bookofjoe

BookSnap — 'Could the publishing industry get Napsterized?'

That's how Washington Post columnist Steven Levy began his February 13, 2007 column.

Long answer short: Not by the Atiz BookSnap (top) — but mos def "... when some company produces the iPod of e-book readers...."

Here's the interesting piece.

Book Ripper Doesn't Bother Publishers — Yet

Could the publishing industry get Napsterized? That was my first thought when I saw the marketing materials for the Atiz BookSnap, the first consumer device that enables you to "release the content" of your books by transforming the printed words into digital files that can be read on computers and handheld e-readers. "It's not a scanner," proclaims a banner on the Atiz Web site. "It's a book ripper." Though ripping (transferring content from an external medium to a computer) is not necessarily an act of piracy, I couldn't help but wonder whether this was a sign of impending apocalypse on Publishers' Row, a scenario that could end up with people file-sharing John Grisham's latest the way they do now with the newest Vampire Weekend tunes.

Then I tested a BookSnap. Short verdict: not a revolution. More a thud than a snap, the device — an ominous three-foot-high construction draped with a thick black darkroom-style shade — looks like a Goth puppet theater and weighs 44 pounds. Under the shade is an angled cradle for a book and a glass platen to hold the pages down during scanning. You turn the pages yourself. It costs $1,600, not including the two Canon digital cameras (around $500 each) necessary to capture the page images and send them to your computer, where software transforms the pictures into files that can be read on a screen or an e-book reader. It takes considerable fiddling to get images set up properly.

Supposedly, once you get started you can digitize 500 pages per hour, much faster and at higher quality than with flatbed scanners (which are much cheaper but not optimized for book scanning). I never got that far, but I imagine such a feat would require considerable caffeine.

Still, the very existence of a consumer book scanner is one of those early warnings of turbulence to come. In the mind of its inventor, Sarasin "Art" Booppanon, scanners one day will be commonplace appliances. Four years ago, Booppanon, 28, who is from Thailand, was a graduate student at George Mason University when he got tired of making photocopies from books and tried to make his own device to get pages into the computer. He hoped to create something that cost much less than the high-end machines used by Google and Microsoft to capture the collections of entire libraries for their search engines. (Those can cost well over $100,000.) He first came up with a $10,000 device designed for commercial use, and then devised the stripped-down BookSnap.

He found a partner and chief executive by watching "The Apprentice," the television show with Donald Trump. One of the contestants was Nick Warnock, a Bayonne, N.J.-born Xerox copier salesman. After The Donald uttered his trademark dismissal to Warnock, Booppanon recruited him. All but two of the 14 Atiz employees are based in Bangkok, where the BookSnap is manufactured at low cost.

Booppanon and Warnock say the BookSnap — and cheaper versions to follow — will encourage people to scan their collections so they can quickly search through them and grab a shelf's worth of reading for a trip across the world or on the subway.

Warnock says potential BookSnap buyers are college students, bibliophiles and just plain folks who "want to digitize their own library." But what if someone gives copies of scanned books still under copyright to a friend or two — or a few thousand friends via an Internet file-sharing site? "All copyright laws should be followed," Warnock said, knowing that to say otherwise is the kind of boo-boo that gets marketers hauled into the boardroom for dismissal.

Not that publishers seem worried. "I'm not going to lose sleep over the BookSnap," said Patricia S. Schroeder, the former congresswoman who is chief executive of the Association of American Publishers. "We've been ready to sell e-books for 10 years," she said. "Everybody still likes physical books." When it comes to potential infringement, she's more worried about abuse of print-on-demand machines that can quickly turn a digital file into a printed book for less than $10.

Allan R. Adler, the association's vice president for legal and governmental affairs, scrutinized the Atiz Web site and tentatively concluded that it focuses on legal uses for the BookSnap. His ire is reserved for Google's program to scan collections of libraries, and use the contents in its search indexes. The association has sued Google over that project.

But while the publishers worry about snippets of copyrighted works appearing in search engines, the real threat will emerge when some company produces the iPod of e-book readers, whether it's based on Amazon's Kindle device or is an Apple production. (Ignore Steve Jobs's recent proclamation that e-readers make no sense because "people don't read anymore." He once said he didn't think people would watch video on tiny screens.) Eventually, electronic readers will become commonplace, creating a demand that won't be met by publisher-authorized releases of copy-protected digital books sold at prices similar to those of bound volumes in stores. That's when the idea of ripping books might really catch on, presumably with cheaper, cooler scanners.

"It will be inevitable," Booppanon said. "And then the book industry will follow what happened with the music industry." Remember, Napster happened in a snap.

