Information Today published my Newsbreak on Google Video today. The product is unusual for a Google announcement: it's immature, and it's misnamed.
See the article at:
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb050131-1.shtml
Excerpts:
It’s surprising to test a product named “Video” only to find that there’s no video to consume. It seems that every page of hits yields the statement “Video is currently not available.” In response to the question “Can I play the videos that Google Video finds?” the Google Video FAQ states, “Not yet, but stay tuned ...”
....
One could even argue that Google has misnamed its new product. Google Video offers a way to search television content, and it offers a way to search local TV listings. But there is a lot more to video than television; one wonders why they didn’t name the product Google TV. Yahoo!, for its part, launched its own video product last week—a tool to search the Web for actual, playable video clips. Perhaps Google was influenced by its rival’s impending announcement. Or perhaps Google plans to expand beyond television, given that Google Images searches freely available images on the Web.
Monday, January 31, 2005
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Boogie Bob, my doppleganger?!?
Recently while at Panera's (place that sells bread, soup, and sandwiches and offers free Wi-Fi) I encountered this fellow. Note the Sony Picturebook laptop. Looking closely, you can see the antenna of a Sierra Wireless card -- in other words he's got the exact same highly-portable Internet setup I had for almost two years.
It turns out this fella is none other than "Boogie Bob" Baldori. He has a colorful history: his band, the Woolies, had a pop hit called "Who Do You Love?" in the sixties. Now he's a rocker and a lawyer. See: boog.com
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Delicious mockery of Ipod Shuffle, Mac Mini, Steve Jobs, and Apple
Ouch!
Seth Jayson of Motley Fool offers some wonderfully wicked words about Apple's fortunes:
Living Up to the iHype
Don't let the headlines fool you (little f). It's about more than the iPod. But the amazing increases in profitability at Apple have one Fool wondering if he's not the one putting on the leather jacket and grabbing for the waterski rope.
The reference is to the time that Fonzi famously waterskied and jumped over a shark - a sign that a TV show has lost its compass.
In any event it's fun to see a detractor when the rest of the trade press thinks Apple is flying higher than ever.
Seth Jayson of Motley Fool offers some wonderfully wicked words about Apple's fortunes:
Living Up to the iHype
Don't let the headlines fool you (little f). It's about more than the iPod. But the amazing increases in profitability at Apple have one Fool wondering if he's not the one putting on the leather jacket and grabbing for the waterski rope.
The reference is to the time that Fonzi famously waterskied and jumped over a shark - a sign that a TV show has lost its compass.
In any event it's fun to see a detractor when the rest of the trade press thinks Apple is flying higher than ever.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Headless Mac a "cube-shaped computer"?!
Tech columnist Hiawatha Bray writes in today's Boston Globe:
Main Entry: cube
Pronunciation: kyüb
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin cubus, from Greek kybos die, cube
1 a : the regular solid of six equal square sides -- see VOLUME table
This tiny new Mac is in no way a "cube" -- its size and shape more resemble a paperback book:
As it happens Steve Jobs famously was associated with a cube-shaped computer, the Next workstation, introduced circa 1990:
It was cool to break out of the tower paradigm in the early 90s and have a cube-shaped computer on your desk. But memo to Hiawatha: the Mac Mini is shaped not like a cube; it's shaped like an Ipod.
In San Francisco, at the annual Macworld trade show, Jobs showed off the Mac Mini, a cube-shaped computer priced at $499, and a new $99 version of the red-hot iPod portable music player.Either Hiawatha didn't physically attend the keynote at Macworld where Steve Jobs introduced the device, or he's forgotten his basic geometry. Quoth Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: cube
Pronunciation: kyüb
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin cubus, from Greek kybos die, cube
1 a : the regular solid of six equal square sides -- see VOLUME table
This tiny new Mac is in no way a "cube" -- its size and shape more resemble a paperback book:
As it happens Steve Jobs famously was associated with a cube-shaped computer, the Next workstation, introduced circa 1990:
It was cool to break out of the tower paradigm in the early 90s and have a cube-shaped computer on your desk. But memo to Hiawatha: the Mac Mini is shaped not like a cube; it's shaped like an Ipod.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Amazing what's on the Net: want the script of "Casablanca"?
For some reason a line from Casablanca was bugging me. Victor Laszlo and Ilsa walk into Rick's. Ilsa asks for a table near Sam, and Victor asks the proprietor for a table away from the evil German major. Rick responds with a pithy line about the complicated geography their request entails. But I can't remember Rick's exact riposte.
So I Google it. And early on the hit list, I find a full-text copy of the script for Casablanca.
