NOW ONLINE: FULL ACCESS TO GENII 1936 to 1998

[Guest]

Originally posted by Chris Wasshuber:
Chris, could you argue your point for the education of the rest of us?
...
Best,
Chris....

My opinions on that are pretty subjective (as I feel yours are), so I'm quite happy to just agree to disagree.

I doubt you have have access to the financials of magicseen and I know I do not. So it seems rather dumb to think a debate on this would produce much in the way of concrete data. If it's important for you to argue the the benefit of e-books (yet again) with someone, perhaps someone else will oblige. :)

Besides, wasn't this topic supposed to be about the new Genii archives? I admit I was quite wrong to go off topic like that.

So how many of you out there think you'll give this new venture a try?

And for those of you already using this system, how is the searching? Pretty quick? Convenient in terms of doing advanced (and/or/not) type searches?

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

Originally posted by Chris Aguilar:
Oh, here's a question. The downloads are pure text of the articles correct? No ads and such? It's not just images of the pages, but rather converted text of just the actual articles?

The files in AskAlexander are full-text images of the issue. You will be able to see each page as it was originally issued (that means all images, ads, etc.) as well as be able to search the full text of everything in the archive.

Searches come back pretty quickly -- I have nothing to complain about there.

So far, I've been very happy with the access I have via Conjuring Arts, and feel it is extremely worthwhile. I'd be more than happy to send a sample pdf and/or screenshot of the AA interface to anyone who asks, but only if Richard says that it's alright. I don't want to step on any toes.

I do, however, want to encourage anyone who is interested to, at the very least, try out the $10, single day access. It's cheap, you'll get a good sense of what's inside, and as Richard stated earlier, memberships are upgradable, so that $10 will not have been wasted.

-Jim

[Guest]

Originally posted by Chris Aguilar:
My opinions on that are pretty subjective (as I feel yours are),...

Well, that's what opinions are.

Originally posted by Chris Aguilar:
I doubt you have have access to the financials of magicseen and I know I do not. So it seems rather dumb to think a debate on this would produce much in the way of concrete data.

Since when does a debate produce data? Data could enter a debate to support an argument, but I have never seen data being generated by debate. I was hoping, since you obviously have an opinion on this subject, that you might explain how you arrived at your opinion. But of course, it is also perfectly fine if you do not want to do so. It just makes your statment weak and unsupported.

Let me share an observation which I find quite interesting, because it is a contradiction. Richard wrote a few posts back: "At this point in time, most people want a magazine that's beautifully printed, that they can hold in their hands, and is easy to read and carry around." Ok fine. Then Richard wrote: "I think Magicseen is making a mistake offering digital downloads of its magazine" and you (Chris Aguilar) wrote: "On a slightly different note, I tend to agree with you about Magicseen. I think offering their current issues online could really bite them in the ass." Why should that be if most want the paper? Don't you realize that there is a bit of a flaw in your reasoning? If nobody wants it in digital form, then offering it in digital form would have no negative nor positive impact. How could that then 'bite them in the ass'?

Best,
Chris....
www.lybrary.com

[Amos McCormick]

Okay, children... Let's all play nice...

[Guest]

Originally posted by Chris Wasshuber:
It just makes your statment weak and unsupported.

Sure, however one wants to feel about such things is fine by me. I certainly don't plan on losing any sleep over it.

Now I realize that some folks seem to enjoy such things, but I'm not particularly enamored at the prospect of yet another debate on the relative merits of e-books.

If one has some insatiable need to tread that ground yet again, I suspect that one would might be best served in seeking out a different dance partner. :)

Now, perhaps we can get back to discussing the new Genii archive?

[Guest]

Isn't the new Genii archive a digital product? Shouldn't we discuss here how to best access it? What are the access limitations? What are their implications? What does it all mean to us?

Best,
Chris....
www.lybrary.com

[Guest]

Originally posted by Chris Wasshuber:
Isn't the new Genii archive a digital product? Shouldn't we discuss here how to best access it? What are the access limitations? What are their implications? What does it all mean to us?

