Google Play replaces Google Music and the Android Market into one unified experience as a music store, a Google music player, as well as a place for books, movies and Android apps for Android phones and Android tablets. Google Play also integrates the Google+ social network and YouTube music videos; plus Google Play works oniOS devices like  iPhone and iPad as well as a music player.

Remember the talk of Google Music failing? Or the Google Drive? Google entertainment device? These were the precursors to the the New Google Play, which replaces Google Music, Google Books and Android Market in fell swoop. Google Play is Googles brand new online store, cloud storage drive and central hub for your digital goods. Its tightly integrated with the Google+ social network of course, as well as Gmail and YouTube.

Visit the Spacelab Music Festival Guide

Smartly, Google Play comes across as a smarter approach than the disconnected user experience of Google Music, Google Books and the Android Market. The beauty of iTunes is that its one place that did all of those, now Google Play provides a Google music player, music store, book store and app store in one experience. They’re also selling certain albums for a quarter right now for a limited time.

Google is hoping that incorporating all their digital content under one solid roof to amplify sales might lure Warner Music Group to offer up their catalog. Notable holdout Warner is currently the only major record label not interested in doing business with Google, said Rolling Stone.

Visit the Spacelab Guide to Streaming Music Sites

Google Play is obviously optimized for Android tablets and Android phones, but you can still use the Google player on iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone. It includes and “Instant Mix” feature that lets you create the Google Play version of Apple’s Genius Playlist. It also lets you share YouTube Music videos via the Google+ social network on any song that you’re playing. Which seems to lay at the heart of the Google Play strategy as well as user experience: a tighter, smarter and easier to use integration of Google products and services. You can bet Google TV will work its way into this experience, for the Google TV vs Apple TV competition that’s unfolding this year. Throw in Amazon Kindle Fire and Amazon video on demand and we’ve got a cage match. Theyre also adding audiobooks.

Now your favorite movies, apps, and games are all in one place thats accessible from the Web and any Android device. Discover, buy and share like never before, reads the introduction from Google Play. Buy a book on your Android phone and read it on the web at play.google.com. Buy a new album on your Android tablet and listen to it on your desktop at work. Rent a movie online and watch it anywhere on your phone. That’s the beauty of the cloud. You can read, listen and watch all your favorite content anywhere you want.

The company recently converged its various content services into a unified storefront with consistent Google Play branding. As part of this transition, the Android Market is being renamed the Google Play Store, reads Ars Technica.

Google Play has gone live via your web browser already, and will populate Android phones and Android tablets over the next few days with the Google Play icon replacing the Android Market icon.

This is a crucial step Google had to take to keep competitive. Google is trying to simplify delivering to consumers something they will pay for or load onto their device. Anything Google can do to streamline that is important. Google has got more Android devices in the world, but I dont think its paying out as much to people who create apps or content, said Gartner media analyst Michael McGuire when speaking to the LA Times.

Read more Digital Music News

MADISON — Three years ago Todd Bol came up with an idea to remember his mother, a teacher who had loved books and encouraged people to read. At his home in Hudson, Wisc., he built a box, made it waterproof and filled it with books. It looked like a miniature one-room schoolhouse, with a sign underneath that said Free Book Exchange. Bol put it on a post outside of his house and invited neighbors to take a book, and return a book.

Thats when something happened Bol says he never could have imagined.

People of all ages, men, women, kids came up and just loved the library, he said. They got excited and they started coming up to me saying, lsquo;Ill build one, do you need books?

14 hours ago 

David Davies put years of fatigue problems aside to reach his third Olympics after booking a spot in the 1,500 metres freestyle alongside Daniel Fogg in the final event of the trials at the Aquatics Centre.

Fogg became only the third Briton after Davies and Graeme Smith to go inside the 15-minute mark when he won in 14 minutes 55.30 seconds.

City of Cardiff swimmer Davies was 5.43secs adrift with the former training partners both inside the qualifying time.

It also means the pair will battle it out for one place in the open water competition in the Serpentine at the final qualification event in Portugal in June.

Davies, who won bronze in the 1,500m in his first Olympics in 2004, was dogged by exhaustion since 2009 and a year later he returned to former coach Dave Haller from Kevin Renshaw at Loughborough, under whom he won 2008 Olympic open water silver.

Fran Halsall equalled Inge de Bruijn’s textile world record as she booked her third slot with victory in the 50m freestyle.

The 21-year-old blasted off the blocks and there was soon daylight between her and the rest of the field.

Halsall, fourth in this event in Shanghai, touched in 24.13, the same as De Bruijn clocked at the Sydney Olympics in 12 years ago.

It was just two hundredths of a second off her own British record set in a 100% polyurethane suit in 2009.

Amy Smith, of Loughborough University, also went under 25 seconds for the first time, her effort of 24.80 ensuring she would join Halsall.

