Google makes thousands of classics available for downloading - The Boston Globe

From the Business Section of the Boston Globe -

Just in time for the start of a new school year, the popular Google search service is making available thousands of classic books free. For now, the Google Book Search service offers full downloads only of "public domain" books, whose copyrights have expired. These include many of the most famous titles of all time, such as the writings of Dickens, Shakespeare, and Dante.

It's the latest milestone in Google's campaign to do for books what it has done for
websites. "Our goal is to create a comprehensive, full-text index of all the world's books," said Google Book Search group business product manager Adam Smith.

Discussion about the Google Book Search project has taken place [on and off] on various listservs and at professional get togethers and till now the general consensus has been "well ... that's nice - but it doesn't do much for us." Because, you see, the Google project creates digital books that are inaccessible for our needs. They are locked-formated and cannot be run through OCR or read by a Text-to-Speech program. The on-line library being created by Google was akin to the "look inside" samples one finds on the Amazon.com catalog. You could see more then just a few pages, but they were only available on-line with no downloading or other hanky-panky allowed. many were missing key passages and pages in order to comply with "fair use" doctrine that doesn't actually say how much of a given work is 'fair' to 'use' but merely stipulates that as long is it ain't the whole kit-n-kaboodle you can get away with it.

But now it appears that Google has found it's booksharing backbone -- sorta. They have decided to offer downloadable PDF versions of out-of-copyright public domain (orphan?) works. Interesting, but nothing earth shattering to folks who have come to rely for years upon good ol' Gutenbgrg.net for the occasional title. Andthe best part - Gutenberg is years ahead of Google in having available clean versions that do need to be futzed with in order to prep them for further processing.

Anyway - getting back to the texts available as complete PDF's, I semi-randomly chose "Flatland" from the 'download the classics' post at the GoogleBlog. Downloaded it and ran it through Abby FineReader (v.8). The output is just as good as any other PDF we have run through OCR. Google has stamped each page with "Scanned by Google" which we would likely keep on the pages and convert to page number tags in the DAISY production process. Just when I was weighing the odds of the liklihood we would need to actually access any of the books Google has available, one of my student staff walked into the alt-media lab, saw what I was doing and said, "Yuck! I had to read that book for a math class and hated it!". This, of course, led to a discussion of what it was about, which led to a discussion of mid-19th cen. literature, which led to a discussion of the less well known works of Rousseau and from there onto the novel-before-movie version of The Princess Bride. But around here -- pretty much every discussion leads to TPB ... huuuum ... funny that.

Well --- it looks like the Google Book Search and ones we can download for free is going to become part of my usual search for materials ritual.

The Macs They Is A-Commin!

Just got word from PCSC [that's the Personal Computer Support Center here at BU - home of the undergraduate UberGeeks] that they expect to see a massive influx of Macs on campus this Fall - backed up by University Computers citing that some 40% of sales to incoming freshmen are Macs. A closer look at the eMail makes me wonder how I got on this distribution list as it is from PCSC HQ to "Campus Computing Departments". Could it be that someone around here has finally figured out what is taking over my job like kudzu on a barn! Huummm - this place does work in mysterious ways at times.

Anyway - what used to fill me with anxiety now only fills me with trepidation. I assume all of these new units will be Dual-Core BootCamp-able and therefore if a student comes to me with expectations of getting their books into alt-media I will have a suggestion for them other than "trade that thing in for a PC".

BTW - if anyone reading this happens to be a BU student looking for a semester job - drop me a line at access@bu.edu because I am hiring for DAISY Production Staff:

• Title: E-Text Production Specialist
• Location: On-Campus, Office of Disability Services
• Description: Convert textbooks and other materials into alternate formats & produce electronic textbooks and digital materials for BU students with various disabilities and print impairments.
• Requirements: Experience with Web development and/or copy editing with MS-Word. Experience working in the Windows XP environment. Knowledge of access technologies and alternate media appreciated but not required. Dependability a must! Training provided.
• Pay: Starting at $10.00 per hour

When good demos go (very, very) bad

Normally this is not the sort of item I would post on the blog, but the specifics of this situation are both humorous and telling. Most of us have had things go kadawhompus during a demo or a training - enough so that after we laugh heartily at this screwup we can also feel pangs of sympathy for the fine people of Microsoft. Admit it -- this is funny:

At Microsoft’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting [last month], Vista product manager Shanen Boettcher set out to show just how easy to use the speech recognition technology built into upcoming Windows Vista software will be. Like, for example, dictating aloud a simple, heartfelt letter to mom, and having one’s voice automatically transcribed into a computer. The result was a disaster. Several tries at making the computer understand the simple salutation “Dear Mom” was read by Microsoft software as “Dear Aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all.”

