I use Google+, but I’m not sure how useful these will be to me. At any rate, Mashable has the latest…

Google is on fire today: besides introducing the new activities recommendation engine Schemer, and the news aggregator Currents, the company also improved Google+ with several nifty features, including face detection.

The new feature is called Find my Face, and it helps tag photos of people in pictures, provided they’ve activated the feature.

Google has obviously learned a lesson from Facebook, which suffered some backlash – even an EU probe – over turning its face recognition feature on by default. In Google+, you can accept or reject someone tagging you or turn the feature on and off and, most importantly, the feature is opt-in.

Find my Face will be rolling out to users over the next couple of days.

Gmail has also been upgraded with a couple of social networking features, making it easier to add people to your Google+ Circles from Gmail and share stuff on Google+ without leaving your inbox.

 

Furthermore, you can now also filter messages in Gmail according to your Circles; for example, you can see only the messages from your family, work colleagues or any other group of people you’ve defined as a Circle.

Google will be rolling out these new features to users’ Gmail and Gmail Contacts over the next couple of days

I’ve found Google Alerts to be very useful and this new feature looks especially appealing to me.

Google Alerts has a new feature that lets you set alerts specifically for books.  So if you are into a specific author, books on subjects that you follow, or books that have a unique combination of subjects, this service will be a big help.

You head over to Google Alerts:

Then you enter your keywords on the bar at the top.  The change comes to the Type pull down where you can now select Books as one of the types.  Then set up the frequency of the alerts, the volume and the email address.  You will get to preview your alerts if you like.  I find this very helpful because I can make quick changes that really tailor the alert to the results I am looking for. 

Create the Alert and you will start to receive them.  I use general alerts to find news published about our library, about subject areas, and now I look forward to building alerts for books.

Amazon’s proposal would reportedly offer limited book rentals to Amazon Prime customers. (BLOOMBERG) Would you pay to have limited, monthly access to a library of books for your e-reader? According to report from the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is hoping you would.

The online retailer is reportedly thinking about making a subscription library service available to Amazon Prime members, adding book rentals to the $79 per month [sic] service that now offers online video and an unlimited deal on two-day shipping. The rental subscription, described in the report as a Netflix-like service for books, would offer older titles, and the company would limit the amount of books users could read for free every month.

According to Journal sources “familiar with the matter,” Amazon is trying to sell the idea to publishers, who may be wary about the effect that that kind of service would have on the value of books and their partnerships with bookstores.

From MakeUseOf:

Despite the obvious attraction to real paper-based books, the digital world has begun to create some really special adaptations of great stories. These somehow blur the line between books, movies and games, by providing a story in page-by-page format, interactivity and audiovisual segments. They’re also usually highly customisable, enabling parents to choose how much glitz to add to an already-worthwhile story. Take a quick look at two prime examples of the new interactive picture book market.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore – MoonBot Studios, William Joyce & Brandon Oldenburg

The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore is a story which started as a short film and then was adapted to become an interactive book for the iPad. Both the film ($2) and the iPad application ($5) version of the story are available to purchase, which is good news for people without an iPad.

Moonbot Studios have created something very special with their iPad application. You can make the pictures animated, add music and sound effects, or remove everything and read it as just a straight book.

On every page there’s something interactive: wind, books, piano keyboard. It’s all there. Readers can get quite engrossed in the story as they’re actually helping the story to be told.

From All Things D:

Magazine publishers have veered back and forth on what tablets means for their business — Savior! Disappointment! Maybe sort of promising! — but here’s Time Inc. making another bet on the technology: The Time Warner publishing unit says that by the end of the year, all 21 of its titles will be available on just about every tablet platform.

