The audio book and when it can be useful

I was never really a fan of the audio book until I had the opportunity to listen to one. I was with a friend in Canada, and we were driving from Regina to Calgary. The journey between the two cities is seven hours. Now throw in the fact that it was winter and was snowing. Canada has a reputation for its snow. I leave the rest to your imagination. Listening to "The Luckiest Guy in the World" was nothing short of wonderful. Apart from the wintry conditions, the book was a breathe of fresh air. I thoroughly enjoyed the narration. It also made me appreciate the audio book in the sense that some books look like a right handful to read. 

However, there is one thing we must not forget, bad narration really does ruin a perfectly good book. Let me give an example (here comes the controversy), Seth Godin is a great public speaker and very interesting to watch in action. For those of you who don't know Seth Godin, he is one of the co-founders of Squidoo, and bestselling author of books such as "Unleashing the Idea Virus" and "All Marketers are Liars". I must complain though that when Seth narrates in one of his books, well, it is not enjoyable. His voice was monotone and frankly boring. Many of you might disagree but why not head on down to Audible.com to download his free audio book "Tribes" and see (hear is what I should say) what I mean. I can also think of some other books such as Adam Khoo's Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires and narrated by Adam could have been better. I am sure Adam would not agree with me just as some of you but hey, you be the judge. Oh, and by the way, Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires is a very interesting book. 

Criticism or not, good audio books are still really good value and should be enjoyed. I can only imagine how most of you enjoy your audio books. Maybe you are one of those people who lights up a cigar and listens to one of Arthur Conan Doyle's books or you put the kettle on for a cup of tea while listening to Oscar Wilde, you can not argue that audio books are useful and here to stay.

Public Domain Books in the Millions from Google Books

The first time I heard about public domain books was from a gentleman called Robert G. Allen. Robert by the way is the author of the book "One Minute Millionaire", and "Cash in a Flash". So what is public domain? 

According to Wiktionary, public domain is the feature of intellectual property not protected under patent or copyright, i.e. no person or legal entity can establish proprietary interests. Another definition from the University of Alberta library states that a work in the public domain is free for everyone to use without asking for permission or paying royalties. The phrase "public domain" is a copyright term referring to works that belong to the public. 

The University of Alberta go on to state that: works can be in the public domain for a variety of reasons: because the term of copyright protection has expired; because the work was not eligible for copyright protection in the first place; or because the copyright owner has given the copyright in the work to the public domain. The owner must specifically license all or certain uses of the work. This is done by stating on the work what uses are permitted such as, for example, that the work may be reproduced, communicated, or performed for educational purposes without permission or payment (A Guide to Copyrights 5).

As many might have heard by now, there are many works especially the classics in the public domain. This means that you have free access to the works and can do just about anything you want with the works. However, in the digital information age, there are corporate bodies trying their damndest to ensure that we the public do not have access to these bodies of works. They (the corporate) are doing everything to change the laws in their favour of course. If we are not careful, we (the public) might find that we are left out of the argument altogether. For a more detailed discussion, please read the blog piece before this one.

Enough old chap, I hear you say; end of rant. Let us get back to what we were discussing – a million books on Google. I have a piece from the Inside Google Books blog titled - Download over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format. This was written by Brandon Badger, Product Manager for Google Books, dated August 26, 2009, and here is the where you can get the original piece: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/08/download-over-million-public-domain.html.  Please enjoy the piece and let me know what you think with your comments.

Over the years, we've heard a lot from people who've unearthed hidden treasures in Google Books: a crafter who uncovered a forgotten knitting technique, a family historian who discovered her ancestor once traveled the country with a dancing, roller-skating bear. The books they found were out of copyright and in the public domain, which meant they could read the full text and even download a PDF version of the book.

I'm excited to announce that starting today, Google Books will offer free downloads of these and more than one million more public domain books in an additional format, EPUB. By adding support for EPUB downloads, we're hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places. More people are turning to new reading devices to access digital books, and many such phones, netbooks, and e-ink readers have smaller screens that don't readily render image-based PDF versions of the books we've scanned. EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or "reflow") to these smaller screens. And because EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won't be tied to or locked into a particular device. We'll also continue to make available these books in the popular PDF format so you can see images of the pages just as they appear in the printed book.

To get started, just find any public domain book on  Google Books and click on the Download button in the toolbar.

Of course, these public domain books weren't born in EPUB format--or even in digital format at all. Let's say you download a free EPUB copy of Treasure Island. You're taking a final step in a long process that takes a physical copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's book and transforms it into something you can download for your iPhone. The process begins with a book that has been preserved by one of our library partners from around the world. Google borrows the book from one of our library partners, much like you can from your local library. Before returning the book in undamaged form, we take photographs of the pages. Those images are then stitched together and processed in order to create a digital version of the classic book. This includes the difficult task of performing Optical Character Recognition on the page image in order to extract a text layer we can transform into HTML, or other text-based file formats like EPUB (if you're interested, you can read more about this process here).

