Internet Archive’s web-based book reader now supports zooming and panning around books with their pages open. This is helpful for foldout maps.
The books can be embedded into any webpage, and the software is all opensource so others can integrate it on their site and extend it.
Congratulations to Michael Ang and the BookServer group.
-brewster
We now support the new [video] HTML tag when viewing movies from our site.
You’ll need Firefox v3.5+ (full or beta release) or Safari v4+ for us to show you a “try the new [video] tag” section under the “click to play” video area.
You can even persist a choice to always use it on our site (by us setting a cookie for you) (and you can change your mind and go back to the normal flash plugin based option).
-Tracey Jaquith
Our flash-based player supports “SubRip” files (files with “.srt” extension). About a month ago, we updated our video pages to automatically support subtitles.
One simply needs to upload a file with a “.srt” extension (in the SubRip format) along with the video file to get started. If the item includes multiple video files/tracks, you can make multiple .srt files, example:
cow1.avi
cow1.srt
cow2.mov
cow2.srt
We support multilingual subtitling as well. Our suggested naming of .srt files for language-based tracks for the best display on our site is like:
cow.mov
cow.en.srt (english)
cow.fr.srt (french)
cow.hu.srt (hungarian)
and our site will show a selector for the three different languages
subtitle: [ en | fr | hu ]
next to the video track in our player.
Example short video with subtitling.
Enjoy!
–Tracey Jaquith
This week, archive.org released a beta version of our new upload tool, created to ease sharing of your material on Internet Archive. We’ll be moving away from FTP uploads in favor of HTTP uploading which allows you to upload right on the web. When you click on the “Upload” button, you’ll be prompted to use the HTTP method, if you choose.
To use the new beta uploader:
For instructions on how to upload to the Live Music Archive, click here.
We encourage you to give it a shot and offer any feedback you have on the new system. Here is a conversation that is currently taking place about the switch.
Additionally, we have a new edit tool for your items on the Archive. You can use this tool to change an item’s title, description, file formats and titles, running time, language, etc. You can also use it to remove, add, or rename files within an item.
To edit your item:
Note: If you would like us to make derivative files, click on “Item Manager” after you click on “Edit Item” and click the “Derive” button. This will make smaller, more compressed versions of your upload.
As always, we greatly appreciate all of your generous contributions to the Archive, and we hope this new process will make this open sharing even easier.
–Cara Binder
Today the Internet Archive and Sun Microsystems are launching a new datacenter that stores the whole web archive and serves the Wayback Machine.
And, it is a modular datacenter that sits outside in a shipping container. This 3Petabyte (3 million gigabyte) datacenter will handle the 500 requests per second as it takes over the full wayback load.
Thank you to Sun and Internet Archive staff that helped conceive and build this new perspective on long term active archiving.
-brewster
Sun’s announcement has a good “success story” video.
Nice photos in eWeek.
For Immediate Release
March 27, 2008
Internet Archive Brings Free Ultra High-Speed Internet to Public Housing
San Francisco : The Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based organization dedicated to preserving a record of the Internet and to increasing access to the Internet, today began offering free Internet service to public housing projects at speeds far greater than any other city resident can receive.
Valencia Gardens Housing, with 240 units, is the first area to be connected in a pilot project that expects to wire more than 2,500 units in the city in the next eight months, according to Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle.
What makes the project unique is that the apartments will be connected to the Internet, and to the educational resources at the Internet Archive, at 100 megabits per second (Mbits/second). That speed contrasts sharply with the normal Internet service offered by telephone companies, which is usually less than 6 Mbits/second.
The residents can instantly view DVD-quality videos of the thousands of lectures and other educational information from the Internet Archive’s collections, as well as traditional Internet access.
The Internet Archive is able to achieve this high speed by connecting the San Francisco municipal fiber optic network, which runs through the public housing developments, to an Archive switching center, which connects to the Internet.
“We are pleased to be the first non-profit organization to bring public housing online,” Kahle said.
He added: “We are excited to see much faster access to the Internet as a way to experiment with advanced applications, and are pleased that the underserved get first access to advanced technology.”
NYtimes: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/low-income-residents-get-high-speed-access/
NPR’s OnTheMedia: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/04/11/04
CNET: http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9904821-52.html
ValleyWag: http://valleywag.com/373658/brewster-kahles-internet-archive-brings-broadband-to-sf-housing-projects
Zotero, scholar’s toolset including a browser plug-in, and the Internet Archive have joined forces. Thank you to the Mellon Foundation.
http://www.dancohen.org/2007/12/12/zotero-and-the-internet-archive-join-forces
The Internet Archive’s outgoing bandwidth doubled today to both the commercial Internet and Internet2.
Support for this increase came from the federal e-rate program and the California State Library (thank you!).
We expect to increase our bandwidth further in the next month based on another innovative project.
Anyway, we are all relieved by this increase because we have been overloaded. We apologize.
But we are not out of the woods yet. Our next step is to find other bottlenecks in our system to help get more cultural materials to more people faster.
Enjoy.
-brewster