Nice general questions, but more suited to another thread on the merits (or lack of) of e-books, I'd think.

I think Richard has been very good at answering the specific questions and I'll almost certainly try the $10 plan to sample the service.

I think you missed this bit from my last post:

...I'm not particularly enamored at the prospect of yet another debate on the relative merits of e-books.

[Richard Kaufman]

This thread is an annoucement that the entire back file of Genii from 1936 to 1998 is available online--the first time in the history of our field that any magazine has made itself available this way.

It is not intended to be a debate on the merits of e-books, e-zines, or the manner in which I've decided to handle the project.

All sensible questions will be answered. All others will be ignored or deleted.

[Guest]

Good to be back on topic.

When one gets search results do they see the whole of the page online before they send it off to pdf? Or is it only seen complete after the pdf conversion?

And do the pdfs have any security restrictions on them? For instance, is it possible to copy text from them if one wanted to paste a snippet somewhere?

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

The search results are returned as a series of in-context snippets, so you'll see your search term along with some surrounding text. Clicking on a particular result will bring you to a page with two frames: the top frame has navigation options (next/previous buttons as well as a search within document and jump to page option) and the lower frame contains the .pdf file with your search term highlighted.

As far as I can tell, there are no restrictions on the .pdf files. I've printed as well as cut & pasted text from several of them already.

Richard -- you may have missed my comment above, but with your permission, I'd like to send either a sample .pdf file or screenshots of the AA interface to people with questions. It'll probably take care of a lot of questions people might have. If you're not comfortable with it, no problem -- I wouldn't do it unless I had your approval.

-Jim

[Matthew Field]

I'm a nut about some subjects (no cracks please, Farmer). One of these is U. F. Grant. I knew that Grant was on the cover of Genii with a ton of his tricks inside, and I just spent about 5 minutes finding the issue on the Genii Archive, and printed out about a dozen pages.

I'm in heaven.

Next I'm searching for Winston Freer.

This is a tremendous resource. Thank you, Richard, for making it available.

Matt Field

[Guest]

One month in 1977 or so there was an ad showing a picture of a metal cup set for Ramsay's cups and balls routine.

Could I search to find that and get the photo as well?

[Jeff Eline]

Richard, is the order form secure? I don't see the little lock at the bottom. Thanks.

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

Originally posted by Jonathan Townsend:
One month in 1977 or so there was an ad showing a picture of a metal cup set for Ramsay's cups and balls routine.

Could I search to find that and get the photo as well?

Jon,
I just tried doing a search on Ramsay and looking at the Genii's from the late 70's but wasn't able to turn up any results. If you have any more information on the context of the ad, I may be able to locate it. However, simply based on the info you provided, I was not able to find the ad/photo in question.

That's one of the problems relating to photos -- you can only search the text that appears around them, so unless you can recall that text, it may be difficult to find. I was surprised that just searching on "ramsay" didn't turn it up, as I assumed that the text accompanying the photo would contain his name. I did find a bunch of ads for the Ramsay Classics in that period, though.

-Jim

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

Originally posted by Chris Wasshuber:
You have been long enough on the forums to know that seven years ago when I started Lybrary.com people ridiculed what I did and proposed.

From what I recall, especially over on Magic Talk, it wasn't so much what you were doing, but your rabid promotion of your service that turned people off. You've since dialed it down quite a bit and I think that has helped people become more accepting.

I don't have any problem with asking questions in the hopes of clarifying and improving digital content. I'm a big fan the services being provided, and have given a lot of feedback to Bill about the problems/limitations I've had with Alexander.

-Jim

[Richard Kaufman]

Yes, the online form is secure. After you fill in all the information and click submit, you are brought to a confirmation page. The yellow "lock" icon appears on that page.

