Last three books I've read

While I'm catching up, here are the last three books I've read and enjoyed.

Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near took me weeks to read, and not just because it is over 600 pages (including notes). What made it hard was its extraordinary ideas. Every page had an insight -- the nature of consciousness, blurring of human-computer boundaries, the nature of a "self" and the impact of computing power limited only by physics. My mind kept wandering over the implications -- I'd read a paragraph and then find myself dreaming up a Philip K. Dick novel.

Kurzweil starts with a simple premise: the rate of progress is accelerating exponentially, which he backs up with some convincing evidence that extends back at least as far as the discovery of fire and invention of stone tools. He then carries on logically and methodically to show why, if that's true, we're much closer than we realize to some extraordinary advances, when progress will essentially proceed at an infinite pace (the "Singularity"). I think he underestimates the complexity of many of these problems, but that would only delay some of dilemmas that we'll face. Just to take one example: Kurzweil compares individuals to the shape of a river, with the water representing the atoms that make up our physical bodies. Because every molecule in our bodies changes about once a month, Kurzweil argues, what we are is a pattern of information, like the shape of the river. Every neuron, and every other part of us, can theoretically be modeled in a computer. What happens when computers get powerful enough to host all of that information? Is it a person? Why not? If Kurzweil is right, we'll be confronting questions like that faster than we realize.


Alastair Reynolds's Pushing Ice was a bit of a mental break compared with Kurzweil's book, but it still had plenty of insights. This is the first book I've read by Reynolds, who has a Ph.D in astronomy and works for the European Space Agency. The story starts in the second half of this century and evolves around a comet-mining ship that is diverted to chase what appears to be an alien vessel racing away from the solar system. Like the last Ken MacLeod book I read, Reynolds takes minimal liberties with the laws of physics. That leads to a problem: Going anywhere interesting takes months or years in space, which leaves conflicts aboard ship to provide much of the action. There's plenty of that before anyone ever encounters an alien, assuming they'd recognize it as such. As time drags on and the chase turns involuntarily into a long-term, interstellar mission, the crew has to struggle to survive.

As always, the science in this fiction isn't strictly necessary. The same story could be told about a ship rounding the horn of Africa in the 16th century. But Reynolds obvious grasp of the science adds to the gripping read. Unlike Kurzweil's book, I devoured this in a couple of sittings.



I'm only about half-way through David Pogue's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, but it's a skimmer anyway. I'll be popping in and out of this book for quite a while since, as I've mentioned in a previous post, we got an iMac for Christmas. Although I've used Macs once in a while while working for PC Week, I haven't used one in earnest since college, when Apple's computers ran a totally different operating system. I've been pleasantly surprised on how similar OS X is to Linux (since it has a free BSD operating system underneath) and Pogue's book does a good job of filling in some of the blanks. The author's focus, however, is aimed squarely at the non-nerd, home computer user. I'm still struggling to get my head around the way OS X manages daemons and schedules tasks, which isn't something that will keep the average home user awake at night. It's something I worry about, though. It took me a week to get a daily backup working, which I finally managed by just piggy-backing on tasks that the computer already does on a daily basis. Perhaps I should try some of the other O'Reilly books on the Mac, such as the ones geared toward people who area already familiar with Unix.






Tags: Books

Splogspot?

I've apparently offended someone enough to be listed, next to dodgy drug sellers and loan sharks, in Splogspot' s list of spam blogs. I've not heard of this site before, and my initial impression isn't good. I used its method of appeal (a little link next to each entry that says 'not spam?'), pointing out that I would think a spam blog would have to be trying to sell something, or at least carry ads. I've heard nothing back in a few days and there isn't any other contact information on the site.

I understand that spam blogs (or splogs for short) are a big problem, but a heavy-handed black list, with little or no accountability, is a poor answer.

Tags: Spam, Splogs

Christmas presents

It must be a sign, but I'm not sure of what. Theresa and I ended up with the coolest gifts this year.

Theresa's main present was a fireplace -- our first in at about 16 years (Ailish was a baby the last time we had one). It puts out a lot of heat, easily heating most of the downstairs. And if I get carried away and stuff too much into it, we have to move upstairs or out in the sunroom for a while. (I'll eventually get my pyromania under control.)



What I especially like about it is that we don't watch the TV as much. It's more pleasant to just sit around the fire, listening to music or reading a book.

My main gift is a new 20-inch iMac. It's mostly for the kids, since I have a PC running Linux upstairs. But I get to play with it a lot, especially when I'm off a few days. (I'm writing this now on the iMac.)



