Searching High and Low

Life magazine is back from the dead (for the third time). The latest incarnation is in the form of a website, Life.com. And it’s not just a bland archive of their tremendous image collection.

Users will be able to share Life images via social websites and create customized printed books or magazines. Framed prints are also advertised on the site but this feature is either not implemented or was only available for selected images when I visited (none of the Muhammad Ali images I looked at had the “Purchase” button).

So how big is the archive? The site doesn’t mention specific numbers only saying that it’s “the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the Web.”
According to the Digits blog at the Wall Street Journal, scanners have been digitizing approximately 21,000 images per day for the past 2 years in building the image database. I’ll let you do the math.

The University of Texas is testing a program that offers, at a reduced rate, electronic versions of textbooks to students in a number of disciplines. The article also mentions the e-textbook program in Ohio and how this one differs. Read the complete article here:

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/10/04/1004textbook.html

It seems the movement away from high priced textbooks is gaining momentum. I saw references to these three happenings in the past few weeks:

• Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free – The New York Times
• A statistics textbook written by a couple of professors was released under a license on the Connexions (a site for creating, sharing, and borrowing educational materials.)
• Virginia recently announced an open source “flexbook” project for physics education and is seeking contributors.

Here are some additional sites:

• Flat World Knowledge – http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/minisite/index.html (launch planned in 2009). See this article on Ars about the company.
• Merlot – similar to Connexions.
• Washington Open Educational resources (blog) – http://blog.oer.sbctc.edu/

From The New York Times

Some of the largest book publishers in the world are stripping away the anticopying software on digital downloads of audio books.

The trend will allow consumers who download audio books to freely transfer these digital files between devices like their computers, iPods and cellphones — and conceivably share them with others. Dropping copying restrictions could also allow a variety of online retailers to start to sell audio book downloads.

…

“Our feeling is that D.R.M. is not actually doing anything to prevent piracy,” said Ms. McIntosh of Random House Audio.

OK, so I skipped lunch today and of course saw that ResearchBuzz updated their Cookin’ With Google tool. It’s a customized Google search engine and lets you type in some ingredients and get back a list of recipes. Hmmm what’s in the office fridge….