Author Archives: jeff kaplan

The Awesomeness of Yosemite

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Just back from a stay in Yosemite Valley. Just awesome…as it always has been.

So of course I came back and had to check on some of the history and other interesting information about the valley at the Archive. There’s a wealth of stuff found by simply searching “yosemite“.


This one from 1905 is one of the earliest with photos.  Lots of changes in the man-made aspects of the valley but not to the natural landforms that are so familiar and, well, awesome in the real sense of the word.

http://www.archive.org/details/discoveryofyosem01bunn
This 3rd edition from 1897 gives an account of the The Indian Wars that led to the discovery of Yo-Semite.

http://www.archive.org/details/yosemiteitshisto00lest
This one from 1873 might be the oldest book we have on Yosemite.

http://www.archive.org/details/yosemite00unkngoog
And of course there is “The Yosemite” by John Muir from 1912.

A great trip as always. The valley may be more crowded than a century ago but the experience is still inspiring and …awesome.

-Jeff Kaplan

Little Known Classics You NEED To Watch!

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The classic, the rare, the obscure…you movie junkies love this stuff. It’s always cool to discover the weird films made by familiar faces. Kudos Matt Holmes and Peter Willis of Obssessed With Film for assembling a Top 10 of little known classics.

You can watch 5 of them right now at Internet Archive. Whoa, is that Telly Savalas!? I’m going to watch Quicksand! now…it has Peter Lorre and Mickey Rooney together.

Check them out:

Horror Express http://www.archive.org/details/horror_express_ipod
Suddenly http://www.archive.org/details/suddenly_avi
Impact http://www.archive.org/details/impact
Too Late For Tears http://www.archive.org/details/TooLateForTears
Quicksand! http://www.archive.org/details/Quicksand_clear

-Jeff Kaplan

MegaReader iPhone App Gives Access to Internet Archive's 1.8 Million Free Books in a Personalized Reader

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from prweb:
Inkstone Software today announces the launch of MegaReader—a highly customizable iPhone eBook reader that gives users the choice of over 1.8 million free books on the internet.

The MegaReader app has been designed to tap into book catalogs such as Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, Baen Free Books, Smashwords, and the Internet Archive—allowing users to discover not only the classics (such as Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, and War and Peace), but also up and coming modern indie authors and publishers.

“We are thrilled to contribute to Inkstone’s efforts to bring the enjoyment of these books to readers around the world” said Peter Brantley, Director of the BookServer Project, Internet Archive.

Read more: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/09/prweb4475754.htm
Get MegaReader: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id387136454?mt=8

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHJapuCixIA&fs=1&hl=en_US]

NASA on The Commons

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From nasaimages.org, a service of Internet Archive:

Internet Archive, NASA, and Flickr are together launching NASA on The Commons, a new way to view and interact with photos from NASA. NASA on The Commons invites the public to contribute information and knowledge to curated photo sets provided by nasaimages.org.  Visitors will be able to add tags, keywords, and annotations to three compilations of images curated by the New Media Innovation Team at NASA Ames and NASA photography and history experts across the Agency. The three collections, spanning more than half a century of NASA history, include: Launch and Takeoff, Building NASA, and Center Namesakes.

“NASA’s long-standing partnership with Internet Archive and this new one with Yahoo!’s Flickr provides an opportunity for the public to participate in the process of discovery,” said Debbie Rivera, lead for the NASA Images project at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “In addition, the public can help the agency capture historical knowledge about missions and programs through this new resource and make it available for future generations.”

NASA on The Commons will make the NASA Images collection accessible to a wider audience while improving the information that accompanies these images with the help of the public.
Read more about NASA on The Commons.

Top 40 best free legal movies you can download right now

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Sean P. Aune at tech.blorge has put together a great list of movies on archive.org.  From his blog:

The Internet Archive works to bring together anything and everything that resides in the public domain, and that includes movies.  We’ve gathered together 40 of the best ones that will keep you entertained for hours on end, all without costing you a dime outside of using some of your bandwidth.  Enjoy!

I haven’t seen a lot of these and didn’t even know we had some of them. This is a great list. Gotta watch one of the Hitchcock movies right now.

Sean, thanks for doing the heavy lifting!

-Jeff Kaplan

The Fourth Generation Petabox

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Waiting for your upload or download….

Behind all the cool stuff users see on archive.org is some serious hardware. I was curious about the ongoing development of data storage here at Internet Archive. I spent a little time with Mario, Master of the Machines, while he gave me a tour of the newest generation of our staff designed and built Petabox storage units.

Here are some of the specs he gave me for the newest version.
• each has 480 terabytes of raw storage
• each Petabox contains: 240 2-terabyte disks in 4U high rack mounts
• each computer has: 2 – 4 core xeon processors, 12 gigs of RAM each, speed-2 GHz
• each machine has pair of 1Gbit interfaces that are bonded so it’s effectively 2Gbit
• the rack has a switch with uplink of 10Gbit
• Ubuntu OS is stored on a pair of mirrored internal hard drives separate from the data disks
• each has IPMI management interface (allows remote control power cycling and remote console)
• in all there will be a total of 8 units (that’s about 4 million gigabytes).

-Jeff Kaplan

Then and Now

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With the continued difficulties in the economy and the comparison often heard to the Great Depression I thought I’d search the Archive for some perspective. While unquestionably there was hardship and suffering, I was heartened to see footage from two places that show daily life.

The first is a series by Ivan Besse of life in Britton, South Dakota. An amazing set of scenes from small town America in the late 1930s show busy people hustling downtown, smiling faces, civic activities and generally what seems to be a tight-knit community that is happy and healthy.

The second from just a year or so later is of San Francisco, home of Internet Archive. In contrast to the Besse film this shows a teeming metropolis full of activity. This film seems more about the scale of enterprise, the high-rise hotels, people hustling to and from businesses, crowds on the Wharf, the early airport and urban life. Less smiling faces but a lively metropolis nonetheless.

During the years these were filmed there was very high unemployment. Yet programs such as the Works Progress Administration were created to provide meaningful employment for many. It was responsible for the creation of many civic projects we continue to enjoy today. Here at Internet Archive we had high hopes that the unemployment extension act that was finally approved by the Senate on Tuesday would help protect the jobs of 140 people who work here. The JobsNow program, originally part of that bill, was cut out at the last minute. So, we all hope that our representatives will find a way to extend the program so that we can continue to expand Internet Archive, a free resource that is intended to provide universal access to all knowledge.

-Jeff Kaplan

Millions of books get digitized for the disabled

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Thanks to By Stephanie Steinberg at USA TODAY  for the nice writeup about the books for the disabled service at openlibrary.org:

Millions of books get digitized for the disabled

“For those who are blind, dyslexic or have diseases like multiple sclerosis and have difficulty turning book pages, reading the latest best seller just got easier.

“Brewster Kahle, a digital librarian and founder of a virtual library called the Internet Archive, has launched a worldwide campaign to double the number of books available for print-disabled people.”

Read more at USAToday

-Jeff Kaplan

New Support for HTML5 audio tag!

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We just rolled out the tag support option for our audio files (which is similar to our tag support that we have had as an option for a bit).

So patrons can now opt to not use our flash plugin for audio file playback with relatively modern browsers (Safari v4+, Firefox v3.5+, Chrome, etc.) that support the new audio/video HTML5 tags.  For such browsers, you can visit an item and then look below where the normal player would be and click “Would you like to try the new audio tag?”  If you prefer this way of listening, we give you the option to set a cookie to make archive audio/video items always use this (non-flash) option.

Enjoy!

-Tracey Jaquith