Google is making its database of 1.5 million public domain books accessible from mobile devices for free. Amazon is working to make all its Kindle titles available on mobile devices.Random House Publishing has announced that will make books available for free for mobile devices. Penguin Group (USA) has started Penguin 2.0, again aimed for mobile devices…
Google already has a mobile version of Google Book Search…
Is the future of ‘books’ likely to be in our palms?
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1 minute read | 101 words
Like the open source movement in software, an open source movements in the textbooks may be afoot. If this movement takes hold it will surely impact the textbook business, which is perhaps the only safe island in a sea of troubled publishing business.
The other question is what motivates people like Professor R. Preston McAfee to make their books available for free, when they could have earned a fair bit from it – $100,000 advance and more, according to a New York Times article (Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free)
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1 minute read | 126 words
Kids who are exposed to too much screen time (TV, Computers, video games, iPods) during their teen years are likely to display depression symptoms later. Science News article says:
“Exposure to more television and other electronic media during the teenage years appears to be associated with developing depression symptoms in young adulthood, especially among men, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of General Psychiatry…”
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1 minute read | 68 words
According to Time magazine, novel podcasts, unlike audiobooks “are truncated into segments and may include ambient sounds, music as well a cast of voices playing different characters.”
“Evo Terra, the co-founder of Podiobooks.com, says 45,000 episodes are downloaded each day.”
If you are in the publishing business you may want to find out more… at Podiobooks.com you can find and subscribe to audio book as well as novel podcasts.
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1 minute read | 74 words
I’ve been hearing about Ideosync’s CR project in Lalitpur for a while now, but a news story finally suggests that they’re close to getting on air.
Here’s the full story.
Village Community Radio will give voice to people’s issues
10 January, 2009
“Community radio is the real voice of the people, it is a communication service that caters to the interests and needs of a certain area, its culture, craft, cuisine and above all social and development issues,” said Mridul Srivastava, the station director of ‘Lalit Lokvani’.
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4 minute read | 641 words
According to Elise Nordling, “The primary function of radio is that people want company.” Assuming that to be true, what kind of company do people normally want? Who do you and I like to talk to? To listen to? To someone who speaks our own language, perhaps. To someone who understands our world, and our lives, and the joys and sorrows and challenges that go into living each day. A mirror that we look into, sometimes admiringly, sometimes critically, but a mirror nonetheless.
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4 minute read | 820 words
Marcella Nunez-Smith of Yale School of Medicine and his team spent more than 18 months studying some 173 researches conducted over the last 30 years on how media affects the lives of children – ‘…obesity, tobacco, drug and alcohol use, sexual behavior, low academic achievement and ADHD’.
Turns out that 80 percent of the research efforts show a ‘link between a negative health outcome and media hours or content’. The study says there is ‘…above average evidence to support the link between media exposure and drug use, alcohol use and low academic achievement.
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1 minute read | 140 words
The Mumbai tragedy has once again highlighted how the radio can be the most effective medium of communication in the time of crisis, be it floods, earthquakes, war, or terror strikes. With electricity supplies cut off, televisions switched off, one of the most effective way to get the message across is the radio. CR activists have been arguing for emergency radio stations in Bihar for a while now, but their plea seems to have got buried in some file – at least till the next tragedy will strike our country, as it surely must.
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1 minute read | 191 words
We’ve taken the next step. Ideosync is going to be TRF’s technical partner in setting up the community radio station, and handhold us at least for the first six months to get us ready for broadcast. Beyond that, we have to find a way to raise funds.
We begin work soon on doing the woodwork for the studio and procuring the transmitter and the studio and field equipment. Then Ideosync does two induction workshops (one in each of our target schools) to build a team of students who can be trained in programming.
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2 minute read | 312 words
At the risk of being taken seriously, I look forward to the day I can hear Lalu Prasad Yadav, our right honourable Railways Minister, coming on in between some truly ribald Bollywood numbers playing on an FM channel and saying, “Humka bhote dijiye! Phir mat boliyega ki yeh rail-gaadi nikal gayee.” (Vote for us. Later don’t say that you missed the train.")
But the flip side of the goverment giving the in-principle go-ahead to political ads on FM channels could well be a hijacking of the airwaves.
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1 minute read | 102 words
An excellent idea has just come downstream from Sajan Venniyoor. He suggests that we utilise the radio for making print available to the visually disabled. This would include everything from school textbooks to novels, short stories, plays and poems, to articles and features in newspapers and magazines. I like it. It’s simple, do-able, and has the potential to extend in other ways.
Since recordings will anyway be done, visually disabled students could be offered these “textbooks” as CDs or audio cassettes.
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1 minute read | 157 words
I’m thinking of that child left behind. The one who cannot follow a lesson because she cannot read what the teacher has written on the blackboard, even though she has faithfully and correctly copied it all down in her notebook. The child who cannot ask a question in class, because she cannot read her notebook, hence can’t put a finger on what exactly it is that she does not understand. This is the child who does not know how to read.
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2 minute read | 348 words
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