I've wanted a Macintosh since college, and a few days with the real thing has convinced me that Apple has the most advanced PC on the planet, by far. Windows can't touch this. (Nor can Linux, for that matter, but what do you expect for free?) Apple's decision to switch from the PowerPC processor to Intel has more recently given me pause. What tipped me over this time is that the kids' Windows PC is beginning to fall over and the thought of starting all over again with the battle to keep it upright against a determined kid attack was just too much. The Mac, like Linux, is far better equipped for life on the Internet, even (and especially) in the hands of children. Plus, the kids are now getting familiar with Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. They're able to sit down on any of them and be productive. That's got to be worth something. The Intel migration, I decided, wasn't much of a worry. A family PC has a 2-3 year life and, by then, Apple will have made the transition and it'll be time to start thinking of a new main computer.

I'm in the process of trying to get my head around Apple's version of Unix, which isn't very different from Linux. Still, it's the differences that are tripping me up. I've created a script to back up everyone's documents folder to Linux using rsync. This is native-speaking for Mac OS X, happily, except for telling it when to run (cron seems to be ignored). I've figured out that I need to use Apple's next-generation services interface via a program called launchd. It's still early days for that, however, and creating and managing services is a bit rough. You have to create an XML file and put it into a central place. I guess I thought "crontab -e" was difficult, when I first encountered it, so this will be no different. I found a good program called Lingon that made it easier to set up and schedule the tasks. I'll find out tomorrow morning if it works.




Another gift that will mostly be used by the whole family is a GPS (global positioning system) receiver. I wrote a post recently about our weekly outings to local parks and Dean Shareski added a comment suggesting we try geocaching. We're taking him up on it. The kids have already found a couple of caches nearby. The idea is that you use GPS to find containers (usually tupperware) hidden around the world. The boxes have little tidbits in them -- little momentos. You take one and add one. Sounds fun and it'll make walking Dude a little more interesting.

The kids? Well, they got the usual assortment: Nintendo DS, some Playstation 2 games (and the network adapter), and various loud toys. But I've barely noticed. I'm too busy playing.

Tags: Family, Christmas, Mac

This Year's Christmas Tree

We put up our Christmas tree a little early this year, since Theresa and I will be working most weekends this month. As usual, it's virtually impossible to take a good photo of a Christmas tree. You either see the tree or the lights (and the latter fuzzily). Ailish, our family photographer, gets the right idea, as usual, snapping a photo of just one ornament:

Now, why didn't I think of that?

Tags: Christmas, Family

Thanksgiving in London

We're living our eighth year in London, overstaying our "two-year adventure" by quite a bit. But even though most of the kids speak with English accents and we've all grown comfortable with the British variant of the language, we still celebrate Thanksgiving every year. It is, by far, the best holiday -- a mostly non-commercial anomaly in a marketing-driven world. No gifts, no cards, just food and getting together.

This year, unusually, we celebrated on the day itself. I took Thursday and Friday off, just for the heck of it, and our guests were also available. We have to make a few adjustments -- the local "stuffing" is a lot denser, for example -- but turkeys are abundant now as we get closer to Christmas. Kathy picked us up some canned pumpkin for making into pies at a store in Hampstead that specializes in "American" food, and we can even find cranberry sauce in the shops now. Either Theresa is getting better at finding the fixings, or the English are picking up on our tastes.

Tags: Family, London, Thanksgiving

How to Wake Me Up

I worked one of my rare overnight shifts, from around 5pm Thursday evening until 2:30am on Friday. One advantage of doing just one, instead of a whole week's worth, is that you end up only working four days that week. I had the day with Theresa on Thursday, with plenty of time for a long walk with the dog and then lunch at a local Indian restaurant before I had to head into work. Today, Theresa is working, which theoretically should have given me a quiet house to sleep in.

The dog had other ideas. About five hours after I went to bed, he tried to drag me out. When that didn't work, he bounced on me a while, then barked his head off for about 15 minutes. I pulled the covers over my head and tried to catch another few minutes of sleep. Dude went downstairs, broke through a puny toddler fence we foolishly believe will keep a 70-pound boxer out of the kitchen and proceeded to sift through the bin for snacks -- old, rotten snacks, like egg shells and last night's pasta. Apparently, it took some effort to find just the right thing because the garbage was spread all over the kitchen in an even layer of stinking slime. The evidence suggests that he rolled in it.

That got me up. Sleep and I have a strained relationship anyway, so five hours is about par.

