Google vs. Amazon: Clash of the booksellers - Computerworld

Computerworld - Are you a fan of those 1960s Japanese monster movies like Mothra vs. Godzilla, where two enormous animals battle insanely while the tiny human onlookers scream in horror?

Well, if your favorite film isn't available on Netflix or Hulu, you can still enjoy a clash of the Titans this week, as Google pits its new e-reading application, Google eBooks -- and its new retail venture, the Google eBookstore -- against Amazon.com's huge inventory.

For a while, there has been some speculation that Google was going to come out with its own e-reader device, like Amazon's Kindle or Borders' Kobo. Instead, Google made headlines on Monday with a strictly software-based strategy: a bevy of applications for Android devices, the iPhone, the iPad, the iPod Touch, desktop/laptop Web browsers, and two specific e-book readers, the Nook and the Sony Reader. (Other e-book readers can also access books from Google's eBook collection if they can read either the ePub or PDF formats.)

Amazon, for its part, today announced its own desktop Web e-reader, which has been in beta since September and which, according to Amazon, should be available sometime during the next few months.

Like Microsoft with its Windows Live offerings, Google is using similar (and somewhat confusing) names for its related services. The general Google listing of free and non-free books that are available to browse, sample and review is called Google Books. The library of books that an individual reader collects, whether free or paid, and can then read on any device is called My Google eBooks.

The place where that reader can purchase new books using Google Checkout? That's the Google eBookstore. (None of these have anything to do, by the way, with Google Reader, which is Google's RSS service.) Google account holders can access all of those services by going to Books.Google.com.

I first checked out Google's browser-based e-reader, which works on any browser (unlike Amazon's current desktop e-reader, which is a separate application and must be installed on a Windows PC or a Mac).

You access it from the main Google Books page by clicking on the "My library" link. This brings you to the main page of My Google eBooks, where you can choose which book you want to read.

On the My Google eBooks page, you can choose one of your downloaded books to read.

The e-reader has a plain look that offers very few distractions from the text -- I was quite favorably impressed. Clickable arrows on the left and right let you page forward and back. Discreet gray icons on the upper left side of the page allow you return to the home page and see a table of contents.

You can change settings such as typeface, type size, line height and justification. You can also switch from "flowing text" (in other words, straight computer text) to scanned pages (images of the pages exactly as they appear in the printed book). There are also icons for search, information about the book (such as where to find a hard copy and user reviews) and help.

The reading interface for a Google eBook is clean and easy to adjust.

However, users of Google's Web e-reader may also need to exercise some patience in trying to navigate the huge and varied Google interface. For example, if you search for a book on the main Google Books page and click on the "Add to My Library" link, you will not find the book in "My Google eBooks" when you go back to your main "My library" page. Instead, you will need to scroll down a page that contains several other "bookshelves" with names like "Purchased," "Reviewed," "Recently Viewed" and so on. I finally found the "Reading now" category (which is how I'd classified a new book I'd chosen) just under "Favorites."

If you want the book to be part of your Google eBook collection -- and therefore accessible on all of your devices -- you have to click on the book and then click on the "Get it now" link on the right side of the book's screen.

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Serb police clash with anti-gay rioters - BusinessWeek

By JOVANA GEC

BELGRADE, Serbia

Serbia's riot police fought running battles on Sunday with hundreds of far-right supporters who tried to disrupt a gay pride march in downtown Belgrade. Several dozen people were hurt, officials said.

Thousands of police officers sealed off the streets in the capital where the march took place, repeatedly clashing at several locations with rioters who were trying to burst through security cordons.

Several parked cars were set on fire or damaged, shop windows were broken, garbage containers were overturned and streets signs destroyed.

The rioters fired shots and hurled petrol bombs at the headquarters of the ruling pro-Western Democratic Party, setting the garage of the building on fire. The state TV building and other political parties headquarters were were also attacked, with many of the house windows shattered by stones.

The protesters, chanting "death to homosexuals!" hurled Molotov cocktails, bricks, stones, glass bottles and firecrackers at riot police. Police responded by firing tear gas and deploying armored vehicles to disperse the charging protesters in the heart of the capital even after the brief pride march ended.

The protesters hijacked a bus, ordered all of its passengers and the driver out, and pushed it down a steep street before hit an electric pole on a main Belgrade square.

Belgrade emergency hospital said 57 people have been injured, including 47 policemen, one seriously. Police said several rioters were arrested.

Right-wing groups say the gay events are contrary to Serbian family and religious values. Most of the rioters Sunday were young football fans whose groups have been infiltrated by neo-Nazi and other extremist organizations.

