Daily Archives: February 8, 2008

5 posts

Kindle Not a Good Choice for Libraries

Rochelle writes: http://rochellejustrochelle.typepad.com/copilot/2008/01/never-mind-lega.html Whoa. Wait a minute.  Stepping back from my Kindle krush and putting aside the question of whether or not it’s legal for libraries to loan them, I considered the Kindle issue through the eyes of a public library manager who has to make decisions about how to get the most out of a budget. Duh!  It’s a no brainer. There is no way  I could justify deploying Kindles, given the present model. The machine itself is 400 bucks and can hold up to 200 titles. Let’s say that the average price of a Kindle title is 10 […]

Let Readers Publish their Own Books?

From Computerworld: Why Japanese kids love books Half of Japan’s top 10 best-selling books last year — half! — started out as cell phone-based books, according to the New York Times. The books-on-phones genre started when a home-page-making Web site company realized that people in Japan were writing serialized novels on their blogs, and figured out how to autocreate cell phone-based novels from the blog entries. The popularity of these blog novels on cell phones sparked huge interest among readers in writing such novels. Last month, the site passed the 1 million novel mark. Some of these amateur writers become […]

Struggling with Feeds & “In Box Zero”

I drove back to Indiana Wednesday night (yes, in our awful weather) to work on my Australia talks and get caught up with some outstanding writing. I’ve found I am super-productive in my home workspace! On the drive back, as I often do, I got caught up on my favorite podcasts, including one I’d been meaning to listen to for a while: Merlin Mann’s “In Box Zero” Talk at Goggle from last year. I’m a fan of Mann’s take on productivity, mac use and technology. In the talk he discusses how he manages his email with some practices based on […]

Video Contest at MSU Libraries

Checkout the just announced video contest at Mississippi Ststae Libraries: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=8661499353 Hosted by the Mississippi State University Libraries, the Digital Video Contest is a chance for students, faculty, staff and alumni of Mississippi State to show their creativity and compete for an opportunity to win a fabulous new digital camera. Those interested in taking part are encouraged to create a video, not more than 5 minutes in length, based on the theme “Once Upon a Time at the MSU Libraries…” It is up to the individual or group to interpret the theme.