View this in the full view mode (bottom right). There are also comments on each image. As always visit my flickr page to see lots mo...
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
As I have on prior years, I've followed the lead of The Millions and thought about the books I read this year. In terms of quantity 2011 was a slower year for me mainly because I slogged through a book that had remained on my shelf unread for 10 years or so. This was Q by "Luther Blissett" a novel about the insurgencies and guerrilla warfare that followed Martin Luther's declarations in the...
Monday, December 26, 2011
Looks like I only missed three editions this year: Week 51: ChromeBooks, Durrell eBooks, Hitchens & Dogs, Unbound & Vogue Week 50: Khan Academy, Academic Libraries, Harvard Business School, Consumer Reports + More Week 49: Revamping GED, HS Corporate Marketing, Book Blogging, Pretty Books + More Week 48: Orwell on Police Actions, Dickens and Economist Book Festival + More Week 47: Lobbying...
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The economist has an amusing article on those things people say but what they really mean. http://www.economist.com/node/21541767"American euphemisms are in a class of their own, principally because they seem to involve words that few would find offensive to start with, replaced by phrases that are meaninglessly ambiguous: bathroom tissue for lavatory paper, dental appliances for false teeth, previously...
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Google's Chrome Lending program is set for a series of tests (DigitalTrends);Google has been working with public libraries recently in order to circulate its Chromebook concept. At least three libraries have been working towards lending out Chromebooks to patrons for a period of time.Most notably, the Palo Alto, California Library will begin making Chromebooks available for loan in January; patrons...
Friday, December 16, 2011
Milan Cathedral August 1961Another weekly image from my archive. Click on it to make it larger.The PND seniors went to Milan and Florence for their honeymoon and this is one of the images from that trip. Unfortunately, when I visited Milan in 2004 I didn't know this image existed in our archive otherwise...
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Rehash originally published August 30th, 2006: Some recent examples suggest that print books continue to be the format of choice for college students but is this because they like the format or because the tangible item can be resold at the end of the semester? Is the problem really that no demonstrably better alternatives yet exist to replace the print version; i.e., electronic titles that offer...
Monday, December 12, 2011
OCLC have released a report they've been working on this year looking at the impact of the web on our rapidly changing information environment. I was asked to participate as an interviewee, which I found intellectually stimulating, and I'm looking forward to reading the full report (79 pages).Here is a summary of the purpose of the study and report:The document examines some of the ways in which...
Pearson continues to shed non-core assets announcing today that they have sold their 50% interest in FTSE International Limited to The London Stock Exchange. As they have done in the recent past, the company appears to have secured very good value from the divestiture. Over the past two years, Pearson has quietly restructured their business, selling non-core businesses at high multiples,...
Sunday, December 11, 2011
An interesting profile of The Khan Academy and its founder Salman Khan from Inside Higher Ed and what is most interesting is less the videos than the opportunity to provide assessment tools that monitor and measure comprehension. (IHEd):One root of the problem is the fact that the college degree is issued by the same institution that is in charge of setting, and enforcing, the standards of that...
Friday, December 9, 2011
Novice Monks on a Boat - Chao Phaya, Bangkok 2001Another weekly image from my archive. Click on it to make it larger.It's all hustle and bustle on this river that flows through Bangkok and there are all manner of ferries and passenger boats chis-crossing the river in all directions. It's certainly not uncommon...
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
The Book Industry Study Group after long deliberation and incredibly astute consulting has announced its policy recommendation for the use of ISBNs for digital products (Press Release):This BISG Policy Statement on recommendations for identifying digital products is applicable to content intended for distribution to the general public in North America but could be applied elsewhere as well. The...
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
A rehash originally from September 21, 2006: As boss you are always worried - at least you should be - that your message is getting out to the troops. Getting this out to them and having them embody it is always a challenge. Having quarterly company wide get togethers is great if you can pull it off. I was lucky to do it once every six months even with a small company. The CEO blog is becoming an...
Saturday, December 3, 2011
The GED test is being revamped (EdWeek):Situating the GED as a pathway to higher education echoes its original intent. The first exams, in 1942, were envisioned as a way for returning World War II veterans to complete high school and use the GI Bill to attend college. In 1949, the first year statistics are available for nonmilitary test-takers, 39,000 people took one or more of the five sections of...
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Pippa Middleton gets £400,000 for a party planning book. Amusing assessment from the Independent :The party tome is a classic Sudden Fame Cash-In Book, a low-brow genre even less dignified than the celebrity memoir. Whereas the latter tends to appear towards the end of a lengthy entertainment career, the former tends to be rushed out in haste soon after the author's first exposure to the...
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Conor Friedersdorf writing in The Atlantic asks What Orwell Can Teach us About OWS and Police BrutalityIn Burma, Orwell remembers, every British police officer was a target of constant ridicule. "When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter," he writes. "This happened more than once. In the end the sneering...
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Joe Sharkey the peripatetic business traveller is like me having to deal with a life with no status - frequent flyer that is (NYT):Lacking status, I was unable to choose a seat assignment at booking. At check-in, my seat assignment was 36C, an aisle seat in the next-to-last row for the first long leg of the flight, on an A320 operated by United with 138 seats — 90 in basic economy, where the seats...
Sunday, November 20, 2011
A long article on how government lobbying activities have brought about significant changes in the prospects for online learning companies (Nation):Despite the clear conflict of interest between her lobbying clients and her philanthropic goals, Levesque and her team have led a quiet but astonishing national transformation. Lobbyists like Levesque have made 2011 the year of virtual education reform,...
Friday, November 18, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
The Economist takes a look at how Springer has approached the digitization of their entire backlist/archive of books. They already provide electronic access to 50,000 titles published since 2005 but now they are looking at the remaining archive of 65,000 titles. Springer has been at the forefront of book digitization efforts and some may remember in the early days of the Google Scholar effort they...
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
About four years ago when I realized I was not only running out of book shelf space but that I had many books that I would never touch again, I decided to open a book store. I do like collecting books and as with many book lovers each title exerts some type of talismanic feeling when you look at them and...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)