"These riots obviously have nothing to do with the gay parade or any moral values," said Democratic Party spokeswoman Jelana Trivan. "These are hooligan gangs which must be punished severely."

Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac, vice president of the Democratic Party, said a part of the party's archive, warehouse and phone lines at the building were destroyed and shots were also fired at the building.

"It is high time that we deal in a very democratic way, through the courts, with those who call themselves members of the patriotic organizations," Sutanovac said. "Is this Belgrade or the wild West?"

Senior Justice Ministry official Slobodan Homen said that the state response will be "fierce." He said that the city center is covered with surveillance cameras and that the rioters have been identified and many already detained. He said they could face up to eight years in prison.

Sunday's march was viewed as a major test for Serbia's government, which has launched pro-Western reforms and pledged to protect human rights as it seeks European Union membership.

Right-wing groups broke up a pride march in 2001 and forced the cancellation of last year's event.

Vincent Degert, the head of the EU mission in Serbia, addressed around 1,000 gay activists and their supporters who gathered at a park in downtown Belgrade which was surrounded by riot police, including armored vehicles.

"We are here to celebrate this very important day ... to celebrate the values of tolerance, freedom of expression and assembly," Degert told the crowd waving rainbow flags.

The same right-wing group set the U.S. Embassy on fire during riots in 2008 to protest U.S. support for Kosovo's independence.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to visit Belgrade in coming days as part of a Balkan tour.

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Associated Press writer Dusan Stojanovic contributed to this report.

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Paul Accuses Conway of Flip-Flopping as Kentucky Senate Candidates Clash - FOXNews

The candidates for Kentucky's open Senate seat, one of the keystones in both parties' plans to hold the majority next year, clashed on "Fox News Sunday" over the nation's economy and over each other's personal integrity, with Republican Rand Paul accusing Democrat Jack Conway of flip-flopping on big issues. 

In a televised debate, Paul described the November midterms as a referendum on President Obama's legislative agenda. Suggesting voters are inclined to vote against that agenda, he accused his Democratic opponent of backing away from the Obama proposals he once supported. 

"What he needs to do is either defend his president or run away -- so far he's running away from President Obama and the agenda," Paul said. 

Paul, arguably the first Tea Party-backed Senate candidate to win a Republican nomination, is trying to cast his opponent as "ambivalent" on economic issues critical to his state. So far, most polls show Paul holding a considerable lead over the state's attorney general - the latest Rasmussen poll put Paul up 11 points. 

But Conway cast Paul as out-of-touch with state voters, particularly on the health care overhaul. Conway said hundreds of thousands of Kentucky residents will have access to health care for the first time, warning that Paul's pledge to repeal the law would strip away premium assistance for low-income families and protections like a ban on denying coverage to kids with pre-existing conditions. 

"I want to fix health care. He wants to repeal it," Conway said. "I think that's a stark difference." 

Conway is standing by the health care law but offers mixed, and allegedly conflicting, reviews on other Obama priorities. Conway said he supported the tax cuts component of the stimulus package but that the "shovel-ready" infrastructure component has had mixed results. He said he would not have supported the bailouts -- which started under former President George W. Bush. 

But Paul said Conway has changed his tune entirely, and repeatedly, on the issue of tax cuts. 

After Congress adjourned without taking action on the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts, Conway now says the Bush tax cuts should be extended. But he told the Courier-Journal editorial board in April: "I would favor letting expire probably the majority, the majority of the Bush tax cuts." 

Conway explained Sunday he was talking about "special interest provisions" that allow companies to ship U.S. jobs overseas. He stressed that he was originally for the Bush tax cuts in 2002. 

Paul accused Conway of simply changing his position time after time. "You were for them before you were against them before you were for them again," Paul said. 

He also accused Conway of being on "both sides" of the issue on the so-called "cap-and-trade" bill that would regulate greenhouse gas emissions. A local Kentucky news report last summer said Conway issued a statement in support of a House version of the cap-and-trade bill. Conway now says he's "against cap-and-trade" and "always have been." 

"Kentuckians are not going to tolerate someone who's ambivalent on cap-and-trade," Paul said. "Cap-and-trade will be a disaster to our economy." 

Conway says he's been consistent in standing up for Kentucky coal miners. 

Conway stressed his work battling pharmaceutical companies and criticized Paul repeatedly for controversial comments he made about the Americans with Disabilities Act. He said he would be focused "like a laser" on jobs creation if elected. 

Paul said his legislative work would be devoted to reducing spending and drawing down the national debt, pledging to introduce legislation to balance the budget. 

The national debt "is threatening the very foundation of our economy," he said. "It's incredibly dangerous. It's incredibly foolhardy." 

Click here for more Fox News "Days to Decide" coverage. 

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