A Natural History of the Hippopotamus: one of first books to be digitized

The British Library collection is about to become even more accessible thanks to a project it is undertaking with Google to digitize 40 million pages from its collection, dating back to 1700.

The plan will see 250,000 out-of-print titles from the British Library collection scanned, digitized and made fully readable and searchable on Google Books and stored in the British Library’s digital archive. Google is covering the costs of the project, which will cover books, pamphlets and periodicals published between 1700 and 1870.

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Those who took part in last week’s riot in Vancouver, after hockey team Vancouver Canucks lost the final game of the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins, are facing a public backlash as they are named and shamed on Facebook.

The angry fans who smashed and looted shops and cars were set ablaze are having their identities revealed on a Facebook group that already has 100,000 fans. Read More »

According to the latest eMarketer research Facebook is set to generate almost $2.2bn in display advertising this year. This whopping figure will see it push past Google and Yahoo! to become the number one site in the US.

Ad Age reports that Google will make $1.15bn in display ads for 2011 and Yahoo! is expected to make $1.62bn. Read More »

PR Week has the story of the appointment of Rachel Bremer being appointed as Twitter’s European communications manager.

While that’s all very interesting its the focus on consumers that she hints at that could signal Twitter’s future development plans here in the UK and globally. Read More »

We already knew that social media would play a big part in Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential bid, he launched his campaign with a YouTube video, but unlike 2008, or even the last four years, this time around he will be tweeting himself.

Obama will be personally tweeting and will sign each official presidential tweet “-BO”, according to the President’s official twitter account, which has 8.7 million followers. Up until now Obama has tweeted very little with his staff handling his account. Read More »

Why should your enjoyment of an exhibition end when you leave the gallery? Why should words and images in your messages be kept separate? And why should tweets exist only as text? I keep spotting new ways that people and organisations are extending the artistic experience through smartphones and tablets, and they’re not just educational but lots of fun.

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If you are the social media news hound types, you must have lapped up some of the interesting snippets on the the social networking juggernauts. For the benefit of the readers, let me make an attempt to quickly round up a clutch of the more interesting ones in my view.

Linked In was recently assessed to be the most valuable network and having crossed the 100 million accounts milestone, is well on the way to an IPO as well. Read More »

Sony has released a couple of videos previewing its forthcoming S1 and S2 Android tablet computers.

They look very nice, and one of the promos is reminiscent of Honda’s classic cog ad, though they don’t give all that much away, but then with a flood of tablet computers now on the market maybe less is more? Take a look and see what you think. Read More »

This is a week in newspapers to remember. Yesterday Guardian News & Media announced a new strategy that it is calling “digital-first”. It is the strongest admission we have yet had that the newspaper industry knows that it is moving ahead to a future where print is receding in the rear view mirror.

Losses are mounting, the Guardian reported they hit £33m, more cuts need to be made, in the order of £25m says Brand Republic, and significantly an admission from editor Alan Rusbridger that readers no longer read newspapers in the same way, that leads to the question: why publish them in the same way? Read More »

PR agency Redner Group got sacked by its biggest client, video game publisher 2k, after it tweeted that it would punish bad reviews of  the game ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ by withholding future releases from reviewers.

For a PR agency it was insanely stupid thing to do and although an apology was quickly offered it was too late. The tweet was out and the agency lost its account. Read More »