Ebooks on Crack Get your ebook fix.

8May/110

One of the best ways to spend your free time is to start reading a new book. Nowadays, people prefer spending each free minute browsing social media, watching memes and jokes, and doing nothing useful for their brains. However, it's a kind of muscle that should be trained regularly, and books help us do it imperceptibly. We get acquainted with the plot, dive into the interesting story, whereas our brain develops imagination, borrows new words and phrases, and improves speaking skills. College students who read a lot have almost no difficulties with academic writing and need to pay for essay in exceptional cases. The number of people using professional assistance is relatively high, and not all of them lack the writing skills to complete essays independently. The problem is with the educational system, destroying all the desire to obtain knowledge. The need to juggle studies with work, excel in all disciplines, and devote time to something besides college is what made academic help popular. Sometimes one finds it better to trust a homework to expert and devote an hour or two to reading a book. And this approach has the right to live.

Doctor Who and the smell of books: Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead

vashtaDoctor Who has been much on my mind lately, what with the new Matt Smith season starting up. (Next Saturday’s episode will be the one penned by master horror/fantasy wordsmith Neil Gaiman, and I’m quite looking forward to it.) But as I was discussing earlier episodes with a friend who is watching through them for the first time, I realized one of them touched on a TeleRead-related topic, and I didn’t mention it when it was originally on the air.

The episode in question is the season 4 two-parter “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead”, written by now-showrunner Stephen Moffat. It can be viewed streaming as part of the Doctor Who collection on Netflix, or in a low-resolution form via YouTube; there’s also a transcript here. You don’t really need any context to enjoy it beyond knowing that the Doctor is an eccentric time traveler who likes to travel with human companions. I’m going to spoil it a bit, so perhaps you should just take my word that it’s good and watch it first.

This isn’t really a full “review” of the episode, as I only touch on a couple of e-book-related plot elements, but suffice it to say it’s very creepy and atmospheric, with a number of interesting characters and ideas—well worth watching. But as for those plot elements…

“People never really stopped loving books,” the Doctor explains as he leads his companion Donna Noble out of the Tardis into a library. “51st century. By now you’ve got holovids, direct to brain downloads, fiction mist, but you need the smell. The smell of books, Donna. Deep breath.” I cannot now recall my exact feelings the first time I heard that line, but I would like to think I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to laugh or throw something at the screen. Even in Doctor Who do you find “the smell of books.”

And you also find the contention that printed books will never die. While Doctor Who’s chronology can be a bit suspect at times (another episode had 20th century TV shows being re-staged in the year 100,000 AD!), book-lovers can take solace in the fact that, in the Doctor Who universe, three thousand years from now there will be a library the size of a planet. (At the rate people publish books, there will probably have to be a library the size of a planet to hold them all, if they all come out in print!)

But it turns out that this is not necessarily a good thing (and here come those spoilers), because the books carried along with them a sort of infection or infestation. The trees that were pulped to make the books had been the home of sentient piranha-like living shadow creatures called the vashta nerada, that can strip all the flesh off a person’s skeleton in less than a second. And the Doctor is faced with having to protect a team of archaeologists from the threat and find out what happened to the thousands of staff and patrons who had previously inhabited the library, who the library computer rather ominously explains were “saved” even though there were “no survivors.”

So you could say that one subtext of the episode is that e-books are better because they are guaranteed 100% shadow-piranha-free. But perhaps that’s not the only e-book-related thing that’s worth pointing out about this episode. It turns out (another spoiler) that those staff and patrons had been “saved” by being digitized onto the library’s hard drive via the library’s transmat system—much the way print books can be “saved” by being digitized into e-books on hard drives.


I may be reaching a little here (given that the episode never explicitly makes this parallel), but it’s an amusing interpretation, isn’t it? And it does go right along with the way the episode subverts the love of print books even in an age of “fiction mist” by making those print books home to the monster of the week. (And who knows how many other giant libraries are similarly-infected?)

At any rate, if you want to explain to someone why e-books are better than print books, you can point to this episode and explain that e-books won’t eat the flesh off your bones. (They’ll just eat up all your free time, if you let them.)