Digitizing books allows us to provide more access to great literature for a wider set of the world's population. Before physical books were invented, thoughts were constrained by both space and time. It was difficult for humans to share their thoughts and feelings with a set of people too far from their physical location. Printed books changed that by allowing authors to record their experiences in a medium that could be shipped around the world. Similarly, the words written down could be preserved through time. The result was an explosion in collaboration and creativity. Via printed books, a 17th century physicist in Great Britain could build on the work of a 16th century Italian scholar.

Of course, it can be difficult and costly to reproduce and transport the information that older physical books contain. Some can't afford these works. Others who might be able to afford to purchase them can't unless they can find a physical copy available for sale or loan. Some important books are so limited in quantity that one must fly around the world to find a copy. Access to other works is only available to those who attend certain universities or belong to certain organizations.

Once we convert atoms from physical books into digital bits, we can begin to change some of that. While atoms remain fairly expensive, digital bits are on a trend where they become ever cheaper to produce, transport, and store. For example, providing every student in a school district with a paper copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet might cost thousands of dollars. Yet if those same students already have cell phones, laptops, or access to the Internet, then they can access a digital copy of Hamlet for just a fraction of the cost. Often times, public domain texts in digital form are more affordable and accessible to the public than their physical parents.

All of this of course assumes that a digital version of the book exists. I love going into work each morning knowing that we're working to convert atoms into bits and that by doing so, we hope to make knowledge more accessible. In a world where educational opportunities are often disproportionately allocated, it's exciting to think that today anyone with an Internet connection can download any of over one million free public domain books from Google Books. Who knows. Maybe some kid will read Treasure Island on their phone and be inspired to write their own great novel some day.

It's a Steal

This piece was from John Lanchester of the Guardian Newspaper. The original piece can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/apr/07/featuresreviews.guardianreview2


Here is the piece:

Many of us take it for granted that we can download films or music without paying. Now, new projects such as Google Book Search will make millions of books available too. What will this mean for authors and the publishing industry? John Lanchester asks who owns what in the digital age.

The words "intellectual property" have a fairly predictable effect. Use them in conversation, and nine out of 10 people immediately fall into a deep sleep, only to wake eight hours later demanding coffee and Weetabix. The 10th person, who is likely to have some engagement with the creative industries, will immediately launch into a long, articulate, autobiographical complaint.

The broad story of copyright is one of creative individuals feeling they are being stiffed, and that the public interest is losing out as a result. Everyone has a beef about it. This is mine. Between Christmas 1941 and the dropping of the atomic bombs in August 1945, my grandparents were in a Japanese internment camp in Stanley, at the far edge of Hong Kong island. Many internees died of malnutrition and illness, only three Red Cross parcels arrived during the entire war, and some of their closest friends were tortured and executed by the Kempetai, the Japanese military police and equivalent of the Gestapo.

Personal possessions were scarce. By the end of the war, my grandmother owned only two things: a one cent coin with the middle drilled out, which she wore as a wedding ring, since she had traded her ring away for food in early 1945; and a small pocket diary for 1942, which she must have bought before the fall of Hong Kong. She used that diary for the next three years, writing in pencil, and commenting almost exclusively on food - basically, every time they had something other than rice, she made a note of it.

At the end of the war, the internees were given a typed newsletter that filled them in on what had happened while they were in the camp. (Almost the first thing on it was a remark about the influence of women in all areas of civilian life during the war: "driving buses and working in factories".) At about the time she was given that newsletter, Lannie, my grandmother, must have found a typewriter, because along with the other scraps of paper from this period I found a poem that she, or someone else, had typed out. It was called "A Farewell to Stanley":

A farewell to Stanley - it's over
Of internees there's not a sign
They've left for Newhaven and Dover
For Hull and Newcastle on Tyne.

The poem must have meant a lot to Lannie, or she wouldn't have kept it for the rest of her life; it is, it seems to me, a rather good poem. But you won't find it in the American edition of my book Family Romance, because my American publisher was reluctant to let me quote it. The fact that I couldn't find anything about the poem's author made them too nervous. If I couldn't find him or her - didn't even know whether he or she existed and wasn't a pseudonym - then the poem was probably in copyright and as such couldn't be published.

There might have been a way around it, if I was prepared to indemnify the publisher from potential costs arising. That didn't seem fair to me. "I don't feel I can indemnify you for the legal risk, for obvious reasons to do with the relative balance of resources between us," I wrote to the corporate lawyer. "Pearson is a £6bn global corporation, I'm a writer with two small children and a mortgage ... One of the complaints of the people in the camp was that they were forgotten and silenced. It does seem sad that this person's voice won't be heard precisely because no one knows who he or she was."

