5 Christmas Copyright Myths (Plagiarism Today) – There are a lot of misconceptions about Christmas and Copyright that this article addresses.
Some you may be aware that my husband is a musician. He has an great holiday album of instrumental jazz available. You can listen on Pandora and Spotify or purchase as a download or CD. You can listen to the whole album or find out more about it at SkafishHoliday.com.
Daily Links are interesting links I discover as I go about my online day. The frequency and number of links posted depend upon the daily news. I also post other, different links of interest on Twitter and on the Google Plus eBook Evangelist Page.
Today, Amazon is featuring 31 titles in the Ed McBain classic 87th Precinct mysteries for $1.99 each. (Pictured is book 1, Cop Hater.) I also found Francine Pascal’s beloved Sweet Valley High series – an ebook bundle with volumes 1-12 for only $7.99.
Right at this moment, I would love to writing new posts for this blog. Instead, I am going through each of my WordPress themes and deleting the plugins that get re-installed EVERY TIME that you update the software – most specifically, the Hello Dolly plugin.
In case you have never bother to activate it, all Hello Dolly does is display a random lyric from the song Hello Dolly. Yes, that’s it. But it has traditionally been included with WordPress since earlyin the software’s development.
A lot of blog posts have been written about this over the last few years (Google delete Hello Dolly plugin and see what I mean). One post refereed to Hello Dolly as “some kind of zombie plugin that would rise from the dead every time I updated WordPress.”
While some people have learned to write plugins through studying the Hello Dolly plugin, more people seem to be frustrated with its continual ressurection. In this 2009 poll from Digging into WordPress, 78% of those who responded voted to remove Hello Dolly from WordPress. And yet it is still here.
Hello Dolly was written by Matt Mullenweg, one of the co-founders of WordPress, and that is probably the reason it remains bundled with the software. In fact, this post from Webnovate suggests that we should keep the plugin installed as a thank you to Matt Mullenweg for WordPress itself.
But there are actually some very good arguments for deleting it, along with any other unused plugins:
Plugins use server resources. They also affect your pages’ load times.
Plugins can interact and cause conflicts and unintended side effects.
Plugins require constant updating, even if they are not active.
Plugins can be huge security risks. Sometimes, the risk is from the plugins themselves, sometimes, it is from plugins being out of date. According to WPExplorer, “Out of date plugins are prime targets for those in search of security weaknesses and can also break when newer versions of WordPress and other plugins are released.”
I use security software to track login attempts on my blogs. Every time WordPress updates, there is a surge in bots trying to access sites, hoping to catch a new vulnerability or exploit a flaw brought about by the new software. Given the security risks that are out there, I don’t want any plugins installed that I am not actively using.
And that’s why I think it is time for Hello Dolly to finally stop being bundled with WordPress. It is too big of a security risk for the world we live in. I know the song says, “Dolly’ll never go away again.” But, hopefully, we are not taking that too literally. I’d rather spend my time doing something else….
On Amazon, the Kindle Daily Deals include Mary Monroe’s Bad Blood and a paranormal romance by Maya Banks.I also found some really good prices on some other bestsellers:
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari for $4.99 (reduced from $14.99). This New York Times bestseller was a pick for Mark Zuckerberg’s book club.
Guidebook to Murder by Lynn Cahoon is the Kobo Daily Deal, price at $1.99. Kobo also has a special on best-selling YA for $4.99 or less through December 21, 2015.
If you are a Woot shopper, you may be interested in a refurbished Trio TrioAXS4G 7.85″ Quad-Core 16GB Android Tablet that is selling for $39.99. This tablet is labeled with the Free 200MB T-Mobile 4G Data For Life plan.
(Note: All prices current at the time of posting and subject to change. Most items marked Daily Deals are good for only the day posted.)
In Sunday’s Kindle Daily Deals offers a selection of books for just $1.99 each. Included are several titles by James Patterson as well as 9 books in Anne Perry’s Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series of Victorian mysteries, starting with the series opener, The Cater Street Hangman. This is a good jump start if you are interested in this 31 volume series. 🙂
And just in time for Green Monday, Amazon has once again marked down prices on Kindle e-readers and Fire Tablets. The $50 Fire is not included (it is out of stock until after Christmas, anyway), but you can find:
The basic Kindle – $59.99 (Deal ends December 19, 2015)
I am experiencing a glitch with the Kobo Daily Deal which is is also supposed to be Lewis’ Save Me for $1.99. Instead of coming up at $1.99, the price is showing as $9.99 on both the deal page and when I put in in my cart. This is very strange as the book is normally $4.99. If you see that the price gets corrected, please leave me a comment below. 🙂
Did you know that Kobo has a whole section of ebooks in Spanish? I didn’t know that until I stumbled on it today. I thought that was a neat find! 🙂
(Note: All prices current at the time of posting and subject to change. Most items marked Daily Deals are good for only the day posted.)
Saturday’s Kindle Daily Deals feature Kay Brat’s Tales of the Scavenger’s Daughters Series, Books 1-4, for $1.99 each, amongst others. There are also some interesting 99 cent cookbooks, including titles by Jennifer Chandler (The Simply series) and Wolfgang Puck, as well as several classic books on Southern cooking. It is an eclectic collection that ranges in style from Aunt Bee’s Mayberry Cookbook (from the Andy Griffith TV show) to a volume by Princess Diana’s former chef, Darren McCrady.
Christmas is a huge book buying season, and that certainly includes ebooks. I will be posting the deals I find daily for those of you looking for reading bargains.
About once a week, I post links to digital-related library news articles and information about digital collections available online. I also post other links of interest about the digital life daily on the Google Plus eBook Evangelist Page.
As someone who like to buy complete series from authors I like, I have been excited to see more and more multi-book collections by a single author being offered by traditional publishers. Some of them are available at substation discounts; others are offered as a simple, convenient way to buy all of the books in a series by an author.
I also have seen more and more collections being offered as Daily Finds on Barnes and Noble. 🙂
The only problem I am having is finding a systematic way to search for them – at this point, it is often a matter of chance or someone else finding them and posting them first. Using the word collections has not brought good results!
How do you find your collections? Any tips to share?
(Note: All prices subject to change. They were current at time of writing this post.)
News is breaking that the parties have settled in the Happy Birthday copyright case. The trial scheduled to begin December 15, 2015 has been canceled, according to a ruling filed in the case.
One of the factors that was to have been addressed in the trial would have been the issue of damages, possibly going all the way back to 1949.
Detail of the settlement have not yet been released, so at this point, we have no idea what this means (if anything) to the public at large as far as usage rights and the song’s public domain status.
Reading Between the Headlines (Write It Forward) – Some thought on the effect of the Barnes and Noble financial situation.
The eBook Evangelist 