Google calls Good to Know its "biggest-ever consumer education campaign." It began with ad campaigns in the U.K. and Germany last fall. The ads highlight security tips like using Google's 2-step verification and checking websites for secure HTTPS connections. The campaign will now be extended to the U.S. with print and Web ads, as well as display ads in New York and Washington D.C. subway stations.

The campaign supports Google's existing resources, such as the Google Security Center, the Family Safety Center and Teach Parents Tech. By dedicating one chapter of the Good to Know website to Google's services, the rest of the document serves as a good general guide to using the whole Web responsibly.

These resources are available at google.com/goodtoknow

Now it's sounding pretty cool, right? Today, MakerBot announced the Replicator™, its newest model, which will be unveiled at CES tomorrow. Starting at $1749, you can print objects the size of a loaf of bread from a device that can sit on your desk. If you pony up a little more, you can get the Dualstrusion™ model, which lets you print two-color Earths or hearts. Not sold yet? How about in 10 years, when you never need to wash (or even buy) dishes again?

Today's MakerBot is positioned for "personalized manufacturing," but it's mostly for practice. You can only make whatever you're able to make out of Lego-like materials. That's still amazingly powerful, though. Earlier this year, MakerBot got its own artist in residence. But MakerBot's marketing talks mostly about what it will do in the future.

"[P]arents and educators with a MakerBot Replicator™ offer the next generation an opportunity to learn the digital designing skills required to solve the problems of the future," today's blog post says. "Students with access to a MakerBot have an edge in the future job market. Just like the youth of the 1980's, who had access to computers, children with access to a MakerBot Replicator™ will become the leaders who make a better tomorrow."

So what will it do tomorrow? Here's the example I always use when I talk about the potential of 3D printing. Imagine never having to wash the dishes again. While you're getting dinner ready, just pick the plates, cups and cutlery you need on your computer, hit "print," and they'll be ready by the time you set the table. After dinner, you don't need to wash them. You don't even need to rinse them. Just drop them in the tank of your 3D printer, which will melt them down and get the material ready for reuse.

That one isn't even farfetched, since it would only require the same kinds of materials MakerBots already use. Think about 3D printing of organic materials: Heart valves? Whole organs? What about food? Imagine nanoscale 3D printing that can assemble things atoms at a time! At that point, the possibilities become almost limitless.

If(/when) 3D printing becomes commonplace, imagine the market on the Web for designs. Not only would it be a new economy for people with 3D design skills, it would have profound effects on retail. Instead of buying preexisting objects, we could simply download the plans and print them out.

If you're still having trouble imagining the world 3D printing could (literally) create, crazy sci-fi man Cory Doctorow has written a book about it. It's called Makers, and the digital versions are free, DRM-less, and available in all kinds of formats (you'll see on the download page). It's about a near-future with some of the trouble towards which our present world seems headed, but the ability to print custom tools is the one cutting edge regular people still have.

With MakerBot pushing things forward in 3D printing, we already live in a world where the Web allows us to transmit physical objects. If you're interested in a high-tech future, 3D printing is a trend to watch closely.

According to the post, the team has been able to bring "Boxee for Computers to about 85% of the Boxee Box in terms of features and functionality."

The Revolution Will Not Be Shown on Your PC

The post thanks computer users of Boxee, but says that the future of TV "will be driven by devices such as the Boxee Box, Connected TVs/Blu-Rays and 2nd screen devices such as tablets and phones." The number of people using computers connected to TVs "is likely to decline as users find better alternatives."

For what it's worth, I tend to agree with the assessment – but that doesn't mean that users who still want to use Boxee for Computers are going to be eager to spring for a Boxee Box or another connected device.

Users will have the 1.5 release for as long as it's usable, and most of the Boxee code is open source (based on the project).

His experiment, as he called it, was to see if he could self-release one of his stand-up comedy specials on the Internet without paying for others to produce, edit and distribute the material, all of which drive up the cost paid by fans. It was a somewhat bold gamble, even if the model had been tested successfully by a few big name bands and musicians. Would it work for stand-up comedy?

This was no YouTube amateur hour, either. Between producing the video and building out the PayPal-powered e-commerce site needed to sell it, expenses for the project were just over $200,000, some of which was offset by ticket sales. To help keep costs down, C.K. directed and edited the video himself. Much of the promotion of the project happened online too, including a Q&A with fans on Reddit.

As C.K. notes, he could have had a third party company produce and sell the material to fans. They would do most of the heavy lifting, but would also pass significant costs onto consumers and come with restrictions on viewing the content.

