Apps For Library Idea Challenge

Sciverse is hosting an "Apps for Library Idea Challenge," in which 10 app ideas suggested by librarians are voted on in order to determine the most popular entry.

There are some good ideas here. Right now the most popular idea is "JTOCs to go," a mobile app for journal tables of contents including authorization links to enable full text access.

Check out the list of entries here:

http://www.appsforlibrary.com/entries/

Amazon's new tablet

This morning Amazon introduced their competitor for the iPad: the Kindle Fire, a touch screen app that leverages Amazon's extensive content and strength in cloud computing.

To check it out, click here.

E book treasures at the British Library

The British Library announced the first few titles in their eBook treasures series last week. The series will make available rare manuscripts which were previously only accessible to scholars, or to the public under glass.

First up is Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Arundel, a series of drawings and notes the artist made mostly concerning mechanics and geometry.

The eBooks are not free; prices listed on the eBook Treasures web site are in British pounds.

Nice overview of big data, with pretty picture

In an article this week on ZDNet.com, Dion Hinchcliffe provides a nice overview of Big Data. There's also a nice graphic included with the article, which gives a pretty good visual breakdown of where all the pieces you've heard about (Hadoop, etc) fit in.

Here's the link:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hinchcliffe/the-enterprise-opportunity-of-big-data-closing-the-clue-gap/1648

How different are Google and Bing?

Nice comparison of Google and Bing in the New York Times this past week:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/30/technology/bing-versus-google.html

Big Data as Engine of Innovation?

An article in the New York Times this week talks about how Big Data will drive innovation in the next few years, likening its effect to the impact of computers on business over the last few decades, or even the effect of coal on the early industrial economy:

"Data is a vital raw material of the information economy, much as coal and iron ore were in the Industrial Revolution," the article proclaims. "But the business world is just beginning to learn how to process it all."

Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/technology/13data.html

Is Delicious the Next Discovery Engine?

This article in Search Engine Watch notes that Delicious (www.delicious.com), which was recently purchased from Yahoo by the co-founders of YouTube, has the potential to be a next generation search engine. Why? Because we are more likely to look at content that has been pre-filtered and flagged by our friends, family, and colleagues. For example as a software engineer I may be looking for information about a new feature the Java programming language. If I search the term in delicious, I will find many links that have been tagged with that term.

Here's the link:

Is Delicious the Next Discovery Engine?