This summer, ten small libraries mysteriously appeared throughout New York City’s Lower East Side and East Village. But who paid for them? Who designed them? And what was the point? In a short film published today, the creators finally answer our many questions about how the Little Free Library came to be.
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Did you know that eight of every ten kids born today won’t experience a night sky dark enough to see the Milky Way? We’re living in an age when light pollution is making stars a rarity—and not just in cities. Paul Bogard, the author of a new book on darkness, even goes so far as to describe it as a natural resource.
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More and more tech companies are showing interest in education and helping out students by offering services and features to assist them during their studies. After all, the youth are the future. Google thinks so too and has introduced a textbooks category in Google Play where students can rent and buy digital textbooks.
Just in time for the fall semester, Google will be bringing textbooks to Google Play starting sometime next month, and they plan to offer a “comprehensive” selection of textbooks for students, although they didn’t go into specifics as to how many textbooks they’ll be offering. However, they did say that all five major publishing houses are on board.
To up the ante, though, Google is promising that these textbooks will be available at discounts of up to 80%, which is sometimes even more of a discount than even buying them physically used. I’m sure exact discounts will vary greatly depending on what book you’re looking for specifically, but most books should be a lot cheaper than their physical counterparts.
Like any other piece of content that you purchase in Google Play, textbooks will be able to sync across your multiple devices, including Android, iOS, and desktop computers through the browser. Seeing as how Google is marketing the Nexus 7 as the tablet to get for students, digital textbooks seems like a great way to continue marketing that.
Google is launching an education section in Google Play later this fall, and we’re guessing that today’s textbook addition will be a part of that platform. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all displayed a huge interest in education and helping students succeed, while Facebook is aiming to do the exact opposite by distracting students during those long study cram sessions. We kid of course.
Google Play gets textbook category as Google dives deep into education is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
If the months of waiting for the next season of Game Of Thrones leaves you curled up in a ball repeatedly muttering "Hodor" to yourself, you’re going to love what Insight Editions previewed at Comic Con this year. Available in 2014, A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros is a lavish 3D book that lets you further explore and learn about the fictional land.
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Whether work has you always traveling, or you’re just tired of reading Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooie to your kids every single night, the Sparkup will take over your bedtime story reading duties if you’re not available, or just don’t want to do it.
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When you’re dealing with clients who will potentially be spending millions of dollars on your product, it doesn’t hurt to splurge a little on your promotional items. After all, you’ve got to spend money to make money, so the brochure for Embraer’s new Lineage 1000 private jet was designed to fly just like the aircraft itself—or float, at least.
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The best-selling biography of Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson will be getting a paperback version this fall, and it will feature a new cover shot of a young Steve Jobs in a similar pose to that of the current hard-cover version of the biography. The new paperback version will also include and updated afterword
A new DRM technology is being developed in Germany that gives every ebook a unique watermark of sorts, so that publishers can track them and see who is pirating copies. With the popularity of ereaders and ebooks on the rise, publishers are looking for new ways to combat the rise in piracy on ebooks, especially
Google’s lawyers visited the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last week for a polite conversation with three judges and attorneys from the Authors Guild. You remember — the book-scanning thing? Yes, the case is 7 years old and still unresolved. The Circuit Court is just a way station in a longer journey — at issue is whether the Authors Guild’s class action suit should be broken apart, forcing authors and publishers to confront Google individually.
Google is going to win this thing eventually. If that makes Google evil, it is a necessary evil.
The bigger question is about the lawfulness of Google’s digital library quest, and the legitimacy of the Guild’s copyright charges and request for damages. There are points of similarity to the music industry’s litigation saga. And major differences. Google is going to win this thing eventually. If that makes Google evil, it is a necessary evil.
You may recall the backlash against Google over its book digitizing efforts, which many say is copyright infringement and it all eventually leading into a legal battle that has been ongoing for years. Back in 2011, for example, a District Court in NY rejected Google’s settlement with the ASA and Author’s Guild, and last summer Google moved to have the lawsuit dismissed. Now a court of appeals is considering whether a class-action lawsuit is warranted.
The matter at stake is whether the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are allowed to go through with a class-action lawsuit against Google, something that could result in billions of dollars in damages – over $3 billion, according to some estimates. As such, it isn’t surprising that Google appealed when one court ruled that a class-action lawsuit was permissible, and now the case has moved up to a higher court.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now handling the issue, and seems to be leaning away from a class-action lawsuit, which would leave those who feel their copyrights have been infringed upon to sue Google on their own. This would result in substantially less damages being paid out, especially considering that many of those who would go after Google are small-time authors not in a position to initiate a lawsuit.
According to Reuters, one of the panel judges said the digitization efforts hold “enormous value for our culture.” Others have mentioned the notion of returning the case to the district court, having it give a ruling on Google’s claim of fair use. We’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out, but presently the plaintiffs are seeking $750 in damages per book Google copied.
[via Reuters]
Court considers allowing class-action lawsuit against Google over book digitization is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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