Kansas City

Amazon may be trying to establish its own wireless network, in a move that would integrate the company more deeply into everyday use of the internet, according to a Bloomberg report citing unnamed sources. Amazon reportedly tested a wireless network in Cupertino, Calif., using spectrum belonging to Globalstar, a satellite communications company which is seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission to convert 80 percent of its satellite spectrum to terrestrial use. That would theoretically allow companies like Amazon to bid on Globalstar's spectrum for Wi-Fi networks.

By Dr. Frank Lowney I recently traveled to Kansas City, Mo., to attend the annual convention put on by the National Association of College Stores (NACS), and to participate in a panel discussion on the impact of emerging technologies upon the textbook business. NACS represents about half of all college stores. The other half are [...]

The post What’s Happening to College Bookstores? appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.

In another small step toward becoming a national Internet service provider, Google has partnered with The Chelsea Improvement Company in the city of New York to provide free public Wi-Fi.

Google expects to serve hundreds of thousands of people per year in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea, where its offices have been located for the past six years. Wi-Fi coverage is now available between Gansevoort St. and 19 St. from 8th Ave to the West Side Highway, and includes the Chelsea Triangle, 14th Street Park and Gansevoort Plaza.

Though the deal has yet to be finalized, Marceline, MO-based Walsworth Publishing has tentatively agreed to buy magazine and journal printer Ovid Bell Press of Fulton, MO for an undisclosed sum.

Walsworth marketing and communications VP Alex Blackwell, told PrintWeek, "We’ve entered into an agreement to purchase Ovid Bell, but the acquisition has not gone through. The estimated close date is December 31 of this year."

Blackwell said he could not comment on how Ovid Bell will be integrated into Walsworth until the deal was completed."

CNet reports that Google announced its new fiber service for Kansas City today. And while most of the story really doesn’t have e-book relevance—the service is aimed at providing access to media with a lot huger file sizes than those—one thing that leaped out at me was that, with each subscription to Google’s $120/mo gigabit [...]

In the last 24 hours, I’ve met a whole lotta new colleagues in the book publishing industry. I’ve talked with people from New Haven and New York, from Kansas City and from St. Paul. I’ve spoken with publishing people from Frankfurt and Amsterdam, from Denmark, Beirut and Qatar. 
 
Such is the international mind-melding going on at the Yale Publishing Course. Take 100 or so folks from all over the world, bring them and their questions about the future of the industry and their part in it into one lovely conference center on the campus of one prestigious university.