"This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai," wrote C.K. "I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again."

A Win For the Web, Despite Piracy Risks

By making the video freely available, C.K. runs the obvious risk of having it uploaded to Bit Torrent and otherwise shared freely among people online. And there's no doubt many will do that. Yet his experiment shows that with an established enough brand, artists can produce and distribute their work by themselves, without the need for middlemen and extraneous costs.

It doesn't hurt that Louis C.K. is already a famous comedian who has had plenty of material produced and sold via the traditional approach, from stand-up specials to his ongoing television series. The DIY method may not work for up-and-coming artists at this point, but with developments like these, the Web is proving itself to be increasingly powerful for distributing and promoting one's work. Despite the conventional wisdom, as C.K.'s experiment has demonstrated, it's even possible to get paid.

Publishers pay $1.99 per book and get to keep 100% of the profit beyond that cost. Paper books from Blurb start at $10 each to print on demand. Two buck easy-to-make eBook publishing on demand sounds awesome.

There's no mention on the site of whether the books will be DRM-free or not, but I sure hope so. (Update: Blurb lead engineer for digital books Michael Murray tells us the ebooks are 100% DRM free.) The company says it will be making a more detailed announcement about the new eBook program soon. All the example eBooks in the announcement are letterboxed on horizontal view, too. That doesn't seem ideal to me.

You should post titles of your awesome Blurb eBooks in comments below, and if you're selling them for $2.00, I'll go buy some of them. Heck, price them at $4 and I'll buy a couple a month. Easy and cheap publishing for a widely used and attractive consumption platform sounds like a beautiful thing.

I have known Scott for many years, and he and I last worked together back in 2005 when I ran TomsHardware.com. One of our most memorable moments from that era was getting a briefing at the offices of Morgan Freeman's production company and hearing the challenges with getting personal video copies for Freeman's wife and getting around DRM issues. Scott is one of our industry's most facile writers and I am excited to have him on our staff. Scott lives in Indianapolis, Ind. and you can reach him at scott@readwriteweb.com.

This bundle includes: Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVVV, Hammerfight, and And Yet It Moves. As with the previous Humble Bundles, these games are all available cross platform (several of which are making their Mac and Linux debuts with this offer) and are DRM-free.

A package deal on 5 great indie games is always good news for gamers, but it's the way that deal works that continues to make Humble Bundle both interesting and unique. The Humble Bundle lets buyers choose what they want to pay for the games. Not only do you get to set the price you'd like to pay for all 5 games, you can also determine how that money gets allocated: dividing it between the game developers, the Humble Bundle team, and charitable organizations. As with past bundles, the two charities involved are the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play.

Since the launch of the first Humble Bundle last year, the effort has raised over $1 million for charity. The generosity of gamers is noteworthy, as is exactly what that generosity looks like in terms of the different platforms for which the games are downloaded. In the past, Linux and Mac users have proven to be far more generous than Windows users, with Linux users contributing twice as much as Windows users.

The Humble Bundle offer only lasts two weeks, but as the games are available DRM-free, once you purchase them, they're yours to re-download and re-install as you deem fit.

But over the weekend, updates were issued for many e-reader apps, removing links to their bookstores in order to comply with Apple's new rules. These stipulate that Apple receive a 30% cut from in-app purchases and subscriptions, something that many publishers balked at, contending that that cut was too high.

One by one, it appears that most of the major e-reader apps have now complied: Kobo, Borders, Nook Kids, and finally this morning, the Kindle apps have all been updated with links to their respective stores removed.

The Google Books app, however, was removed from the store entirely, for reasons that weren't clear. But the app is now available to download again.

Usability Issues

Users will still be able to access their purchased content via these apps. But in order to buy new e-books, they'll have to go through Safari directly, rather than see those apps open the browser directly to the store, as they used to.

The changes are causing some usability issues. Martin Taylor from ActivityPress reports that books he'd purchased via the Safari mobile browser would not open in the Kobo app. Instead, he was prompted to open the newly downloaded file with either the Bluefire or OverDrive apps, both of which handle DRM-restricted content.

The major booksellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble might not suffer from these changes or from new usability issues. Customers are likely accustomed to using the Web to buy content from them already and the Kindle does allow users to download content wirelessly regardless of where they purchase the e-book. But these usability issues might be a bigger problem for a company like Kobo.

In the meantime, you can always opt not to upgrade your e-reader apps as doing so seems to keep those bookstore links functioning - for now.

