3 Milions e-book from Google

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It's been six years since Google announced its plan to digitize vast collections of literary works and make them available to view online. Now the search giant has launched a new eBookstore in the U.S. where users are able to get hold of more than three million digital titles, including the latest best sellers, recommended reads and lots and lots of classics. Google eBooks are compatible with numerous Internet-enabled devices and can also be read online via a free browser-based portal.

Since Google Books first launched in 2004, over 15 million works have been made digital, not just in the U.S. and not just in English. The project to make the information stored in the world's books accessible and useful online has digitized titles from over 100 countries in more than 400 languages. All of these will continue to be available via the Google Books page but a link to the newly launched eBookstore now also features.

Any Google eBookstore purchases - or free to read content such as Great Expectations and Gulliver's Travels - are stored in the cloud, hidden away behind a free password-protected account with unlimited storage.

Google offers automatic device syncing of titles you're currently (digitally) thumbing through, so if you read a chapter on an e-Reader in the morning but decide to pick up the trail on your smartphone's Android app or the eBooks Web Reader on your laptop at work, then the system will know where you left off and deliver the content from there.

However much you get through on your laptop will also be stored and when you take your Apple iOS device to bed for a few pages before sleep, you'll be presented with the story from the point you left it. Of course, for this to work, all of those devices will need access to the Internet but that's not really much of an issue in our modern, connected world.

In addition to grabbing new digital books from the new eBookstore, users can also purchase titles from participating members of the American Booksellers Association and store them in the same virtual library, alongside those bought from Google.

Google eBooks are compatible with a host of digital devices, including Apple's iPad, Sony's e-Readers and the Nook from Barnes & Noble.

There is one device that is conspicuously absent from the list of supported devices - Amazon's Kindle. Google has stated that it is open to supporting the devices but Amazon looks to be taking another route.

In a slightly adversarial move, the company has announced Kindle for the Web that will allow users to read the full Kindle books within a browser. Like Google's eBooks, the new Kindle portal will also allow the synchronization of the library across different devices.

Interestingly, Amazon has also stated that "Bookstores, authors, retailers, bloggers and other website owners will be able to offer Kindle books from their own sites, let their readers start enjoying the full text of these books instantly, and earn affiliate fees for doing so."

Reference:
[1]http://www.gizmag.com/google-launches-3-million-title-ebookstore/17220/

user tracking protection tool in IE 9

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Hot on the heels of a call for a user-controlled tracking prevention mechanism from the FTC comes news that Microsoft is introducing a new privacy feature to the next version of its browser - Internet Explorer 9. The Tracking Protection tool is aimed at helping netizens take control of online tracking from within the browser.

When you visit a website, you may assume that any information about your visit that's collected and stored by the website owners stays with them - but that's not necessarily true. These days, what you see displayed in a browser window is likely to be a patchwork of content provided by numerous other websites across the web. Each of these Third Party sites gets access to some of the information about you that's gleaned from the browser when you access the page.

Some of the hundreds of different sites you might pass through in the course of the week will inevitably use content that originates from the same source. These common sources will be able to see where you have been during your virtual travels and could use this information to generate user profiles.

There are instances when tracking information can be put to good use, such as allowing a shopping site to record purchase information. What's needed is some sort of balance between preserving the ability to have online privacy and the marketing needs of industry.

Microsoft has started the ball rolling with the announcement that the next version of Internet Explorer will feature a mechanism that will allow users to have some control over which third-party site elements within a web page are allowed to collect data about the user and which are not.

The release candidate version of IE9 will include a new opt-in mechanism called Tracking Protection Lists that will allow users to create allow and block lists for Third Party website content, somewhat like the anti-spam black and white lists now operated by most email clients. A user will be able to tell the browser which websites they'd rather not exchange information with and the next time they visit a website containing content sourced from that website, it will be blocked.

The list will remain active until the user turns it off and there will be the facility to publish lists for others to install and use. Users will also be able to install or create more than one list. The feature is still in development and is expected to evolve over time in response to the ever changing privacy debate.

A more detailed introduction to the new feature appears on the IE blog.

Article Source:
http://www.gizmag.com/microsoft-tracking-protection-feature-headed-for-ie9/17231/

Splashtop instant-access OS enters public beta

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For those of us who virtually live online, waiting around those few precious minutes for the system to boot into Windows, connect to the Internet and then present the browser is time wasted. For the last few couple of years, more and more new Windows machines have come pre-loaded with something that boots straight into our beloved online world. Splashtop is a browser-based operating system companion that allows users to get online in seconds after pushing the power button on. Now it's being made available for public beta download.

Splashtop was introduced in 2007 and has since found itself being pre-installed on millions of laptops and netbooks from companies like Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and LG. It's a lightweight, web-centric operating system optimized for notebooks and netbooks that takes less than five seconds to load in and get users online.

Read More:
[1] http://www.gizmag.com/splashtop-os-now-available-for-beta-download/17159/