Potter fans on Twitter are planning an hour of Twitter silence to pay their respects for the fictional parents Harry Potter. Below is some Twitter reaction to what people are saying on Twitter about “RIP James and Lily Potter“. As Im sure you can imagine some are pretty serious about it, while others find the whole thing rather absurd.

What are thoughts on “RIP James and Lily Potter”. Let us know in the comments.

The Harry Potter book series will launch in eBook form on Pottermore.com in October, and they’ll also become available through the Google eBooks platform. When users buy it, they will be able to keep it in their Google Books library in the cloud (as well as on other platforms).

“Pottermore will be the exclusive place to buy Harry Potter ebooks and digital audiobooks,” says Larissa Fontaine in New Business Development for Google Books. “You’ll be able to buy ebooks from the Pottermore Shop, push them to your Google Books library and store them alongside your other Google eBooks. Your other Google eBooks may be purchased from any of more than 250 independent booksellers or from Google directly.”

“Also under this agreement, Google Checkout will be the preferred third party payment platform for all purchases made on Pottermore.com,” says Fontaine. “When you visit the Pottermore Shop, you’ll be able to pay for your purchases using Google Checkout, in addition to using a debit or credit card.”

Pottermore will also take advantage of Google’s YouTube for global video broadcasts.

Google eBooks can be read on the web, and through apps for iOS and Android, as well as on over 80 e-readers. A new Google eBooks-integrated e-reader from iRiver is being sold at Target, Google announced a couple weeks ago. With this one, you can browse, buy and read Google eBooks with your e-reader through Wi-Fi, rather than downloading and transferring them from computer to e-reader with a cord with other devices.

So for all of you who want to stay immersed in the Harry Potter world, a new iPad app attempts to make that possible.

From ScrollMotion, the Harry Potter Film Wizardry app is said to be “written and designed in close collaboration with the cast and crew that brought J.K. Rowling’s celebrated novels to the silver screen.” The app is about 1 Gig and will run you $12.99. Here are some of the features as described on its iTunes page -

Features include:

•Slideshows of previously unpublished photography from all eight of the Harry Potter films
•Animations, including, the Marauder’s Map, the Time-Turner, and a timeline showing Daniel Radcliffe growing up as Harry Potter
•3-D objects, such as the Yule Ball invitation, Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes product selection, and the Borgin and Burkes auction catalog
•A plethora of extras such as concept art from all eight films, interactive audio, immersive page effects, tap and zoom photos, and behind-the-scenes videos.

This app comes packed with over one gigabyte of media: videos, interactive 3D renderings of unforgettable props, photographs, storyboards, sketches and much more. It’s a one-of-a-kind look at the world of the Harry Potter films that will always be available at your fingertips.

Here’s a couple of screen caps -

Have you seen Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 yet? If so, what do you think? If you haven’t seen it yet but plan to this weekend, check out this 5-minute retrospective, “Harry Potter: A Look Back.”

YouTube has announced via official blog that they will be ground zero for Harry Potter mania in the upcoming weeks. The final installment of the saga, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, won’t be released to the general public until July 15th – but its official premiere will happen a week earlier.

And YouTube will be broadcasting the red carpet event live from Trafalgar Square in London on July 7th. The live stream will begin at 11 a.m. EDT. YouTube says that the red carpet will feature the entire cast, author J.K. Rowling and “surprise celebrity appearances.” YouTube will re-broadcast the entire event if you miss it live.

The live stream will appear on YouTube’s Harry Potter channel. If you go there now, you can see a opening day countdown clock as well as photos, posters, and trailers for the upcoming film.

There is also a sweepstakes link to Harry Potter: The Quest, a game that offers the chance to win a trip to the London premiere.

J.K. Rowling recently made a splash with the unveiling of Pottermore, her new Harry Potter themed website. It mysteriously appeared a couple weeks ago through an online scavenger hunt. The site merely said “coming soon” and linked to a YouTube account with a announcement countdown.

