Official Google Blog: Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices

You can discover and buy new ebooks from the Google eBookstore or get them from one of our independent bookseller partners: Powell’s, Alibris and participating members of the American Booksellers Association. You can choose where to buy your ebooks like you choose where to buy your print books, and keep them all on the same bookshelf regardless of where you got them.

Looks big. I’m not crazy about the online reading experience in the browser — it’s very Google, but as soon as I start bitching about that I realize that this is not something I can do with iBookstore, and is pretty clumsy with the Kindle reader on my laptop, too. Selection is strong, and the web reader does actually support ragged-right, even if the default font (Georgia) is a bit grating. Weirdly, I’m not sure I care about that on the laptop — I can’t yet envision reading a book on it. Looks like, for most titles, you can download PDF or ePub versions for offline reading so Stanza is back in the game. So far the iOS app isn’t available for me but it’ll be interesting to see how they handle typography.

Bubbloy on Twitter censorship of #Wikileaks

It might well be that #Wikileaks is failing to trend simply because of the algorithm failing to pick it up for whatever reason. However, I must say, that would imply that Twitter has written perhaps one of the most abysmal Trend Identification algorithms it could have possibly written. If the goal of the algorithm was to pick up events of importance, popularity or any other meaningful social metric, Twitter would have failed miserably in this aim, and would truly start looking into developing a new one.

He’s got some interesting data with insights from Student Activist and Twitter. I get that Twitter is all about organic promotion and whatnot, but that #Wikileaks is not trending seems off to me. At some point, We The People need issues like this — particularly if they’re as wildly popular as the graphs seem to indicate in this case — to be “promoted” for broader discussion in the interests of the public good. There’s actually a role for Twitter in this discussion and an algorithm that is ignorant of such a capital-I-Important issue is failing the public good on that count.

Message

But, when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere.

This is a pretty clear case for Amazon, and I buy it, in part. But I have a hard time believing that Amazon AWS, which does not pre-screen customers, just happened to start policing Wikileaks without just a hint of political prodding at work.

How Lieberman Got Amazon To Drop Wikileaks | TPMMuckraker

Staffers then, according to the spokeswoman, Leslie Phillips, called Amazon to ask about it, and left questions with a press secretary including, “Are there plans to take the site down?”
Amazon called them back this morning to say they had kicked Wikileaks off, Phillips said. Amazon said the site had violated unspecified terms of use.

This is worth reading. As, I’d wager, would be the “unspecified terms of use” which Wikileaks allegedly violated. No one individual in Congress should have the pull to sway a private corporation, but that it was Lieberman really irks me.

Project Magazine | iPad Magazine

Project, alongside other launches, is both a bold new chapter in media, and a blind pitch into a potentially humiliating void. Whether it changes the fortunes of the written word remains to be seen; built into any new launch these days is the largely optimistic hope that people still exist who like reading stuff, and don’t mouth the words as they’re doing so.

The Virgin iPad-only mag appears to be the first of this new breed of publications, the only one that is iPad-only to start. It’s $2.99 per monthly edition, but the app description says content will be updated daily.

This model of pay-per-edition pubs is on its last legs as rumors swell of Apple’s pending launch of in-app subscriptions, paving the way for publishers to offer on-going digital subscriptions. Until this happens, these apps like Wired, The New Yorker, and now Project, are saddled with this clumsy distribution model that seriously hampers their presentation. Still, Project is a beautiful publication — you can tell they’ve put terrific development resources to it — if slightly sluggish.

While the application chrome doesn’t appear to come from Adobe’s publishing tools, navigation certainly does (swipe up and down to view a single article stack, left and right to navigate between articles seems to have become the new norm in digital mag publishing). It’ll be interesting to see if they rolled their own given the similarity to Adobe’s solution; same inability to copy and paste, same content reflow on axis, yet strangely even more finicky behavior. I’ve been tapping all over the damned place to get the menu to come up to take me home, but that only appears to work when you tap the bottom margin, or from every third-odd page. Until it does work. Then it will continue working on every page, until it stops. And, even though Project is strictly digital, each article is adorned with printer’s cut marks, which are weirdly out of place as a design choice if the intent is to push the medium forward. The right margin cut-mark is supposed to take me to Project forums, but that doesn’t seem to be working for me.

Nice use of video throughout, though in some articles it’s overdone. Images just start moving for no reason, which makes me think of the bloated file size these pubs are hitting.

Finally, there’s just a touch too much lame iPad navel-gazing. Vladimir Putin’s iPad app line-up, well, I can see where that would have been clever in an editorial meeting, but it’s not doing anything to amp up the intelligence of the platform. It’s all about the execution, I guess.

Oh, and one note on proofing: I typo all over the place. I even use “typo” as a verb. But I suppose I expect just a little more from my digital pubs. This too about 15 seconds of swiping to discover, from the sub-head of a piece on Kim Sung-il:

The Eternal President, despite dying of a heart attack in 1994. Weird fact: was always photographed from a certain angle, due to baseball-sized limp [sic] on his neck.