Dude and I had an exchange of words -- I yelled my head off and he stood there, wagging his stubby tail. "He must be saying 'it's time for your walk' in a very loud voice," thinks he.

No, he's not very bright.

Early Morning Walk

It's going to be a week for doing unusual things. This morning, since Theresa is working and so is our normal alternate dog walker, I got up at 5am to take Dude for a stroll. It's was a freezing morning, with a hard frost, no clouds, and no moon. The skies are as dark as it ever gets in the city -- dark enough for me to see my first shooting star in months and to make out six of the Seven Sisters without trying (seven, if I look out the corner of my eye).

I had a ball, but there was no point in throwing it. It would just get thrown once, and neither one of us would see where it went. But there was plenty to keep the dog running. It's the time of the morning when the foxes, Dude's arch-enemy, have the run of the neighborhood. Once he caught the scent, he was off and running. Fortunately, he's a mediocre hunting dog, at best, and has no hope of catching anything. But it keeps him entertained.

By the time we headed it home, it was just before 6am and the sky to the east was glowing very slightly. It's going to be a long, dark winter.

Tags: Pets, Walking

Sunday Afternoon

We had an unexpected gap of free time this afternoon. Theresa was scheduled to work Saturday afternoon and evening, arriving home around 10pm, and then the early shift on Sunday, which would have had her home around 4pm. Not much time left, after dog walking, church, meals, etc. It was going to be a very quiet (read: boring) weekend. Instead, she ended doing the two shifts back-to-back, working continuously from 1pm Saturday afternoon until around 8am on Sunday. That meant she'd sleep through part of the day on Sunday, but we'd have a couple of extra hours. We spent it doing something we haven't done in months -- dinner out with the whole family.

We walked about 15 minutes, in cold but clear weather, to a small Italian restaurant in Eastcote that offers the best mix of choices for even the pickiest eaters among us. Most of the kids had pizza. I went for linguine Frutti di Mare, a mix of pasta, mussels, squid and prawns. Theresa splurged on a monk fish dish.

It was just what I needed. I woke up crabby and anxious already about the week ahead, which will include my own overnight shift on Thursday. The dinner took my mind off that and made me feel more like I've had a weekend. It also reminded me that we're heading into a nice stage with the kids. All of them are old enough now to have real conversations at the dinner table. We're not battling to keep them quiet out of fear of disturbing the peace. We still played 21 questions, as normal (answer: ice cube), and a staring contest (I remain world champion), but the atmosphere at a family dinner is getting more and more "adult" every year. I'll miss the youngster stage, of course, but not that much.

Tags: Family

Learning GNU Emacs

I've been reacquainting myself lately with Emacs, which I've used off and on for nearly 15 years. The off part is because I occasionally think that it's ridiculous for a liberal arts-educated news editor to be using Emacs, possibly the most complex text editor ever devised and usually thought of as a tool for programmers. This monster of a program is dedicated purely to moving characters around, inserting them and deleting them. That's it. Nothing else. Yet it includes way more features than Word or even most professional publishing programs. It even includes its own psychoanalyst.

So once in a while I decide it's time to grow up and start using WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) programs such as Microsoft's Word, which I have to use it at work anyway, or OpenOffice on Linux. But that's equally silly. I can count the formatting attributes I care about on less than one hand -- italics, bold, centred and, um, that's about it. I rarely print, and in 20 years of reporting and editing, I've never cared what the output looks like, ever. Just give me a word count and off I go.

And nothing, with the possible exception of another editor called Vi, is more powerful at flinging words around than Emacs. It isn't very easy to learn, but once you do, it's easier and less distracting to use. I like how I can keep my hands on the keyboard at all times and jump anywhere in even the longest documents with a keystroke..

What got me back to Emacs this time was Tim Bray's ode to Emacs on the Mac, which I read after a long time exploring "Web 2.0" editors such as Writely. This time, I also picked up a copy of the latest version of O'Reilly's Learning GNU Emacs because I need a refresher and there's always something new to learn about Emacs. What I especially liked about this book is that it focuses on the aspects of the editor that are useful for any writer, not just for the programmer. The first two-thirds of Learning GNU Emacs is about writing features, such as the built-in outliner, searching, moving text around, and creating macros.

One side of Emacs that I haven't explored too deeply before is customising it. The book goes into the programming language that Emacs uses for customization, a variant of Lisp called elisp. Lisp isn't for the faint of heart. As the book points out, it's one of the oldest high-level languages and was designed when it was more important to be easy on the computer than on the programmer. The authors (there are several -- Debra Cameron, James Elliott, Marc Loy, Eric Raymond and Bill Rosenblatt) do an excellent job of walking through the basics of adding small features, customising the many "modes" that Emacs has and even developing your own mode from scratch.

