Google won’t face Supreme Court fight over book scanning

After many years, Google's efforts to scan out-of-print books for online searching is officially in the clear. The US Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal over Google's victory in a legal dispute wit the Authors Guild, effectively determinin...

US appeals court rules Google’s book-scanning project is legal

Google's goal of scanning millions of out-of-print books for online access has drawn the ire of authors and publishers for years. Today, a US appeals court ruled that the practice is in fact legal. Claims of infringement brought by the Authors Guil...

Google patent filing describes tailored online book clubs, minus the wine

Google patent describes tailored online book clubs, minus the wine

The phrase "virtual book club" may not conjure romantic visions of low-lit rooms and vintage wines, but you don't necessarily need those things to throw fancy words around. Amazon-owned Goodreads hosts user-created online clubs, but a Google patent application that's surfaced today imagines a different way of bringing bookworms together. It describes a system that automatically prompts the buyer of a new title, presumably acquired through Google Books, to join a club. To make this virtual version a little more like the real thing, it'll suggest specific groups based on your age, location, interests, preferred club size, reading speed and literary tastes. Furthermore, you'll only be coupled with those who've bought the work recently, so your new-found chums aren't on page 400 before you've even started.

It'll all be managed through a social network, of course (we hear Google has one of those), and members will be able to fill specific roles within the club hierarchy. They'll also be able to schedule "activities," which we assume is patentese for Hangouts and the like to foster discussion. The patent filing also talks of financial rewards to tempt participation, which sounds like the perfect strategy for building millions of inactive G+ pages.

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Source: USPTO

Google Play Books updated to allow user uploads, supports EPUB and PDF

Google Play Books updated to allow user uploads, supports EPUB and PDF

With the exception of a brief mention in Google Play for Education, Mountain View's book platform was all but absent from its Google I/O presentation. Still, the service is getting updated with a significant new feature: user uploads. It hasn't rolled out to all users yet, but those with access are now able to add up to 1,000 PDF and EPUB files to their Google Play online library. Both the Android and iOS versions of the app will be able to read these files starting today. The update brings a standard assortment of stability and performance improvements too, and Android users will see a few minor visual tweaks. Check out the source link below to see if the feature has rolled out to your account, or click here to peek at Google's biggest I/O announcements.

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Via: Android Police

Source: Google Play, App Store, Google Play online library

Google Play Books app arrives in Japan, adds translation, place info, highlighting and more

Google Play Books app arrives in Japan, adds translation, place info, highlighting and more

Not content at stopping with its recent European tour, Google Play Books has made the trip to Japan and brought back a handful of new features. In addition to support for reading Japanese books in a vertical, right-to left layout, Mountain view now lets users tap on names of geographical spots within text and see them pinned to a Google Map alongside the option to find more information using Larry Page's favorite search engine or Wikipedia. A freshly added translation feature takes user-highlighted words and phrases and spits them out in the reader's language of choice. Particularly studious literature lovers can now mark up their digital books with notes and highlights that sync to the web and across their personal fleet of devices. A new sepia tone theme also joined the existing day and night views on their journey abroad. Hit the source links below for more details and the download.

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Google Play Books app arrives in Japan, adds translation, place info, highlighting and more originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nexus 7 guidebook appears on Google Play, teaches you how to blink, manage Google Now cards

Nexus 7 guidebook appears on Google Play, teaches you how to blink, manage Google Now cards

Trapped in that post-Google I/O funk of hurry up, pre-order and wait? Maybe this can satiate your desires: a Nexus 7 guidebook detailing the basics of Mountain View's upcoming slate. The digital tome covers standard Android usage as well as Jelly Bean specific tips -- including the OS' dynamically resizable widgets, using Google Now cards and "blink for face unlock," a stock Android take on Samsung's eyelid shuttering identification tweak. Ready to read up? Check it out at the Google Play link below.

Nexus 7 guidebook appears on Google Play, teaches you how to blink, manage Google Now cards originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 20:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google launches Endangered Languages website to save 3,000 at-risk tongues

DNP  Google launches Endangered Languages website to preserve atrisk tongues with

Google lets users surf the web in 40-plus languages, and its Translate service accounts for 57 different tongues, but those numbers are dwarfed by the grand total of 7,000 currently existing languages. On its official blog today, the company announced the Endangered Languages Project, a website dedicated to preserving at-risk dialects by providing information via audio, video and text samples. Google collaborated with the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and Eastern Michigan University to compile research on the 3,000 languages at risk of dying out, and each language's profile includes results drawn from Google Books. Click through to the source link to check out a global visualization of these tongues -- it's mind-boggling that there are 52 endangered languages in Brazil alone.

Google launches Endangered Languages website to save 3,000 at-risk tongues originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jun 2012 10:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google brokers a deal with French publishers to immortalize out-of-print books

Google faire daccord avec French publishers to immortalize outofprint books

Google has reached an agreement with France's publishers to scan thousands of out-of-print texts. From the terse explanation offered, it looks like Mountain View will digitize the books, but the publishers and authors will retain commercial use of them. It means those editions will presumably be sold over Google Play rather than being offered free -- but on the upside, will mean that you'll save plenty of time checking eBay for that copy of Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley.

Google brokers a deal with French publishers to immortalize out-of-print books originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jun 2012 11:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Next Web  |  sourceGoogle  | Email this | Comments