Users cried foul when Netflix came out with support for only five phones in May, four of them from HTC. The new rollout adds the service to top-selling devices from Samsung and Motorola. That includes the entire line of Motorola Droid phones (original, X, X2, 2 and 3), as well as the Galaxy S series and other Samsung devices. If you have bought a popular Android phone in the last couple of years, Netflix will probably be able to work on your device. Finally.

A quick test of the application using a Motorola Atrix streaming over HSPA+ (AT&T's version of "4G") features everything a user would expect from a Netflix application. Users can search, browse and access their instant queue. Video streams on the device in landscape mode and, depending on the hardware and speed of the data connection, does not lag or endlessly buffer (the dual-core processor and high-speed data connection of the Atrix certainly helps).

Endgadget also reported today that streaming will be coming to Android Honeycomb tablets, starting with the LG Revolution. Like Android smartphones, it will only be a matter of time before Netflix catches up on the Digital Rights Management (DRM) and hardware requirements across the landscape of Android tablets. The span between updates (two months is a significant amount of time between rollouts) once again highlights the fragmentation problem of the Android ecosystem. Yet, as Google asserts more control over Android, the software problems should dissipate.

But many industry analysts noted that Rowling's decision to bypass the traditional publishing industry - to self-publish, if you will, her novels on a new website called Pottermore - could mark another important shift in power. No traditional publishers. No traditional booksellers. No DRM.

How Pottermore would work remained a little unclear, particularly as Rowling promised that the content would be available for all e-reader formats. But news from Google today helps answer some of these questions.

Google also says that it will provide the payment platform (Google Checkout) and video broadcast platform (YouTube, obviously) for this new online Harry Potter experience.

It's no surprise that Pottermore has turned to Google to run what is bound to be a wildly popular e-commerce site. How well this deal will help boost Google's own e-bookstore efforts, beyond just sales of the Harry Potter titles, remains to be seen. No doubt Google hopes to be able to lure fans and book-buyers in to its e-bookstore for all their reading needs.

Pottermore is expected to open in October.

UltraViolet is the child of 70 (and growing) companies including movie studios, technology providers like AMD or Akamai, device manufacturers like Toshiba and entertainment retailers like Netflix and Blockbuster. The program is designed to permit cloud access to digital rights through a "locker" system. In other words, after you purchase music or video, you can access that content everywhere. It is the entertainment industry's attempt to strike back at a decade of Internet piracy and will soon be a significant part of consumers' lives.

UltraViolet is an aggressive move initiated by the studios. As the primary content providers, the studios hold all the keys to legal viewing of their content. The purpose of UltraViolet is to allow all content providers to use one cloud and one set of Web standards for digital rights management (DRM).

"Consumers are looking for a better value proposition to own and collect digital movies and TV shows - a proposition that provides downloads, streaming and physical copy viewing options which are accessible on multiple platforms," said Mark Teitell, the general manager of UltraViolet.

The format is based on the Common File Format that will play on computers, televisions, tablets and smartphones - basically, any device or platform that conforms to UltraViolet's rules and standards. Netflix is a member of DECE and all the corporations that are part of Hulu (except Providence Venture Partners) are as well. DECE hopes to see a broad launch of UltraViolet by the fall.

Warner Bros. bought movie rating and information application Flixster earlier this year (which also owns movie critic website Rotten Tomatoes). The company hopes that application will be the delivery mechanism through which Warner Bros. brings UltraViolet content to consumers. It's a interesting play by the studios as they try to put their foot down and control the flow of premium content across the Internet.

And now, this rapidly growing user base will have their very own conference: MyGreatFest, the world's first convention for the jailbreaking community.

Jailbreaking, once the domain of hackers and the tech elite, has rapidly become a force to be reckoned with. It attracts a much wider crowd these days, thanks to easy-to-use tools put out by both individual hackers and teams of hackers. Some, like the recently launched JailbreakMe.com, don't even involve software downloads. All a user has to do on with JailbreakMe.com is open its URL on their mobile device to begin the jailbreaking process.

The benefits to jailbreaking are plentiful. Although the activity has been associated with application piracy in the past, many jailbreakers simply want access to the apps that Apple rejected or wouldn't permit in the App Store. In the past, these have included things like mobile hotspot tools, themes, widgets, replacements or upgrades to core apps, changes to the device's default functionality and other such tweaks. But more importantly, jailbreakers have a sense of control over their devices, and a sense of ownership.

If there's something a device doesn't do that you wish it would, there's probably a jailbreak "app for that."

Even Apple itself seems to be warming up to the jailbreaking community of late. The company recently hired well-known jailbreak app developer Peter Hajas, whose "Mobile Notifier" app appears to have served as the inspiration for iOS 5's new notifications center. Does that mean the jailbreaking scene will now be the testing ground for new iOS features? Considering the wide range of innovations that emerge there, we hope so.