Copyright © 2012 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

Fran Halsall clinched her third Olympic qualifying place by winning the 50 metres freestyle at the British trials on Saturday in a time that would have been good for gold at last years world championships.

This is all about one media giant trying to grab market share from other media giants. Education publishing is the most profitable part of the book business these days–maybe the only profitable part. So experiments with digital publishing have been cautious, and hampered by the lack of a great delivery device. Apple thinks it can hasten the technological transition, just as it did with music on the iPod, and grab a big slice of the profits in the process. The only difference this time around, say some observers, is that giants like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson have decided to join ‘em rather than fight ’em.

This is all about selling iPads. This point of criticism has two variants. The first says Apple’s textbook push will fail because it’s insincere: the company really just wants to hook teenagers on Apple hardware, so they’ll buy the iPad 7 (with direct neural interface!) when they grow up. The second says it will fail because iPads are too expensive: schools can’t afford to supply every kid with a $499 gadget that they’ll probably just break, lose, or misuse.

Schools will never buy e-textbooks if they can’t own them. Apple’s textbook program is dead in the water because the company wants schools to purchase books using “volume vouchers.” The vouchers would come with codes that students can redeem in the iBooks store; the textbooks would then be placed into the students’ personal iTunes accounts. The objection here is that schools won’t be able to grok the accounting math or the concept that the books will actually belong to the students, rather than being passed along from year to year.

Authors will never write textbooks for iBooks if they can’t sell them elsewhere. The biggest post-announcement hullabaloo has been over the terms of the end user license agreement for iBooks Author, the free program Apple built to help authors, publishers, and teachers create their own multimedia textbooks. Under the agreement, iBooks Author users who want to give away their textbooks free can do so by any means they like, but those who want to sell their books for profit may only do so through the iBooks store, where Apple gets its usual 30 percent cut. That might seem like simple business logic–there’s no reason Apple should help authors create content for competing platforms like Amazon’s Kindle. But critics screamed bloody murder about the provision, saying that it was like Microsoft taking a cut for every novel written using Word.

Nothing new here–iBooks textbooks are an inferior ripoff of existing technologies. Apple is obviously late to the consumer e-book party, where Amazon still has a commanding lead. The criticism here is that Apple, despite its boastful press releases last week, hasn’t really reinvented anything about e-textbooks. Companies like Inkling, Kno, Chegg, Vook, Flatworld Knowledge, and Cengage Learning already offer systems for creating and publishing multimedia textbooks, and most of these books work on multiple platforms, not just the iPad.

Apple is trying to kill open e-book publishing standards. Ahh, standards. Few debates are as bitter, partisan, and unending–it’s the tech world’s version of “The Blue and the Gray.” Apple is an ongoing supporter of the open ePub format. Books using this format work on devices from a variety of manufacturers (one exception being Amazon, but that’s another story). But critics are incensed that e-textbooks created using iBooks Author are … Next Page »

Wade Roush is Xconomys chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush.

Six of the nine nominations announced this week for Best Picture are based on books, reflecting a recent pattern in which the Oscar lists have consistently and gratifyingly affirmed cinemas dependence on literature. Apart from a modest lurch towards originality in 2010, the previous five years saw line-ups in which half or more of the shortlistees were adaptations, including the winners No Country for Old Men (2008), Slumdog Millionaire (2009) and The Kings Speech (2011).

Its not classic novels that attract movie-makers. Of the books turned into nominated films this time, only Michael Morpurgos War Horse (1982) was not published in the noughties. The others are Brian Selznicks The Invention of Hugo Cabret (filmed as Hugo), Jonathan Safran Foers 9/11 novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Moneyball by Michael Lewis (the second non-fiction sports title by him in three years to generate a Best Picture nominee, as he also wrote the source of Blind Side), and two debuts, Kaui Hart Hemmingss The Descendants and Kathryn Stocketts The Help. Its the first time for quite a while – conceivably since 1940, when Gone with the Wind won and Wuthering Heights was among the nominees – that versions of two novels by women have been listed for the most coveted Oscar.

Baftas shorter Best Film list, announced a week earlier, is even more novel-reliant, with The Artist the sole original film selected, competing with Drive (based on a James Sallis thriller) and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, as well as The Descendants and The Help.

Diehard believers in cinemas creative autonomy will no doubt point in the Oscars list not only to The Artist, but also to two self-penned movies by publicity-averse veteran auteurs, Woody Allens Midnight in Paris and Terrence Malicks The Tree of Life. Theyd be unwise to do so, as these films are by no means pure of literary influences. Online commenters have begun to note echoes of DH Lawrence (as well as Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubricks 2001) in Malicks Palme dOr winner, and particularly The Rainbows portrayal of one family against a cosmic backdrop; while Midnight in Paris makes no secret of its bookish hankerings, magically granting its present-day protagonist encounters with Djuna Barnes, TS Eliot, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.

