That’s Impossible!

British model Lily Cole recently launched a social giving network, impossible.com, with the Wikipedia co-founder. The site, based around a gifting economy concept, would allows users to help each other.

Read more:

Google gathering: Search engine is taking its quest for knowledge offline at a secluded British hotel

Lily Cole’s ‘Impossible’ network wants its users to help each other out

Help Create a DRM-free Ebook Lending Social Network – Guest Post by Greg Belvedere

Help Create a DRM-free Ebook Lending Social Network.

Contribute to the Our Bookshelf Indiegogo campaign. A few months ago I wrote a guest post here that touched on some of the barriers to sharing ebooks legally. In that post I talked about my plans to create a DRM-free ebook lending social network called Our Bookshelf. I have designed the website and I now have a great developer lined up to build it. However, good programmers and graphic designers don’t work for free. So I have launched an Indiegogo campaign to help raise the funds. You get neat perks when you contribute. More importantly, you will help create a place where people can share ebooks as easily they share print books, but in a way that still treats copyright holders fairly.

Your contribution will help Our Bookshelf reach its first phase and become an ebook lending social network for public domain books. Since these books are not under copyright, users may share them freely without having to worry about restrictive licenses. Once we have an active social network we will work start getting authors and publishers to adopt our new ebook license that allows sharing. I have worked out way to share ebooks fairly through the Our Bookshelf website. You can read more about it on our Indiegogo campaign page or on our website. I hope you will contribute and help improve the way we share ebooks. I also encourage you to tell any bibliophile friends and colleagues that you have. You can find us on facebook, google+, and on twitter @ourebookshelf

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Greg Belvedere is the founder of Our Bookshelf, the DRM-Free ebook lending social network.

Grubwithus: A New Type of Networking

What better way to network than breaking bread over the table together.  Check out Grubwithus, a new type of networking that happens around the table.  View your city and see what social dining events are happening or even start your own meal.

Our Bookshelf: The DRM-free Ebook Lending Social Network – Guest Post by Greg Belvedere

Even with the rise of e-readers and e-books, there are unresolved issues such as the use of digital rights management (DRM) files that affect the sharing of e-books. Here is a guest post by Greg Belvedere about Our Bookshelf: The DRM-free Ebook Lending Social Network.

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Like many I have grown frustrated with the lack of convenient ways to share ebooks. Companies like Amazon claim to offer ways to do this, but they use DRM files and place so many restrictions on how you can share ebooks that few have taken advantage of them. On the other end of the spectrum sharing ebooks via Bit Torrent and other file sharing methods amounts to little more than piracy. Although very convenient, these file sharing methods do not respect the copyrights of authors and publishers. If these people can’t make a living we can’t expect them to keep producing quality ebooks.

In response to this problem I have found a way to make sharing ebooks as easy as sharing regular books, maybe easier. At the same time my method will respect copyright holders. I’m doing this by creating a DRM-free ebook lending social network. I have a clear concise explanation of how this will work on our website Our Bookshelf. In addition to this novel way of respecting copyright in a file sharing setting, I plan to build some interesting features into the site. I hope you will check it out and follow us on twitter @ourebookshelf and like our facebook page, so we can keep you updated and let you know when we launch the site.

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Greg Belvedere is the founder of Our Bookshelf, the DRM-Free ebook lending social network. He is also an adult librarian who works for Brookyn Public Library.