Author: Librarian, Cybrarian Appreciation is 'Overdue'

"Johnson is the author of the new This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (Harper, 272 pp., $24.99), a humorous, unabashed love letter to the men and women who used to toil quietly in stacks but now circulate in cyberspace."

ARL Panel: Open Access to Research Inevitable

"Public access to research is 'inevitable,' but it will be a slog to get to it. That was the takeaway message of a panel on the role libraries can play in supporting current and future public-access moves. The panel was part of the program at the membership meeting of the Association of Research Libraries, held here yesterday and today."

AT&T Faster Than Verizon, Sprint in 3G Wireless Performance Test

"AT&T was the top performer in 13-city 3G wireless speed tests conducted by PCWorld. The network recorded download speeds that were 67 % faster on average than rivals Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon."

Poor But Networked: U.N. Says Cellphone Use Surging

"More than half of the people in the developing world are now cellphone subscribers, a U.N. report said Tuesday, highlighting strong global growth in telecommunications."

More Than 1.2 Billion Cellphones Sold in 2009

"Worldwide phone sales were flat in 2009, but the fourth quarter showed an 8% bump in sales, says market research firm Gartner. Some 1.21 billion phones sold in 2009."

Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally

"In a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks, Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes."

New Type of Computer Virus

"A new type of computer virus is known to have breached almost 75,000 computers in 2,500 organizations around the world, including user accounts of popular social network websites, according Internet security firm NetWitness."

Number of Cell Phones Worldwide Hits 4.6B

"The number of mobile phone subscriptions worldwide has reached 4.6 billion and is expected to increase to five billion this year, the U.N. telecommunications agency said Monday."

New Data: 40 Percent in US Lack Home Broadband

"Roughly 40 percent of Americans do not have high-speed Internet access at home, according to new Commerce Department figures that underscore the challenges facing policymakers who are trying to bring affordable broadband connections to everyone."

Google Buzz Fuels Rising Privacy, Security Concerns

"Despite two rounds of privacy-setting revisions, Google Buzz continues to come under widening criticism by privacy advocates and cybersecurity experts."

After Frustrations in Second Life, Colleges Look to New Virtual Worlds

"Some colleges that have built virtual classrooms in Second Life—the online environment where people walk around as avatars in a cartoonlike world—have started looking for an exit strategy."

Money Magazine: How the E-Readers Stack Up

"Which of the three is most deserving of your dough? Money tested them to help you pick one you won't be able to put down."

Sweden Beats U.S. to Top Tech Usage Ranking

"Sweden took the number one spot from the United States to top the annual rankings on the usage of telecommunications technologies such as networks, cellphones and computers, a report released on Thursday shows."

Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year over Year

"According to The Nielsen Company, global consumers spent more than 5.5 hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82 percent increase from the same time in 2008 when users were spending just over three hours on social networking sites."

Google's Gmail to Try to Challenge Facebook

"The search giant is upgrading its Gmail program to add social-media tools similar to those found on Facebook. Google will incorporate photo and video sharing within the Gmail application, along with a new tool for status updates."

Google to Build Ultra-Fast Broadband Networks

"Google plans to build experimental, ultra-fast Internet networks in a handful of communities across the U.S. to ensure that tomorrow's systems can keep up with online video and other advanced applications that the search company will want to deliver.."

Ten Sages Read the Future of Print

"What becomes of the printed word? What's the fate of companies that produce periodicals and books? Here's what 10 media and tech luminaries think."

Will You Be E-Mailing This Article?

"Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles, checking it every 15 minutes for more than six months, analyzing the content of thousands of articles and controlling for factors like the placement in the paper or on the Web home page. The results are surprising..."

E-Library Economics

"New research indicates that e-book oriented libraries could save colleges a bundle, but academics may have a hard time letting go of the stacks."

New Web Site Lists Free Online Textbooks

"A new Web site, Open Educational Resources Center for California, brings together information on free and open textbooks and course materials in one location. Though the Web site was designed for California's community-college faculty members, it could be a useful resource for anyone trying to find learning materials in the public domain."

The Web site address is Open Education Resources Center for California.

New Web Site Lists Free Online Textbooks

"More than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library's
collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from
this spring."

Consumers Spending More on Digital Data

"U.S. consumers are spending increasing amounts staying connected to the digital world through phone, computer and game platforms, the government said."

5 Sites That Are Better Than Google

"Actually, there are more viable Google alternatives than ever. For the most part, they don't compete by trying to out-Google Google at basic Web searching. Instead, they do useful things that Google doesn't."

Justice Dept. Criticizes Latest Google Book Deal

"In another blow to Google's plan to create a giant digital library and bookstore, the Justice Department on Thursday said that a class-action settlement between the company and groups representing authors and publishers had significant legal problems, even after recent revisions."

Jaron Lanier on the Limits of Web 2.0, Intellectual Property...

Interview with Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.

ScrollMotion to Develop iPad E-Books for Major Publishers

"Software developer ScrollMotion announced this week that it will make textbooks compatible with the new Apple iPad for four major publishers: McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson, and Kaplan Publishing. The e-books, in addition to providing the original content of textbooks, will allow users to highlight text in multiple colors, take audio and printed notes, search content in different ways, take quizzes, and watch videos."

Amazon, Google Prepare iPad Competitors

"Amazon isn't the only one to be cooking up a competitor to the iPad, though. Google, which already mounted an impressive campaign against Apple in the mobile phone arena, is now looking to take out the iPad early with superior tablets powered by Google's new Chrome OS."

Facebook Viewed as Riskiest Social Network by Companies

"Seventy percent more companies reported spam and malicious infections arrived via social networks in 2009 vs. 2008. By the end of last year, 72% of companies expressed concern that their employees' use of popular social sites could result in a security breach. And 60% of companies now consider Facebook to be the riskiest social network out there."

Blogging is for Old People, Pew Report Finds

"Teenagers and young adults spent less time blogging during the past three years as social networks like Facebook became more popular, according to a Pew Research Center study released Wednesday."

Study Links Excessive Internet Use to Depression

"People who spend a lot of time surfing the internet are more likely to show signs of depression, British scientists said on Wednesday."

Free Online Courses Don't Hurt Paid Enrollment

"New research takes a close look at what happened when one institution, Brigham Young University, experimented with granting free access to the content of some of its distance-education courses. The study examined the cost of opening up those materials and the impact their publication had on paid enrollments, a concern for institutions worried that giving away free courses could cannibalize their ranks of paying students."

Study: 73% Use Bank Password Everywhere

"A new study by security firm Trusteer found that 73 percent of Web users take their online banking password and use it at other Web sites. And about half of all consumers utilize the same password and user name at online banking sites and other sites."

IE8, Chrome Have Most Momentum in Browser Wars

"Chrome is on a roll. It's the fastest-growing browser in terms of market share we've seen in a long time. And its rapid growth corresponds with Internet Explorer's steady decline. Keeping that in mind though, data from last month shows that IE8 has managed to grab 25 percent of the browser market, beating all versions of Firefox to the punch."

Amazon Loss on E-Book Pricing Could Fuel Trend

"A pricing battle lost by Amazon.com Inc to a top publisher may herald pressure from other publishers, compromising low e-book prices which could potentially hit sales volume growth for its Kindle e-reader."