I think I'll stay in Emacs for a while. For what I do, it still hasn't been beat.

Tags: Books, Emacs, Review

Insomnia

It's 3:30 am and I'm still awake. Insomnia is a drag, and as I leave 40 in the distant past, the problem is getting worse. Now, even when I do sleep, it's fitful, never deep. I'm getting a tired of being tired.

I recently read probably the most unhelpful advice I've ever received for fighting insomnia: Don't. Just go to sleep when you're tired and wake up when you, um, wake up. Sounds heavenly. The idea is to reset your body's natural clock, to become in tune again with its circadian rhythms.

Unfortunately, it take weeks. I'm not independently wealthy, nor do I make a living at a job that could tolerate such flexibility. An author, in the middle of writing a long book, could maybe do that. Or a programmer working on a long-term project that doesn't need human contact for a while. But not me.

So instead I'm trying and failing to make myself tired by writing this. And in a couple of hours, I'll be sitting at a desk, pumping caffeine as quickly as I can into my system in an attempt to stay sharp, setting myself up for another fitful-at-best night's sleep. There's a circadian rhythm for you.

Guy Fawkes Day

Bonfire night, held every year on Guy Fawkes day in the U.K., is difficult to describe to our U.S. relatives. It's vaguely like Independence Day, commemorating when the English foiled a plot by Catholic conspirators to blow up Parliament. Had they succeeded -- and they very nearly did -- it would have been easily as devastating as 9/11. The plan was to blow up the building during the opening of that year's session, killing the king and every top noble in the country. The English celebrate the capture and burning of the conspirators every year on Nov. 5, or the nearest Saturday night.

Fortunately, the anti-Catholic aspect of the celebration has waned a bit. They hardly ever burn Catholics on those bonfires now. What they do instead is shoot off enormous quantities of fireworks, which are legal and cheap here. You can buy anything, up to and including the biggest chest-thumping rockets, at the local corner shop.

The noise begins a week or so before because the Hindu celebration of Diwali, which is also celebrated with copious amounts of explosives, falls at the end of October. The Asians are concentrated mostly a couple of miles away, closer to Heathrow, but the low rumble of thousand and thousands of fireworks in the distance adds to the illusion that we're near the front lines. In a week, the battle will roll through our neighborhood in its full fury.

For an American, where fireworks have been made illegal in most states, and expensive where they remain, the barrage is hard to imagine. Try to think what it would be like if every third or fourth house could put on a show equal to any managed by a small town on July 4th. On calm nights, the smoke hangs in the air like fog and you can hardly hear each other talk.

This year, like others, we trudged out in the drizzle and mud to try to watch some of the show. I took the kids and the dog to the middle of a large field, which gave us a view of several simultaneous displays. I had hoped we would be close enough to watch one of the biggest shows around -- a paid event in a park nearby -- but by 9:45pm or so, they hadn't started yet and the kids were getting cold and tired. We did manage to watch some kids diligently trying to blow each other up. At first, they were shooting their rockets up, like they're supposed to. When that wasn't entertaining enough, they started shooting them at each other. We moved before we became the next target.

We also had fun for a while making letters out of a flashlight for the camera. I put together Sullivan, above, but we made enough letters to make everyone's name, as well.


Tags: Family, Bonfire Night

Why Share?

There are several online conversations going on about the business of sharing. One dispute is over whether users should be compensated for the value they bring to sites such as Flickr and del.icio.us. See Anil Dash, Catrina Fake and Ted Leung, for example. Another that's been going around is whether you should be giving these corporates your data in the first place . Keep it to yourself, some say. In other words, why share?

I think there are good economic, social and societal reasons behind sharing on the Internet.

First, I use Flickr (paid account) and del.icio.us because I get economic benefits from it. They provide storage and bandwidth. Instead of sending a multi-megabyte photograph on email, I just upload it once and then can use it in multiple ways with short bits of HTML. On del.icio.us, my Web bookmarks are stored centrally and accessible anywhere, and I can also repurpose them in multiple ways, such as on my blog. But we can, and should, join these services with open eyes -- they're making money off our content. Flickr, at least, gets some economic benefit from my photographs. When I send photos to friends and relatives who aren't Flickr members, they see advertisements. I'm not sure what del.icio.us's business model is, but I suspect its purpose is to be bought, which is a business model too. Either way, the benefits are worth it. That doesn't mean really good photographers shouldn't share in the revenue (see my post below about revver.com), but Flickr's business isn't necessarily wrong. If the trade off isn't worth it, don't use it.

