Creekside Chatter

Now firmly placed as a mainstream item, ebooks have grown in popularity enough for many libraries to have started making digital versions from their catalogue available for lending.

The only thing you’ll need, accept your eReader and an appropriate library card, is an Adobe ID (see below).

Most libraries that do provide ebooks are using the Adobe DRM protection system, which also means that most dedicated eReaders (Sony, Kobo, etc) and several eReader apps (Bluefire, OverDrive) can be used to read these DRM protected library ebooks.

I’m going to write three very short tutorials on how to get your library ebook onto your eReader/App. One of the three options below should give you enough information even if yours is not actually covered here.

Maybe you’ve got a new camera to play around with. Or maybe you’re already thinking about those books you want to make in the coming year (birthdays, Valentine’s Day, graduations). To start you off on the right foot, here are two basic rules that’ll help you create fresh, visually compelling photos and page layouts.

The first is one you might already be using (a little refresher never hurts!): It’s the rule of thirds and it’s how photographers make their best images. The second rule is one that artists and architects have long used: Fibonacci’s ratio, aka the Golden Mean.

Does the definition of "publisher" need to expand?

Tim O'Reilly: Publishers think way too narrowly about what kind of business they are in, and as a result, are blind to how the competitive landscape is changing under their feet. If someone has roots in ink-on-paper, they are a publisher, but if they are web- or mobile-native, they are not. But this is wrong-headed! Put another way: Why would you think Zagat is a publisher but Yelp isn't? They both perform similar jobs. Competition should be defined by the jobs publishers do for users.

That being said, curation and aggregation are among the core jobs of publishing, and it's clear to me these jobs still need to be done. There is a real need for someone to winnow out the wheat from the chaff as more content becomes available online. (Of course, Google is also in the curation business, but they do it algorithmically.) Eventually, there will be new ways publishers get paid for doing these jobs, but there are also going to be new ways to do them.

O'Reilly's vision of the future of publishing is fascinating. Read it all.

Now, the Most Recent option has been turned into a drop down menu which reveals a slew of options. You can now see only stories related to Games, Status Updates, Photos, Links and Pages. You can also choose to see only stories from a specific Group of yours. Finally, the drop-down menu now gives you access to the Live Feed settings, where you can determine whether you want to see more or less stories from a specific user.

Our new website, BrushLovers, was just launched last month and is already becoming immensely popular, with thousands of free downloads every day of our unique designer collection of Photoshop Brushes.

Over the past few weeks we’ve been adding loads of exciting new brushes, just in time for the holidays.

As usual, most of the brushes are completely free, and to make the premium sets even more worthwhile, we’ve introduced very attractive lower priced premium packs.

Marketers are tracking smartphone users through "apps" - games and other software on their phones. Some apps collect information including location, unique serial-number-like identifiers for the phone, and personal details such as age and sex. Apps routinely send the information to marketing companies that use it to compile dossiers on phone users. As part of the What They Know investigative series into data privacy, the Journal analyzed the data collected and shared by 101 popular apps on iPhone and Android phones (including the Journal's own iPhone app). This interactive database shows the behavior of these apps, and describes what each app told users about the information it gathered.

Read the whole article, then start sending emails.

A very nice browser gets even better.