So here’s the obvious question: Did she intend to have some sort of confrontation there Wednesday in front of the cameras at the Phoenix airport? We think probably not – in politics, as in life, happenstance usually explains more incidents than does conspiracy. But whatever her plan, Governor Brewer has benefited from Waggate in at least one respect: She’s selling a lot more books.

That’s right. Her memoir “Scorpions for Breakfast” was published last November to generally underwhelming sales. Earlier this week, Amazon listed it as the 285,685thbestselling book in America. By way of comparison, Newt Gingrich’s Civil War novel, “The Battle of the Crater,” is currently No. 39,967.

Daisy runs off with Caldecott and Dead End takes Newbery

Kids books: A Ball for Daisy and Dead End in Norvelt earn top honors. Heres a look at the books and their creators.

By KAREN MACPHERSON

Scripps Howard News Service

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Millions of Americans now own Kindles, Nooks and other e-readers. And libraries are taking notice, expanding their collections of e-books they can loan to patrons.

That trend has 3Ms attention. The company has a long history of serving libraries. And 3M sees a big business opportunity in helping libraries build, manage and lend their collections of electronic books, Minnesota Public Radio reports (http://bit.ly/xP8d7X).

The St. Paul Public Library next month will begin a formal trial of 3Ms Cloud Library system, along with 10 other major public libraries around the country.

For the past month, Stephanie Harr of St. Paul has been a volunteer tester of the 3M system. She reads a lot of books while getting her caffeine kick at the Swede Hollow Cafe on St. Pauls East Side. All she needs to get a book from the St. Paul library is her iPad and an Internet connection.

So, this one is available. I just hit the check-out button. That little blue bar shows its downloading into my device, Harr said. So, when thats done, I can read it.

Harr has had an e-reader for about two years and is glad to see the library expand its e-book collection.

As a dedicated library user, I wasnt used to paying for books. So, as soon as the library started having e-books, I was on board right away.

Harr says she prefers the sign-up process and book browsing features of the 3M system to a competing service the library had used last spring. But she says otherwise the two services are pretty much the same.

From a business standpoint, 3M is behind. The company has been serving libraries for over 40 years, providing them with devices and software to check out physical books and protect them from theft. But an Ohio company called Overdrive already provides e-book services to 18,000 libraries in 21 countries.

Still, 3M sees an opening.

Being a company with a strong technology history, we have an opportunity to really come in and innovate and create the best platform for libraries to lend e-books to a community, said Tom Mercer, who is leading the marketing efforts for 3Ms Cloud Library service. At this time, e-books are just a small part of library collections. But Mercer says those collections will grow and libraries will need help managing them.

We see a very large opportunity as libraries shift their spend from physical material to digital material, he said. By about 2015, a third of all books sold will be digital in the United States.

With the 3M Cloud Library service, library patrons can read e-books on many portable devices including 3M-branded e-readers that libraries can loan to patrons.

But OverDrive has a head start and company spokesman David Burleigh says its growing fast. We had about 35 million checkouts through the system thorough all our libraries in the network last year, which was up from about 15 million the year before, Burleigh said.

Overdrive wont comment on 3Ms intentions, but Burleigh says theres good reason to be bullish about the business opportunities to help libraries with e-book collections.

In Minnesota, most public libraries will stock e-books by mid-June, according to state librarian Nancy Walton.

The St. Paul Public Library started its e-book collection last April and now has about 4,500 e-books to lend.

Digital library manager John Larson expects e-books will eventually account for 10 to 20 percent of the St. Pauls book lending. There are advantages for both patrons and libraries, he said. E-books cant be damaged or lost. And patrons dont have to worry about returning them. You dont have to worry about any overdue fines. It just automatically disappears at the end of the loan period, Larson said. And you dont have to come to the library to pick them up. It just comes straight to you. If youve been waiting for it on hold. If its available, you can check it out on the spot.

But that convenience may be offset by the refusal of some publishers to license their e-books to libraries. Still, there seems little doubt there will strong demand from libraries for e-reader technology. Market analysts at Forrester Research estimate that about 70 million Americans will be using some kind of e-reader by 2016.

___

Information from: Minnesota Public Radio News, http://www.mpr.org

Posted at 12:25 PM ET, 01/27/2012
And the Oscar goes to …? Books!
By Steven Levingston

No matter which way the awards finally go, several books already are winners. As the Guardian reports, six of the nine nominations for Best Picture are based on books. And another of the top contenders, Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” takes a deep bow toward the literary world of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.

Books may be going from paper to digital but they’re also still blossoming on the big screen.

By Steven Levingston
 | 
12:25 PM ET, 01/27/2012

• Tumblr
• Reddit
• Stumbleupon
• Digg
• Delicious

Next:
Author and Gov. Jan Brewer has words for Obama