No one is more excited than me about Google's ambitious plans to scan millions of library volumes for full-text presentation on the Web. This is just a tiny example of how cool it will be to find the most obscure things in print, without having to physically visit Cambridge or Ann Arbor.
So I Google it. And early on the hit list, I find a full-text copy of the script for Casablanca.
No one is more excited than me about Google's ambitious plans to scan millions of library volumes for full-text presentation on the Web. This is just a tiny example of how cool it will be to find the most obscure things in print, without having to physically visit Cambridge or Ann Arbor.
Friday, December 31, 2004
Cool product speeds up your Wi-Fi experience
So you're sitting in the Peanut Barrel, mooching off the Wi-Fi signal from Espresso Royale, a couple of doors down. The signal indicator says "Poor" and those Web pages just aren't painting fast enough.
Now there's a solution:
Now there's a solution:
The accidental telethon -- or the Amazon telethon
Amazon is devoting a huge portion of its home page real estate to an appeal to donate to the American Red Cross for relief for tsunami victims. So far they've raised $7,326,939.19 from 107,683 donors.
Charities worldwide are reporting surprising levels of donation, much of it online. Google's helped by adding a link labeled:
Ways to help with tsunami relief
In effect, this is a worldwide accidental telethon. People see the horrifying images on CNN or in the newspaper, and they want to donate. If they've got handy Internet access, they pop over to a familiar site, such as Google or Amazon, to give.
In some ways, the call to action is as explicit as in the Jerry Lewis telethon for muscular dystrophy: CNN shows scenes of devastation, then flashes on screen the address for the Red Cross, Oxfam, etc. At some times, the Web address of the charity - say, salvationarmyusa.org - remains on screen as the camera pans over distressed victims.
Some charities' Web sites have melted down under the load. Amazon is donating more than precious home page real estate; they're providing the back-end of a world-class e-commerce site, easily able to handle the strain as millions consider donating, and thousands follow through.
Amazon is promising 100% of its collections on behalf of the Red Cross will go to the charity. (Let us hope that the ARC spends 100% of it wisely.)
The number of donors via Amazon alone now almost equals the estimated death toll. Let's hope the former increases much faster than the latter. Imagine if the number of donors matched the estimated 5 million displaced survivors....
As inspiring as it is to see the world respond, it's not all good news. We're responding to compelling images. Still, as horrible as things are in coastal Asia right now, where there are no television images, we're not moved to respond. See the movie "Hotel Rwanda" for the images we didn't have in 1994, when 800,000 people were slaughtered. In that case, CNN wasn't bringing us 24 X 7 coverage.
Charities worldwide are reporting surprising levels of donation, much of it online. Google's helped by adding a link labeled:
Ways to help with tsunami relief
In effect, this is a worldwide accidental telethon. People see the horrifying images on CNN or in the newspaper, and they want to donate. If they've got handy Internet access, they pop over to a familiar site, such as Google or Amazon, to give.
In some ways, the call to action is as explicit as in the Jerry Lewis telethon for muscular dystrophy: CNN shows scenes of devastation, then flashes on screen the address for the Red Cross, Oxfam, etc. At some times, the Web address of the charity - say, salvationarmyusa.org - remains on screen as the camera pans over distressed victims.
Some charities' Web sites have melted down under the load. Amazon is donating more than precious home page real estate; they're providing the back-end of a world-class e-commerce site, easily able to handle the strain as millions consider donating, and thousands follow through.
Amazon is promising 100% of its collections on behalf of the Red Cross will go to the charity. (Let us hope that the ARC spends 100% of it wisely.)
The number of donors via Amazon alone now almost equals the estimated death toll. Let's hope the former increases much faster than the latter. Imagine if the number of donors matched the estimated 5 million displaced survivors....
As inspiring as it is to see the world respond, it's not all good news. We're responding to compelling images. Still, as horrible as things are in coastal Asia right now, where there are no television images, we're not moved to respond. See the movie "Hotel Rwanda" for the images we didn't have in 1994, when 800,000 people were slaughtered. In that case, CNN wasn't bringing us 24 X 7 coverage.
Monday, December 27, 2004
If US tsunami center had warned Asia, could thousands of lives have been saved?
Scientists in the U.S. and elsewhere knew the earthquake had hit, and could've predicted a tsunami in the Indian Ocean. But they had no network to warn nations likely to be affected. Could perfect information have saved lives?
