Net & technology

How Google hides free copies of public domain books while directing people to pay-for reprints

Google has been allowed to scan hundreds of thousands of out-of-copyright books from libraries around the world and supposedly this is a wonderful free resource for all of us. But, over the last year or two, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to find the free versions while Google Books presents reprints to buy. Here’s an How Google hides free copies of public domain books while directing people to pay-for reprints

Web hosting changes – how is it for you?

This website is on shared hosting. For those who don’t know, that means that a number of websites all share one server. It’s cost-effective and works well providing no individual site hogs the resources.

Google Video likely to disappear

In the latest example of free hosting services not being forever, Google is planning to close down its Google Video service. Originally the service was due to close to visitors on April 29th with another two weeks for users to download their videos (until May 13th). Those dates have now been scrapped but it’s obvious Google Video likely to disappear

Audio cassettes go digital

I’ve been transferring my audio cassettes to digital. It’s a job I put off for a long time, as there are about 250 of them. Those that date from 1980 onwards are played in my Tascam Porta05 Ministudio — a multitrack cassette recorder that I bought in 1988. Tapes from the 1970’s are more tricky.