The Great Slydini Makes Magic for Dick Cavett

The Great Slydini — Tony Slydini — is featured here on two videos from the Dick Cavett Show, along with commentary by Cavett on his New York Times blog.

Cavett explains that there are no mirrors, and no tricks with the cameras.

The first video is intact; the second video has some outages, but just stay with it and they clear up and continue (you'll hear the sound but not see the images for short times.)

If Cavett could post these to YouTube, then these could become "viral videos" like nothing else in the history of the Net.

Slydini says: "You can do anything, if you know how."

Watch and be amazed.

The Great Slydini on the Dick Cavett Show, 1977
http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/conjuring-slydini/

The Great Slydini on the Dick Cavett Show, 1978
http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/conjuring-slydini-part-2/



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Books (freeware book cataloging for Macs)

Books is the name of a freeware book cataloging application for Mac computers. It's free, simple to use, and filled with useful features.

You can download Books after visiting the project's home page, here:

http://books.aetherial.net/wordpress/

Installation takes almost 8 seconds: unzip the downloaded file, and then drag the icon into your Applications folder. (I always take another few seconds to make an alias, and then drag this "shortcut" to my desktop.)

You can immediately begin to add books. I typed in some titles by hand, but there are other options: you can import book information in many ways: from Amazon.com, from the library of Congress, from a .csv file, or from Delcious Library — a shareware book cataloging tool with pinache: whenever you delete a book the book bursts into flames.

You can add book covers by simply dragging an image onto the Books interface.

Once you have some books listed, the fun begins. Now you can create "smart lists" for sorting your books, similar to the tagging system used in Delicious.com. For example, you can create a smart list for books you want to read next; or for books by a certain author; or for books written in the Greek language; or for books loaned to your Aunt Fanny, and so on.

Books has many other features: export your book list; create your own custom fields; keep track of books loaned; link to reviews of the book, and much more.

Now that ebooks are getting more and more popular, you'll need a way to catalog your ebooks. Books can do it admirably. From the Books main screen, I made a separate list for my ebooks. Then I tagged each ebook with useful tags of my choice, for example: ebook file format, genre, source (where I acquired the ebook) and location.

For the ePub ebooks that I keep on Bookworm, I make a note in Books to help me to remember that fact. My PDFs are stored in a file called "My Ebooks 2009". Books lets you add a file link to every listing: so my PDF ebooks (and text and HTML ebooks) can be opened and viewed in two easy clicks. Books uses Apple's default PDF viewer, Preview, which is my favorite way to read PDFs on the Mac.

I haven't yet tested Books when thousands of books are entered, but I have a feeling that it can handle large libraries. (I will report back here with an update).

The Books development team will cheerfully accept your donations, here: http://books.aetherial.net/donate/ You might also want to donate time and skills, either developing software or translating into other languages.

Books is a great answer to the problem of organizing your book collection, not only because it is specifically designed for book cataloging, but also because it gives you all the power and flexibility of a database application, with none of the cost, and only a fraction of the learning curve.

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

(Thanks to Teleread for alerting us to this great freeware.)



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50 Benefits of Ebooks is Now in Paperback

Important Note:
A new edition of this ebook — updated and expanded — is now available. For the latest editions, visit the book's companion blog: http://www.EpublishersWeekly.net

Do not buy the paperback!
Buy the ebook at 1/20th of the price!

50 Benefits of Ebooks
A Thinking Persons’s Introduction to the Digital Reading Revolution
Edition 2009
by Michael Pastore
Paperback, pocket-sized 4.25" x 6.88"
320 pages
ISBN: 978-0927379-17-5
Published by Zorba Press, April 2009
$ 20

50 Benefits of Ebooks is a lively introduction to the brave new worlds of ebooks and electronic publishing. In 21 chapters, the book explores five essential aspects of ebook reading, writing and publishing:

A. Benefits of Ebooks and Paper Books
B. Reading Ebooks
C. Ebooks for Authors and Publishers
D. The Value of Reading; and
E. The Education of An Ebooklover (resources)

Ebook newcomers will find all the basics here. And ebook experts can debate and debunk the author’s wild predictions for the rosy and thorny future of ebooks, by reading the essay, “Publishing Ebooks: Ten Tremendous Trends in 20009.” Authors will discover tips, tricks and resources for ebook publishing; and library professionals will enjoy the book’s glossary, index, links to leading-edge ebook sites, and sections about how and why ebooks are good for libraries.

The paperback edition of this book is pocket-sized, 320 pages, about 40,000 words — and sells for $20. The ebook editions (in formats ePub and PDF) contain all the same content as the paperback — except the paper. The ebook editions are 1/20th of the paperback price, and sell for one dollar.

