My colleagues and I sadly mourn the passing of a pioneer in digital curation. Michael Stern Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, has passed away at age 64. While not a household name, Hart has an important place in modern technology, given he is credited as the inventor of the eBook. His contribution can be […]
I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about how to keep “big data” safe: research datasets, archival documents, that sort of thing. But, the lessons we learn here are also pretty useful for smaller setups, artists, businesses… and people at home. Everyone can benefit from digital preservation. Everyone needs to know how […]
Over the summer, the RUcore team has been working with a few researchers to better understand their needs, and to work on preserving and sharing our first samples of actual research data. In collaboration with the Philip E. Marucci Center for Blueberry and Cranberry Research and Extension, our efforts – if you’ll pardon the pun – have begun to bear fruit.
In an era where music is downloaded, synced, and played back wirelessly, the writing is on the wall for most physical containers of digital media, and MiniDisc could be among the first of many types of this physical media to go obsolete in the near future.
On July 7, Sony announced that production of MiniDisc playback equipment would cease in September, with the manufacturing of blank media to end approximately one year later. Soon to be gone, it shouldn’t be forgotten, as MiniDisc is a valuable case study in the effect of format wars, and how adoption of a medium can be hampered by Digital Rights Management and poor business decisions.
Some recent, high-profile security-related events are adding another wrinkle of complexity for those who are trusting the cloud for their data storage and content delivery: who your neighbors are, and what they might be doing. On June 21, the FBI raided a Reston, Virginia based server farm for Swiss hosting provider Digital One. While the […]