With less than two weeks remaining until a key deadline in the Google Books settlement, Google's opposition is circling the wagons.
The Open Book Alliance, a consortium that includes nonprofit author groups, library institutions, and Google rivals Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo, launched Wednesday to "insist that any mass book digitization and distribution effort be open and competitive." As reported last week by the Wall Street Journal, the group will be led by Peter Brantley of Internet Archive and veteran antitrust lawyer Gary Reback of Carr & Ferrell.
Google's proposed settlement with book rights holders last October gave it the sole legal authority to scan and distribute digital books that are still in copyright but out of print, and library groups and privacy activists have been up in arms ever since.
Some object to the unchecked publishing power granted to a single corporation, some are concerned that rights holders are not getting a fair shake under the deal, and some just don't like Google. On the other hand, there are some rights holders who are excited by the idea of gaining recognition and perhaps revenue for books long out of print.
Book rights holders have until next Friday, September 4, to decide if they want to opt out of the proposed settlement and prevent their books from being displayed in Google Book Search. The U.S. Department of Justice is also looking into the Google Books settlement to determine if "anticompetitive practices" were used in the formulation of the settlement.
That's perhaps where Reback comes in. Reback was instrumental in the DOJ's prosecution of Microsoft in the 1990s, and also attempted to argue an antitrust case by representing Peoplesoft against an eventually successful takeover bid from Oracle. He did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the Open Book Alliance.
Iterasi is a new bookmarking tool previewing today at DEMO. I got a demo of the service in action a few weeks back, and am looking forward to getting my hands on it for a review when the beta begins within the next month. The basic premise of Iterasi is that you can save any page you're looking at for later. It's almost like a screenshot, except that it preserves links, formatting, and any content that was on the page when you were viewing it at that moment. The end result is a bookmark that you can share with others that retains what the page looked like at that point in time. The creators tell me this is especially handy if you want to show someone a page that's behind a security login or on a local intranet.
To begin saving bookmarks on Iterasi, users need to install a small browser plug-in that will let them "notarize" any page they're on for later retrieval. I told the creators the notarize moniker reminded me of getting legal documents signed, but they think it will grow on users, and that it made more sense than making up some word that just sounded nice. The notarize button resides in the top right-hand corner of your browser, and also lets you jump to your bookmark list with one mouse click.
(Credit:
Iterasi.com)
To sort through all your notarized content there's a home screen that lists everything in reverse chronology and can be parsed quickly using any tags you've added. You can either browse by text links that looks a little similar to the detailed file view in Windows Explorer, or a list view, which shows each saved site as a thumbnail. The service has a built-in search tool that will sort through the tags, site names, and any content that was stored on each page. You can also put multiple items into folders, and send them off to other Iterasi users, or your contacts via e-mail.
One of the most interesting features, and one I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on, is the... Read more
Fichey's controller is dead simple, with two buttons to jump back and forth between pages.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Fichey is a new approach to serving up content that's been popularized by social bookmarking services like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit among others. Similar to DuggTrends, and other sites that cache Web pages that have gone down or become incredibly sluggish due to a high traffic, Fichey's solution is to take a snapshot of the page, sans links, and serve it up in a slick Flash viewer. Pages can be viewed one at a time, and have a slick rotation animation similar to Apple's Front Row. All you have to do is go back and forth.
Fichey isn't just eye candy though. Double-clicking any story will open up the original page, which--if it's working--will load up in your browser with links and up-to-date comments. Fichey will also insert a small hover frame that directs you back to its navigation, and hooks you up with the site's URL to share with others.
Also neat is the option to travel to various dates to see the most popular content for each site. Clicking the calendar button will pull up a small month view where you can travel all the way to July 5, presumably when Fichey started archiving. In this sense, it's a little bit like the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, although a little prettier.
[via TechCrunch]
Browsing sites in Fichey is a little like StumbleUpon. You can visit another site just by clicking one button.
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