8May/110

Google loses newspaper article-aggregation appeal in Belgium

belgiumGoogle may be wanting to use “Belgium” in a Douglas Adamsian sense about now. On May 5th, the Court of Appeals in Brussels upheld a 2007 decision stating that Google could not use headlines and excerpts from Belgian newspaper articles in its Google News service, siding with the papers who insisted that their content was valuable enough that Google should be paying them to carry it. Google, on the other hand, holds that it is providing a valuable service to the newspapers, getting more people to read their stories (and see their advertising).

This is essentially the same dichotomy that long dogged broadcast stations on cable television: the stations think that the cable networks should pay them for carrying the content because it is beneficial to the cable network to have more content; the cable networks think that local stations should pay them because it is beneficial to the local stations to have a bigger audience.

I’m still not sure why the newspapers don’t just add the little bit of code to their sites that will cause Google to pass them by. Too much work? Or maybe they’d rather keep the extra exposure but force Google to pay them too?

As one Belgian lawyer notes, the case could set a precedent meaning Google (and other news aggregators) would either have to pay papers or not carry their material. With that in mind, Google really doesn’t have any other choice than to appeal the decision. (I’ll bet Rupert Murdoch wishes he had a court-issued decision like that over here.)

Google has issued a statement saying that it still believes Google News “to be fully compliant with copyright law.” It still has the right to appeal to Belgium’s highest court, the Cour de Cassation.


While the outcome of the case probably won’t directly hurt Google outside of Belgium, I would not be surprised if newspapers in other areas started getting the same idea.

8May/110

A typographic checklist

This checklist is from an article in Monotype Imaging’s fonts.com site.  If you go to the original article you will find links to each item on the list with an explanation of why it is there.  The list was compiled by Ilene Strizver, founder of The Type Studio and a typographic consultant.


I always recommend that designers and students make a typographic checklist to help avoid committing type crimes, as well as to aid in finessing their typography. I’ve decided to create a checklist that covers issues I’m most frequently asked about in my workshops. You can download the PDF and print it out. You can also click on the links to learn more, as I’ve previously published columns dedicated to most of these topics.

AChecklist

 

8May/1125

Father and Son Launch APPLE iPhone into SPACE


Ebook:Father and Son Launch APPLE iPhone into SPACE
FREE EBOOK goo.gl Learn How to Make some easy internet money in between watching YouTube videos! goo.gl Father and Son team launch an iphone into space. The iphone along with a HD camera were lifted up to an altitude of 100 000ft above New York using a helium filled balloon. At this atitude the weather balloon burst and sent the iphone, camera and burst container hurtling towards the earth at 150mph even with the parachute open! Thanks to the iPhones internal GPS, the capsule and its contents were located intact in a tree 30 miles north of the liftoff site!

8May/112

Edible Bouquet Craft Project


Free ebooks:Edible Bouquet Craft Project
► plc3demo.com There are many arts and crafts websites on the Internet but very few of them contain candy craft projects. I feel that edible crafts including candy crafts deserve better than that. So I have started this site dedicated specifically to amazing edible crafts. I hope you will find some interesting craft ideas here that you will want to try on your own. On this site you will find: * How to make your own candy bouquets and other candy arrangements: Detailed instructions with photos For all ages and levels of experience * Food crafts for kids When your child has a craving for fun, try one of these fun and easy food craft projects! Kids love to make these tasty treats! * Edible fruit and vegetable creations: Making these edible arrangements is entertaining and enjoyable for the whole family! * How to make candy: Candy making history, basics, secrets, lots of recipes, and free ebooks. Making candy is easier than you may think! Find out more at ► plc3demo.com

8May/110

New website, Storiad, to fill a professional networking niche

Screen shot 2011 05 08 at 10 28 08 AM

From the press release:

Newly-launched professional networking website storiad.com is dedicated to the art and business of writing. Storiad offers familiar technologies to enhance the professional networking and marketing strategies writers work hard to develop. Storiad offers writers personalized online platforms from which to connect and collaborate with fellow writers, and portfolio management tools to develop, organize, and market project portfolios of written works.

Storiad’s guiding philosophy is simple: help writers gain the exposure needed for their work to be read, shared, discussed, and bought. By introducing increased pull into a traditionally push market, Storiad works to enhance the probability of any given project fulfilling the right demand, because “you just never know who in the wide world is looking for that very piece you’ve written.” Simple

Storiad enables integration of writer profiles and portfolios with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media assets for a comprehensive and professional online presence. To that end, Storiad’s group registration feature encourages writers to coordinate their existing social and professional networks on a uniform platform dedicated exclusively to the needs of writers serious about the art and business of writing.

