How to read books from your local library on your tablet
If you haven’t been inside your local library in the last ten years, you might be surprised how easy it is to check out ebooks.
How to move your music and photo libraries from one iOS device to another
Apple has done a pretty good job of getting your various media and photo libraries on to your iPod or iOS device. Getting them off is another matter entirely.
How to use your iPhone, iPad or Mac to borrow ebooks from the library
You don’t have to pay for ebooks on your mobile device or your Mac: your local library will lend you ebooks, digital magazine and audiobooks. Here’s a quick guide to getting set up.
Mendeley injects some pace into academia with fast, big data
London startup Mendeley is already beloved by researchers around the planet for helping them manage their work. Now it’s unveiled a new product that it hopes can help universities get a better handle on what’s happening right now. Goodbye slow, stuffy academia.
Today in Connected Consumer
While the battles over online movie and music piracy have grabbed headlines recently, the rapid evolution of the e-book business could soon provoke new fights over copyright in the digital age. Lending libraries, at least in the U.S., have long operated under the protection of the so-called first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows libraries, like anyone else, to loan out copies of books they have purchased without needing authorization from the copy right owner. As with all copyrighted material on digital platforms, however, e-books occupy murky ground with respect to the first-sale doctrine. Now, with different publishers trying to impose different rules on libraries for e-books, or refusing to sell e-books to libraries altogether, tensions are starting to come to a head. Meanwhile, new types of e-books, such as the active-content apps being introduced by Amazon.com for the Kindle, are likely to raise their own questions about ownership that the current law is ill-equipped to answer.
Ping Gets Better, But is it Enough?
Apple’s first update to version 10 of its media player software iTunes brings some great improvements for Ping. It shows that Cupertino actually cares about the success of the product, and that it’s interested in what users have to say about its services.
AirPlay: Like AirTunes, Only More So
AirPlay was one of the most nebulous topics up for discussion at today’s special press event regarding iOS, iPods, iTunes and Apple TV. In many ways, it’s something we already know a lot about, since it’s the successor to AirTunes. In others, it’s a mystery.
Web Working In the Library, the Pros and Cons
Usually, when I want to get out of the house for a change of scenery, I head to Cafe Kuvuka, a local coffee shop just at the end of my street, but yesterday afternoon I fancied working somewhere new. I haven’t worked in a library since finishing my degree years ago, so decided it was time to give my local library, the Bristol Central Library, a try, and thought it was worth sharing my thoughts on the experience here.
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TuneUp Update Brings New Features for Obsessive-Compulsive iTunes Users
iTunes cleanup software TuneUp has been undergoing some exciting changes. Last week, TuneUp launched a new UI, and today the company is announcing the availability of the software at Apple (s aapl) Store retail locations in the U.S. Over 250 Apple Stores will now offer a retail-packaged version of TuneUp for $29.95.
I had a chance to review the newest version, but first let’s see what’s new:
- Field-specific cleaning: TuneUp will now allow users to set which metadata it saves by default. This is also available on a per-album basis, which is great for mixtapes where you want to save artist/track name, but keep the original album title.
- A greatest hits toggle: TuneUp will allow users to avoid compilations when matching songs to albums. This feature makes it easier for users to keep songs organized by the album on which they originally appear.
- Playlists on Mac: Mac users can now choose whether they’d like TuneUp to create playlists of dirty/cleaned songs.
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Simplify Music 2.0 Does What iTunes and iPhone Should Do Natively
Around when I first got my iPhone, I used to use Simplify Media to really wow anyone who cared to listen to me gloat about my new toy. The app, if you’ve never heard of it, allows you to stream your home iTunes library from any computer with the desktop client installed directly to your iPhone. You can browse your library and change tracks, all remotely. Very handy if you have a 40GB library, but only 8 to 16GB of storage on your iPhone.
I stopped using it shortly after, because I missed a lot of the features from the iPhone’s built-in iPod app, especially playlists. Simplify Music 2.0 is a completely different app, and while the new features probably could’ve been introduced via an update to Simplify Media (which many downloaded as a free release when it originally came out), they are significant enough to justify the $3 (on sale, $6 starting May 14) purchase price. Read More about Simplify Music 2.0 Does What iTunes and iPhone Should Do Natively