While the first scan was done manually on a 300 page book and took 40 minutes to process, Google now use cameras capable of scanning at a rate of 1,000 pages an hour and also work with 20,000 publisher partners who provide content directly.  They have also been able to provide over 1 million books that can be read in full from cover to cover; these unrestricted works are either books that have fallen out of copyright or have been provided with publishers express permission.

As well as simply scanning the books, Google performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the pages, thereby turning them in to pure text which can be entered in to their database.  As a result when you do a Google Search you are now not only returned results from relevant websites but also your search terms are checked against a library encompassing millions of books and appropriate matches are suggested for further reading.

The integration in to the Google Search engine means you may have already inadvertently stumbled across Google Books but if you haven’t and are eager to explore then the Google Books can be found by visiting the site http://books.google.co.uk/ directly.   Being a Google service, it almost goes without saying that the service is completely free of charge and is instead paid for via a minimal number of sponsored links which are in no way intrusive or detrimental to the service.

From the Google Books site you can perform searches, add books to your virtual library or organise your collection in a logical manner.  Searching for a book and then subsequently clicking on it opens an interface which allows you to either view the directly scanned pages from the book or in some instances a ‘plain text’ version.  This plain text can then be copied and passed to another application or simply printed out for reading offline.

Books still under copyright enjoy the protection of a variety of access limitations and security measures which limit the number of viewable pages making the experience somewhat akin to being able to flick through the first couple of pages in a library or bookshop.   Despite this protection there have rather predictably been a number of fairly major lawsuits issued by individuals and publishers alike; some with legitimate grievances and others just seeking money or publicity.

Possibly the most notable case was between The Authors Guild, the publishing industry and Google which resulted in Google agreeing to a settlement on October 28, 2008.  This would see them pay a total $125 million not only to pay the court costs of the plaintiffs but also create a Book Rights Registry which will collect and disburse revenue generated by all third party sites such as Google which provide content based on the content of books covered by the agreement.

These issues aside, on the whole I am amazed that again this relatively new company have been able to offer such an incredible gift to the world.  With Google Books we have the potential to preserve centuries of human literacy work for generations to come as well as promoting the spread and availability of knowledge amongst all groups and all classes of people.

How is Resolution Measured?
Resolutions are generally expressed in two different formats – either the pixel dimensions of the image are given or the total number of pixels used in its creation.

Most digital cameras express their maximum resolution in terms of megapixels (millions of pixels) that can be used to create an image; an 8 mega pixel camera would be able to break a picture down in to 8 million pixels hence giving a higher resolution that a 5 mega pixel camera.

The resolution of a computer image on the other hand is usually expressed by giving the number of pixels present on a line and the number of lines used in the image.  For example, an image measuring 1600 x 1200 would contain 1600 pixels per line and a total of 1200 lines giving a total of 1,920,000 pixels (1.92 mega pixels).  As the image contains a greater number of horizontal than vertical pixels we can assume this picture would be landscape rather than portrait.

How does Resolution affect File Size?
The more pixels an image contains the larger the file is likely to be; this is due to the fact that storing information relating to 10 million pixels is liable to require more space than saving a lower resolution 1 million pixel image.

There are several other very important factors to consider:

File Format – Over the years there have been many different image file formats, each introducing new advantages and disadvantages and covering them all would take an article in itself.  The two you are most likely to come in to contact with when using a digital camera are JPEG (smaller images that often include compression) or RAW (Completely unprocessed images files which are of a higher image quality but also substantially larger)

Colour Depth – Along with the total number of pixels that constitute an image, we also have to consider the potential number of colours each pixel could be.  If, for example you save your image as a ‘line art’ image where each pixel can be either black or white then the amount of data required to store this information is less than if you set a colour depth of ‘true colour’ where each pixel could be one of 16,777,216 potential colours.

Compression – Many image formats, such as JPEG allow you to adjust the amount of compression that is utilised when saving the image.  Compression can work in a number of different ways but ultimately it works to minimise the amount of data required to save the image.  This is usually achieved by looking for areas of commonality (for example a shape or pattern) and saving the description of that area which the computer can then later reproduce when reloading the image rather than defining each individual pixel.

Last week we discussed the theoretical uses for file compression on the Internet and to take this one stage further, this week we will put this technology to use by looking at a off-shoot of it which has caused quite a bit of controversy in the media lately – MP3’s.

For those of you who missed Click last week, I’ll quickly explain that MP3’s are very tightly compressed music files which can be downloaded off the Internet at the rate of approximately one track every 25 minutes. This system has been open to abuse with many people downloading commercial MP3’s which is obviously a breach of copyright laws; very much like making a copy of a mates new album onto cassette. I would just like to disassociate myself from this as the advice given in this article is only to be used for the downloading copyright free songs such as those produced by mainly unsigned artists.

The most effective way to search for MP3’s is by using a MP3 sharer. These programs work on a method that everybody who uses one has the option to share the music currently on his or her computer to the remainder of the community that are currently running the program. If you can imagine that one hundred thousand people use the program then that same number of people have the option of sharing their files with the general public, assuming each person has 100 music files to share then you can soon see that this amounts to 10 million files shared across the network.

The MP3 sharing program just sits in the background keeping a constantly updated database of who is connected to the network and what files they have chosen to share with the rest of the community. This database can then be searched by a single user for any particular song that he or she requires, then, once a suitable match is found the music file in question can be transferred straight from the computer that holds the file to the computer that requests the file. This is done completely free of charge while the chosen MP3 sharing program acts as an intermediary between the two computers conducting the transfer.

There are dozens of programs available for MP3 sharing, the most popular until recently was Napster. Unfortunately, due to countless court hearings against the program for breach of copyright this program has been forced to remove many of the MP3’s available to it’s users by means of a system designed to detect the transfer of copyrighted material. This has had the side effect of the exclusion of much un-copyrighted material from the service. It is still worth a look at however and is available free of charge from www.napster.com.

One of my favourite programs at the moment is called WinMX and is the one that I’m quickly going to look at today. One of the main advantages is that it isn’t subject to any of the restrictions that have been placed on to Napster due to the nature of the system which actually makes it impossible to regulate or shut down – Remember however it is illegal to download copyrighted MP3’s in any case. The program is free to download from www.winmx.com and once installed it allows you to search for music, videos, pictures and program files from the hard disks of people currently connected to the WinMX servers.

The program itself is fairly easy to use; the main trick you’ll quickly pick up is being able to determine who you would be best off downloading from when you do a search for a song that returns many results from different users. Obviously since you are downloading straight off someone elses computer it would help if they had a fast connection to the Internet in order to be able to send you the song you requested.

Another impressive feature of the program is the ability to be able to decide which songs you want to share with the other uses and it is even possible to ask not to allow anybody to download off of your hard drive. You are also able to chat with those people that you download or send MP3’s to and the program includes a function to be able to create a library of all the songs you’ve downloaded.

If you are lucky enough to be furnished with a CD writer then you would be able to copy the songs on to CD using a separate piece of software in order to play them in the car on the way to work or for use on your home stereo.

I recommend that you download WinMX or one of the similar programs just to see what you think of the MP3 sharing revolution; you may be able to find some interesting new music completely free of charge.