MyGreatFest: The First Ever Jailbreakers' Convention

For those who have watched the community from the sidelines, following well-known personalities like @saurik or @P0sixninja on Twitter, the new jailbreaking conference MyGreatFest will put them up close and personal with their favorite hacking idols. And for fellow hackers, who often jockey for position among their peers, as hackers tend to do, it will offer a venue where they can show off their skills, maybe even get into a coding grudge match in front of a live audience. Meanwhile, fans who really want to meet the hackers one-on-one will have the opportunity to buy tickets to a VIP area where they can "have lunch" with the developers, or just hang out and chat.

There will also be a series of presentations from big names in the jailbreaking community, where they will tackle subjects like the piracy problem, and whether or not DRM (digital rights management) should be included in the jailbreaking tools provided to mainstream users. In addition, the event will offer Q&A sessions, giveaways, vendor booths and everything else you would expect from a traditional conference.

First Official iOS 5 Jailbreak May be Revealed at MyGreatFest

And there may be one more big event at the upcoming show: the first official iOS 5 jailbreak, says MyGreatFest organizer Craig Fox. Although the beta of the OS has already been jailbroken, until the commercial release, there's no way to know if the exploits used will still be available when the new iPhone launches.

However, there's a good chance the next iPhone will arrive before the conference's start date of September 17th, 2011 in London. Fox says that if that's the case, it's very likely we'll see the new iPhone jailbroken right there at the event.

Interestingly enough, Fox (pictured, right) isn't a developer, hacker or event planner by trade - he's a carpenter. Cearly, a jailbreaking enthusiast, too. It's a testament to him that he's been able to pull this event off at all, much less attract the big-name developers as both speakers and attendees.

The London event is only the beginning, Fox tells us. By October, he will be ready to announce the dates of future events here in the U.S., as he plans to bring MyGreatFest to both coasts by 2013, starting sometime in spring 2012 with an event in the San Francisco Bay area.

In the meantime, despite the distance, the first jailbreakers' convention has attracted a wide audience of attendees. Tickets have have been sold all over Europe, North America and even India and Singapore. For those who can't make it, sessions will be both livestreamed and posted to YouTube.

The conference has a very grassroots feel, which is makes sense, given that jailbreaking itself is very much a grassroots movement. But now that jailbreaking has its own convention, Apple is stealing jailbreak app developers and the jailbreaking user base is numbering in the millions, this activity is rapidly losing its niche status in favor of mainstream success.

Still, that's not necessarily a bad thing, if you ask us.

For more info on the event, check out MyGreatFest.net.

But even in the states where e-book access is commonplace, when it comes to making digital literature available to their patrons, libraries face a number of challenges. We've covered many of these issues here. Most well-known among these obstacles was the controversial announcement earlier this year by publisher Harper Collins to have library e-books "self-destruct" after 26 checkouts, forcing libraries to re-purchase titles in order to secure more checkouts. This among other factors (including, of course, budget issues) has made the future of e-books in libraries unclear.

A number of announcements made during the ALA's annual convention this past week suggest that the tipping point of e-book library lending may be here:

• "Always Available" E-Books: In order to address the problem with wait lists for checking out e-books, OverDrive announced a set of "Always Available" titles so that multiple library patrons could check out titles simultaneously. Although digital texts do make it possible to distribute multiple copies this week, in most cases, up until now, lending of e-books has followed the same restrictions of print. In other words, if a book is checked out - whether it's print or digital - no one else can read it. OverDrive's "Always Available" books do not include all its titles, but it's a sensible start.
• Magazine Checkouts: Digital newsstand Zinio announced it has partnered with Recorded Books to allow digital magazines to be available to library patrons in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K.
• Library Checkouts for Nook: Library lending comes to the Barnes & Noble Nook with a partnership between the bookseller and digital distributor Baker & Taylor.
• The Open Library Serves More Public Libraries: The Internet Archive announced that it has expanded its OpenLibrary lending program to its 1000th library. This program allows libraries to pool and share their e-books.

There have been fears on the part of many librarians that the move to digital content would harm libraries - not because of any problem with the digital format per se, but rather that some of the restrictions on their access to materials and to lending would be too onerous. However it appears as though there are a number of new pricing models for libraries and a number of lending alternatives. Patrons clearly want to borrow and read e-books, and most libraries are in the process of developing programs to make that possible.