Flatwire — Affordable paper-thin, flexible wiring

Pretty cool.

June Fletcher wrote about it in today's Wall Street Journal as follows:

Flatwire

Southwire introduced a new generation of Flatwire [top], its paper-thin, flexible wiring that sticks to a wall with adhesive and can be spackled over and painted. In stores by year end and costing from $2.49 to $6 a foot, it's a do-it-yourself way to wire indoor wall sconces, smart-home devices and other applications.

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Bonus: bookofjoe readers, as well as those who aren't that fortunate — or unfortunate, depending on your point of view — can shop at the online Flatwire store right now.

Why wait till year's end?

Avoid the holiday rush, that's our philosophy.

California Woman Pays $50,000 for Booger

Read all about it in Anna Fifield's article in today's Financial Times; it follows.

Ground-dog day as woman pays $50,000 to clone dead pitbull

The prospect of having nine lives is no longer the sole preserve of cats.

In a happy mix of science and commerce, man's best friend can now live again and again — if the owner is besotted and rich enough.

The South Korean stem cell scientists who produced Snuppy [top], a cloned Afghan hound, have received the world's first commercial order to clone a dog and are now preparing to recreate Booger, a pitbull terrier from California. It is an order they hope will lead to the production of as many as 500 born-again pets each year.

"We received an order from an American woman to clone her dog, Booger," said Ra Jeong-Chan, chief executive of RNL Bio, the Korean company that will help Seoul National University stem cell scientists create Booger II. "She is disabled and has trouble walking, so Booger was a big help to her and she wants him back."

The price for cloning a dog is set to be $150,000, but because this is the first order, and because the woman agreed to allow the event to be publicised, she is only being charged $50,000.

An SNU team of scientists produced the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005 but the achievement was overshadowed by the sensational revelations that Hwang Woo-suk, the leader of the team, falsified research suggesting he had created the first human stem cells. However, the subsequent investigation into the production of Snuppy found that the dog was a genuine clone.

Scientists are now preparing to send cells from Booger to Korea, where they will be placed into surrogate mother dogs, meaning Booger II may breathe again in October.

Mr Ra said he expected his company to receive orders for specialist dogs such as drug and bomb sniffer dogs. He added that capacity will be increased in the hope that 100 "companion dogs" can be cloned from next year, and eventually 500 dogs annually.

Mr Hwang's former colleague, Lee Byeong-chun, who remains at SNU but has since admitted to some mistakes in cloning research papers, will provide the technology to copy Booger.

Asked about SNU's past scientific scandals, Mr Lee said: "I don't care about that."

But Mr Ra suggested the move to commercial cloning could help clear up any remaining doubts about Korean science. "I think we need another two years to overcome all the problems," Mr Ra said.

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I remember Woody Allen once remarking that they tipped a map of the U.S. on its side and everything loose fell to the bottom — then they leveled it again and there was California.

Credit Card Skin

From the website:

Credit Card Decal

You don't let your mom choose your clothes, so why would you let your bank choose how your credit cards look?

Enter these fabulous card skins.

The super-thin adhesive covers can be used on credit cards, debit cards, ATM cards, cash cards and loyalty cards.

Since they only apply to the front of your cards and not the back, they won't damage the magnetic strip, and the gentle adhesive allows you to remove the decal easily.

In a variety of designs.

$6 CAD ( click on "Personal Accessories", then scroll down).

'How Grandma Sees the Remote' — by Roz Chast

I got news: it ain't only grandma.

Sitting Spoon

From the website:

Sitting Spoon

An innovative spoon with a bend in it which allows it to rest over the rim of the glass or mug.

Also ideal for sundae glasses — perfect for that lazy ice cream in the garden.

Never have the dilemma again of where to put that spoon.

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$10 CAD (Click on "Kitchen and Tabletop", then scroll down).

Japander.com — Stars as you've never before seen them

The website was founded by a Canadian named Al Soiseth.

It features Japanese commercials featuring Western actors who would never stoop to such low-brow (and extraordinarily lucrative) work back home.

Up top, Cameron Diaz for SoftBank.

Easy Circuit Finder

From the website:

Easy Circuit Finder

Here's an easy and inexpensive way to track down what fuse or breaker controls which outlet.

Just plug the Easy Circuit Finder into the outlet in question.

When the power is turned on, it makes a very loud tone you can even hear in the basement.

No more yelling up and down the stairs, "Is it on? Is it off?".

Easy Circuit Finder makes it easy to track down switches or breakers without an assistant.

Adjustable volume control lets you use it in close quarters, too.

Plugs into any 115 volt outlet.

$15.95.