he turned to Sharon, 'Can I have a drink? Please?'
'Just one,' she said. 'You're going to fall down.' " [USA Today]
8:29:10 AM Permanent link here
|
|
Repost for my weekday readers: "I've set up a poll on OpinionPower asking Should I Truncate My RSS Feed? I know the point of a news aggregator is to scan, but I personally like not having to go to each site to read a whole post.
Which do you prefer? Now's your chance to be heard! As we say in Chicago, vote early and vote often! I'll give it a few days and then announce the results."
7:25:42 AM Permanent link here
|
|
"The Wachowski brothers are currently in residence at the Fox studios in Sydney, Australia, simultaneously shooting Matrix Reloaded (part two) and Matrix Revolutions (part three). The movies won't come out until 2003 (Reloaded in May, Revolutions in either August or November), but the hype has already begun. This month a trailer for Reloaded hits theaters, and not since the Star Wars movies has a film inspired so much breathless anticipation on the Internet." [Time.com, Slashdot]
Some clues about the second and third installments, plus a picture!
7:21:33 AM Permanent link here
|
|
"David Chess: On CBDTPA. It's like the difference between making it illegal to drive over 65 miles per hour, and making it illegal to make a car that is capable of going over 65 miles per hour." [diveintomark]
12:13:44 AM Permanent link here
|
|
I'm not sure how Ernest knew that both my brother, father, and I would be fascinated by The Mercury Theatre on the Air, but I thank him heartily for the link!
"All of the surviving Mercury Theatre shows are available from this page, in both streaming and downloadable RealAudio format. (MP3s are also available for some shows.) There are several Campbell Playhouse episodes available here as well; the rest are being added gradually."
12:04:21 AM Permanent link here
|
|
© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
|
|
|