Flash forward a week and Rowling released a video detailing in brief what fans could expect from the new site. Pottermore will be the exclusive place for fans to purchase Harry Potter eBooks as well as a hub for new content written by Rowling. We shouldn’t expect new Harry Potter adventures, but most likely supplementary materials. In the video, Rowling hints at some sort of social network layer to the whole experience as well.

Pottermore will open to the entire public in October, but a select few are being chosen to join early to give the site a test run. Rowling said that this is so fans could “help shape” the experience.

The end is near, Potter fans. With Deathly Hallows Part 2 only 2 weeks away, are you ready to jump back in to Potter-mania?

The plans for the site were announced via online scavenger hunt last week, and when visited, the site announced “Coming Soon” and linked to a countdown on YouTube. Today, JK Rowling has released the YouTube video detailing what to expect from the new site.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you,” Rowling says in her YouTube announcement. “Because no author could have asked for a more wonderful, diverse and loyal readership.” And considering the buzz surrounding this new site and the upcoming film conclusion of the series, I would say she’s spot on.

Rowling says Pottermore will be an “online reading experience like no other.”

Part of the site will be a Harry Potter store where fans can purchase, among other things, audiobooks and for the first time ever eBooks of the series.

“Pottermore will be be built by you, the reader…Pottermore will be the place where fans of any age can share, participate in and rediscover the stories,” Rowling says. This hints at some sort of social network layer to the experience, possibly even user-generated content.

Possibly the most exciting part of the new site will be the new content from Rowling herself. She says that she has been “hoarding” information about the world of Harry Potter for years, and the site will be the place where it will be revealed. It doesn’t look like this information will be any new adventures for Harry Potter but rather an expansion of the world. Possibly encyclopedic in nature? Backstories? We will have to wait to find out.

It’s been reported than Rowling has written over 18,000 words of new Harry Potter material for the site.

Pottermore will be open to everyone in October, but a select few (1 million) users will be chosen to “help shape” the experience of the site on July 31st (Harry Potter and Rowling’s birthday). You can sign up to receive email notifications on the site.

Part social experience, part new content and part online store? Are you guys excited about Pottermore?

Potter fans may now have something else to focus their internet attention towards, other than making Twitter trending topics out of Ron Weasley and Luna Lovegood. A mysterious site has popped up called Pottermore and the only thing on it is “coming soon” and JK Rowling’s signature.

The site was unveiled by a Harry Potter scavenger hunt, where map coordinates were placed on various fan websites like The Leaky Cauldron. Nine were placed on these sites and the final one was tweeted out yesterday on the newly established Pottermore Twitter account.

The coordinates, once entered into the search box at secretstreetview.com, would reveal a photoshopped letter on some Harry Potter-themed site. The “M” in “PotterMore,” for example, was a reference to Manchester Station where JK Rowling first conceived the idea to write the beloved novels.

If you click on one of the owls on the Pottermore website, you will be directed to a YouTube page called “JK Rowling Announces.” It doesn’t say what, only contains a countdown clock that now reads about 6 days, 10 hours until her announcement. The poster profile says that fans will be able to watch her announcement exclusively on the YouTube channel.

So what in the mudblood could this site be? Rowling’s lawyers have said that it is not a new Harry Potter book. The Leaky Cauldron has this to say –

Speculation on the trademark information of Pottermore has also been making its way around the internet. The info, which was registered in 2009, says that Pottermore is trademarked for, among other things, multiple-user networks, online boards, digital audio, printed books, toys, retail stores, and more, and more, and more – in short, pretty much everything. We don’t feel this gives much direction one way or the other.

Right, that points simply to a giant fan site, possibly a Harry Potter themed social network? If Call of Duty can try it, so can Harry.

Gizmodo says that an anonymous tip told them something about a Harry Potter branded smartphone. Now wouldn’t that be interesting?