[Guest]

Jim, the problem with searching in ads, even though they have text is that this text is often in unusal font types and sizes, which is very hard for an out of the box OCR to convert correctly. Sometimes the text is also tilted or on an image or textual background. The OCR conversion accuracy and thus the search hit rate on ads is therefore much lower than the one for plain text columns.

Best,
Chris
www.lybrary.com

[Richard Kaufman]

In my ongoing research on Theodore DeLand, Jr., I have found that the text search will pick up DeLand's name in most of the ads in which it appears.

[Guest]

Originally posted by Jim Maloney:
From what I recall, especially over on Magic Talk, it wasn't so much what you were doing, but your rabid promotion of your service that turned people off.

That, too, but I have saved emails and forum posts where one can read everything from "this is a stupid idea" and "nobody want's this" to personal attacks because I was trying to make ebooks and digital information better and more accessible. I would argue that you have today access to the back issues of Genii in part because of my efforts in digital contents in magic.

Best,
Chris
www.lybrary.com

[Richard Kaufman]

I'm sorry, Chris, but nothing you have done at Lybrary.com has in any way influenced or affected my motivation or decision to put the Genii Archive online.

[Guest]

Hi Richard

With regards to the security of the sign-up form - as my understanding of SSL encryption goes - your sign-up form is not secure.

The SSL tunnel encryption is an end to end communication and needs to be established before sensitive data is inputted.

Securing the confirmation page - as what appears to be the case - does not secure the cc details.

Encrypted pages also normally start with https to indicate security along with the padlock.

I would have your IT dept. check it out to be on the safe side.

Regards

Craig

[Guest]

In answer to Mr. Pecore's query about missing issues. I thought that all issues were scanned and uploaded (regardless of what shows in our catalog). On second look I see that somehow volume 55 is missing. The Conjuring Arts Center does not have this volume. If anyone could donate theirs we would gladly scan it and add it to the database.
Regarding quality. We scanned Genii early on in our project and the issues are all in black and white. That means that the text is fine and readable, and searchable. The photos are often not in grayscale. We will eventually do an entire rescan in color and this should make everything even more pleasant.

Yours,
Bill Kalush

[Guest]

Originally posted by Richard Kaufman:
I'm sorry, Chris, but nothing you have done at Lybrary.com has in any way influenced or affected my motivation or decision to put the Genii Archive online.

Richard, I am sure I did not affect your motivation nor your decision, but the fact that Genii was scanned in the first place has in some small part to do with me. Bill and I have collaborated for a while. Bill was the first for example to suggest I digitize the Sphinx. We compared notes on scanning and OCR. I remember the emails and phone calls regarding what software what hardware what settings a.s.o. I learned from Bill and he learned from my experience having scanned and converted tens of thousands of pages before he got going. I even sold him a scan stand which was custom built for me, which will be important for him to scan his wonderful collection of old and rare magic books. Of course he did all the work on Genii and he did a fine job, but I dare to claim that he benefited from my experience digitizing books for Lybrary.com. Which in turn means your Genii archive benefited from it as well.

On top of that, I also dare to argue that if I wouldn't have started Lybrary seven years ago when there was nothing happening regarding digital magic contents you would not be here today announcing your digital Genii archive.

End of my posts in this thread. I have lots of great new products to tend to at Lybrary and work on the next step up and future technology in digital contents.

Chris
www.lybrary.com

[Richard Kaufman]

Yes, The Conjuring Arts group is merely waiting for me to get off my duff and ship one of our complete files up to New York for the new scans--then everything will be in color.

[Matthew Field]

Bill Kalush -- This is magnificent. My congratulations to you.

Matt Field

[Guest]

Originally posted by Jim Maloney:
...it wasn't so much what you were doing, but your rabid promotion of your service that turned people off.

That and I wouldn't do business with anyone who mispells "library."

[Jon Elion]

Originally posted by Craig Mitchell:
... With regards to the security of the sign-up form - as my understanding of SSL encryption goes - your sign-up form is not secure. ... [snip] ... Securing the confirmation page - as what appears to be the case - does not secure the cc details. Encrypted pages also normally start with https to indicate security along with the padlock.