What that means in practical terms:

• Time Inc. currently supports tablet versions of its four highest-profile titles — Time, Sports Illustrated, People and Fortune — and will roll out another 17 versions for titles like InStyle, Entertainment Weekly and Real Simple.
• All of the titles will be available via Apple’s iTunes, Google’s Android store, Hewlett-Packard’s new tablet platform and Next Issue Media, the “Hulu for Magazines” joint venture that Time Inc. spearheaded a couple years ago.
• Time Inc. also highlights an agreement to sell digital subscriptions via Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and doesn’t mention Amazon in the release (below). But it’s a very safe bet that Time and other publishers will be supporting Amazon’s new tablet when it’s released this fall.
• It’s much less likely that you’ll see the titles on Research In Motion/BlackBerry’s unloved PlayBook, which isn’t mentioned in the release.
• Note that while the release mentions “digital subscriptions,” what that really means is “digital-only subscriptions available everywhere but iTunes.” Apple and Time Inc. still haven’t come to terms on subscription rules, so right now the only way to get a digital subscription for the iPad is to buy a subscription package that also includes print.

Pew Internet & American Life provides a lot of interesting research, usually on up-to-date topics such as the one summarized below:

The share of adults in the United States who own an e-book reader doubled to 12% in May, 2011  from 6% in November 2010.  E-readers, such as a Kindle or Nook, are portable devices designed to allow readers to download and read books and periodicals.  This is the first time since the Pew Internet Project began measuring e-reader use in April 2009 that ownership of this device has reached double digits among U.S. adults. 

Tablet computers—portable devices similar to e-readers but designed for more interactive web functions—have not seen the same level of growth in recent months.  In May 2011, 8% of adults report owning a tablet computer such as an iPad, Samsung Galaxy or Motorola Xoom.  This is roughly the same percentage of adults who reported owning this kind of device in January 2011 (7%), and represents just a 3 percentage-point increase in ownership since November 2010.  Prior to that, tablet ownership had been climbing relatively quickly.

These findings come from a survey conducted from April 26-May 22 among 2,277 adults ages 18 and over, including surveys in English and Spanish and on landline and cell phones.

There is notable overlap in e-reader and tablet computer ownership – 3% of US adults own both devices.  Nine percent own an e-book reader but not a tablet, while 5% own a tablet computer but not an e-reader.

This is interesting news from ReadWriteWeb. I’ve been using Overdrive at my library since it became available, first for eaudiobooks, then for ebooks after I got an ereader. This move is in the right direction, although there are likely to be some hitches along the way.

The number of people who check out e-books via their local library is still pretty small – less than 15% of people in a recent survey indicated that they turned to libraries for their digital content. In part, it’s been difficult for libraries to offer e-books to their patrons, but as the popularity of the e-books and e-readers has skyrocketed, it’s clear that both libraries are keen to find a solution to make e-book lending possible. And an announcement today from the digital content distributor OverDrive is a huge leap towards making that possible.

Earlier this spring, Amazon announced that it would be working with OverDrive in order to make it possible for libraries to lend Kindle books to their patrons. OverDrive already provides digital content to libraries and schools, and by making the popular Amazon format an option, it was anticipated that many more people would be able to take advantage of library e-book lending.

Platform Agnostic, DRM-Free E-Book Lending

OverDrive says it will become platform agnostic and “eliminate the need for librarians and readers to deal with various e-book file formats.” In addition to supporting multiple file formats, OverDrive says that it’s launching “Open E-Book,” a DRM-free collection. These formatting options will make it much easier for libraries and for patrons to be able to access content across devices and platforms.

OverDrive is also tackling one of the long-standing complaints about e-book lending: the fact that they’re restricted by the same laws of physics that bind printed books and if someone else has checked out an e-book that it isn’t available for anyone else. OverDrive says that it will provide new “always available” e-book collections so that multiple patrons can read certain titles simultaneously.

And finally, It’s going to enable “patron driven acquisition,” an opt-in program for libraries that will let readers immediately borrow a title (or recommend that their local library purchase it) from online booksellers.

All of this sounds fairly promising, although it’s worth pointing out that many of the details of how these things will be implemented aren’t available yet. OverDrive says it will offer more details at the American Library Association conference at the end of the month.

