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New Life

Over the weekend, the goddessly Tess (assisted by Hero Hamid) gave birth to Nou Alipour, a gorgeous little girl. Tess is largely responsible for the look and feel of this website; Hamid does the programming that powers it. Additionally, the two of them oversee Bloggapedia, our carefully-curated catalog of good blogs.

Welcome, Nou, and blessings!
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 31, 08, 10:38 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

PDFs and Kindles

Category: Digital Publishing
I'm working on a couple of projects that involve more than a passing familiarity with XML - I don't need to write actual code but I do need to explain things to people and really understand the capabilities (and business potential) of XML documents.

So I figured, why not put the Kindle to the test? I went onto the Kindle store and downloaded a sample chapter of XML Demystified. But that was the only title that seemed to fit my requirements - I needed more.

I went to O'Reilly's website and found XML In a Nutshell - much more what I was looking for. It was available as a PDF! So I bought it and downloaded it.

Amazon doesn't state explicitly that the Kindle supports PDFs. But I thought I would give it a whirl anyway - I emailed it to my Kindle account, and it appeared on my Kindle in about 10 minutes (it was a big file). It doesn't look perfect. The conversion from PDF to mobi is less than dreamy. The table of contents is a little mucked up - not that it matters, because the Kindle doesn't use page numbers anyway. But the text itself...is just fine. It's good enough. It'll work on the subway - I can read it during downtimes. It will, in a nutshell, do. At least until O'Reilly releases it in mobi format (not everything is available that way).

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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 23, 08, 2:44 PM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

I want candy

Content the Kindle could be selling, but isn't:

The Gawker blogs. Gawker, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Defamer, Jezebel, and Deadspin. Not having the Gawker empire on the Kindle when you've got BoingBoing and TechCrunch seems an obvious omission. I go to Gawker every day, but I don't hit the others as much as I would like to.

More Jane Haddam, Janet Evanovich, and Linda Fairstein. 6,800 mysteries and thrillers isn't enough.

More inspirational titles. Looking at the Kindle categories, there aren't nearly enough books published by gurus. Where's your Wayne Dyer, your Deepak Chopra, your Marianne Wiliamson? Yes, they have some books available, but these folks have deep, deep backlist.

More newspapers and magazines - where's the NY Observer? Where are my tabloids? Where is The New Yorker? Where's People Magazine? Where's Vanity Fair?

Consider all those requests.


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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 22, 08, 3:16 PM , comments(1) , permalink , Email this post

Of books and Kindles

Books never lose battery.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 22, 08, 3:13 PM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

Kindle conversion experience

Right, then, I bought this Kindle.

I have to say, I was skeptical. Really skeptical. A small laptop, an iPhone-like device - I could see a whole slew of ebook readers that would have more utility than the Kindle. Something that allows you to share text, something that allows you to email snippets to friends, something that allows for embedded video and all sorts of other things....

And the photos of the damn thing - FUGLY.

But then one day I saw Shatzkin slip his into his blazer pocket on his way out to lunch. It was so light and thin. And I thought, hmmm....And I was infected.

Not convinced, but definitely infected. Then I began thinking about impending travel. Stacks of books? Or...that light, thin white thing?

Then I began talking with others who own them. Clients, colleagues. Everyone who owns one loves it. And I thought...how can I continue to be skeptical without actually experiencing the damn thing myself? How can I help publishers with their digital plans without using an ebook reader?

It was a toss-up between the Sony Reader and the Kindle, but what really got me was the wireless connection. Downloading books on the fly - dangerous for the wallet, but I wanted that functionality. I never update my iPod because I hate hooking the damn thing up to my computer. I love the idea of downloading books from the air!

So I bought it. And waited breathlessly. And came home from work yesterday and plugged it in to charge, and read the manual, and immediately ordered two books I've been wanting to read, and a magazine subscription. Once it was charged, I did what I do with all my books - took it onto my bed, curled up, and immediately fell asleep with it.

A success. If I can nap with it, it works.

Today I downloaded a third book while waiting in the car for my boyfriend to do an errand at the hardware store. I am halfway through one of the books already, and am dipping into the magazine here and there in small downtimes. The flicker of the "page turn" doesn't bother me. I do sometimes mis-navigate, but that's just a question of getting used to the thing. The ergonomics of it seem fine to me - I appear to be able to hold the thing in the way it's meant to be held, and I don't trigger page turns without wanting to.

Is it fugly? I don't really think about it. I'm too busy reading my content.

So I didn't expect to like it at all, and I love it.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 18, 08, 12:40 PM , comments(1) , permalink , Email this post

Just bought a Kindle

I keep hearing raves. Despite my instincts, despite my hesitations, despite the fact that I haven't seen one on the subway yet. I am skeptical.

But it will be here tomorrow and I'm sure I'll find it fun.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 16, 08, 5:05 PM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

More on Google and librarianship

On the Read 2.0 listserv a couple of days ago, Jeff Ubois commented (and gave me permission to share) on the problem of Viacom demanding Google/YouTube user data:

Brewster [Kahle, of the Internet Archive] has been warning about this problem in the digital environment for fifteen years, and the ALA has been on it for a long time in the analog world:

"It is the librarian's obligation to treat as confidential any private information obtained through contact with library patrons. - 1939 ALA Code of Ethics
The economic value of log data to companies selling ads is immense though, so it's hard to see commercial services coming around to the POV that it's a liability. Maybe this is another reason why organizations focused on shareholder value are not always the best custodians for our collective cultural heritage.

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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 9, 08, 7:57 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

New CEO at B&T

Baker & Taylor has replaced former CEO Richard Lewis with Thomas I. Morgan, former CEO of Hughes Supply, a construction supply firm. Apparently chosen in a search by Castle Harlan, the equity firm that owns B&T, Morgan has a long career in auto parts.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 8, 08, 9:17 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

Thomas M. Disch

I was shocked this morning to read in Shelf Awareness that SF writer Thomas M. Disch committed suicide over the holiday weekend. He was 68.

When I was an editorial assistant at Bantam/Spectra, working with Pat LoBrutto, we revered Disch. His soulfulness was cut with an acute intelligence that made him both an amazing writer and a great critic. I met him one evening at the home of one of my writing professors - David Black - and he was so wry, courtly, and gentle. Often you meet people whose work you admire and you're disappointed; this was not the case with Disch.

At any rate, we've lost a really awesome mind, and it's doubly sad that it was self-inflicted.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 8, 08, 8:54 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post

Google Library

This, from the Wall Street Journal, this morning:

Last week, in the context of Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google’s YouTube, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube.

This doesn't strike me as a good idea. In the past, libraries and bookstores (and BuzzMachine has a great piece on this) have adamantly opposed government efforts to turn over user information (who buys which books, who withdraws which books). Once you start doing that, you get into questions of what people "should" and "shouldn't" be accessing. And that's not a uniform consensus - that's subject to political whim entirely. (And the concept of "fair use" is indeed a political one.)

Google is resisting the judge's order so far, asking instead to be able to "anonymize" the user logs.

And who is Judge Stanton? He is a Reagan appointee, a Yale and UVA graduate, born in 1927. Beyond that, we know very little. Obviously, HE has managed to keep his user data private.
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Posted by Laura Dawson , July 7, 08, 9:30 AM , comments(0) , permalink , Email this post
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