From today's LA Times:
In fast, the NOAA / National Weather Service detection service in Hawaii issued this warning:
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER
0315 PM HST 25 DEC 2004
TO - CIVIL DEFENSE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII
SUBJECT - TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN
THIS BULLETIN IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY. NO ACTION REQUIRED.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME - 0259 PM HST 25 DEC 2004
COORDINATES - 3.4 NORTH 95.7 EAST
LOCATION - OFF W COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATERA
MAGNITUDE - 8.0 MOMENT
EVALUATION
BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA A DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS
NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII. REPEAT. A
DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO
TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII.
THIS WILL BE THE ONLY BULLETIN ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS
ADDITIONAL DATA ARE RECEIVED.
Take special note of the first line: TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001 If this is bulletin 001 for 2004, they made it almost to the very end of the year having issued no warnings for the Pacific. Think about that: this little office on a beach in Hawaii has staff monitoring seismographs all the time. (Today, they issued TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 003 dated 0536 AM HST 27 DEC 2004 reiterating that despite some small activity in the Pacific, Hawaii is not at risk.)
In the wake of such loss of lives and such devastation, people surely will ask why the Indian Ocean region didn't protect itself better. When people start to point fingers at the governments of affected nations, some folks will say "I told you so." From today's New York Times:
But even given perfect detection, did the region have adequate procedures in place to warn and evacuate people on the coasts? Was there a robust civil defense network in every coastal region. You'd have to educate everyone from locals in poor area shacks, to homeowners in luxury neighborhoods, to folks in bars and restaurants, to tourists in high rise hotels. (Can you imagine a placard on the door of your hotel room that begins "In event of a tsunami warning, please run downstairs and head for the hills...)" And all this for a threat that hasn't hit hard since 1883.
So did any warnings get through? In past disasters, ham radio operators have been instrumental in getting vital messages through. Did anyone hear in advance and evacuate?
Some "what if's" come to mind:
-- Some U.S. seismologists report that they tried to call authorities in countries likely to see the tsunami, but they didn't know who to call. What if they had been able to get through? How many lives might've been saved?
-- What if, instead of trying to call the authorities in those nations, the U.S. tsunami officials had called CNN? Could broadcast media have done a better job of reaching those at risk? (I think the answer is without question yes.)
-- Is there any way the Internet could've helped? The Internet is famous for spreading hoaxes rapidly. What if officials had sent the tsunami warning out to every major blogger in the affected countries and elsewhere, with links back to authoritative sites?
From today's LA Times:
Nations along the Pacific Rim participate in a tsunami detection and warning system, set up since the 1964 earthquake sent a tsunami crashing into the Alaskan coast. But nations on the Indian Ocean have not done so.The quake was the largest since a magnitude 9.2 temblor struck Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1964 and was one of the biggest ever recorded by scientists. It triggered the first tsunami in the Indian Ocean since 1883, civil engineer Costas Synolakis of USC said.
In fast, the NOAA / National Weather Service detection service in Hawaii issued this warning:
TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001
PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER
0315 PM HST 25 DEC 2004
TO - CIVIL DEFENSE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII
SUBJECT - TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN
THIS BULLETIN IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY. NO ACTION REQUIRED.
AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
ORIGIN TIME - 0259 PM HST 25 DEC 2004
COORDINATES - 3.4 NORTH 95.7 EAST
LOCATION - OFF W COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATERA
MAGNITUDE - 8.0 MOMENT
EVALUATION
BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA A DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS
NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII. REPEAT. A
DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO
TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII.
THIS WILL BE THE ONLY BULLETIN ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS
ADDITIONAL DATA ARE RECEIVED.
Take special note of the first line: TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001 If this is bulletin 001 for 2004, they made it almost to the very end of the year having issued no warnings for the Pacific. Think about that: this little office on a beach in Hawaii has staff monitoring seismographs all the time. (Today, they issued TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 003 dated 0536 AM HST 27 DEC 2004 reiterating that despite some small activity in the Pacific, Hawaii is not at risk.)
In the wake of such loss of lives and such devastation, people surely will ask why the Indian Ocean region didn't protect itself better. When people start to point fingers at the governments of affected nations, some folks will say "I told you so." From today's New York Times:
Other scientists have voiced similar concerns. At a meeting in June of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, a United Nations body, experts concluded that the "Indian Ocean has a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis" and should have a warning network.
But even given perfect detection, did the region have adequate procedures in place to warn and evacuate people on the coasts? Was there a robust civil defense network in every coastal region. You'd have to educate everyone from locals in poor area shacks, to homeowners in luxury neighborhoods, to folks in bars and restaurants, to tourists in high rise hotels. (Can you imagine a placard on the door of your hotel room that begins "In event of a tsunami warning, please run downstairs and head for the hills...)" And all this for a threat that hasn't hit hard since 1883.