I’m just glad I don’t have any limps on my neck.

we’re gonna need a bigger boat Quotes

I tried to fool it. It bested me repeatedly.

15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics

To see if their task could help, Miyake recruited 283 men and 116 women who were taking part in the university’s 15-week introductory course to physics. He randomly divided them into two groups. One group picked their most important values from a list and wrote about why these mattered to them. The other group – the controls – picked their least important values and wrote about why these might matter to other people.

This sort of brain-trickery has always been fascinating to me. If you’re a woman in physics at CU, don’t read this study, cause you’ll blow everything. Otherwise, read on to learn just how critical it is that we strive to not just improve education, but improve the environment in which we provide it.

4th Amendment Wear

“Assert your rights without saying a word.”

Lessons In Becoming An Expert – Andrew Sullivan

Just a quick reminder. This one’s worth remembering.

Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction – NYTimes.com

He pushed first period back an hour, to 9 a.m., because students were showing up bleary-eyed, at least in part because they were up late on their computers. Unchecked use of digital devices, he says, can create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world and lost in it. “I am trying to take back their attention from their BlackBerrys and video games,” he says. “To a degree, I’m using technology to do it.”

I love hearing stories about educators tackling tomorrow’s challenges with tomorrow’s logic. Refreshing.

Proof of extra dimensions possible next year: CERN | Reuters

CERN scientists say they have already taken research with ions further than those with gold at the long-established Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the U.S. Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.

 

These experiments have shown the power of the link-up of 140 computing centers around the world known as the Grid which processes the vast amounts of information that ion collisions produce.

On December 6, the LHC will be shut down for servicing and to avoid draining electricity in the depths of winter from the energy networks of France and Switzerland along whose border CERN lies.

It will start up again in February, then run at full blast, with protons, until the end of the year, when it will close down again until 2013 while engineers prepare it for running at double the energy to the end of the decade and beyond.

I know, it’s hip to bitch about that fact that here we are in 2010 and, wha? no flying cars or hoverboards? I get it. I’m with it. But seriously, CERN is great evidence of what nations can do to uncover vast scientific mysteries through diligence and appropriate funding. How do we make this kind of science cool in the US again?

From Isaac Schlueter: TSA Success Story

This is one of those terrific stories that starts with something I bet many of us struggle with:

I was worried that I’d chicken out. No, not “worried”. I was sure I’d chicken out. Of course I would. I talk a good game about incendiary politics and unconventional ideals, but when the chips are down, I generally do the expedient thing like a nice polite citizen. I’m not one of these “talk down the authorities” types, even though I wish I was.

And ends with:

After the first 4 “OPT-OUT” calls, they just passed us all through the regular metal detector. No one got groped.

Information, properly delivered, is power.

I’ve been prepping a post contrasting all the hoopla about Facebook privacy and prissy first-worlders bitching about giving up some personal information in exchange for use of a free service, something that might just scratch my emotional itch for a little perspective, when it hit me that I’m far, far more riled up about the TSA. What’s more, I feel pretty strongly that the TSA thing is far more justified to be riled up about.

So hats off to Isaac for keeping his cool and not reacting like I would, for being prepared and whatnot, and for those crazed about how teens are going to be using their shiny new @facebook.com email addresses on their resumes, grab your 5-year-old and head to the damned airport.

Newsweek and the Gray Lady: Your Future Awaits: Tech News – GigaOm

… there is an argument to be made that when it comes to an online audience, the Newsweek brand name may actually have a negative connotation rather than a positive one. The site won’t be disappearing entirely: Tina Brown says it will live on under its own banner, and links will obviously be redirected so that past content doesn’t disappear.

I don’t know what the big deal is. Look at the two sites in an a/b test and strip the logos? Same site.

Cooks Source Publisher Statement

The bad news is that this is probably the final straw for Cooks Source. We have never been a great money-maker even with all the good we do for businesses. Having a black mark wont help…and now, our black mark will become our shroud. Winters are bleak in Western New England, and as such they are bleak for Cooks Source as well. This will end us. In the end if we did keep going, I would (very gladly) hire someone else to serve as editor and just continue my work with the towns. You should know that I did have an interview last week and the reporter grilled me seriously. I was able to show him all the promo books and articles we receive, all the photos we take and the “clip art” that is free for everyone. I also showed him those emails…

This is one of those it’s sad … because it’s true stories. Sorry for Cooks Source — it’s hard to see any publication have to shutter in this climate. Sorrier for the decisions that were made that got to this point.

A New Way for Consumers to Give | GiveBack: The People’s Foundation

To achieve this vision, GiveBack recruits businesses to offer percentage-of-sale donations that are unlocked upon consumer purchase. The donations go directly into the consumer’s foundation and the consumer maintains complete control over how, where and when their money is directed. In addition, 100% of the money goes directly to the selected charity.

Seems like a smart way to empower giving through complete brainlessness — one of the things that’s consistently in the way actually doing something good with your money in the first place.

I’d like to start a foundation. When I was singing in college I had this idea to donate a building to the music school that was perfect in every way, but instruments would not be allowed. I was, of course, an a cappella nerd. At the time, I thought this was funny.