In what's an uncommon occurrence, Rowling retained all the rights to digital copies of her books. And until now, she had not struck any deals with publishers or distributors to make the series available digitally. All that will change when Pottermore officially launches this fall.

Self-Publishing's Defining Moment

The books will be available exclusively through the Pottermore site, meaning that Rowling is self-e-publishing the novels. While self-publishing is, of course, nothing new, digital publishing and digital readership has helped self-publishing become more popular and, for authors, more lucrative. As we reported earlier this week, Amazon recently announced that self-published author John Locke had joined its "Kindle Million Club" after selling over one million copies of his e-books on the Kindle platform.

But Rowling's decision here isn't just another mark of legitimacy for self-publishing, nor is it simply yet another blow to the traditional publishing industry - although no doubt, both of those are true. Rowling's announcement has several other ramifications here for the publishing industry.

DRM-Free Content

Digital rights management (DRM) technology is often placed on digital content, so the argument goes, to help prevent piracy. And indeed, the Harry Potter series may already be among the most pirated books in history, no doubt because of fans' desire to read the books in a digital format. But rather than viewing that desire with suspicion about sharing, Rowling is trusting they'll do the right thing. The Harry Potter e-books will reportedly be DRM-free, although they will be digitally watermarked with purchasers' information.

Wired calls this the publishing industry's "Radiohead moment" and likens this to the band's release of its albums on its own site. "The crucial parallel between Radiohead and Rowling is the fact that they both put their faith in the fans rather than any intermediary. For Radiohead, this meant self-releasing their album In Rainbows after the end of their contract with EMI with an honesty-box pricing strategy."

E-Book Standards

DRM-free content also means that consumers won't be locked in to one particular format. As it currently stands, DRM is one mechanism that prevents users from sharing e-books; but it also means that Kindle owners can't read Nook content, and Nook owners can't load their iBooks onto their devices. But DRM is only part of the problem here; file formats are another. Rowling says that the books will be made available for all formats - to Kindle, iPad, Nook owners alike.

It's not yet clear how that will be accomplished, but the most obvious way to do that would be via ePUB, the open e-book standard. However, Kindle does not currently support ePUB. But as paidContent's Laura Hazard Owen posits, "if any author could get Amazon to change its policy, it's J. K. Rowling."

There have been rumors recently that the Kindle will begin supporting ePUB, and that may come as part of Amazon's new library lending program this summer.

(Another) Tipping Point for E-Books

The tipping point for e-books could have been when Amazon announced that Kindle versions were outselling print bestsellers two-to-one or when it said that e-books were outselling all print copies. The tipping point could have been when the company announced that a self-published author had managed to sell one million copies of his e-books.

But it seems likely that with the excitement and passion that Harry Potter fans have for anything associated with the series, that the release of the digital Pottermore will unleash yet another milestone in what is a quickly changing landscape for publishing.

Unfortunately, not all Android devices are supported at launch.

According to Hulu, the initial rollout includes only six phones: the Nexus One, the Nexus S, the HTC Inspire 4G, Motorola Droid II, Motorola Droid X and the Motorola Atrix. Although the company won't say why, we expect the reason for the small lineup has to do with compatibility issues as well as a need to secure the content using digital rights management (DRM).

Netflix did much of the same thing for its Android launch - only supporting 5 phones out of the gate, including the HTC Incredible, HTC Nexus One, HTC G2, Samsung Nexus S, Motorola Droid and LG Revolution. Both companies have promised "more on the way."

In Netflix's case, the company was more transparent as to its reasons, stating:

Because the platform has evolved so rapidly, there are some significant challenges associated with developing a streaming video application for this ecosystem. One of these challenges is the lack of standard streaming playback features that the Netflix application can use to gain broad penetration across all available Android phones. In the absence of standardization, we have to test each individual handset and launch only on those that can support playback.

Those are likely the same reasons that are holding back Hulu from a larger initial rollout on Android too, in addition to concerns over piracy. An earlier entry on Netflix's blog had explained that DRM was the real issue with the Android platform. Certainly Hulu's corporate parents, Comcast (NBC), News Corp. (Fox), Disney (ABC) and Providence Equity Partners, have the same fears as the movie studios Netflix deals with when it comes to protecting their content on the

How to Get It & How Much

In any case, in brief tests here on ReadWriteWeb writer Dan Rowinski's Motorola Atrix, he found that the app installs, loads and runs without any issues. The only shows it doesn't have access to are the "Web only" ones, which won't play on anything but a laptop, even with Hulu Plus.

The Hulu Android app is available for download for free from the Market here. New subscribers can get one week free to try the service. Afterwards, it's $7.99.