Wildfire -- Talking Pen and Paper

Wildfire

This is a new invention that combines automatic language translation with a smart pen (pen-based scanner with audio output). The inventor sees it as useful for conducting incoming patient interviews in a hospital, but I can imagine a wide variety of educational and commercial uses, such as providing menu translation in restaurants to both sighted and blind patrons.

Book Use Book Theory: 1500 - 1700

Book Use Book Theory: 1500 - 1700

We may be living in the future, but our future or present exists as it is only because of the book. Here's an interesting web-based exhibit on the history of the book, courtesy of the University of Chicago Library.

Tom's Glossary of Book Publishing Terms

Tom's Glossary of Book Publishing Terms

Thanks to Carol Reich for sending me the link to this very funny glossary of book publishing terms.

Edge 311

Edge 311

If you're not already reading Edge, then you're missing out on some of the most insightful writing on our path deeper into the future. Read a recent sample at this link.

Publishing: The Revolutionary Future - The New York Review of Books

Publishing: The Revolutionary Future - The New York Review of Books

Jason Epstein has had a long, distinguished career in publishing. His latest project was the development of the Espresso Book Machine. In this article, he argues for the importance of books as printed, ink on paper, objects that cannot be deleted with the click of a mouse.

After Amazon's deletion of Orwell's 1984 from the Kindles of customers who had "bought" it (what more appropriate title? except perhaps Fahrenheit 451) demonstrated the reality of digital purchases as licenses for use rather than as permanent purchases of ownership, I began rethinking my own belief about the permanency of digital rather than printed books. Naively, I had liked the fact that digital books could be stored in the cloud; I hadn't reckoned with the legal and technical fragility of them.

As always, Jason Epstein is worth reading. Please let me know what you think on this subject, too.

Slashdot Technology Story | Five Years of YouTube and Forced Evolution

Slashdot Technology Story | Five Years of YouTube and Forced Evolution

Here's a new update on the HTML 5 issue, based on the idea that Google spent so much when it bought YouTube for $1.65 billion that it has developed Chrome and the Chrome IE Tab in order to ensure that its investment pays off, and that it can take over the online world.

Conspiracy theory? Coincidence? or Make Sense?

Will Idealism be Firefox's Downfall?

Will Idealism be Firefox's Downfall?

Most people don't realize that the videos they see on the Internet are usually run with Adobe Flash. Neither to they understand that the Internet is written in HTML. Consequently, they completely don't understand that the new HTML standard for the Internet, HTML 5, is replacing Adobe Flash with H.264.

Lots of techno-talk. Bottom line? For web browser developers to use H.264, they have to pay MPEG-LA (as in Los Angeles, and as in an intellectual property service corporation that does not create but collects dollars and enforces patents) a $5,000,000 per year royalty fee. That is going to squeeze out anyone wanting to create a new web browser, so it's going to kill much creativity in browser land. We'll all be left with IE, Safari and Chrome -- browsers with bucks behind them. Mozilla could probably pay the fee, but they are more concerned with open access and creativity, so they won't.

Another angle is that Google (which owns YouTube) has "merged with" On2 (Google bought On2) which has HTML 5 video technology which is beyond H.264. If Google opens the market, it will eliminate the $5,000,000 barrier to entry.

Let's hope Google decides not to be evil in this deal. Meanwhile, cancel my YouTube account.