So did any warnings get through? In past disasters, ham radio operators have been instrumental in getting vital messages through. Did anyone hear in advance and evacuate?
Some "what if's" come to mind:
-- Some U.S. seismologists report that they tried to call authorities in countries likely to see the tsunami, but they didn't know who to call. What if they had been able to get through? How many lives might've been saved?
-- What if, instead of trying to call the authorities in those nations, the U.S. tsunami officials had called CNN? Could broadcast media have done a better job of reaching those at risk? (I think the answer is without question yes.)
-- Is there any way the Internet could've helped? The Internet is famous for spreading hoaxes rapidly. What if officials had sent the tsunami warning out to every major blogger in the affected countries and elsewhere, with links back to authoritative sites?
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Photos of Pere Marquette 1225: Inspiration for Polar Express
In November we went up to Owosso, Michigan, where one of the last steam locomotives made in the US resides. It's Pere Marquette 1225, and it inspired a Grand Rapids native to write a book you may have heard of, The Polar Express.
A bunch of photos of 1225, inside and out, and of the museum where it resides, are at:
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2453905093
You have to register one time to visit Imagestation, but it's free.
Here's a little tidbit: many working railroad museums have done "Polar Express" tours for years. With the movie about to come out, Time-Warner did something really stupid: they demanded royalties from the museums. These folks operate as a labor of love, and helped promote the book, and will help sell DVDs of the movie when it comes out.
Warner-Brothers backed off on this stupid, onerous, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot demand, but too late for many museums to call their holiday runs "Polar Express."
So the home of the actual engine that started it all had to call it "the North Pole Express" ....
A bunch of photos of 1225, inside and out, and of the museum where it resides, are at:
http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2453905093
You have to register one time to visit Imagestation, but it's free.
Here's a little tidbit: many working railroad museums have done "Polar Express" tours for years. With the movie about to come out, Time-Warner did something really stupid: they demanded royalties from the museums. These folks operate as a labor of love, and helped promote the book, and will help sell DVDs of the movie when it comes out.
Warner-Brothers backed off on this stupid, onerous, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot demand, but too late for many museums to call their holiday runs "Polar Express."
So the home of the actual engine that started it all had to call it "the North Pole Express" ....
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
German spam funnier than meafloaf
I received spam from some German source proposing some sillystuffen, and I replied:
"No sprechenzie Deutsch and no wanten zie spam" -- then I got this response, as translated by Altavista:
well you: -) now are you astonished which? times a Mail of me, well that has also an important reason! I chatten very gladly with you is only unfortunately my PC in the bucket and I so gladly still many more from you to know would learn have you desire which we a little at the mobile phone chatten? 0163/3299152 do not come is no frog I bite also,I genuinly much would be pleased! To then Anja
The bit about biting the frog has me especially concerned. Should the ASPCA be alerted? Or the French Anti-Defamation League?
Someone please call Anja and tell her to please pursue other continents....
"No sprechenzie Deutsch and no wanten zie spam" -- then I got this response, as translated by Altavista:
well you: -) now are you astonished which? times a Mail of me, well that has also an important reason! I chatten very gladly with you is only unfortunately my PC in the bucket and I so gladly still many more from you to know would learn have you desire which we a little at the mobile phone chatten? 0163/3299152 do not come is no frog I bite also,I genuinly much would be pleased! To then Anja
The bit about biting the frog has me especially concerned. Should the ASPCA be alerted? Or the French Anti-Defamation League?
Someone please call Anja and tell her to please pursue other continents....
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
My 2001 proposal for a digital Library of Congress comes closer to fruition
In 2001 I proposed that the nation should expend resources to digitize the holdings of the Library of Congress. Not a sample of materials on a single subject -- e.g. the American Memory project -- but every page image of every book in the collection -- tens of millions of books, full-text, full image -- terabytes of data.
Roy Tenant, a leading digital libraries expert, and I debated the concept remotely, with him at the Internet Librarian conference in California, and me teledebating from halfway across the world, from the First Monday conference in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
My main argument in 2001 -- and today -- is simple: disk is so cheap, and digital imaging technology is so mature, that you can
conceive of capturing every page of every book or journal in your collection at low cost.
Roy and I reprised this debate the next spring at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington, D.C. Several hundred people listened to our debate. One of Roy's best lines was "but the Library of Congress contains a lot of junk!" My response: it's cheaper to digitize everything in the collection than to spend staff time deciding what is useful, and what's junk.
You have to understand that Roy is someone who actually creates digital libraries, and I am but a dreamer. So what the hell do I know? Still, I claim: You were right in a way, Roy. Large research libraries contain a lot of junk. But we retain the junk, and the real estate, because we don't know what is junk and what is useful.
