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OLPC spinoff Sugar Labs announced today that they are releasing "Sugar on a Stick", a version of the wonderful Sugar learning applications from the One Laptop Per Child that runs from a USB stick (based on Fedora Linux LiveUSB technology).
This will allow children to have access to their software environment from most computers at home, at school, or (maybe) in libraries simply by booting from the USB stick. Since the stick bypasses the machines' own hard disk, it can be used with computers normally running MS Windows, Linux or the Macintosh OS. It can even be used with computers without hard disks.
Not only is this a great software package for kids, but it points to a low-maintenance-cost public computing model that could open up new possibilities for libraries.
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Targeting the proprietary RefWorks software, the folks at the open source Zotero project have announced the beta release of the Zotero 1.5 citation gathering plug-in for Firefox and the launch of Zotero's web application which allow users to sync up their Zotero collections between multiple computers over the web. This gives students and libraries a free alternative to RefWorks, and one that also doesn't lock researchers into a proprietary format.
Version 1.5 also delivers an improved interface, easier management of pdfs, and better integration with OpenOffice and Microsoft Word for bibliography creation.
I'll be reporting back on how this beta release handles in the near future.
Congrats to the people working on this important project!
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After months of leaks and rumors, Amazon announced the second generation Kindle today, called (you guessed it) the Kindle 2.
Thinner, faster, with improved controls and more features than the first generation product, the Kindle 2 is priced the same as the outgoing model.
It's interesting to compare the evolution of the Kindle with the iPod. Although storage on the Kindle 2 is greater, the company points out that books purchased for the Kindle can be re-downloaded wirelessly at any time, meaning that local storage is less of an issue. The advances in mobile technology in the years since the debut of the iPod now permit this approach, one that still isn't showing up on the iPod.
The Kindle 2 adds an "experimental" text to speech feature. The device saves the user's place in the book and allows users to switch between reading a text and listening to it. Depending on how well, or seamlessly, this works, it could truly be a revolutionary feature.
It looks like Amazon paid attention to the complaints about the original Kindle and is also trying to drive innovation in the e-reader market. With cheaper readers like the Foxit's e-Slick coming to the market, Amazon looks to be taking steps to maintain it's place atop the high-end of the e-reader market.
The use of mobile phones as ebook readers in common in Japan, and is growing in the US and elsewhere. A number of publishers are making the leap (last month, for example, Books on Board announced their catalog of 20,000 books would be available for the iPhone).
Now comes word that Google is entering this market. Google has launched a mobile phone version of Google Book Search that could could eventually grow to include the 1.5 million public domain books scanned as part of their digitization project.
The books currently exist as scanned images-- these mobile versions will be text created through optical character recognition. Where the computers produce only garbled text, readers can click on the sport to retrieve that part of the scanned image.
Not only does this open up smart phones to the vast public domain resources harvested through Google's digitization project, but this also shows that OCR technology has improved to the point where Google (at least) thinks it is ready for prime time.
Scanned images are just the first phase of bringing books into the digital world. Ebooks need to exist as digital text, and human-based projects like Project Gutenberg are probably proceeding too slowly. OCR is vital to the next phase of mass-digitization. We'll soon see if Google's timing is right.
LISNews reports that the University Libraries involved in the Google Books project have established a central repository for the 2 million digital books scanned thus far.
Called the Hathi Trust, and with lead participants the Universities of Michigan and Indiana, the repository will serve as a backup should Google go out of business, or lose interest in the project (as Microsoft did with its Live Books project). "Hathi" is the Hindi word for elephant, who are famously good at remembering things.
A large scale search feature is planned for the repository, as are a number of other intriguing features, including an API to allow partner libraries to integrate the collection into their local systems, access mechanisms for the disabled, the ability to publish virtual collections, the ability to add (or "ingest") non-Google content, and a public discovery interface.
As full-text search looks to replace the traditional library search methods over the next few years, it's great to have a non-corporate source for the search data. Congrats to the HathiTrust team!
The folks over at Zotero have made available a development release which shows off new features which will make Zotero an even better competitor to the proprietary RefWorks and Endnote citation tools.
Zotero is a Firefox plug in which captures and builds citation information (from a variety of web pages including most major library automation systems), stores this information locally (up to now!) and allows export in a variety of citation styles to OpenOffice or MS Office for inclusion in research papers. Other features allow the storage of PDFs, images and web pages. All of this goes into a searchable database on the user's machine.
As far as this goes, it's a wonderful, light-weight app that is also free and open source. However, up to now it has lacked the online features that make costly and proprietary products like Endnote and RefWorks so valuable for libraries. Unless a student was able to do all the research for a paper and write it in one sitting, the tool has not been too practical in computer lab settings, where the saved data would likely be erased at the end of the session.
But the new version, called Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview, adds multi-computer synchronization, automatic backups, and support for thousands of existing Endnote export styles.
The Preview edition runs only on Firefox 3, and like most other development releases, the notes include multiple caution and warnings about possible instability or data loss. (So, probably not a good idea to test this on the only copy of the notes for your dissertation!)
But for the would-be pioneer, the Preview edition shows how Zotero is developing into a real competitor for RefWorks and Endnote in the always cash-strapped, understaffed world of libraries.
In the same way that campuses have gravitated to the proprietary iPod system for podcasting academic content, there is a move to embrace Amazon's Kindle as an e-textbook platform.
As reported by the Christian Science Monitor, Princeton University Press will publish e-books in the proprietary Kindle format (joining the Oxford, Yale and University of California Presses). Inside Higher Ed reports that publishers are not revealing the financial arrangements behind this (which reportedly involves revenue sharing).
It's also interesting to note that the ebook versions are only slightly less expensive than printed paperbacks, but the real (and probably compelling difference) is that printed books often take two to four weeks to ship, while ebooks are downloadable immediately. I can see this as driving students into ebooks in a big way. There's still the $359 price of the Kindle-- it would take saving a few bucks each on an epic quantity of textbooks to pay for the reader.
There's also that proprietary format that locks students into Amazon's world. The money can be tempting, and the convenience of relying on others to make tough decisions for us can be seductive, but I don't think our interests are identical with these large corporations who view our students as customers. We would do better to promote a non-proprietary format which will not threaten to strand our students at the flip of a marketing plan.