Storiad is committed to helping foster exposure and success for writers. The company’s founders believe that products ought to be designed by those who will use them. Accordingly, Storiad provides interactive and collaborative communication tools to better understand writer needs as the company works to refine, strengthen and expand the Storiad network.  At every point of product development, writers are encouraged to join the conversation on Storiad’s social media pages and take a proactive role in setting the direction of next-generation Storiad technologies.

Currently, Storiad is hosting a kick-off poetry contest in celebration of National Poetry Month.  Writers can participate by visiting www.facebook.com/storiad.

STORIAD.com is a Pasadena-based professional networking site created for writers, by writers and charges no writer-related fees.  Sign-up is easy and free at www.storiad.com.  For more information about the website, contact Ramzi S. Hajj, President of Storiad, Inc. at [email protected].

8May/110

Little impact on electronics firms from strong ringgit|Lastest Ipad News]

Little impact on electronics firms from strong ringgit
Kuala Lumpur (The Star/ANN) - It's sheer mania in the tech world and the catalyst - nothing other than Apple CEO Steve Job’s creations, which started with the iPhone back in 2008. Fast forward three years, and Apple’s latest offering, the iPad 2 has exploded off shelfs since its launch in mid-March.
Read more on Asia News Network via Yahoo! Singapore News

8May/110

Week in Apple: Thunderbolt iMacs, iOS location tracking tweaks, and more|Lastest Ipad News]

Week in Apple: Thunderbolt iMacs, iOS location tracking tweaks, and more
In the last week, Apple released an update to iOS devices to help address some of the concerns over location tracking and unleashed new, Thunderbolt-equipped iMacs. Ars also dug into OWC's SSD replacement for MacBook Airs and the Quadro 4000 from NVIDIA, and discussed upcoming changes to MobileMe, Samsung's lawsuit against Apple in the US, and a fake antivirus app for the Mac. Read on for the ...
Read more on Ars Technica

8May/110

PaperPhone – amazing flexible pocket computer, ereader and mobilephone





An ereader or mobile phone that you can fold up and put in your pocket:

Human Media Lab at Canada’s Queen’s University  have come up with a rather extraordinary and weird invention, a mobile device that has an E-Ink screen that is both floppy and actually functions.

Not the first floppy screen:

There have been earlier attempts to create a floppy ereader – the Skiff- which  died a quiet death some time ago, but these good folk seem to have come  up with  something that is actually useful,and thus may actually make it into production as a sort of ereader, portable computer and mobile phone, all in one.

As its creator, Roel Vertegaal, who is also the director of the Human Media Lab puts it:

“This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper,  you interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen.”

It has a 9.5-cm (3.74-inch) thin film flexible E-Ink display, underneath which is a flexible printed circuit incorporating resistive bend sensors. Those sensors allow it to be programmed to recognize different types of bending gestures, which will subsequently result in it doing things such as navigating menus, making calls, selecting songs, or any other function. A built-in Wacom tablet also allows users to draw on its screen – making it even more paper-like.

All rather amazing, no?   And actually useful too, since it can be folded up and put away in your pocket when not in use, and being an E-Ink device, when it isn’t doing anything, it consumes no power, so as with ereaders, it will work for ages on one charge.

It can happily function as a mobile phone, an extremely mobile computer (way better than any tablet I suspect) an ereader.

I realise that it is only in the prototype  stage just now, and will in all probability go the way of a lot of other interesting and fun ideas, but I can well imagine that it might be truly useful.

To judge from the video (see below), it might well be rather hard work to get it to do anything, but I report on it in a spirit of “keeping you informed of developments”.

 

Source: Gizmag

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So, what do you think of this idea?   Realistic and useful, or simply another bright idea?

 

 

 




8May/1121

Importing PDF File Format Into Your iPod


Kindle ebook:Importing PDF File Format Into Your iPod
IMNirvana.com There is a way of importing a PDF file into an iPod. I do this for e-books and reports I like to read when on the go. If you already own an iPod this can be the poor person's Kindle.

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