OverDrive has launched a pilot program that will allow millions of library patrons to check out the same eBook all at once during a two-week period. The Big Library Read project will let members of more than 7,500 libraries globally simultaneously accessThe Four Corners of the Sky by Michael Malone.

OverDrive is working the book’s publisher Sourcebooks on the initiative. Library patrons at participating libraries will need to have a library card to check out the book.

Sari Feldman, executive director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Ohio expressed her enthusiasm in a statement: “It is an exciting opportunity to engage readers all over the world in a global book discussion and highlight the critical role libraries play in the discovery process. It has long been accepted as conventional wisdom that libraries help drive the success of authors. Through projects like this, we can affirm that wisdom with hard data and reinforce what we already know – that libraries play a key role in marketing books and authors.”

OR Books has a new eBook available called Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, the Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists and Suits Teamed Up to Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet and appropriately, the publisher is selling the eBook through a name-your-price model.

The book explores the history of the fight against SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. It includes essays by: Aaron Swartz, Larry Lessig, Zoe Lofgren, Mike Masnick, Kim Dotcom, Nicole Powers, Tiffiny Cheng, Alexis Ohanian, and Cory Doctorow.

The publisher suggests that customers pay $10 for the download, but there is a drop down option to pay other amounts including: nothing, $2, $5, $25, $50 or $100.

When OR Books put out Julian Assange’s book  Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet back in December, they skipped Amazon and released it through eKiosk, a site that creators sell eBooks and music outside of major online marketplaces, through a network of smaller online shops.

Are you planning a summer vacation but you’d like input from your friends before your book? Check out TripShare, an iPad app that lets you create and share your itineraries before you book them.

Once you sketch out a plan, you can share it plans with friends who can then give you feedback on your plan and make suggestions to your travel plan. You can then make edits to the itinerary based on your friends’ suggestions. Once you have the trip in mind that you’d like to take, you can price and book your trip through various online travel agencies — Expedia, Fly.com, Homeaway and Viator — without leaving the app.

Read more

Hearst Corporation has launched the Elle Glassware app exclusively designed for Google Glass. The publication is the first magazine to launch a Google Glass app, though it joins other media companies including The New York Times and Mashable both of who already have Google Glass apps.

Hearst Corporation worked with Google on the app, which includes content from the magazine’s most widely read and shared sections online. The app features stories from ELLEDispatch, Street Chic and Lookbooks, as well as horoscopes. Users can share articles and photos and create reading lists and shopping wish lists using the app. The app is now available to as part of Google Glass’ Explorer launch.

“Hearst always strives to be on the leading edge of innovation—it is at the core of our company,” explained Phil Wiser, chief technology officer, Hearst Corporation, in a statement. “Across our media businesses, we are working to engage consumers everywhere content is consumed, now and in the future. Google Glass encourages us to think about our content in a new way. We are very pleased at the experience of partnering with Google on this project.”

Mobile app developer skobbler has updated the Android version of its maps app ForeverMap 2 adding turn-by-turn navigation which is available both online and offline. In doing so, the company has renamed the GPS Navigation & Maps and added a feature that lets users get directions to where they are going with voice guidance.

Here is more from the press release: “The update combines the one-of-a-kind map features users love from ForeverMap 2, with skobbler’s GPS Navigation 2, the internationally renowned mobile navigation solution with over 3.5 million users on iOS alone, while enhancing aspects of both to create a standalone, next-generation orientation solution.”

“By adding voice guided, turn-by-turn navigation to what was previously a maps only experience, we’ve not only evolved ForeverMap 2, we’ve also fundamentally transformed the orientation landscape on Android,” stated Philipp Kandal, co-Founder of skobbler.

Pompeii, Its Life and Art by August Mau is today’s Free eBook of the Day.

The historical text was created by German Archaeological Institute in Rome and originally published by The Macmillian Company in 1899.

Here is an excerpt:

In the construction of columns and many architraves large blocks were used. Previous to the time of the Roman colony these were of gray tufa, or, in rare instances, of limestone; a coating of white stucco was laid on the surface. From the advent of the colony to the time of the Early Empire, the whitish limestone was used; after that, Carrara marble.

Project Gutenberg has the free download.

For more free eBooks, check out our Free eBook of the Day archive.

The New Yorker has introduced a new online receptacle where sources can share documents and messages with the magazine anonymously. The tool is called Strongbox and it is accessible using the Tor network, a private and secure online network.

The publication will not record the I.P. address or any browsing information from people who share documents on Strongbox. It will also not try to access your computer or operating system, and they will not add cookies to your browser.

Here is more about Strongbox from The New Yorker‘s website:

It was put together by Aaron Swartz, who died in January, and Kevin Poulsen. Kevin explains some of the background in his own post, including Swartz’s role and his survivors’ feelings about the project. (They approve, something that was important for us here to know.) The underlying code, given the name DeadDrop, will be open-source, and we are very glad to be the first to bring it out into the world, fully implemented. Read more

When Hollywood producer Neal Edelstein set out to make Haunting Melissa, a horror film iPad app about a teenage girl that goes missing, he didn’t want it to be just another film. The first directorial production from the producer of Mulholland Drive and The Ring, the film was created the specifically for the iPad.

“The story was designed with the technology in mind,” Edelstein told AppNewser last week over coffee in New York. ”It’s a ghost story that was designed to be watched in the dark with headphones on.” Read more

Do you like reading movie scripts? Check out Script Lit, a new series of unproduced screenplays that have been adapted as eBook novellas.

Here is more from the site: “There are many wonderful scripts written that are never produced and therefore aren’t shown to the world. This process of adapting those ‘lost gems’ into eBook novellas gives the writer a chance to be heard and loved by a wide audience. We are SL eBooks and are proud to present Script Lit, the new literary genre.”

The debut title from the collection is Mom of the Year by Denise Pischinger and is available through various eBook stores for $2.99. The second title from the collection, a horror/thriller title called Ambrose Fountain by Brian Sieve will publish next month.

Pivot by L.C. Barlow is today’s Free eBook of the Day.

The horror novel is the first book in a trilogy. Check it out: