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Thursday, February 17, 2011
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IBM’s Watson Defeats Humans in Jeopardy! Battle
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by Erik Arnold
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IBM's supercomputer named Watson completed its conquest for Jeopardy! domination by defeating two of the best contestants on Earth: Ken Jennings, the longest consecutive winner in Jeopardy history, and Brad Rutter, the all-time earnings leader. Time will tell if the Jeopardy! victory is a Truman/Dewey moment. The Jeopardy! competition was a total score over two games (aired in three episodes Feb. 14-16), with the highest total score at the end of the two games claiming victory. Watson won the $1 million prize, and it was not even close until the last round when Ken Jennings seemed determined to put in a good showing for humans before bowing out by writing "it's time to welcome our new artificial intelligence overlords" on his Final Jeopardy question. This delighted the IBM heavy studio audience.
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Springer eBooks Now Available in the Google eBookstore
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Springer ebooks are now available in the Google eBookstore. Google currently holds the largest collection of Springer ebooks with more than 52,000, which is a combination of physically scanned books published prior to 2006 and PDF file submissions since 2006. Springer adds 4,000 newly published titles per year. This service will initially only be available for international customers. A platform for the German-speaking markets will follow in due course.
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ScienceCinema Offers Searchable Videos from U.S. DOE
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Scientific videos highlighting the most exciting research and development sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are now available through ScienceCinema. The multimedia search tool was launched Feb. 8 as part of a 1-day workshop, "Multimedia and Visualization Innovations for Science," jointly hosted by Microsoft and the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI), held in Redmond, Wash.
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Apple Launches Subscriptions on the App Store
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Apple, Inc. announced a new subscription service available to all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, and more. This is the same digital subscription billing service that Apple recently launched with News Corp.'s The Daily app.
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Update on Gale—Mobile, Global, and In Context
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by Paula J. Hane
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At the recent ALA Midwinter meeting, I caught up with Nader Qaimari, senior vice president of marketing at Cengage Learning, to talk about recent developments at Gale and get a peek at some forthcoming products. Gale continues to be excited about the streamlined company structure implemented last summer—the integration of Gale and Cengage. Qaimari says it lets the company make content connections and help libraries serve as the conduit to information and textbooks. Other news he was eager to discuss included the company's mobile initiatives, its new Gale World Scholar product line, enhancements to PowerSearch, new administrative tools, and ongoing work on the In Context products.
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