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Roland celebrates 50 years of music gear with glossy new book
The 400-page tome includes several chapters about some of Roland's most iconic gear.
BioWare book will chronicle 25 years of games
Did you practically grow up with BioWare games? If so, there will soon be a book to help you reminisce. The studio is preparing BioWare: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development, a retrospective book that will discuss "key moments" in the company's history while showing previously unseen artwork and photos. You can also expect tidbits regarding "secret, cancelled" game projects. This might shed light on how Mass Effect characters came to be, or help you wax nostalgic about playing the original Baldur's Gate or MDK titles ("good gravy, that's Edmonton!").
The US is suing Edward Snowden over his memoir
The United States is suing whistleblower Edward Snowden over his memoir, Permanent Record. It claims the former Central Intelligence Agency employee and National Security Agency contractor violated non-disclosure agreements with both agencies because he didn't submit the book to them for review before publication.
Disney+ docu-series will focus on the people behind its movies and parks
Disney+ will have access to Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Fox's impressive film library, but it needs a wide variety of other content to compete with Netflix's endless scroll. The entertainment giant has dropped a clue at what we can expect to see with the launch of a new docu-series called One Day at Disney. It will go behind the scenes to profile Disney talent like Imagineer Eric Baker, who designed props and creatures for Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, Aladdin animator Eric Goldberg and Marvel Studio development head Ryan Meinerding.
J.D. Salinger novels will finally be released as e-books
It's not just musicians giving in to demand to go digital. J.D. Salinger's son Matt has agreed to publish e-book versions of the famed author's novels, including The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey, later this week. Salinger had generally been against technology and was one of the last great 20th-century writers to refuse digital publication, but his son Matt saw this as a matter of keeping his father's work relevant in the modern era. Many people only read on phones and tablets, the younger Salinger told the New York Times -- if there weren't e-book versions, people might not read these classics in the first place.
NASA's free interactive photo book shows the abstract beauty of Earth
NASA just released 168 pages of stunning images showing the planet's atmosphere, water, land, ice and snow from a satellite's perspective. For $53, you can buy a hardcover version of the book, simply titled Earth. Or you can accept the unavoidable truth that print is dead and enjoy the free, interactive online version on NASA's Earth Observatory. And if you absolutely must take the book with you, there are free PDF and ebook versions too.
Scrapped 'Final Fantasy XV' DLC will live on as a novel
Square Enix left Final Fantasy XV fans hanging in the lurch when it scrapped most of the game's DLC, but that doesn't mean you'll be left wondering what happens next. The developer is borrowing a cue from Mass Effect: Andromeda by releasing a novel, The Dawn of the Future, to fill in what's left of the storyline. It promises to pick up where the Episode Ardyn add-on leaves off and will be available in Japan on April 25th, or just a month after Ardyn's March 26th debut.
Ada Lovelace manuscript and algorithm fetch $125,000 at auction
A manuscript written by Ada Lovelace, who's considered by many to be the first computer programmer, was just sold at auction for more than $125,000, the Guardian reports. A first edition and just one of six known copies of the book, it contains Lovelace's translation of a paper written by Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea that describes Charles Babbage's plans for his "Analytical Engine" computing machine. The manuscript also contains copious explanatory notes and observations from Lovelace as well as a formula for calculating Bernoulli numbers that has been called the world's first computer program.
Amazon is turning William Gibson’s ‘The Peripheral’ into a series
It's about time we got a serious attempt at adapting William Gibson's work to the small screen. With the success of Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon and Philip K Dick's The Man In The High Castle, streaming studios with an eye on originals can only benefit from Gibson's seminal take on the future. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, the creative team behind HBO's Westworld reboot, are taking on The Peripheral, Gibson's 2014 sci-fi thriller, for Amazon Studios.
'Super Mario Bros.' encyclopedia comes to the US October 23rd
Nintendo did many things to mark the 30th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., but there's been one you couldn't usually get your hands on unless you lived in Japan: the Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia. You'll be glad to hear that it's coming to the West, though. Dark Horse Publishing has announced that the official guide to Mario's universe will be available in a standard edition in the US on October 23rd for $40. Amazon is also hinting at releases in the UK and Europe, although we don't have official information as of this writing.
Touring the solar system with a new book of NASA photos
It's easy to get jaded by images of our solar system, especially when NASA probes like Cassini make it look so routine. A new book called The Planets, written and curated by Nirmala Nataraj with a forward by Bill Nye and featuring hundreds of stunning NASA images, should cure you of your cynicism. As Nye puts it, we haven't exactly been doing this for a long time. "You are looking at images with a clarity and sharpness that our ancestors probably couldn't even imagine, let alone capture," he said.
