Google Cultural Institute

Imagine a public library that focused on providing access to digital versions of books, photographs, historical records, audio recordings and videos to anyone with access to the Internet.  The library’s mission would be to efficiently store a huge amount of digital content and make it easily searchable and accessible.

There is an organization trying to create such a library known as the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).  The idea is that universities, museums, libraries and anyone else with historic or cultural data would have a repository for storing their digitized content and sharing it with the world.

Google seems to think such a library is a great idea too.  That’s why they launched the Google Cultural Institute in 2010.  The mission of the site is to ”help preserve and promote culture online”.

A quick visit to the Cultural Institute’s website reveals an immersive experience.  The site showcases historical and cultural collections of pictures, art, videos and documents that one would expect to see in prestigious museums.  Visitors can search the site using names, places, events or dates.  For example, searching for “1941″ brings up some pictures of Hitler in Germany and Poland as well as a photo of Margot and Anne Frank.

Yesterday, Google announced that they expanded their cultural database by adding 42 new exhibitions.  The new online exhibitions cover Apartheid, D-Day and the Holocaust through a collection of letters, photographs and videos.  Google partnered with 17 organizations to bring the latest exhibitions online.

The Google Cultural Institute is a perfect example of what the Digital Public Library of America could look like.  It’s a technology-focused organization that specializes in efficiently digitizing, storing, searching and displaying content from a wide variety of sources on a single website.  Too bad it’s a private company and not a national public library.

{ 0 comments }

Kindle Fire HD

In a much anticipated move, Amazon introduced their next generation of Kindles today.  In general, the new devices are faster, better and cost less than last year’s batch.

It looks like Amazon is going for the Goldilocks approach when it comes to ereaders and tablets.  They pretty much have a device for everyone.  On a budget?  Get the entry level Kindle ereader for only $69 ($10 less than it was last year).   Want a built-in light?  The new Kindle Paperwhite (replaces Kindle touch and adds a built-in light) is for you.

The company has a similar philosophy with its Kindle Fire tablets too.  The entry level Kindle Fire (40% faster, double storage) is only $159.  That is quite an achievement since the original Fire went for $199 last year and was popular enough to snag Amazon 22% of the tablet market.

Amazon unveiled new Kindle Fire HD tablets as well.  The 7″ wifi-only version comes with 16 or 32GB of storage and runs $199.  It also has a 1920×1200 HD display.  The 8.9″ version comes in either wifi-only or 4G LTE models at $299 and $499 respectively.

The 4G LTE is pretty surprising since $499 puts it at the entry price of an iPad.  The real surprise is the data plan that Amazon is offering with the tablet though.  For only $49.99 a year you get 250MB per month of 4G LTE service.  The same data costs $14.99/mo. at AT&T and the smallest plan you can get from Verizon is $20/mo. for 1GB.  So someone that uses 4G a lot would save at least $130/year by using a Kindle Fire HD instead of an iPad.

So the biggest name in ebooks and ereaders has drastically cut the prices and improved the quality of its ereaders and tablets.  This will certainly accelerate the already rapid transition from print books to ebooks.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Amazon Kindle Owners’ Lending Library now has over 200,000 ebooks

September 5, 2012
Thumbnail image for Amazon Kindle Owners’ Lending Library now has over 200,000 ebooks

Amazon can put another notch in their ebook “library” bedpost.  As of this writing, there are now 200,433 ebook titles in the list of ebooks in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Amazon’s Lending Library launched under a year ago on November 3, 2011.  It allows anyone that owns a Kindle and that subscribes to Amazon Prime for $79 per year to be able to borrow one ebook from the library

Read the full article →

100 million ebooks downloaded from Kindle Owners’ Lending Library

August 28, 2012
Thumbnail image for 100 million ebooks downloaded from Kindle Owners’ Lending Library

Amazon has done the unthinkable…again.  The company announced today that over 100 million ebooks have been either borrowed or purchased from their Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. We remember way back when Amazon launched the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library ten months ago how it only had 5,400 titles in it.  Now the library contains over 180,000 ebooks.  That means the company has added over 17,000 ebooks a month or 580 ebooks a day

Read the full article →

Amazon sticks Unglue.it with suspended payments

August 14, 2012
Thumbnail image for Amazon sticks Unglue.it with suspended payments

Amazon just let everyone know how they feel about the new ebook crowdfunding site Uglue.it.  Amazon Payments has been the payment processor for Unglue.it since they launched in May, but last week they decided to pull the plug and halted all transactions from the site. Apparently crowdfunding presents too many legal issues for Amazon to keep up with so they decided to reject all crowdfunding business in the future.  The one exception

Read the full article →

Amazon now sells more ebooks than print books in the UK

August 6, 2012
Thumbnail image for Amazon now sells more ebooks than print books in the UK

It looks like Olympic athletes aren’t the only ones setting new records in London.  The Telegraph reported today that Amazon now sells more ebooks than print books on their UK site. Amazon revealed in its latest UK sales figures that they are selling 14 percent more ebooks than physical hardbacks and paperbacks combined.  Ebooks have been outselling print books on their US site for over a year, but this is the first time

Read the full article →

Charging sales tax on ebooks could be really good for libraries

July 27, 2012
Thumbnail image for Charging sales tax on ebooks could be really good for libraries

Get ready for prices to go up on everything you buy online.  The Wall Street Journal recently reported that tax breaks for online shoppers might be nearing their end.  Internet sales and digital goods might soon be subject to sales tax just like physical goods and physical store sales.  This means that customers would be charged sales tax when they purchase an ebook.  This could be good news for libraries.

Read the full article →

Publishers could use movie release windows for ebooks at libraries

July 13, 2012
Thumbnail image for Publishers could use movie release windows for ebooks at libraries

Ever seen a movie on a store shelf and decide you want to rent it from Netflix or Redbox only to find out that it’s not available to be rented yet?  That annoying situation exists due to the release windows that the movie companies have implemented to protect their sales. The typical movie goes through a life cycle that is carefully controlled by these release windows.  The movie is first released in theaters (unless

Read the full article →

Free ebooks are available at your local public library!

June 27, 2012
Thumbnail image for Free ebooks are available at your local public library!

Over 75 percent of U.S. libraries lend out ebooks for free and thousands of them have had ebooks available since 2007.  A lot of libraries (39.1 percent) even loan out ereaders!  You would think most people would know that you could get free ebooks at the library by now.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the case according to a new Pew report on libraries. A shocking 62 percent of people surveyed did not know if

Read the full article →

Ebooks now outsell hardcover print books

June 18, 2012
Thumbnail image for Ebooks now outsell hardcover print books

Ebooks have passed another significant milestone on their way to becoming the most popular book format.  For the first time ever ebooks outsold hardcover books. Last week, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released sales figures for the first quarter of 2012.  The data showed that ebook revenues increased 28 percent to $282.3M and that adult hardcover revenues increased 2.7 percent to $229.6M.  Adult paperback was still the largest single category with

Read the full article →