Month: June 2010

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Robert Douglass on Solr and other Search Back Ends For Drupal

Apache Solr is a powerful and flexible mechanism for performing site search on a Drupal site. Join us as we talk with Robert Douglass about all things Solr in Drupal, including new features and functionality and future development plans. Also, as a bonus, you will hear Robert use the word “de-baconify” in the context of Solr and Drupal.

Acquia Podcast 16: Robert Douglass on Apache Solr and other Search Back Ends Acquia.

This podcast covers mush that is going on with Drupal, Solr, and search in general. Lots of good, current information.

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Kindle Gets Audio/Video… On the iPad and iPhone

Amazon just introduced a audio and video to the Kindle, but the only way to experience the new Kindle multimedia books is on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. A baker’s dozen of titles already come in multimedia editions, including Rick Steves’ travel guides, Best of the Beatles For Acoustic Guitar, and Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds In Song.

via TechCrunch – Amazon Introduces A Video/Audio Kindle . . . But Only On The iPad And iPhone.

Interesting development., but a couple of things are worth noting here. First the entire collection of multimedia editions numbers just 13 indicating this may be a test as much as anything else. Second, while it seems odd that they would sell ebooks that have features that aren’t usable on the Kindle, think of it as simply expanding their market by offering more ebooks to a wider market by including other features.

Think of it this way, a Kindle now costs $189. For your money you get what is considered the industry standard in readers. A great device for reading fiction and non-fiction works that are primarily text. It is a device that is aimed at casual reading and it works very well for that.

Of course text is hardly the only content type that can be used effectively in ebooks. By their very nature ebooks can be multimedia works incorporating color graphics, images, audio, and video. Amazon knows this and they also now that selling those works requires a platform that is different than the Kindle. No problem, the Kindle software turns your iPad or iPhone into a Kindle and it will handle multimedia quite well. So, Amazon offers audio and video enhanced ebooks for the Kindle on the iPad/iPhone. If you want ebooks with those features get your self the more expensive iPad[1], starting at $499, and buy those books Amazon.

I think this move is really designed to enhance the Kindle app and make it more appealing than Apple’s own iBooks. No need to have 2 separate accounts for your ebooks, just use the Kindle for all your ebook needs. Of course I would expect that we will see the multimedia features of the Kindle app turn up on the Windows and Mac versions of the software. And at some point Amazon will introduce a color Kindle of some kind.

[1] Yes, you can get the features on the Kindle iPhone, I suspect that you will find it more satisfying on the iPad.

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links for 2010-06-26

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U of IL Library Project Archives Computer Games

Sometime this August, librarians at the University of Illinois will finish archiving over a dozen famous computer games, then step back to consider where to go next with their project. These programs go back over four decades, and include a 1993 version of Doom, various editions of Warcraft, and even MIT’s Spacewar! circa 1962.

Ars Technica – Saving “virtual worlds” from extinction.

Now this is the sort of digital preservation I could get into. It will interesting to see how they solve all the issues around hardware dependency that comes with these old games, “[W]hat we’re trying to do is preserve not only the games, but preserve the knowledge that you would need to create a virtualization platform to play the game.” Big job for librarians. Seems like figuring out how to keep copies of digital texts around should be a walk in the park after this.

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Sen. Ted Kennedy’s FBI Files Released Just in Time for Beach Reading Season

Edward “Ted” Moore Kennedy served as U.S. senator for the state of Massachusetts from November 7, 1962 until his death. He was a long-time leader in the Democratic Party and candidate for that party’s presidential nomination. During his senate tenure, Kennedy served in several senior leadership positions, including stints as the chair of the Judiciary Committee, the Labor and Human Resource Committee, and the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

Edward “Ted” M Kennedy – Federal Bureau of Investigation – Freedom of Information Privacy Act.

Most of the files cover “FBI investigation of threats of violence and other extortion claims against Senator Kennedy and other public officials”. The files are in PDF format, scans of type written pages mostly. Hopefully someone will take it and do something useful like make it searchable.

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WordPress 3.0 Released, Includes Merge of MU Features Into WordPress Core

WordPress 3.0, the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the culmination of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download (or upgrade within your dashboard). Major new features in this release include a sexy new default theme called Twenty Ten. Theme developers have new APIs that allow them to easily implement custom backgrounds, headers, shortlinks, menus (no more file editing), post types, and taxonomies. (Twenty Ten theme shows all of that off.) Developers and network admins will appreciate the long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress, creating the new multi-site functionality which makes it possible to run one blog or ten million from the same installation.

WordPress › Blog » WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious”.

So, now the big question is how it changes WordPressMU. As those of you who follow along at home know, I’ve been busy of late with moving CALI’s Classcaster podcasting and blogging network over to WordPressMU. I think I will ewait a bit for the reviews come in on how the upgrade from MU to WP3 goes before I jump off that cliff. I’ve included a lot of plugins in Classcaster, so how all of them react to WP3 is going to be an issue.

Most likely I’ll take a stab at upgrading this blog first, after CALIcon, and then think about Classcaster. Of course any additional change to Classcaster will need to be done by mid-July so it is all ready for the Fall 2010 semester.