A number of people came up to me afterward, including librarians at the Library of Congress, and said I'd put forth a grand vision. Sadly, LC did not pick up the mantle. Happily, three years later, Google has.
Here's a link to my presentation from 2001/2002:
The Digital Library of Congress
And here's Roy's side of the story from our debate in 2002. I must confess, he may still win the argument: this requires a huge amount of human effort, and a huge leap of technological faith. In researching my side of the debate, I found the earlier calculations of Michael Lesk invaluable. He understood the incredibly shrinking cost of disk before most people did.
Until today, every library digitization project was small-scale. No one took on an all-library project; they objected:
Roy Tenant, a leading digital libraries expert, and I debated the concept remotely, with him at the Internet Librarian conference in California, and me teledebating from halfway across the world, from the First Monday conference in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
My main argument in 2001 -- and today -- is simple: disk is so cheap, and digital imaging technology is so mature, that you can
conceive of capturing every page of every book or journal in your collection at low cost.
Roy and I reprised this debate the next spring at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington, D.C. Several hundred people listened to our debate. One of Roy's best lines was "but the Library of Congress contains a lot of junk!" My response: it's cheaper to digitize everything in the collection than to spend staff time deciding what is useful, and what's junk.
You have to understand that Roy is someone who actually creates digital libraries, and I am but a dreamer. So what the hell do I know? Still, I claim: You were right in a way, Roy. Large research libraries contain a lot of junk. But we retain the junk, and the real estate, because we don't know what is junk and what is useful.
A number of people came up to me afterward, including librarians at the Library of Congress, and said I'd put forth a grand vision. Sadly, LC did not pick up the mantle. Happily, three years later, Google has.
Here's a link to my presentation from 2001/2002:
The Digital Library of Congress
And here's Roy's side of the story from our debate in 2002. I must confess, he may still win the argument: this requires a huge amount of human effort, and a huge leap of technological faith. In researching my side of the debate, I found the earlier calculations of Michael Lesk invaluable. He understood the incredibly shrinking cost of disk before most people did.
Until today, every library digitization project was small-scale. No one took on an all-library project; they objected:
- We can't afford to digitize the entire collection
- It will take too long
- We can't overcome copyright concerns
Google to the rescue. It takes a company with the vision, the technological prowess, and the capital that Google possesses, to make this happen.
One of the points I tried to make in my debate with Roy is that it would take a large-scale project, something on the scale of Kennedy proposing that the United States send a mission to the moon, in order to move digital libraries forward. When JFK proposed we send a man to the moon "before this decade is out" no one knew how the hell to accomplish that goal.
I believe this project is every bit as important as the Apollo moon program -- and this time, it's privately financed.
I believe today's news is cataclysmic, certainly in the halls of academe, if not a red letter day in world history.
Monday, December 13, 2004
University of Michigan announces 7 million volume digitization deal with Google
You heard it here first, received un-embargoed from secret source:
>The University today is announcing a groundbreaking
>partnership with Google that will digitize the entire seven
>million volumes in the U-M library and make them accessible
>via a simple Google search.
>
>This project puts the University at the leading edge of a
>movement that will transform access to knowledge. Anyone who
>has Internet access, anywhere in the world, will be able to
>search our entire library, without limitations of geography,
>time or expense. It is an endeavor that carries remarkable
>implications for our institution; as a great public research
>university there is nothing we care about more deeply than the
>creation and sharing of knowledge.
>
>The project will make it possible for a user to locate and
>read the full text of works that are out of copyright, and to
>find snippets of text for copyrighted material, along with
>information about where a work can be found.
>
>Google will begin placing digitized volumes online in
>mid-2005, beginning with materials in Buhr. The technology is
>non-destructive, and rare books are excluded.
>
>As a product of this partnership, the University Library will
>receive and own a high quality digital copy of the materials
>digitized by Google, and it will be able to provide enhanced
>access for University patrons. The digitization at this scale
>is a massive undertaking that we simply could not have
>achieved on our own. The University will receive no financial
>compensation.
>
>Harvard University and the New York Public Library are
>announcing their own agreements with Google today, and more
>may participate in the future.
>
>In undertaking this project, we understand and respect the
>copyright issues involved. As an institution we create, use,
>and distribute all sorts of copyrighted works, and we care
>deeply about copyright issues from all aspects.
>This project is consistent with the very purpose of copyright
>law as reflected in the U.S. Constitution, to promote the
>advancement and dissemination of knowledge.
>
>For more information about the project, go to www.umich.edu
>
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