What do you think the new site will be? Something magical I’m sure. Are you excited about all new things Harry Potter? Don’t forget, this comes out very, very soon guys…

Now we are about to see the Twitter monster flex it’s muscle once again as Harry Potter hits theaters tonight at midnight. I expect we’ll see pretty much the exact opposite of the Bruno effect with Harry Potter on Twitter.  Now, I have not read the book, nor have I seen the movie yet. But I am fairly confident that so long as it isn’t 90 minutes of tasteless satire and homoerotic visual gaffes, Twitter hype will be an overall positive for Harry.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the trending topics are dominated by Potter references on a scale we haven’t seen since MJ died. There are fan sites across the web already motivating their bases to dominate the social spaces.  The Dumbledore Twitter Challenge for example is requesting that Potter fans add a #dumbledore to their Twittering in a 36 hour campaign to make #dumbledore the most Tweeted word on Twitter. 

Harry Potter is hardly a franchise that needs a lot of help in the hype department, but it’s going to get it nonetheless. There could also very well be an uptick of Twitter registrations as Potter fans create accounts for the sole purpose of connecting with each other.  That will be interesting to see too, so we’ll keep our eyes on that and let you know what we turn up.

Something indirectly Harry Potter-related, however that is far more buzz-worthy than any movie (if it comes to fruition) is the "invisibility cloak" made popular by the Harry Potter franchise, that scientists are saying they are getting closer to realizing. BBC News reports:

The materials do not occur naturally but have been created on a nano scale, measured in billionths of a metre.

The team says the principles could one day be scaled up to make invisibility cloaks large enough to hide people. 

Yes. The power to make yourself virtually invisible.

This reminds me of something Dr. Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park. He talked about how scientists got so caught up in whether or not they could bring dinosaurs to life, they didn’t stop to think if they should. Of course the plot of the movie determined that in fact they shouldn’t have.

Yes, we all want an invisibility cloak, but what happens when they fall into the wrong hands? Supervillains? I’m sure murderers, rapists, and thieves would love to get their hands on one of these.

By the way, Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park has also written a novel on threats of nano-technology to the human race. It’s stories like this that make him seem almost prophetic rather than just another science fiction author.

This real-life technology story, will surely not get the Digg love that future Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince stories will, however. Don’t get me wrong, there are a fair amount of diggs on the subject currently, but let’s see what the score is come November.
 

“We at the Google Book Search blog would be remiss if we did not address the most significant event in book publishing in the last 50 years: the release of the final book in J.K. Rowling’s excellent Harry Potter series,” writes Roland Lange, Strategic Partner Development Manager, on the Inside Google Book Search Blog.

Lange goes on to discuss several different matters, and I’ll warn you right now: if you haven’t read the last book, clicking on some of his links may not be a good idea.  (As one of the 42 people who haven’t yet gotten around to it, I’m afraid to click on much of anything.)

“Although the full text of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows isn’t searchable online, you’ll find lots of information about it on our ‘About this Book’ page, including links to book reviews and web references from diverse sources like the BBC and a host of HP fan sites,” he states.

Others links lead to various books and movies that might intrigue the Potter posse – those look pretty safe.  All in all, it’s just interesting to see Google express its interest in this publishing phenomenon.

But the second quarter ended June 30, and the Deathly Hallows were not bestowed upon the world until last week, even if Amazon did sell over 2 million copies, which will be noted next quarter.

In short, Potter had little to do with Amazon’s second quarter results, unless devotees were catching up with the other six books, or the movies, or even the merchandise. And they most likely were.

Whether or not J.K. Rowling significantly contributed to Amazon’s 2Q earnings, it was a magical period for the online retailer, enough to send shares dot-com-boom levels.

The company beat Wall Street expectations, pulling in $2.89 billion, $90 million more than estimates, beating even its own forecasts by $40 million.

Currently, Amazon shares are up over 17 percent to around $86.76.