Craig raises an excellent concern. I too noticed the lack of the "padlock" icon on the ordering page. But that just means that the order-entry page was not displayed with encryption (that is okay, as that is not required at the first step in the transaction).

The real concern is what happens when you hit that Submit to Genii button, as you want to know that your personal (and credit card) information is being sent in a secure fashion. A quick peek at the HTML behind the ordering page confirms that this is indeed being done in a correct and secure fashion (phew!). The POST action of the Form specifies an https-based destination for the information, so that the information is properly protected en route.

The confirmation page is returned to you via https (secured) so that again, your personal information is not being sent "in the clear" and is protected. The padlock icon is now shown, reassuring the user that this is indeed the case.

So much for the geek-speak. The bottom line is that the information entered on the order from (including the credit card) looks like it is being handled correctly.

I, like Craig, balked when I saw that padlock icon missing from the order page, but now that I have confirmed that the information gets POSTed securely, I'm ready to order!

P.S. My free advice is worth every penny you pay for it!

[Steve Bryant]

Richard, Bill -- this is just an extraordinary resource, with a great search engine (unlike The Complete New Yorker!). Youngsters in magic can finally access those great Steranko issues of Genii (hint: Steranko also had a SERIES of tricks in Genii) and all the great magic from Magicana, such as Larry Jennings' Famous Chop Cup Routine.

[Richard Kaufman]

Our ordering form IS secure. Please don't argue with me on this issue.

[Guest]

If anyone is still not comfortable ordering on the page, just enter the "s" next to http.

The page is:
http://geniimagazine.com/genii_index/fu ... irect.html


You can still access it from:
https://geniimagazine.com/genii_index/f ... irect.html

That will guarantee you're on the secure server.

[Richard Kaufman]

Just to satisfy everyone, I've had Webmaster Brad "fix" the actual page on which you enter information so that it is now secure as well.

[Guest]

Thanks for adding that "extra" security level. With many people it is often the sense of security that matters more than the assurance of security.

[Guest]

I don't think I understand for sure, but are the issues on the Genii Archive already full color?

[Guest]

Thanks Richard !

[Guest]

I have been using the archive over the past few days and it is excellent. I have already come across some Roy Walton tricks that I have never seen before. Happy Days!

However, I have a quick question as regards the 'Browse' Feature that allows you to clik on a volume of GENII and then use the arrows in Adobe Reader to click through the pages of a volume.I have tried doing this but it dosen't work. The cover page for the volume shows up in Adobe Reader but the arrows will not let me flick through the rest of the volume.

I am using Acrobat Reader 5.0 ... Would downloading a newer version be all that is required and if so, which version should I use?...Oh, and I am still using Windows 98...Maybe that is the problem...

Any help would be most appreciated and thanks once again to Richard for his efforts with the print and digital versions of GENII.

[Guest]

This seems to be a problem with Internet Explorer....If you download and use Firefox everything works properly. I am not sure why the problem with Explorer.

[Joe Pecore]

You might want to try the latest Adobe Reader first. They are up to version 7.0 now I think.

[Guest]

Thanks alot for your replies Gary and Joe... I had trouble finding Acrobat Reader 7.0 and so have downloaded the Firefox Browser. Everything is working fine now and I am very excited about been able to flick through the issues of GENII one page at a time. So, if anyone has a similar problem I would recommend the (free) Firefox Browser.

Thanks once again Gary and Joe...

Joe Mckay

[Jim Maloney_dup1]

There are definitely issues with IE, as others have noted. The folks at Conjuring Arts have been aware of this for MONTHS, but I haven't seen any change made to correct it. However, I use Firefox as my default browser, so it's not something that I'm aware of on a daily basis. It would be a good idea to fix up the problems with IE, though, since that is the browser the majority of people use.

-Jim

[Richard Kaufman]

You won't have any problems if you use Netscape. I do, and wasn't aware of the issues with Internet Explorer.