Pastore writes that he loves paper books, and hopes that they are never replaced by their electronic progeny. Nevertheless, every day, ebooks are growing in use, in sales, and in significance. After years of sputtering, the digital reading revolution has at last arrived.

50 Benefits of Ebooks is your friendly guide.

To buy the book, or for more information, and additional updates and resources, visit the book’s companion website: www.EpublishersWeekly.net

Members of the media can read the news release, here:
New Paperback and 1-Dollar Ebook Explores the Joy of Reading Ebooks

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Ethical Markets by Hazel Henderson

Green is the color of the new economy. To understand what all this greening is about, you can read Hazel Henderson's book, Ethical Markets.

Henderson's websites have more excellent resources:

Ethical Markets
http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/

and

Ethical Markets TV
http://www.ethicalmarkets.tv/

— Michael Pastore


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Project Guterotica: Is PG Still PG ?

On his deathbed at age 94, George Bernard Shaw iced his place in history, with the "immortal" last words: "I knew if I hung around long enough, something like this was bound to happen."

The same thing might be said about Project Gutenberg (PG), a repository for free literature in the public domain, the venerable grandfather of the free ebook movement. This morning, on PG's list of newly added works, some books appeared that might be classified as that 19th-Century Viagra known as "Victorian erotica".

We have no objections, and we have one suggestion: Is it possible for Project Gutenberg to label this material as "Adult Content" ?

Diligent journalists as we are, we did manage to download some of these offerings, written by "Anonymous". One is titled Forbidden Fruit: Luscious and exciting story; and More forbidden fruit, or Master Percy's progress in and beyond the domestic circle. Two other titles that sounded suspiciously salacious are Laura Middleton; Her Brother and her Lover; and The Power of Mesmerism: A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies.

Put the kids to bed before downloading any one of these.

Project Gutenberg: let's get those "Adult Content" labels up, and keep them up.

I thought that with 50 I had discovered every possible benefit of ebooks, but for the 2010 edition, this could be one more.

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks


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MacHeist Bundle: The Last Day

The MacHeist Bundle is a collection of Mac software applications offered — for a limited time only — for a very low price.

It's a great deal for Mac users, and today is the last day of this zany sale.

Ten percent of your purchase goes to charities.

I bought my "bundle" about a week ago, and already I've been using some of the applications: Acorn, a graphics editor (list price: $ 49); Picturesque, for enhancing images (list price: $ 39); Kinemac, for creating 3D animations (list price: $ 299); WireTap Studio, for audio recording (list price: $ 69), and Times, an RSS reader (list price, $ 30). All these — and 8 more applications — were snagged for the insanely low price of $ 39.

There is some drama in this event: if a goal is attained ($ 500,000 for charity), then the final two applications will "unlock" — meaning, they will be made available to the MacHeist buyers.

Take a look at the MacHeist page, and if one of these featured applications is something you can use, then don't hesitate to buy. It sounds too good to be true, but it is true: you get the full versions of these products, with no gimmicks and no strings attached. Payment options include major credit cards and PayPal.




Update:
At 10:45 am, EST, Macheist achieved its goal of $ 500,000 for charity. Congratulations to the MacHeist staff! Everybody wins: charities get half a million dollars; customers get a great deal; and software developers get more than 50,000 new customers. And other businesses might want to look at the MacHeist model for innovative ideas to promote their work.

The goal has been met, but the sale continues through today. (Do check the time zones; MacHeist time is not EST).

MacHeist Bundle, 2009
www.MacHeist.com


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Can Ebooks Save the New York Times ?

Note:
This is a preview of a full essay that is now published on our blog on April 26, 2009.
Here is the full essay: Print 2.0: Can Ebooks Save the New York Times ?

Can ebooks — part of the electronic publishing revolution that has often been blamed for print publishing's troubles — be a major factor in the paper's resurgence?

Story Summary:
A gruntled author, whose upbeat book about ebooks has been ignored by the Times, explains the causes of the newspapers’ demise, and then offers 12 solutions for renewal, including a New York Times-owned ebook reading device: the NYeTBook.

First sentence:
“Print publishing has one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel.”

Some of the facts in this story are taken from the book and ebook:

50 Benefits of Ebooks.
Ebook newcomers will find all the basics here. And ebook experts can debate and debunk the author’s wild predictions for the rosy and thorny future of ebooks, by reading the essay, “Publishing Ebooks: Ten Tremendous Trends in 2009.” Authors will discover tips, tricks and resources for ebook publishing; and library professionals will enjoy the book’s glossary, index, links to leading-edge ebook sites, and sections about how and why ebooks are good for libraries.

For more information, and to buy the ebook for a buck (in PDF or ePub), go here: www.EpublishersWeekly.net


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