Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Pottermore Is the Ebook's Beatles on iTunes Moment [Video]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5814906/pottermore-is-the-ebooks-beatles-on-itunes-moment

Well, that rumor about Pottermore being a smartphone was completely wrong. But that's okay, because that was an idiotic prospect, and the truth is more interesting: Harry Potter will sell as ebooks for the first time ever. And that's huge.

The Harry Potter print saga's sold more than 400 million copies across the world. That's an incredible number of books, but an incredible number of books that've only been sprayed onto tree carcasses—J.K. Rawling's mint hasn't gone digital until the debut of Pottermore.

Harry Potter doesn't need your iPad to be legitimate. Its sales numbers and (hordes of crazed fans) speak for themselves.

Ebooks don't need Harry Potter to be legitimate. Kindle and iPad numbers (and hordes of crazed users) speak for themselves.

But the union of these two, with Pottermore not only offering e-Harry, but being the only place on the internet to get it (though no word on formats), might turn the format into a media event.

Remember when The Beatles finally brought their mops over to iTunes? The fact that I say finally says it all. Their catalog, despite being almost half a century old, was a big deal again. This was music that almost anyone with even the slightest bit of interest in the group had purchased or stolen years ago, and yet, the iTunes debut made headlines. Our headlines! Not so much for the music, but for what it meant: a legendary, and legendarily stubborn artistic entity caved. Fine, this computer music thing is for real. It was a mainstream zenith.

So too with Rawling. She could live in her golden palace paid for by the joyful screams of tweens and adults for the rest of her years without selling a sidewalk hot dog, let alone a fleet of ebooks—and yet she's digitizing Potter. Putting the series online and onto our tablets and Kindles and Nooks and all the rest indicate a big-time cultural hegemony for the ebook realm—We've got Harry Potter, it can scoff at skeptics. And there's no retort against that.

LulzSec Leaks Hundreds of Classified Arizona Police Documents in Attack Against Border Patrol [Hackers]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5815031/lulzsec-dumps-classified-arizona-police-documents

Lashing out against the "racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona," LulzSec has released their newest data dump: "hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement."

The release, entitled "Chinga La Migra" (Fuck the Border Patrol) is the first time LulzSec's purported to release personal information of government agents, rather than just disrupting their websites (see: CIA, US Senate). This is a powerful move. Home addresses are home addresses—about as personal as personal data gets. LulzSec's also clearly placed a political motive behind this thrust, as opposed to the HACK HACK LMAO ethos we've seen before.

And LulzSec says this is just the start:

Every week we plan on releasing more classified documents and embarassing [sic] personal details of military and law enforcement in an effort not just to reveal
their racist and corrupt nature but to purposefully sabotage their efforts to terrorize communities fighting an unjust "war on drugs".

A politically radicalized LulzSec is a big step away from the crew that was pissed off about videogames. [LulzSecurity]

Prototype dual-screened 2-in-1 Android smartpad from Imerj preview

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/23/prototype-dual-screened-2-in-1-android-smartpad-from-imerj-previ/

From the front it looks like yet another plain smartphone -- dark, nondescript, and maybe a little like an iPhone 4 that's had its right-most extent sliced off. Pick it up, though, and you realize this little thing isn't so nondescript. In fact, it feels oddly substantial, with a strange bevel cutting around the edge and a curious amount of heft. And then you flip it open. Suddenly it's a little tablet, two screens forming one 6-inch slate bisected by a few millimeters of bezel.

Shades of the Echo? Sure, but this is actually a very different device to hold, and a very different device to use. The software customizations built over Android 2.3, the bezel gestures, the proper multitasking, all make this into a unique device that feels incredibly familiar yet altogether different. It's a prototype device from Imerj and Frog (formerly known as Frog Design) something that's months away from production and hasn't even been blessed with a model designation more specific than "2-in-1 smartpad." So, is this poncho-clad Phone with No Name a legitimate threat to the established families of devices that own our little wireless San Miguel? Or, will it ride straight off into a sunset of obscurity when it launches? Read on to find out.

Gallery: 2-in-1 smartpad prototype from Imerj and Frog Design

Continue reading Prototype dual-screened 2-in-1 Android smartpad from Imerj preview

Prototype dual-screened 2-in-1 Android smartpad from Imerj preview originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google code reveals inner Circles, a social secret weapon?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/23/google-code-reveals-inner-circles-a-social-secret-weapon/

Nothing livens the day like a blurry screen grab of some Javascript, especially when it hints at the ghostly form of a social networking tool that doesn't officially exist. The code was spotted hiding in plain sight at Google Profiles by Austrian blogger Florian Rohrweck, who fortunately enjoys browsing computer-speak more than playing in the park. Rohrweck noticed the word "circles" used repeatedly in the context of people adding and maintaining groups of contacts, and made the connection to the Google Circles social networking platform that was feverishly rumored and then vehemently denied earlier this year (a saga fully recapped at the More Coverage link). It's impossible to know whether these few lines of code represent a forthcoming service, another social layer on top of existing services, or just pure experimentation on the part of Google devs. In any case, the circular references have apparently now been zapped, leaving us with nothing more than that screen grab -- oh yeah, and Facebook.

Google code reveals inner Circles, a social secret weapon? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 11:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Archos intros 80 G9 and 101 G9 Android 3.1 tablets: 1.5GHz CPU, 250GB HDD, 3G-ready

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/23/archos-intros-80-gb-and-101-g9-android-3-1-tablets-1-5ghz-cpu/

Angling for a new Android 3.1 tablet, are ya? If so, Archos has a new pair emerging from Paris today, the 80 G9 and 101 G9. Predictably, the biggest differentiator between the two is the screen size, with the former offering an 8-inch panel with a 1024 x 768 screen resolution and the latter stepping up to a 10.1-incher (1280 x 800). Both of 'em are proudly using Seagate's 7mm Momentus Thin in order to scale to 250GB, but of course, only time will tell how a power-hungry HDD will do in tablet form factor.

Under the hood, you'll find a dual-core OMAP 4 processor (1.5GHz ARM Cortex A9), support for Flash, access to the Android Market and a full-size USB port -- one that's good for accepting the outfit's new G9 3G WWAN stick ($49). You'll also get an HDMI output, support for 1080p playback and a pay-as-you-go option with the aforesaid 3G dongle. The duo is scheduled to go on sale at the end of September (you know, just a month or two before Ice Cream Sandwich makes Honeycomb look like old hat), with the 80 G9 going for $279 and the 101 G9 for $349. Don't ever say Archos' accountants didn't look out for you.

Gallery: Archos 80 G9 and Archos 101 G9 press images