Nick Newcomen really likes Ayn Rand. He believes that if "more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better place - freer, more prosperous and we would have a more optimistic view of the future."So what did he do to let the world know?He drove 12,238 miles, across 30 states, using a GPS logger (Qstarz BT-Q1000X) to "ink" the message. He began his trip in Marshall, Texas, and he turned on the device when he wanted to write a letter and turned off the device between letters. The recorded GPS...
Is the Rare Book World Ready For a Fully Interactive Catalog on CD? Part Two
Yesterday, I discussed the severe limitations of digital catalogs as PDF files integrating Flash animation. What might a fully interactive digital rare book catalog look like?Insert a new model digital catalog CD into your lap or desktop machine, click on the icon and open it. First thing you’ll notice is that it is full-screen with no wasted real estate surrounding it, content sized to a screen, not shoe-horned to fit onto a standard-sized 8 x 11 leaf of paper. You can read the text without need to zoom in.Click the mouse to move pages forward or backward. Click fast or...
Is the Rare Book World Ready For a Fully Interactive Digital Catalog?
Early last year I received a rare book catalog on a CD. I thought: This is it, someone has finally taken full advantage of the technical and design possibilities, broken with the past and stepped into the future.Alas, it was the dealer’s print catalog mounted as a PDF. PDF files are monstrously heavy to send via email attachment and can take time to download. Hence, its snail-mail delivery on disk.Last week, one our colleagues in the trade, Chris Lowenstein of Book Hunter’s Holiday, issued her first print catalog. It is a handsome, lovingly produced and designed work, and everyone who...
Thomas Edison’s Kindle-iPad Combo
Thomas Edison, beyond his inventions, was the Steve Jobs of his time. He developed innovative consumer applications from contemporary technology and materials and was a master at marketing them. People marveled at his wonders that made day-to-day living easier and more convenient, and hung on every word he had to say about technology and great, game-changing gadgets newly arrived and to come from his factories.Forget the Kindle or Apple's new iPad. The "e" in ebook stands for Edison.In the February 1911 issue of The Cosmopolitan (yes, that Cosmopolitan - long before it was Helen Gurley-Brown'ed into Cosmo) the Wizard of...