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$99 Nook!

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Sat, 11/06/2010 - 20:54
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Barnes & Noble is clearing out their refurbished Nooks on Ebay … for $99! That gets you a 3G-capable Nook that still has a year warranty on it … it looks like the best deal that anyone has seen for a high-end eReader.



eBook insanity from the U.K.

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Thu, 10/21/2010 - 09:10
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An absolutely crazy decision was announced today from the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) meeting in the U.K., driven by the Publisher’s Association. From the article on The Bookseller



We have a winner!

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Tue, 10/12/2010 - 09:18
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Last month I announced the first ever Perpetual Beta contest, with the winner receiving a copy of my newest book, Mobile Technologies & Libraries. After pouring over the entries, a final decision has been made, and the winner is:

LeecyB75 (real name forthcoming, if he/she chooses to share)! The search story in question was this one:

Congratulations! There may be other contests coming on Perpetual Beta in the future…keep reading!



Major Facebook announcement

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Wed, 10/06/2010 - 14:19
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Facebook announced two interesting new features today during a press conference: Groups and Downloads for your information. Groups are a type of self-organized private discussion, allowing you to quickly tag and gather friends separately from your larger friends lists. The most exciting news, for me at least, is that Facebook is going to implement a single-button download service, which will zip up all of your information: pictures, posts, etc…and allow you to download a file of them. That’s great news, and the first crack in the walled garden that gives people hope of being able to get all of their content if they wish to move to another service.



Google New

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Wed, 09/22/2010 - 21:11
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Have trouble finding out what Google is up to these days? Lose track of what they’ve launched recently? They just released one site where you can see a summary of all their new stuff, check it out:

Google New



Google Search Stories Contest reminder

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 21:18
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You’ve got just over a week to get your entry in for my Google Search Stories Contest! Create a Search Story, and post the link to it in the comments to this post, or in the comments on the original.

Deadline is still Sept 30, and the winner will receive a copy of my book Mobile Technologies & Libraries!



Future of the Book

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 21:11
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Take a look at design firm IDEO ‘s examination of the Future of the Book….fascinating! Which would you rather have: Nelson, Coupland, or Alice?



Blio arrives Sept 28

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Wed, 09/15/2010 - 11:10
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The long teased Blio eReader platform finally has an official launch date: Sept 28th for the Windows software, and then iOS and Android apps “following soon after”.

Blio is a new eReader platform developed in part by Ray Kurzweil, and focused around flexibility of display and interface. As you might expect coming from Kurzweil, it has strong text-to-speech capabilities, and is designed for full color displays and not eInk devices such as the Kindle. In addition, content is being provided by Baker & Taylor, and Blio claims to have over 100 publishers lined up to help provide content for the platform.

I had a chance to play with Blio nearly a year ago at CES 2010, and talked about it during the ALA Midwinter 2010 Top Tech Trends presentation…it’s exciting stuff. Can’t wait to see if it can give Kindle and Nook a run for their money.



Google Instant

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Wed, 09/08/2010 - 12:37
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Google today rolled out a major change to their search that they are calling Google Instant. This change will begin to populate search results as soon as you begin typing, using your history combined with the information that Google has about word frequency and popularity to predict what you’re looking for. This will be rolling out across the world over the next few months, but you can test it now by visiting this page.



Google Priority Inbox

Submitted by Jason Griffey on Wed, 09/01/2010 - 07:16
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Google is rolling out a new feature to Gmail this week they are calling Priority Inbox. It’s an automated method for ranking and determining which emails in your inbox are important to you, and thus float to the top and are marked, while less important ones aren’t given prominence in the email window. It uses your email history (who you read, didn’t read, responded to, etc.) as measures, and allows you to manually rank as well to increase its filters.

Think of it like an inverse spam filter. Instead of filtering out the bad stuff, it filters up the good stuff!