Google, on the Book Settlement, from arstechnica:

“Approval of the settlement will open the virtual doors to the greatest library in history, without costing authors a dime they now receive or are likely to receive if the settlement is not approved,” Google’s filing reads. “Nor does anyone seriously dispute, though few objectors admit, that to deny the settlement will keep those library doors locked while inviting costly, fragmented litigation that could clog dockets around the country for years.”

Or, in other words: Shut up, and get out of the way.

I’ve been testing a new Google Reader app over the last few days called Reeder, and noticed a UI piece that I hadn’t seen before on the iPhone. Check these pics:

On the first one, check the small dot in the upper right. If you swipe it, it folds to the left and shows the text on the second pic. Swipe back, and it goes back to the standard connectivity/time message. This is the first time I’ve ever seen an app take over the title bar…some make it go away, but this is the first I’ve seen with this behavior.

Are there any others that do something similar? It says something about the tyranny of the Apple UI guidelines that this shocked me so much.

At my place of work, we’re just beginning a massive weeding project as a part of the larger new library building project. We are hoping to weed the entire collection for, effectively, the first time in the history of the library. Needless to say, it’s kind of going to own our lives for the next 18 months.

As a part of this, my awesome co-worker Andrea created this chart showing the distribution of publication dates for our collection. The massive amount of 1800’s is from our Early English Books Online collection, but the rest of it shows a pretty great distribution of “when did the library have funding” over the decades.

Since I realized that I had missed doing the 2009 State of the Union Word Cloud, here it is. Big difference from this year? “Economy”…barely mentioned this year, swapped for the more down-to-earth “Jobs”.

word cloud by wordle

In the vein of my previous years, here’s a Tag Cloud of the 2010 State of the Union address delivered tonight by President Obama. It’s particularly interesting to compare to the 2007 and 2008 State of the Union addresses (I skipped 2009, for some reason…should probably do it retrospectively I went back and did the 2009, for comparison).

cloud created by wordle