ICYMI: Boston's book cleaning machine and Disney's new SFX tricks
Today on In Case You Missed It: We take a look at the Boston Public Library's novel method of keeping its archives clean. Hint: it involves pushing them through a portable vacuum cleaner. The Depulvera book cleaning machine, as it's called, can scrub the dust and accumulated grime from up to 12 ancient tomes a minute without damaging the books themselves. Disney is also making headlines with a pair of new special effects tricks. The first will enable Disney CG animators to motion capture real life hairstyles and port them directly into computer generated simulations. The second uses high speed cameras and infrared lasers to map and project digital images and animations onto actors' faces. One will result in more lifelike and naturals doos in kids movies, the other will serve as a steady source of nightmare fuel for the parents. Good times. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @Terrortola.
Zoe Quinn's book about fighting online hate arrives Sept. 6th
Zoë Quinn, perhaps one of the most qualified people to talk about online harassment, has written a book on her fight against online hate. It's called Crash Override, just like the volunteer group she founded to support harassment victims, and it's now ready for pre-order. As GamerGate's original target, the game developer had to endure having her accounts hacked, her sensitive photos stolen and her family and friends doxxed and harassed. She was also on the receiving end of numerous murder and rape threats. Quinn's book talks about her GamerGate experience in its first few chapters, but it sounds like it has much more to offer.
A Google search is all you need to book a fitness class
When Reserve with Google starting helping users book fitness classes last year, the scheduling tool was only available in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City. Today, the company announced that the handy feature is now available all over the US. That means that you'll be able to book and pay for a yoga or exercise session in Google Maps, Google Search or directly through the Reserve with Google website.
Isaac Newton text is the most expensive science book sold
Science texts aren't normally top earners at auctions, but Christie's just proved that there are major exceptions to this rule. The auction house has sold a first edition of Isaac Newton's 1687 masterpiece, Principia Mathematica, for just over $3.7 million -- the most expensive science book sold to date. It was originally estimated to sell for no more than $1.5 million, but its rarity likely helped drive the price up. This is a rare continental Europe edition, with only 80 copies published versus the 400 for Britain.
Apple wants to sell you a $300 photo book about its products
Apple is known for two things: design and modesty. Okay, one thing. Today, the company announced a new photo book that "chronicles 20 years of Apple design," called Designed by Apple in California. Dedicated to the memory of its co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs, the new book intends to highlight both Apple's design process as well as its products. It features 450 photos of gadgets past and present, shot by Andrew Zuckerman, a photographer who is perhaps most famous for his Creature book and subsequent sequels.
Europe rules that libraries can lend e-books like normal ones
Europe has ruled (PDF) that e-books can be lent out just like their physical counterparts. That is, as noticed by Ars Technica, one copy can be "checked out" by one person at a time. After the lending period expires, that user can no longer use the book and it goes to the next person who wants it. This might sound kind of expected, but you have to remember that it took until 2014 for the European Union to approve digitizing library books in the first place. And even then, you could only use them within the library's walls and at dedicated terminals.
Nintendo's NES retrospective book looks like a game cartridge
Nintendo's NES Classic Edition isn't the only nostalgia bomb the company is dropping this fall. Nope, Playing With Power: Nintendo NES Classics from strategy-guide publisher Prima Games is en route for this November as well. The hardcover boasts 320 pages of interviews from the NES era, bits of old-school advertising and "priceless excerpts from Nintendo Power magazine back issues." Oh hey, hand-drawn maps and character art are on tap as well. Here's to hoping some of those are from Howard and Nester artist Bill Mudron.
The story of EE has been turned into a book
Nothing says summer like lying on a beach and getting stuck into a good book. But what to read? A 19th century classic, or perhaps Murakami's latest surrealist tale? What about the fascinating story of how mobile provider EE came to be? Well, look no further than The 4G Mobile Revolution: Creation, Innovation and Transformation at EE, penned by former network CEO Olaf Swantee and now departed comms director Stu Jackson.
Google experiments with e-books designed for your phone
E-books are just digital recreations of what you can get on paper. Wouldn't it be better if they took advantage of internet-connected mobile devices to tell new stories? Google, at least, wants to give this a shot. It just launched Editions At Play, an experiment in making e-books that rely on the dynamic qualities of the mobile web to do what you can't in print. One book (Reif Larsen's Entrances & Exits, above) sets stories inside Google Street View locations that you can explore. Others create portals full of animation and sound, degrade the text alongside a character's mind or let you flip between two sides of the same tale.