No dice. The poem isn't included in the US edition of my book. It was cheeky of me even to ask, since, as my American editor told me, "copyright over here is like libel over there" - in other words, it is immune from common sense, with no room for flexibility or negotiation or the self-evidently right thing. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the ferocity of the copyright laws in America, which are in effect written by the large entertainment conglomerates. The most famous example of this is the Mickey Mouse effect, whereby every time the Mouse is about to come out of copyright, the term of copyright is extended. This has happened 11 times in the past 40 years. If the same laws had applied retrospectively, the US government would never have been allowed to use the name or the image of Uncle Sam.

The corporations have the power, and they are not afraid to use it. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US considerably extended the range of both criminal and civil offences that could be committed over copyright issues. There is a clause in US film contracts which awards the producers rights "in perpetuity and throughout the universe and for any and all forms of expression whether now existing or hereafter devised". As far as I can tell, the only loophole in that is if you fell through a crack in the space-time fabric of the universe into a parallel one. (In case you're wondering how that bizarre clause came about, it was as a result of a lawsuit between Disney and the singer Peggy Lee over the video-cassette edition of Lady and the Tramp. Her contract was drawn up before the existence of VCRs and she sued on the basis that Disney did not automatically have the right to sell videos without her permission. She won $3.8m, and the "throughout the universe" clause was born, to make sure the studios never went through anything like that again.)

There is an irony here. Twenty years ago, the US studios announced that the end of civilisation as we know it was at hand; the destructive force was the video-cassette recorder. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, went before Congress and said that "The growing and dangerous intrusion of this new technology is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone." Today, revenue from video rentals accounts for 46.6% of all the money earned by the major studios. Without the technology they fought to the last ditch, the studios would have gone out of business.

The entertainment industry feared new technology, and didn't understand it. And then came the internet and file-sharing. First they adopted the ostrich position, then they counter-attacked by issuing semi-broken "copy-protected" CDs, and by suing alleged file-sharers, and in general did everything they could to try to make their customers hate them. Thanks to these draconian legal tactics - which have involved mishaps such as suing dead people, children and grannies who don't own computers - the industry is slowly managing to convince people that file-sharing is illegal. But that is not the same thing as persuading them it is wrong.

Our full and proper Domain

This is to let everyone know that http://nosadigital.yolasite.com is now http://nosadigital.com/

Audio Books Best Sellers

Here are the best seller audio books from Michael Lewis, Jonathan Kellerman, and David Baaldacci to mention a few:

One reason why the iPad could be the eBook Reader Killer

I recently received a present from older brother - a MacBook Pro. I received it about a week and a half before my birthday. This present really made my century not my day. It took me a little while to get used to the MacBook considering I have used a Windows based PC since I started anything computing. As I got used to using the MacBook, I noticed one key thing - the ease on the eyes while reading.

Seriously? Yes, seriously. Although I cannot speak for everyone, I am sure there are many who can say the same thing. Some of you might think I am plugging Apple products, but I assure this is not the case. When something is of good quality, let us not be hypocritical about it. Anyone who has tried to read eBooks on a laptop will know that after reading about two or three pages, the eyes begin to feel the strain. In addition, if you are wearing glasses, heaven help you.

However, reading on the MacBook has nothing short of fantastic. It has been easy and I have finished reading four eBooks within a two-week span. I will tell you that I have never done that on my laptop. I have a wonderful HP laptop and I would not trade it for the World.



This now brings me to the real topic - the iPad. I read a headline recently that the iPad is the eBook reader killer. Going by my experience with my new MacBook Pro, I could say yes even if it is just for the ease of reading. I have not yet had a chance to use the iPad - and I will get a chance very soon - but if the reviews are anything to go by, then Apple is in for some serious profits. For those of you who got to see CNBC’s Charlie Rose Show will have heard the comments made by the journalists who got to use the iPad for a few weeks. We all know they were very impressed.

As I mentioned earlier, I have not yet got the chance to use the iPad but if it is great to read with as the MacBook is, then I might just trade in both my Aluratek and Sony eReaders for one. What do you think?

New page additions - Coupons and Video On Demand

This is to let everyone know that two new pages have been added to our site. The first of our pages is Coupons. This page shows all the special deals you can get from us. Many have a limited time to claim, so please hurry. The second of our pages is Video on Demand. This page allows you to watch an entire library of movies and TV programmes online. You will have access to movies such as Avatar, and Crazy Heart. You will also have access to TV programmes such as Blood Brothers and Heretic Fork to mention but a few. 

So what are you waiting for? Get viewing and have a great time.