August 2008

Today is the 45th anniversary of the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington D.C.

You don’t have to be a centenarian to remember it (this reporter was in junior high school in the District), but Della Jones, 105, remembers it as a very special day…it was the day of her college graduation at age 53. She since went on to become a teacher and librarian, and now at the age of 105, still lives on her own in the same house in Williamstown, KY that she’s been in for 85 years, despite being a double amputee and confined to a wheelchair.

“Oh, I thought it was wonderful,” Della said of the historic 1963 speech. “I think we all should have a dream for our lives and work towards that dream.”

Amazon.com is hiding the sales rank on certain risque books if they become too popular. Full story here. The books in the article may be the best selling books in the country. According to the article their is a strong argument that they are at least in the Amazon top 100.

Amazon.com’s acquisition of Seattle-based Shelfari is raising some questions — at least in the mind of one competitor.

LibraryThing’s Tim Spalding offered his take on the deal, writing in a blog post that he has the “greatest contempt for (Shelfari) and for what book-based social networking will become if they beat out LibraryThing.”

His harsh critique of Shelfari, an Internet site that allows people to create virtual bookshelves, continued:

Full article and critique here.

This database contains about 5.2 million Library of Congress Subject Headings, set up for browsing by the authority headings themselves but also by phrases and even words contained in the headings. The large majority of the records are for personal names and name/title combinations. This is in a very early stage! Little time and no funding was available for it, so please don’t expect perfection.

Microsoft Corp. today spelled out new privacy tools in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) that some have dubbed “porn mode” in a nod to the most obvious use of a browser privacy mode.

A privacy advocate applauded the move, calling it a “great step forward,” while rival browser builder Mozilla Corp. said it is working to add similar features to a future Firefox.

The internet is a whole lot of nothing without a search engine or two. While the staying power of search engines has never been in question, it’s been interesting to see how they’ve evolved to the point of replacing the address bar.

With more information being published on the internet and different filters for interpreting this information being created, here’s a look at readwriteweb.com’s picks of unique search engines that are making headlines and changing the way we search.

At BookFinder.com, they track demand trends for a wide range of out-print titles. Most of those books went out of print because of low demand or ailing publishers, but some have more interesting publishing histories, involving factors like suppression or controversy. Several of the titles in this year’s BookFinder.com Report fall in the latter category.

Chicago Tribune reports: Documents related to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s service for a nonprofit education project started by former 1960s radical Bill Ayers were released last Friday from an archive at the University of Illinois at Chicago library. They had previously refused to release records of the project. Will the archive be fodder for the Swift Boat-types?

All Things Considered on NPR has a segment called “Three Books”. Here is their description of it:”Three Books …” is a series in which we invite writers to recommend three great reads on a single theme.

The current “Three Books” are about China.

China’s scale is so vast, its variety so great and its rising power so apparent, it acts as an enormous magnet fixing our attention. One result is a torrent of books — political analyses, memoirs, histories, novels and short stories. Each promises a key to China, but how on earth to choose?

Listen or read the piece here.

Salman Rushdie received an apology in the high court this morning for lies in a book about his time under police protection.

Ron Evans, a former police officer who was part of the team protecting Rushdie while he was under a fatwa, made an apology through his solicitor on 11 counts of falsehoods in his book On Her Majesty’s Service. Publisher John Blake also apologised.