The ebook scene is a different animal then the music scene.  Name an album and I can almost guarantee that you we'll be able to find an illicit copy of it somewhere.  Conversely name a book.  Let's say a current book on the Globe and Mail best seller list.  Now, I can almost guarantee you that you'll be hard pressed to find an illicit copy of that book somewhere. The genie is out of the bottle on the MP3 scene but content providers aren't letting the same thing happen with the EPUB scene.  Why?  DRM mostly but I'm also guessing other facts play a part: market fragmentation, pirates don't read, lack of a clear winner in the ebook file format wars... but I digress.

 This brief tutorial will show you how to add ebook content from your local public library to your Kobo ebook reader.  I wanted to show this for two reason:

1. I haven't seen this complete set of instructions anywhere else.
2. To illustrate how cumbersome the process is, thereby demonstrating how DRM is hindering the proliferation of ebooks.  (Imagine if mp3's were so locked down in 1999, no one would bother owning an iPod)

I'll be demonstrating with the St. Catharines Public Library Digtial Media Collection: http://overdrive.stcatharines.library.on.ca/.  This platform is based on the Overdrive Media system.  Since I just bought my Kobo, that'll be the ebook reader.

I waited and studied the market before I made the decision on the Kobo Ebook Reader.  Here is the short list of why I chose it:

• Price Point - at 150 CAD it is the best deal
• Supports ePub and PDF - All those Gutenberg books load up without a problem
• Come pre-packed with a bunch of out of copyright books (some that you'd actually read)

Much like many other sites my University has an iTunesU presence that hosts some media and interesting tidbits from events and classes here at Brock.  The only hitch (as the name implies) is that this nifty media collection is served up via iTunes.  Further to the application lock-in there is no easy way to authenticate to the service directly via iTunes, so in most cases any school that wishes to get their users into the service need to write up an authentication system and host it on local web-space. Once some local authentication is done you construct a POST to iTunes and if all goes well iTunes will shell open on the system you're on and you'll be recognized as a member of your institution.  This post is a look at one way to create this login.

I love it!  I didn't know you're allowed to actually put these kinds of signs up.

 I was alerted to something odd the other day.  I had a patron who was trying to view a PDF file in an Ebsco database and was having trouble with it.  As it turns out the problem was that inexplicably the file was being forced open through an embedded Adobe Acrobat viewer plugin.  Yup Adobe or nothing else, what was also 'paint you in a corner' about the situation was that no HTML version of the document was available.  Yuck, and here is why:

Oh Deal Extreme how I do admire thee. Now because of you, I'm only days away from gadgetry the likes of which I have never seen before.

 Whilst reading my favorite 'zine I came across a brief article entitled "The Voyager Library Information System".  Normally that wouldn't mean much but the zine was 2600 and it was the typical article that you find in 2600. (In other words an alarming discovery of the ILS system and the data that it contains).

April Fools 2010: The Definitive List - [Delicious]

Today is a really tough day to be online.  Every site you visit has plenty of April Fool's Day gags.  I almost tried to buy a Dharma Initiative Alarm clock.  I can't trust any items coming through my news feeds today.

About 50 on list and it's only 9:15 EST. Internet, you've taken it too far again.