Followers of the TeleBlog know we're paying close attention to the music business to see what it could portend for books. To Music Marketers, Oldies Are Goldies, a recent Washington Post article, brings to mind one possibility. The big studios are unabashedly going after the aging boomers--via oldies such as Rod Stewart's--after having gotten the message that Gen X and below would rather get material online for free. As the music conglomerates see it, the gray hairs are more likely than their sons and daughters to, gasp, pay for physical objects. Does this mean that eventually the book...

"Senator Ron Wyden is getting ready to introduce a compromise copyright bill that doesn't seem like much of a 'compromise,' as it's really a consumer protection bill in disguise (not that that's a bad thing...). This bill would require consumer electronics, technology products, and media products to come with labels explaining their anti-copying technologies." - A few more details at TechDirt. Also see a CNET article.The TeleRead take: Let's hope the copyright mess gets straightened out in a helpful way, even though, like TechDirt, I doubt that the music biz will appreciate the Wyden bill. Meanwhile the fossils in...

TeleRead, alas, isn't here yet to help narrow the digital divide between rich and poor, and meanwhile we're sorry to hear that Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to kill off the state's $1.5-billion Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund. Check out a news story in the Austin American Statesman, dated Feb. 18, with a link I've added below:"David Disko's workday is supposed to end at 4:30 p.m., but he usually stays late because students at Del Valle Junior High are hungry for more time on the computers. "Every day after school, the computer lab teacher and more than a dozen students tackle...

Is the time nearing for a massive, librarian-run search engine without commercial ties? Overture's buyout of AltaVista may greatly increase the need for such an arrangement. In the New York Times today, Ted Meisel, Overture CEO, said that in the future AltaVista will charge Web sites extra for indexing page other than the home page. Stinkin' idea if applied to any site, and especially horrid if it applies to noncommercial ones. Let's hope that the Googlers and others are clueful enough to know that this kind of greed is not good. In full, here's the relevant paragraph in the...

On the Horn of Africa, east of Ethiopia and Sudan, sits the nation of Eritrea with 3.5 million people in nine ethnic groups. Just the kind of place where a TeleRead-style national digital library system could eventually thrive, given the rural nature of the country and the need to spread books around inexpensively to different cultures. Today we were delighted to learn that tFanus, an Eritrean Internet company, had placed TeleRead on a list of the most interesting computer-related sites--right behind TechWeb and PCWorld.com. ...

About new media monopolies....Er, we'd better be especially nice to Google now that those folks are buying Blogger, whose publishing system powers the TeleBlog. Already, as noted in a Feb. 17 Wired News article, some people are wondering whether Google in the future will treat all blogging systems alike.The TeleRead take: This is yet another argument for a well-stocked national digital library system, so that the public and content creators would not be so dependent on the whims of the big boys. Nothing against Google, by the way. It's near the top of the list of our favorite Net...

"In the strongest signal to date of its commitment to preserving the nation's digital legacy, Congress has set aside $100 million for the Library of Congress to carry out a plan for collecting and preserving digital information, including images, CD's, Web pages and electronic journals." - New York Times, Feb. 15.The TeleRead take: So what about modern books? The Times article correctly notes: "The library has digitized some of its physical collection, including items like Civil War photographs and presidential papers. But it is lagging in the task of archiving electronica: scholarly journals, books and magazines that are 'born...

One of the arguments against a TeleRead-style national digital library system is the potential for privacy violations. We've addressed this by suggesting that tracking of intellectual property use--for the purpose of compensating content providers--could be done through technologies similar to those envisioned for anonymous digital cash. Meanwhile, it looks as if existing Web services are far, far less vigilant. Check out Google as Big Brother in GoogleWatch: A look at how Google's monopoly, algorithms, and privacy policies are undermining the Web.Google is one of our favorite search engines and is the ultimate deathblow to the old argument that one...

Handhelds.org promotes "the creation of open source software for use on handheld and wearable computers" and offers some interesting how-tos such as How to Run Linux on iPAQ Handhelds.Meanwhle Motoroa has unveiled a new Linux-based handheld/phone.Earlier in this blog, James Linden, TeleRead's CTO, discussed the idea of a tablet-style Linux portable optimized for education....

Aggressively enforced copyright monpologies will stifle innovation (.pdf file). That's among the arguments of two economists.David Levine of UCLA and Michele Boldrin of the University of Minnesota invoke a fascinating parallel from the steam-engine era. The reader can immediately apply it to the pay-per-read lobby here in the States and elsewhere.Of James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, Levine and Boldrin write: "Watt is is a clever inventor, who, after getting one step ahead of the pack, remains ahead not by superior innovation, but by clever exploitation of the legal system. The fact that his business partner is a...

As valuable as tech can be, should President Bush's brother really be warring against the old-fashioned Florida state library, as reported in The Shifted Librarian? Check out an editorial from the St. Petersburg Times.Meanwhile be assured that contrary to surface impressions, this is not a Florida-only blog, especially with TeleRead originating from the Washington, DC, area. Just looks as if Florida's where the action is right now....

So what should the tablets computers be like for schoolchildren in Florida? James Linden, TeleRead's chief technical officer, shared his thoughts, which we've paraphrased here. I've just read the essay below and I'm excited over the possibility of tablet computers for Florida schoolchildren and others. But how could we drive the costs down, perhaps to less than $400 within a year or two? Mass purchases by Florida--maybe through a consortium with other states--could help. So could the use of the Linux operating system. The application programs, the word processor, spreadsheet and the rest, would have to work together...