Author John Green is an Internet sensation. He has millions of followers through various channels such as Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr. Green recently was named Indie Champion by the American Booksellers Association. The ABA published his acceptance speech on YouTube last week, which I spotted on the Huffington Post today. His speech may be not NSFW, but he gives a heartfelt rant about the power and necessity of tools of traditional publishing: “I am sometimes held up as an example of someone who is like changing the publishing paradigm or whatever because I have a lot of Tumblr followers or YouTube subscribers and I...

For anyone who hasn't yet had a chance to watch the video of Lisa Bu's beautiful TED Talks lecture about the power of books, and the life-altering affect they had on her own life, give yourself the gift of clicking on the video below; it's just six minutes and 17 seconds long. I don't know if any of you will feel the same way, but the next time I happen to find myself stuck in a reading rut, I plan to sit back and give this video another close look. (Lisa Bu, by the way, is TED's content distribution manager. Her...

In my grandfather's day, if you saw it on the front page of the newspaper, it must be true. My, how times have changed! A bizarre story is gripping my city this week, and nobody knows if it's true or if it isn't. The fact that somebody told it to somebody else is news enough! It's almost too bizarre to even begin explaining. Our mayor, Rob Ford, is, to put it in the kindest way, a character. His dislike for the Toronto Star, a major local paper, is legendary and well-established. Their dislike of him is as established. But when they...

Yes, this is a few months old, but nevertheless, a kindly tip o' the hat goes out to GadgeTell editor Matthew Marchesano, who just alerted me to the bizarre YouTube video we've embedded for you below. The video features Dmitry Golubovskiy (the CEO of Esquire Russia, interestingly enough) reciting the chemical name of Titin. Apparently, it's either the longest word in the English language or the longest world in any language; it's made up of a mind-bending 189,819 letters and takes 213 minutes to pronounce. As some YouTube commenters have pointed out, Golubovskiy begins the 3.5-hour-long video with a respectably clean-shaven look; by the video's end,...

It’s probably safe to say that we’ve all dealt with our fair share of ridiculousness, bestowed complimentary-style from our local Internet service providers. Hidden fees, promotions that are too good to be true, bad or weak Internet connections, frustrating customer service reps, forced up-selling, etc., etc., and the list goes on… A comedy troupe that makes short YouTube videos and refers to itself as Extremely Decent Films published the following video earlier in the week. Although it’s an obvious exaggeration of the truth, at the same time it really isn’t. What’s alarming, in fact, is just how much of the content in this video is real...

Techdirt has a great write-up about a British children's author, Terry Deary, who is on a misguided campaign against libraries. Deary believes libraries are giving away entertainment for free; he also believes they are severely damaging the book publishing industry. Techdirt's Tim Cushing argues that, notwithstanding some of the fallacies the author is operating under, in fact, many forms of entertainment these days are indeed given away for free. And of course, many others are paid for... I decided to have a quick think about the 'entertainment' we consume in my own household. How much of it do we pay for? How...

Good e-Reader ran an interesting post earlier today about Oklahoma’s Metropolitan Library System, which took the unprecedented step back in December 2012 of advertising its e-book lending services on broadcast television. According to the post, the 60-second spot was developed by the library system's own IT department. It ran for about two weeks on the area's Fox and CW affiliate stations, and for roughly a month on local cable channels. And as the library system's marketing director, Kim Terry, explained, "over 1,700 new customers began using our eMedia site since the commercial started running, which was a 22 percent increase over the previous month.” Perhaps not surprisingly,...

Those of you who've been closely following the e-book scene for years now will probably remember a certain YouTube video that went semi-viral two years ago, and which I've embedded below; it was titled, "Oregon Bus Driver Caught Reading Kindle While Driving." That title pretty much says it all, no? I only discovered this video myself a few weeks ago, and frankly, I still can't decide if the story is hilarious or horrifying. A little of both, I suppose. For those of you who didn't see the video when it was originally making the Internet rounds back in September 2010, the controversy at the...