Google and eBooks

Google has adopted the EPUB digital book format for its distribution of ebooks.  The EPUB, developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum, has other notable companies backing the same format such as Adobe Systems, Random House, and Harelquin to name a few.  Sony recently said that its books for its new Digital Edition reader would use the same format.  This support for EPUB doesn’t bode well for Amazon who uses a proprietary system for its Kindle.  As with the Beta and VHS war, the better system may not always be the one that wins out.  It usually comes to distribution and availablity of titles.

Google will be using the EPUB standard to start distributing about 1 million public domain books for use on Sony and Apple’s reading devices.

Internet Hit a Record 21.4 Billion Watched Videos

July turned out to be the highest ever for people watching videos online.  Its easy to do when you have a powerhouse YouTube to fan the flames with 9 billion of these watched videos.  Record amounts of people are watching Elaine Boyle or the Dance Wedding Procession.   The amount of watched videos, 21.4 billion is an astonishing 88% increase from a year ago.   Also, Hulu is also reporting record amounts of viewership.

In July the average online viewer watched about 8.3 hours of video, up from 7.6 hours in June.  What is possibly happening is that people are foregoing their cable or satellite services and watching their favorite tv shows or other programming online.  The average viewer watched 135 clips.

Experts believe that the record breaking numbers are apart due to some high profile events such as the Michael Jackson death and funeral.  These two events nearly caused a shut down of Twitter, Facebook and Google saw a huge increase in traffic that affected them as well.  Also, the turmoil in Iran and other events have caused this increased viewship at a time when prime time programming is on hiatus for the summer.