A & E's Designing Blind -- is this for real?

Yes -- it is for real.

"On DESIGNING BLIND, A&E Network's new home-makeover-series-with-a-twist, couples relinquish control to acclaimed designer Eric Brun-Sanglard, known for his breathtaking renovations of prime properties in Los Angeles. Added to the precarious but always entertaining process of seeing a space transformed amidst the owners' reactions to each other's strong and sometimes opposing tastes is one additional condition that the homeowners must accept - Eric B. is blind."

OS-Leopard Shows Its (Beta) Spots

Apple introduced the latest incarnation of software at the annual developers meeting last week - OS-X/Leopard - and as much as they poke fun at Microsoft for 'borrowing' from Apple, the reverse is also true as a number of new features in the Mac OS seem to have stemmed from Windows. I'd bore you (dear reader) with my banter on details, but Paul Thurrott does a much better job than I could in an article on his "SuperSite for Windows".

In terms of accessibility, Apple is trying to pull even with Windows but they have a long way to go. It's not that Mac OS will not be better than the native Windows acces options - in fact if Leopard does as it promises it will be better - it remains to be seen what after-market applications will be availble. Windows strength in the accessibility arena does not lie with windows but rather with companies that produce software (and hardware) designed to work in the Windows environment. I won't be impressed until Freedom Scientific releases a version of JAWS for the Mac that allows a user to make a seamless transition to an Apple machine.

BootCamp Continues

Alt-Media listserv member Wayne Chenoweth recently tested a BootCamped iMac with these 4 applications:

• JAWS v.7
• ZoomText v.9
• Dragon Pro v.8
• Kurzweil 3000 v.9

To his surprise, JAWS installed and ran fine. However, it could not find the server for the network license. Wayne guesses this may be an artifict of the test environment in the tech lab. ZoomText had a similar problem until he used the right account, but it also ran fine - even the voices. K3000 had no problems with the read version but he has not yet tested the scan version. He suspects there will be problems with the scanning feature but won't know for sure until he does some trials. Dragon Professional would not install because it wanted a 40 GB partition to install to and Wayne had only created a small test partition. He guesses there are/will be swap file issues there.

On another Mac laptop he tried Parallels, a product that allows simultaneous Windows on a Mac. According to Wayne, "the JAWS install hosed the Windows install completely just like it does sometimes on real Win boxes. Probably the video driver. Watch out for that one."

Wayne's impression of the beta is that this is not an enterprise solution at this time, but more of a toy, or for very limited use of Windows standard apps. Also to note is that BootCamp is a beta expires with no upgrade path. Users will eventually be able to buy OS-X Leopard for the real thing and start all over again. I'm waiting to see what the real product has to offer before going any further with it .

In my trials, I ran into the same problem with Dragon – I partitioned the drive to give Windows 20 GB (about a third of the total available) and figured that would be enough for what I am trying to do. I never before realized how much space Dragon demands. The others I have tried (ZT, JAWS, OpenBook) all worked fine in short trials but I am concerned about long term use in the BootCamp environment. I have been unable to register my copy of Windows because it is a Dell install disk. It is set to expire in 24 ...23 ...22 days and counting. Whe it does I will wipe the machine clean and repartition with enough space for Dragon. In the meantime I will continue my testing with Dolphin EasePublisher.

The website and instructions do warn that doing this to the Mac is not meant to replace the Mac apps or turn your PowerBook into a PC but is designed rather to ease Windows users into the Mac world and to run a couple of programs that are unavailable as Mac apps. On another note - a USB mouse in the Windows environment works just fine and is much better than the touchpad alone.

Podcast of Note - "Fly With Me"

Taking a brief break from the Mac testing to introduce a podcast I discovered recently - Fly With Me produced by 'JoePodcaster' - a guy who is a pilot for a major U.S. air carrier. Normally I would not post about a non-access tech related podcast on this blog, but episode eleven (11) caught my ear enough that I just had to share. Here is the link to the mp3 download.

In episode eleven, Joe interviews a listener who has a bit of a technology/computer background with a dream of learning how to pilot a helicopter. What makes this relevant to ATHEN is that this gentleman is blind and during the interview they discuss the auditory and tactile side of aircraft controls.

I recommend the entire podcast - all 14 episodes and then some. I especially enjoyed episodes 8 and 8.5 "When Things Go Wrong" and episode 12 wih the real life "Snake on a Plane". Listen and enjoy.