Andy Rooney on e-books

In 2007 Andy Rooney did a segment on 60 Minutes on his visit to the New York Antiquarian Book Fair. In it he reminded us that books are one of the greatest inventions of all time.Now, nearly 4 years later, Rooney weighs in on e-books and e-readers and as you might expect he isn't too impressed."I'm not interested in having my books on an electronic device. I want them in books. I want my words in books" says Rooney.Full text of segment hereAnd for those in the New York area the 2011 book fair is currently under way.

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Text-Off

The folks at the app judgement show on the Revision3 network hold a text-off.The rules: Who can type the sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" the fastest on their mobile device.It begins with the first mobile typing device, a typewriter!A few info nuggets:"Words Per Minute" is generally the standard used to measure the speed at which someone types and according to a study quoted by Wikipedia, the "average" typing speed for the average "fast", "moderate", and "slow" typists is 40, 35, and 23 words per minute respectively.Also according to Wikipedia, the average professional typist reaches 50...

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Side Table with Book Slant

Here's a blast from the past - this gem made its way around the design blogosphere in July 2009.The Lectus Pile of Books end table by Josefin Hellstrom-Olsson25.59" tall x 17.72" wide and retails for around $800.Should be available from Personal Interior Design once they get their website up and running again.h/t booklicious

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AbeBooks E-mail Database Hacked

 This email was recently sent by AbeBooks to its customers informing them that their email database had been breached:Epsilon Informs AbeBooks of E-mail Database BreachWe have been informed by Epsilon, a third-party vendor we use to send e-mails, that an unauthorized person outside their company accessed files that included e-mail addresses of some AbeBooks customers. Epsilon has advised us that the files that were accessed did not include any customer information other than email addresses. As a reminder, AbeBooks will never ask customers for personal or account information in an e-mail. Please exercise caution if you get any emails that...

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