Saturday, October 25, 2003

hmmm....     Intro Multimedia/Computing Course with Jython See the course textbook Intro to Media Computation: A Multimedia Cookbook with Python (PDF, with updates) for more information about a computing course for non-CS majors that uses the Jython programming environment (Python language for Java) as well as a custom-made IDE, JES, the Jython Environment for Students. Another innovative computing course with a different approach is this one at Brown University where students design real educational software applications that meet the specific needs of local schools. Ed Tech Dev comments? [] 7:53:54 PM     Amazon changes the game Whoa! Now I remember why I suspended weblogging and news-reading while I transitioned to my new job.  Its too engrossing. No sooner do I reconnect with my newsfeeds than I learn that Amazon has initiated a groundbreaking digital non-library of 100,000 scanned books. (I call it a non-library because you can't simply read each book front to back...but you can't not neither.) The Wired article tells the story well, as does the Jarrett House post below. Six things about the full-text book search at Amazon. Wired says that Amazon got around copyright concerns by claiming it never built a library at all, just a digital image archive that can't be permalinked; Matthew Kirschenbaum suggests this upends a few applecarts, particularly with respect to textual studies and the very definition of books; I think Amazon, or book publishers, may be in for some trouble here, given that [base "] professors and their students have to pay through the nose to photocopy sections of copyrighted works for course packets? Those are images rather than machine readable text too, surely, and you can print the page scans from Amazon[per thou] (reprinted from my comment at Matt[base ']s site). Doc Searls says it[base ']s humbling to see how few times your name is mentioned in print. Reverse ego-surfing? Brian Dear points out you can get damn near a whole book for free this way. Dare Obasanjo calls it the [base "]world[base ']s shittiest search feature[per thou] for how badly the book search results get polluted now, and says, [base "]If ever a feature needed to be turned off by default it is this one.[per thou] That means something coming from a Microsoftie. :) [Jarrett House North] As a veteran of the millenial e-book wars (i.e, the Great e-book Boom of 1999-2000), and as someone resuming the fine art of academic navel-watching, I have a few more "things" to add to this list. 7. Consider this along with Apple's I-Tunes venture, and an interesting trend emerges: we are entering the next phase of the digital copyright revolution. Apparently the copyright holders are now willing to let demonstrably successful, marquee e-businesses, with credible commitment to genuine commerce and genuine copyrights take small steps toward the obvious and the inevitable--digital content readily available. 8. Amazon's legal chutzpah is very impressive here. Their theory that they are not violating the owner's copyrights is probably just substantial enough to get them to the point where they can proceed. I presume they'll remove books when and if publishers demand that they do so....but meanwhile, they will probably be able to convince most that their scheme will in fact increase book sales. (That's the clear implication of the National Academy of Sciences experience in posting full text electronic copies of their books with even fewer impediments to online reading.) 9. This is already a significant new addition to the biblio-ecology. Searching on my own name I discovered several references and quotations of my own work that I was unaware of, and would likely have remained unaware of. The reach of this resource into nooks and crannies of scholarship goes beyond that of the more-than-casual, but less-than-professional scholar in at least my area. (That's how I might characterize myself in those areas where I am not currently invovled in active research.) 10. I suspect future Amazonian offerings that build on this one will end up consuming or subsuming netLibrary, the Gutenberg project, Books 24 x 7 etc. 11. They can and should do this in a way that will (a) increase appreciation, exposure and efficacy of Gutenberg and other such not-for-profit ventures. If, for example, Amazon were somehow to go belly up, the digital archive they are creating is not likely to be lost to posterity. Whether by design or just because digital bells can't be unrung, I think this venture will in the long term significantly increase access to digitally encoded book content. 12. With reference to a decade of Digital Rights Management debate and technological R and D, its worth noting that the big breakthrough here is social and commercial, not technological. 13. This whole thing does not rely on the fact that most people still prefer doing serious reading on paper books. When electronic devices become comparably attractive platforms for book reading, this system will become more, not less, important. All in all, I think this is a big and a good thing. comments? [] 5:26:44 PM     How to stop zooming with the mouse in word on os X. Solved This turned out to be a side effect of uControl imitating a scroll wheel was down bar when the ctrl-key. Now I scroll by holding down Alt- So I'm no longer crazy. comments? [] 3:38:27 PM

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