links for 2009-07-02
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The INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES (ILT), founded in 1986 at Teachers College, Columbia University, works to advance the role of computers and other information technologies in education and society. Through its program of practice, the Institute seeks to empower the creative reform of education through technology:
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He was a man of idioms and idiosyncrasies, deeply intelligent and a soothsayer. He had prescient knowledge of the Internet. Although educated in literature, Marshall McLuhan was known as a pop philosopher because his theories applied to mini-skirts and the twist. For his ability to keep up with the cutting edge, one colleague called him
My perfect e-book reader
In my opinion, the idea of an e-Book reader is awesome. Some people find it strange, since they know how I love books. Paper ones.
So, I started to see what kind of e-Book readers are in the market.
First of all, I was horrified with prices. More than 150 euro is not acceptable and even that price is not acceptable with the usual characteristics of e-book readers in the market.
Another matter is Digital Rights Management (DRM). You know I refuse to support DRM, and it is absurd that people who bought an e-book with some functions (like text-to-speech), suddenly find that they don’t have that function anymore, like it happened with Kindle, just because some publishers decided that a machine reading text is copyrighted. It’s a machine reading a text!
In terms of copyright, I see this function like a photocopy. In Portugal, photocopies does not have copyright. If the law allows you to take a photocopy of a book or paper, you can not say that you are “the author” of that photocopy. The same with photography, except when applied to 3D objects, because in this case, the choice of the angle and light makes a new work.
I think the only possibility of buying a book read by a machine is when there is no other format of the book for that person and that person really needs or want to read that book.
Of course, text-to speech can have some advantages. Suppose you are reading an e-book, and at some time you need to have your hands free and don’t want to stop your reading. You can always, for a brief period of time, use the text-to-speech function and after that return to the text.
So, I would never buy a text-to-speech function, I would prefer the text version or the audiobook version read by a person. In fact, I bought two recently and I liked the experience. In one of them, the reader even does the voices! 
The e-book publishers are saying to customers: “If you buy one of our e-books, you can stop to have some functions and even you can stop to have access to the book at all, but if you go to the next site, the e-book will be yours forever and you didn’t even pay for it”
I don’t really think this is a good message to pass, if the publishers want to get customers.
So, what would be a perfect e-book reader for me?
- It should cost less than 150 euros;
- It should read several formats (pdf, txt, html, mp3 are compulsory);
- It should not support DRM;
- It should have a minimum of 10G of space (I should be able to listen audiobooks there, one audiobook can have 274Mb);
- It should be able to bookmark any format supported (text or sound);
- It should be small (if I am going on holidays or if I am going to make a long trip, I would certainly find a space for a paperbook in my bag; so the e-book reader is useful in those circumstances like small trips in public transports or situations when a paperbook is not socially acceptable, but something like a mobile is. So it should be possible to quickly put the e-book reader in my pocket, if I need to do it)
Do you know an e-book reader with these characteristics? Because now I am using a mp4 player as e-book reader, without lots of features I would like to have.
Two films for the next weekend (without DRM)
So, you know the rule: for each CD, DVD, Ebook that I found with DRM, I’ll post here an alternative free of DRM. A few weeks ago, I didn’t buy Hot Five, Hot Seven CD from Satchmo, because it was from Sony Music (I don’t give money to Sony, which supports DRM), so I decided to share with you two films that do not have DRM, that are in public domain, free and one of them is a master piece of german expressionism.
The first one is Faust: Eine deutsche Volkssage, a 1926 silent movie from F.W. Murnau and his last German production before leaving for Hollywood.
You can see it/download it here.
And if you like it, maybe I could tempt you to read Faust, a Tragedy from Goethe, accessible from Gutenberg Project. I have the fortune of having the paper book, in a Portuguese translation by Agostinho D’Ornellas, revised and annotated by Paulo Quintela and published by University of Coimbra in 1953.
The second film is based on the Agatha Christie’s book And Then There None (original title: Ten Litle Niggers – click to know more about it). Agatha Christie is one of my favorite writers and this book one of her best.
Updates on EuroMACHS’ blog
I’ve been updating EuroMACHS’ blog with some posts on Digital Humanities and some useful tools like Zotero and Omeka.
Sábado e a festa da IF
No Sábado da Festa da Íntima Fracção, mesmo com a chuva, eu e o Marcos decidimos fazer uma série de coisas, mas como acabámos por sair mais tarde de casa, acabámos por não as fazer todas.
Não fomos à Feira do Livro. Já tínhamos ido lá uma vez e na verdade ficámos um bocadinho desiludidos:
- pareceu-nos que este ano, haveria menos livrarias-alfarrabistas presentes (não encontrei nem uma Vampiro Magazine 
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- o espaço da Leya continuava um mau espaço: com os seus seguranças e alarmes “à porta” intimidantes. Na verdade, passámos por lá só para verificar se não haveria mais barraquinhas acima.
Chegados ao Chiado, decidimos lanchar no Ben & Jerry’s e aproveitar para trocar uns livros: deixámos lá “Alice no País das Maravilhas” (edição de bolso ilustrada), “Os Cinco e a Ciganita” e um livro de ficção científica, da colecção Argonauta, todos repetidos. Trouxémos três livros que não conhecíamos, mas que nos pareceram interessantes.
Os alfarrabistas não estavam no Chiado, e em vez deles, estavam montadas várias tendas com roupa, sapatos e acessórios, (ler em tom irónico) que anunciavam preços baixos, “agora este casaquito já não custa 200 euros, só custa 115 euros”.
Passámos adiante, porque queríamos encontrar uma loja, que nos disseram existir por ali, que vende produtos antigos, mas não a encontrámos.
Como a Chili com Carne já se encontrava fechada, acabámos por passar na Fnac, onde fiquei logo mal-disposta: um cd (quatro na verdade) do Hot Five, Hot Seven do Satchmo, a seis euros e picos, que ficou lá por ser da Sony (argh); dois ou três CD de jazz que também ficaram lá por serem da Verve, ver CD de Quim Barreiros e de Música Clássica na secção de Jazz e finalmente ter visto uma caixa de Big Bands que comprei aqui há tempos na Fnac por 9,90 euros, marcada a 50 euros: sim viram bem, 50 euros.
Depois, decidimos ir até ao Cais do Sodré e jantar por lá, após o que nos dirigimos para a LerDevagar na LXFactory.
O espaço é delicioso, tanto que acabei por trazer um livro do Wong Kar Wai que já andava a namorar há muito, muito tempo.
À hora, subimos as escadas para a sala onde decorreu a festa da IF. Devo dizer que me emociono sempre que ouço o Franscico Amaral ou outras pessoas daquela rádio falarem daquela rádio. Foi uma excelente noite, rematada por um curto concerto, do qual podem ver aqui uns bocadinhos.
A Íntima Fracção fez 25 anos e por cada ano que passa que a IF continua a existir é como uma esperança. Obrigada IF.
New post on Digital Preservation
I wrote a post on EuroMACHS blog about digital preservation, a very important issue nowadays and not only to historians or digital humanities people.
Feel free to go there and to comment on this matter.
