Toolemera Blog

Scams, eBooks, Kindle, Google and the terror unto death

Just a few articles on why eBooks are fattening the wallets of thieves:

Are eBooks The New Content Farms?

eBook Fraud

Fence Your Stolen Content

The Kindle Swindle

Bloggers Weigh In On The Kindle Swindle And New Fraud

till next, Gary

 

 

 

Kindle-Napped

The never-ending war for truth, justice, etc. rages on!

While setting up the Look-Inside features for some of the titles on Amazon, I discovered a transgression. Someone had produced a Kindle ebook of Woodwork Joints, most likely using the Internet Archive version which is not the edition I used in my reprint. Nor do I have an eBook version available as of yet.

Even more dastardly, the foul varmint pulled the descriptive text from my book, not even bothering to remove the "Toolemera Press" from the text. Talk about foolish and lazy.

Amazon does have a procedure for copyright complaints, which I will follow in due course. It's a bit of a pain, but I'll do the paperwork and send it to their legal office.

I'm doing some research on the eBook angle. The major problem is producing a file that is small enough. For the iPad, it must be under 15 mb and preferably a lot smaller. For Kindle and Nook, it has to be tiny. Some fiddling to come up with an image resolution that still looks great but allows for a small enough conversion is the task at hand. It will take awhile as I am busy with other tasks at hand, but it will happen.

Till next, Gary

 

The Packrat as a Community Service

There is a blog I follow, both for it's interesting content and to keep tabs on the underbelly of the library and archives world: Digitization 101. Sometimes the content is pertinent to my thought patterns, sometimes I scratch my head and wonder at the increasing complexity of it all and sometimes I just guffaw. I will hazard this opinion: it's entirely possible to make life more complex than it needs be. It's possible to over-think something to the point where less is done than would be if we just got on with it. And, it's possible to take a world-view that attempts to insert controls where there may needs be none.

There is a fairly recent post regarding a post on another blog, which post was entitled "digital curiosities and amateur collections". This was a head scratching one for me. As an inveterate packrat, I tend to think of my stuff as my personal form of self-absorbation. I do it because I like to. At the same time, I started a website and eventually a blog to share some of this stuff with people who were of like minds. And again, because it's fun to do so. It's a form of connecting with other people on topics which I might otherwise not get to pontificate upon.

That word 'amateur' gets me. It implies that we, as collectors, are less conversant with our material than are the 'experts', the 'professionals'. As a recently retired 'professional', I feel comfortable slinging arrows and outrageous fortunes. It implies that an 'amateur' website or blog, while containing useful information, is somehow less so than the professionally created museumish website. Sure, the blog post goes on to discuss the highpoints of Amateur Cabinets of Curiousities as well as the importance of preserving and sharing this information with the public at large. The underlying tone of the post is one of 'hey look! these people out there are doing something good, but it is lacking in formal organization of data and metadata (librarians and archivists love to sling the word 'metadata' 'cause it sounds so much better than 'data about data' which sounds like a character from a sci-fi show) that is necessary for this information to be made really real.

Google and Antitrust

Antitrust and the Google Books Settlement: The Problem of Simultaneity

Eric M. Fraser
University of Chicago - Law School; University of Chicago - Booth School of Business
June 10, 2009

A thorough review of the Google Book Settlement and how US Antitrust laws relate to this impending fiasco for the written word.  I've read through this paper and will need to read through it a few more times. If you have any interest in what Google is doing and how it could change the distribution of the written word, and Google's bottom line, take the time to read this one.

Till next, Gary

The Google Patent

I just couldn't resist this one... US Patent # 7,508,978
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United States Patent	7,508,978
Lefevere ,   et al.	March 24, 2009

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Detection of grooves in scanned images

Abstract

A system and method locate a central groove in a document such as a book, magazine, or catalog. In one implementation, scores are generated for points in a three-dimensional image that defines a surface of the document. The scores quantify a likelihood that a particular point is in the groove. The groove is then detected based on the scores. For example, lines may be fitted through the points and a value calculated for the lines based on the scores. The line corresponding to the highest calculated value may be selected as the line that defines the groove.

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Inventors:	Lefevere; Francois-Marie (Mountain View, CA), Saric; Marin (Palo Alto, CA)
Assignee:	Google Inc. (Mountain View, CA)
Appl. No.:	10/938,727
Filed:	September 13, 2004

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Till next, Gary