The Future of the Book
November 10, 2005
The Book Scanner 0
by C. Max Magee
In the midst of all the controversy surrounding digitizing the world’s books did you ever stop to wonder how all these books are getting scanned? It turns out it’s just regular folks making a few bucks an hour sidled up to some high-tech scanning machines. The job doesn’t sound half bad, actually. [...]
November 3, 2005
Amazon’s digital book initiative: paying by the page 0
by C. Max Magee
As Google stokes controversy with its Google Print service, Amazon has unveiled its own digital book offering, one that’s sure to make the publishers happy. Amazon is launching two services, Amazon Pages and Amazon Upgrade. According to an AP story on the new products:
With its new Amazon Pages service, Amazon.com Inc. plans to [...]
November 2, 2005
Google presents public domain books 0
by C. Max Magee
As Google battles publishers over copyright issues, an AP story out this evening announces that Google Print “on Thursday will begin serving up the entire contents of books and government documents that aren’t entangled in [the] copyright battle.” I don’t think it’s live quite yet as my searches failed to turn up anything interesting, [...]
October 21, 2005
The publishers’ big blunder 0
by C. Max Magee
On Wednesday, five publishers, McGraw-Hill Cos. Inc., Pearson Plc’s Pearson Education and Penguin Group (USA) units, Viacom Inc.’s Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons Inc., filed suit for copyright infringement against Google’s Google Print service. What is Google Print? Google has scanned the full text of thousands of books and made [...]
March 1, 2005
Hardcover, Softcover… iPod Shuffle? 0
by C. Max Magee
Yesterday, Scott posted the good news that six Bay Area libraries are making audiobooks available as downloads that readers can listen to on their digital devices. At least one other library appears to be jumping on the digital download bandwagon, but this one is providing the mp3 player as part of the deal. [...]
December 14, 2004
Will Google Reinvent the Book? 0
by C. Max Magee
You may have heard the news that Google is embarking on a new venture to digitize the collections of several university libraries. According to Google this venture “a part of our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Though I have heard some naysayers discussing this on [...]
