Via LLRX.com – Want to hear text to speech from free library books on your 50-mile commute? Even if you own an Android machine and the usual app can’t do “read-aloud” unless audiobooks count? A new, expert and insightful report by David Rothman focuses on the new Kindle Fire HDXes. He recommends them to be… Continue Reading
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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici
New Study Finds Cash Alone Effective Way to Fight Poverty
“Researchers today released the results of a long-awaited study, which may reveal a promising new direction in alleviating poverty, one much simpler than many popular aid methods. While traditional charities and aid programs often have infrastructures designed to deliver specific types of aid to the poor, such as food or livestock, the researchers studied a… Continue Reading
New York Review of Books – The fast pace of change on the information superhighway
Are We Puppets in a Wired World? – Sue Halpern highlights new books on a range of issues including privacy, big data, social media and predictive analysis in relationship to e-commerce. “In the first five years of the new millennium, Internet use grew 160 percent; by 2005 there were nearly a billion people on the Internet. By 2005,… Continue Reading
Open Access, Megajournals, and MOOCs
Open Access, Megajournals, and MOOCs – On the Political Economy of Academic Unbundling – by Richard Wellen. SAGE Open October-December 2013 vol. 3 no. 4 2158244013507271. The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/2158244013507271. “The development of “open” academic content has been strongly embraced and promoted by many advocates, analysts, stakeholders,… Continue Reading
The Global Gender Gap Report 2013
Press Release, October 25, 2013 – Increased Political Participation Helps Narrow Global Gender Gap in 2013 The Global Gender Gap Report 2013 “finds 86 out of 133 countries improved their global gender gap between 2012 and 2013, with the area of political participation seeing the greatest progress Iceland has the narrowest gender gap in the… Continue Reading
An Open-World Assumption for Hypermedia
Distributed Affordance: An Open-World Assumption for Hypermedia – by Ruben Verborgh, Michael Hausenblas, Thomas Steiner, Erik Mannens, and Rik Van de Walle “Hypermedia links and controls drive the Web by transforming information into affordances through which users can choose actions. However, publishers of information cannot predict all actions their users might want to perform and… Continue Reading
CU-Boulder-led study shows unprecedented warmth in Arctic
News release: “Average summer temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic during the last 100 years are higher now than during any century in the past 44,000 years and perhaps as long ago as 120,000 years, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study. The study [Unprecedented recent summer warmth in Arctic Canada, in Geophysical Research… Continue Reading
Loss and damage from climate change
News release: “An open access special issue of the International Journal of Global Warming brings together, for the first time, empirical evidence of loss and damage from the perspective of affected people in nine vulnerable countries. The articles in this special issue show how climatic stressors affect communities, what measures households take to prevent loss… Continue Reading
Notice on Reader Privacy at the Internet Archive
“The Internet Archive has extended our reader privacy protections by making the site encrypted by default. Visitors to archive.org and openlibrary.org will https unless they try to use http. For several years, the Internet Archive has tried to avoid keeping Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of our readers. Web servers and other software that interacts with… Continue Reading
Commentary – Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet
Bruce Schneier, Cryptographer and Computer Security Specialist and Author of Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Thrive “We’re in the middle of an epic battle for power in cyberspace. On one side are the nimble, unorganized, distributed powers such as dissident groups, criminals, and hackers. On the other side are the traditional,… Continue Reading
Map Shows The Most Famous Book Set In Every State
Via Business Insider – This Map Shows The Most Famous Book Set In Every State – MELISSA STANGER AND MIKE NUDELMAN “Local literature can be a surprising source of home state pride, no matter where you’re from. We found the most famous book set in each state. How many have you read? Check out the annotated map below.” Click for… Continue Reading
What Lies Beneath Deep below the streets of New York City
William Langewiesche in Vanity Fair – “Deep below the streets of New York City lie its vital organs—a water system, subways, railroads, tunnels, sewers, drains, and power and cable lines—in a vast, three-dimensional tangle. Penetrating this centuries-old underworld of caverns, squatters, and unmarked doors, William Langewiesche follows three men who constantly navigate its dangers: the subway-operations… Continue Reading