 Have you ever been in the process of creating a video and just needed that one perfect clip to make it pop? Maybe you were creating your own music video and needed an aerial video of Los Angeles at night to spice it up. Unless you had a helicopter, a pretty powerful camera and some fierce editing skills, this would have been a big challenge. Now, look no further than the Creative Commons library accessible through YouTube Video Editor to make this happen. Creative Commons provides a simple way to license and use creative works.

 
You can now access an ever-expanding library of Creative Commons videos to edit and incorporate into your own projects. To find a video, just search in the YouTube search bar or from within the YouTube Video Editor. We’re working with organizations like C-SPAN, Public.Resource.org, Voice of America, Al Jazeera and others, so that over 10,000 Creative Commons videos are available for your creative use.
 
To get started, visit youtube.com/editor and select the CC tab:

 

  

 

Any video you create using Creative Commons content will automatically show the source videos’ titles underneath the video player:

 

  

As part of the launch of Creative Commons licensing on YouTube, you’ll also be able to mark any or all of your videos with the

Creative Commons CC-BY license that lets others share and remix your work, so long as they give you credit. To mark your video with the Creative Commons license, select ‘Creative Commons Attribution license’ on the upload page or on the Video Description page:

 

You can learn more about Creative Commons on YouTube at our help center, and remember that all content must still follow the rules in our Copyright Center.

Via youtube-global.blogspot.com

Today in our New York City office, along with Citi, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint, we gave a demo of Google Wallet, an app that will make your phone your wallet. You’ll be able to tap, pay and save using your phone and near field communication (NFC). We’re field testing Google Wallet now and plan to release it soon.

Google Wallet is a key part of our ongoing effort to improve shopping for both businesses and consumers. It’s aimed at making it easier for you to pay for and save on the goods you want, while giving merchants more ways to offer coupons and loyalty programs to customers, as well as bridging the gap between online and offline commerce.

Because Google Wallet is a mobile app, it will do more than a regular wallet ever could. You’ll be able to store your credit cards, offers, loyalty cards and gift cards, but without the bulk. When you tap to pay, your phone will also automatically redeem offers and earn loyalty points for you. Someday, even things like boarding passes, tickets, ID and keys could be stored in Google Wallet.

 

At first, Google Wallet will support both Citi MasterCard and a Google Prepaid Card, which you’ll be able to fund with almost any payment card. From the outset, you’ll be able to tap your phone to pay wherever MasterCard PayPass is accepted. Google Wallet will also sync your Google Offers, which you’ll be able to redeem via NFC at participating SingleTap™ merchants, or by showing the barcode as you check out. Many merchants are working to integrate their offers and loyalty programs with Google Wallet.

With Google Wallet, we’re building an open commerce ecosystem, and we’re planning to develop APIs that will enable integration with numerous partners. In the beginning, Google Wallet will be compatible with Nexus S 4G by Google, available on Sprint. Over time, we plan on expanding support to more phones.

To learn more please visit our Google Wallet website at www.google.com/wallet.

via googleblog.blogspot.com

Just last Friday, I wrote about how Amazon has essentially become a book industry “in a box”, having completed the vertical integration of the book industry by launching their own imprints. And now that box has just gotten a whole lot bigger: on Sunday, the news broke that Amazon has hired former Time Warner Book Group CEO Larry Kirshbaum, who is expected to create a slew of imprints that would put Amazon into young adult, literary fiction, business and general non-fiction.

What does this mean? With Amazon opening a New York office and making a full-on assault of publishers across many of their publishing markets, it looks like the industry’s “Big Five” — the term traditionally used to refer to Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette, Simon and Schuster and Penguin — is fast becoming the Big Six.

And with book buyers rapidly going digital, the company that owns the lion’s share of the e-reader market could have a huge advantage in getting its books in front of readers (who hasn’t bought a book as a result of Amazon’s recommendation engine at some point?). Not only that, but the existing Big Five will now see books from Amazon imprints next to their own offerings in brick and mortar bookstores.