US Justice Department Looks to Restructure Google Books Settlement

≡ Category: Google, e-books |Comments

The US Justice Department officially weighed in today on the Google Books settlement with publishers and authors. On the plus side for Google, the government wants to see the project continue because it has clear social benefits. On the downside, the DOJ has concerns about antitrust and copyright issues, and it’s looking for the deal [...]

The Google Book Downloader

≡ Category: Google, e-books |Comments

A quick heads up: Lifehacker is highlighting today some new software (Windows only) that will let you download free access/public domain texts from Google Book Search and then turn them into neat PDF files. To get tips on how to use the software created by a third party, not Google, head on over to Lifehacker. I [...]

Google Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars?

≡ Category: Google, e-books |Comments

Critics of Google Book Search (and its class-action settlement with publishers) are popping up everywhere. European governments have voiced their displeasure. The US Justice Department has placed the settlement under review. Amazon is protesting. Yahoo and Microsoft have piled on too. And now you can add academics to the list. Writing in The Chronicle of Higher [...]

Touring Mars with Google Earth

≡ Category: Google, Science |Comments

Google Earth has somewhat outgrown its name. These days, Google’s satellite program (download it here) gives you more than a unique view of our planet Earth. It also offers a nice tour of Mars (and the Moon). The Mars tour is guided by a familiar voice — the voice of Ira Flatow, who hosts the well [...]

Open Books from Google

≡ Category: Google, e-books |Comments

New from the Google Books Blog:
Try doing a search for [Hamlet] on Google Books. The first few results you’ll get are “Full View” books — which means you can read the full text. And, because the book is in the public domain, you can also download a copy of Hamlet in PDF form.
Starting today, you’ll be [...]

Google Knol Prediction Revisited

≡ Category: Google, Wikipedia |Comments

Back in December 2007, I made a bet against Google Knol, the search giant’s answer to Wikipedia. In a fairly involved piece, I listed three reasons why Knol wouldn’t upend Wikipedia. Now fast forward 18+ months: Tech Crunch has reported that Knol’s traffic is trending down. It peaked in February at around 320,000 visitors per [...]

Chris Anderson @ Google

≡ Category: Audio Books, Books, Google |Comments

Chris Anderson, the author of Free: The Future of a Radical Price (download a free audio file of the book here) is making the rounds, promoting his new book. Of course, it was only natural that Anderson (also the author of The Long Tail and editor-in-chief of Wired) should pay a visit to Google, a company that [...]

John Hodgman@Google

≡ Category: Comedy, Google |Comments

He appears in the well-known Mac v. PC commercials, on The Daily Show and occasionally on This American Life. John Hodgman is kind of everywhere these days, and now, promoting his new book, More Information Than You Require, he hits the stage at Google and gives the crowd an offbeat hour talk.
Related Content:
The British Slant [...]

How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write

≡ Category: Amazon Kindle, Google, e-books |Comments

According to Steven Johnson’s piece in The Wall Street Journal, the “breakthrough success of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, and the maturation of the Google Book Search service”  could “make 2009 the most significant year in the evolution of the book since Gutenberg hammered out his original Bible.” Johnson goes on to explain why e-book readers (like [...]

A Closer Look at YouTube EDU

≡ Category: Google, YouTube |Comments

On Thursday, we announced the launch of YouTube EDU. Now, as promised, it’s time to give you some more details about the new university video hub.
I had a chance to chat with Obadiah Greenberg, a key Googler behind the launch. And he gave me some insight into the genesis of the project. As you can imagine, YouTube EDU [...]

Introducing YouTube EDU!

≡ Category: Google, YouTube |Comments

Here’s a little breaking news: Today, Google has launched YouTube EDU, which centralizes the content from over 100 universities and colleges (get list here).  This robust collection gives you access to lectures by professors and world-renowned thought leaders, new research and campus tours. At the moment, you can access over 200 full courses from leading universities, including MIT, [...]

Ancient Rome in 3D on Google Earth

≡ Category: Google, History |Comments

In November, Google launched  a 3D tour of Ancient Rome, circa 320 AD. The tour, produced with the help of the Rome Reborn project at the University of Virginia, features over 6,000 buildings, some rendered in fine detail, and it includes some interiors as well. The Coliseum, the Roman Forum, the Basilica Julia, the Temple of Vesta — they’re [...]

Watch Educational Videos Offline with YouTube

≡ Category: Google, YouTube |Comments

It’s another good day for the open education movement. As part of an experiment, YouTube has partnered with a select number of universities (Stanford, UC Berkeley, Duke, and UCLA) to make lectures, courses and other videos available for free download. This gives educators and lifelong learners the freedom to watch educational videos offline, whenever and wherever they want, including [...]

Google Maps the Oceans, Mars and Time

≡ Category: Google |Comments

Given that water covers roughly 70% of our planet, it makes sense that Google Earth should take the oceans into account. Thanks to a partnership with the California Academy of Sciences, Google Earth now offers, according to the company blog, detailed maps of the ocean floor “so you can actually drop below the surface and explore [...]

Google and the Path To Enlightenment

≡ Category: Books, Google, Harvard, Web/Tech |Comments

In the latest edition of The New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton, a prominent French historian who now runs Harvard’s Library system, puts out a tantalizing idea: “Google can make the Enlightenment dream come true.” Having settled its lawsuit with publishers and authors, Google is now steaming ahead with its effort to digitize millions [...]

