Happy Belated Birthday to Project Gutenberg.

Project Gutenberg's 32nd Birthday

“July 4th marks the 32nd anniversary of that day in 1971 when Michael Hart first sped an all-caps version of the Declaration of Independence to anyone and everyone then on what later became the web, thus founding Project Gutenberg. Thanks to an army of volunteers and the Distributed Proofreaders, this is the last year PG will have fewer than 10,000 titles. Strangely, Microsoft picked this dual anniversary of literacy and freedom to re-launch their Reader product, with three free bestsellers a week, if you activate the new version with Passport, sign a EULA, etc. Real reason for the upgrade might be that the DRM on MS's old Reader was cracked. If you're not into giving away data, or are running a system other than Windows, maybe you could take the time to tell a friend about free books online, or even help out by visiting the Distributed Proofers and editing one page per day.” [Slashdot]

So a happy belated birthday to PG, even while Darci Chapman quotes Jacek Artymiak discussing ebooks:

“Today's eBook efforts are missing the point. They make reading books harder, not easier. A book that cannot be read once the batteries run out or when you forget your password is pretty useless to me. Technology ought to make our lives easier, after all.”

Amen and hallelujah.

[The Shifted Librarian]

i did a bit of distributed proofing on this yesterday, its fun. try it. do a page a day or two or three..

Call for Webtexts: Kairos CoverWeb 9.1. Call for Webtexts: Kairos CoverWeb 9.1

The Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Portable Technologies

Kairos: Rhetoric, Technology, Pedagogy, an online, peer-reviewed journal, is seeking submissions for the Spring 2004 CoverWeb issue on Rhetoric and Pedagogy of Portable Technologies. Including technology in our lives and our classrooms used to mean being tied to a wire and an outlet. As one television commercial implies, communicative tools with wires are becoming outmoded and valueless to many users, and they are losing ground to portable technologies, such as laptop computers, wireless Internet connections, PDAs, and cell telephone text and photographic messaging. As these portable technologies enable greater flexibility of communication, they also push us rhetorically and pedagogically. [Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy]

i should send something for this. laptops….

GIA. Watch the watchers. Government Information Awareness:A single, comprehensive, easy-to-use repository of information on individuals, organizations, and corporations related to the government of the United States of America. [MetaFilter]

interesting project.

Sick CSS tricks. Okay, this is utterly sick and utterly fascinating. Never mind rounded corners. Using zero-dimension boxes just for the sake of the borders is where it’s at. Via Simon…. [Caveat Lector]

this is nifty, alot of cool stuff.

The June issue of Upgrade is devoted to Open Knowl …. The June issue of Upgrade is devoted to Open Knowledge. The guest editors are Philippe Aigrain and Jesús M. González-Barahona. All the articles are good, but here are the ones most relevant to open access.

• Philippe Aigrain and Jesús M. González-Barahona, Ownership and Terms of Use for Intangibles. Land Grab or Commons?

• Yochai Benkler, The Political Economy of Commons
• David Bollier, The Rediscovery of the Commons
• Richard Stallman, The Right to Read

[FOS News]

some interesting papers here. Philippe's work is great in this area.

HeckleBot – A project to support heckling at conferences.

Many conferences have wifi for the audience these days. People blog the conferences or chat during the conferences. There is definitely a back channel and a lot of people who track conferences online. At a recent conference in Helsinki, Kevin Marks, who was in California, wrote a limerick heckling Tom Coates on IRC. The difficulty is feeding some of the good stuff back to the speakers. This is where HeckleBot comes in. HeckleBot is an IRC bot that sits in the IRC channel for a conference. You give it commands like “?heckle Stop pointificating!” on IRC. The bot talks to a linux box connected to an LED display facing the speakers. The LED displays the message to the speakers. This way, the speakers can get immediate feedback from the audience as well people watching a video stream or reading people blogging the event.

I promise to try to get the HeckleBot set up at as many conferences I attend if people will help me build it. There are some links to the various pieces on the wiki page about HeckleBot. Please sign up or contribute on the Wiki.

◊—-»
On July 4, 2003 02:28 PM chuqui said:

this is just contrary to the whole purpose of conferences. it might seem like a fun idea, but it fails the do unto others as you would have them do to you, lest they be better at doing it than you rule.

More on the Sabo bill….The official text is now …. More on the Sabo bill….The official text is now online at THOMAS. The URL I used in today's issue of SOAN has already expired. I hope this one lasts longer. [FOS News]

I suggest that everyone that can support this bill which helps rebuild the commons and should increase, significantly, the amount of research output significantly

A Solution to the Adjunct Problem?. The Adjunct Problem has rather a nineteenth-century ring to it (think, for example, of the Woman Question). The management at D-squared Digest have drawn inspiration from the nineteenth-century practice of buying and selling military commission and clerical livings to propose… [Invisible Adjunct]

this is not a solution to the problem, but the creation of a problem. the solution to the problem is a. public awareness b. political awareness c. unity. because c. will never happen, the problem won't go away. you will always find someone that can teach a course, be it adjunct or graduate students.

the argument has to be made that the current situation of falling budgets, removed tenure lines, etc. is untenable, but why? at what point do the liberal arts provide for something that the market demands? are you sure that the market demands well rounded, educated people? or even critical thinkers? what does it seem to absorb? look at the middle tier doctoral comprehensive schools, they seem to be making more and more professional programs such as technical writing, design, etc. programs that have professional certifications available, which in theory represent 'marketable skills' hmmmm…

I'm not sure where i read this, but it certainly isn't my idea. education is become class oriented. there will be schools that serve those classes, and this means that for many of the people in the u.s., those people that are attempting to become nouveau riche, or are capital oriented, which is the bulk of the population, education will be replaced with training for their capacity. for those that are not seeking wealth because they already have it or just don't seek it, they will have the educational liberal arts to choose at some level. but if you look around, you can see that when states start referring to universities as producing labor pools and providing for the creation of certain capacities in that pool, that those in that labor pool by necessity are being treated differently than those that are not….

this deserves more work, but i need another cup of tea

I think this covers alot of material that might be useful. having sent out several applications in the last few months, and having used most of this type of advice, though not from this site, i think it is worth the perusal