Visit the Prado Art Collection with Google Earth

≡ Category: Art, Google, Video - Arts & Culture |Comments

Thankfully, it’s not all bad news here in Silicon Valley. Yesterday, Google and the Prado (the major art museum in Madrid) announced that you can launch Google Earth from wherever you live, travel virtually to Spain, and then take a close look at fourteen of the museum’s finest paintings. And, by “close,” I mean close. [...]

Google Brings Magazines To The Web

≡ Category: Google, Media |Comments

Just last month, Google announced that it was bringing the massive LIFE Magazine photo archive online. Two million photos are already uploaded, and another 8 million will be coming online soon.
This week, they’ve made a new announcement. The upshot? Google has reached an agreement with magazine publishers to digitize their historical archives. This will bring [...]

The Web According to Google in 2001

≡ Category: Google, Web/Tech |Comments

Google recently turned 10, and, as part of the celebration, it has re-published its first search engine index from 2001. A mere 1.3 billion pages. Now, go ahead and do your vanity search and see if you show up. Me, I’m barely there. You?
 
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Knol: Ok, It’s Not Wikipedia. But What Is It?

≡ Category: Google, Wikipedia |Comments

The Chronicle of Higher Education is running a new piece (where I happen to get a small blurb) on Google’s Knol, asking what it will mean for students and professors. But it also deals, at least indirectly, with another question: Is Knol really intended to compete with Wikipedia?
When the content initiative was first announced, many [...]

The Comic Book Introduces Google’s New Web Browser

≡ Category: Google |Comments

Here’s a heads up from Altaf, one of our readers…
The tech world is buzzing today about Google Chrome, the new web browser coming out of Mountain View. If you’re wondering what it’s all about, you can read a comic book (produced by Google) that introduces the new initiative. (Windows users can download the browser here; [...]

Cuil: The New Search Engine

≡ Category: Google, Web/Tech |Comments

Just in case you haven’t seen it yet, some former Google engineers launched a new search engine, Cuil (pronounced “cool”), which claims to be the “world’s biggest search engine,” indexing 120 billion web pages, or roughly about three times what Google supposedly does. (Get more info on the new site’s schtick here.) A quick round [...]

What Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales, Thinks about Knol, the New Google Competitor

≡ Category: Google, Video - Arts & Culture, Wikipedia |Comments

Here is Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, being interviewed after Google debuted Knol. Interesting that his first thought is that users should copy Knol content and bring it to Wikipedia … :

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Google’s Answer to Wikipedia Now Live

≡ Category: Google, Wikipedia |Comments

Last December, Google announced that it was testing a new content initiative — dubbed “Knol” — intended to rival Wikipedia. The fruits of their labor are now live (in beta), available for all to see.
As we mentioned in our initial piece, Knol caters to the individual author/expert, not to the wisdom of crowds (à la [...]

70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube

≡ Category: Google, Most Popular, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society, Video - Science, YouTube |Comments

Smart video collections keep appearing on YouTube. But rather antithetical to the ethos of its parent company (Google), YouTube unfortunately makes these collections difficult to find. So we’ve decided to do the job for them. These enriching/educational videos come from media outlets, cultural institutions, universities and non-profits. There are about 70 collections in total, and [...]

Will Google Kill Science?

≡ Category: Google, Science |Comments

Not an obvious conclusion, I’ll agree. However, Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, presents the argument like this: as all sorts of data accumulate into a vast ocean of petabytes, our ability to synthesize it all into elegant theories and laws will disappear. The story is the cover of this month’s issue of Wired but I [...]

Salman Rushdie’s Book Tour Rolls Through Google

≡ Category: Books, Google, Video - Arts & Culture |Comments

Salman Rushdie’s latest book, The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel, has hit the streets. And it comes just three years after his last one, Shalimar the Clown, which makes him a good deal more prolific than many of his contemporaries. (A piece in The Guardian — The Great American Pause — notes that many celebrated [...]

Google Sky, Moon and Mars

≡ Category: Google, Science |Comments

Here’s what you get when Google engineers put their heads together with astronomers from large observatories: With Google Sky, “you can search for planets, listen to Earth & Sky podcasts, watch some beautiful Hubble telescope images, or explore historical maps of the sky from the comfort of your browser.” The product was rolled out just [...]

YouTube’s Slow Drift Toward Enlightenment

≡ Category: Apple, Google, Media |Comments

Today, the Chronicle of Higher Education has a good article on an emerging trend — universities bringing their lectures to YouTube. As you’ll see, we get a mention in the article.
We first began discussing this trend about a year ago. In this public radio interview aired last March, we talked about the sheer dearth of [...]

10 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube (Smart Video Collections)

≡ Category: Google, Video - Arts & Culture |Comments

(UPDATED: See 70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube)
It’s been a constant lament that YouTube offers its users scant little intellectual content. And that content is itself hard to find. Just visit YouTube’s so-called Education Section, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find anything actually educational. But the good news is that we’re seeing some recent [...]

Betting Against Google’s Answer to Wikipedia

≡ Category: Google |Comments

As many now know, Google announced Friday that it’s testing a new content initiative — dubbed “knol” — that it hopes will rival Wikipedia. Realizing that Wikipedia entries rank first on 27% of all Google search result pages, the folks at Googleplex couldn’t resist launching a competitive product. In announcing “knol,” the company highlighted two [...]

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    Open Culture editor Dan Colman scours the web for the best cultural and educational media. He finds the books you want, the classes you need, and plenty of enlightenment in between.