The second benefit is social. What keeps me on del.icio.us even in the face of increasing competition from similar services, or on Flickr despite rivals with a simpler user interface or more features, is that I benefit from the work of other users. Thousands of people daily submit links to del.icio.us, making its popular links page one of the best places on the Internet to find really interesting stuff. And Flickr brings me photos, ideas, people and places every day that I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. They're valuable because they're popular.

Finally, sharing makes the Internet a better place. The Web is like a public park or town commons. The fewer people who use it, the worse it gets. That's counterintuitive, but you see the phenomena all the time in a big city such as London. If a park isn't used, it quickly degenerates into a hang-out spot for vandals, bored teenagers or worse.

The photo above is of a fence around our local scout hut, which was burned down twice. And when they rebuilt it, it was quickly covered in graffiti. They've resorted to surrounding it with evil-looking spikes and a tall fence. Right next to it is a playground that used to be constantly covered in broken glass and the remains of equipment that the local yobs had been diligently trying to smash into smithereens for years. Frequent visits from the police did nothing. The solution was to put in new equipment. People started to bring their kids again, and the vandalism declined dramatically.

The same effect can be seen on the Internet, where the equivalent of the vandals are the spammers, script kiddies and phishers who have turned some previously valuable corners of the Web into neighborhoods you'd hesitate to walk through at night. But spammers are a minority, by a long shot. Most people are good. The more of the latter who use the Internet -- really use it, by contributing to it, not just consuming what the big media companies give you -- the more hospitable, interesting, pleasant and valuable place it becomes.

Tags: Web 2.0, Business, Sharing

Encouraging File Sharing for Cash

Revver is one of the most interesting attempts to make a business out of file sharing. Video creators upload their files, the company adds an advertisement, and then splits the resulting ad revenue with the creator. The files can be distributed everywhere, using whatever software, because the ads are embedded in the file itself. I spotted one today that was wonderful -- a video of a guy getting some amazing sounds out of a ukulele. Unfortunately, it's gone now.

A couple of problems: First, if the ads just measure views and not clicks, it could be considered spyware. There should be an option to just purchase the video, sans ads. The second problem is that I don't know how the ads work. I'm using Linux, and the only viewer I have for quicktime videos doesn't show me the advertisements. So, on Linux at least, I can't show my appreciation by at least clicking on something. Perhaps Revver should offer filmmakers the option to convert their videos into some more standard formats, or even flash, like YouTube does?

(Updated: The video I was pointing to has disappeared. Bummer.)


Tags: Video, Filesharing, Business

Halloween

Theresa's favorite holiday is Halloween. Christmas is an expensive pain and she works like a slave on Thanksgiving. But All Hallow's Eve? That's for having fun. She even held a murder mystery party for the kids and their friends this year.

I've never carved a pumpkin in my life and didn't even like candy that much as kid. Halloween always meant avoiding bullies, dodging flying eggs and acting nice to cranky neighbours -- all to collect a grocery bag full of stuff I mostly didn't like.

Thank God for Theresa. The kids are making much better memories.

Rethinking Thin Clients

I've been tinkering with the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) over the last week or two and it's been changing my mind about thin clients, the low-powered computers that act as a terminal for a central, powerful computer.

The Linux distribution I use, Ubuntu, comes with the software built in. Getting LTSP set up took about an afternoon, and two messages to the support email list. The process is described here on Ubuntu's Wiki (which I've contributed to a little). But once done, my own moderately equipped Ubuntu PC (2.8GHz Celeron, 1GB RAM) could be used by three people simultaneously with good performance. I used an IBM Thinkpad and an HP Vectra as temporary clients.

The original idea of thin client computing, and the one most supporters still push, is that it's good for very large companies who want greater control over their users: Why give the cubicle dwellers real PCs that they'd only mess up anyway? But all that does is shift the cost. The companies have to manage several big servers with enough horsepower to run everyone's software and the clients aren't that much less expensive than full PCs. The two most expensive parts in your computer are the processor and the display, both of which are still needed by a thin client. So now you have two problems -- the cost of a big server room, and only slightly less pricey PCs. No thanks.

I think a better use is for home users. The most common computers you can buy cheaply now have more than enough umph to run handle several users simultaneously. Why not make use of all of those wasted cycles and let your kids surf the web or work on their homework at the same time you're checking your stock prices and reading email? Adding thin clients is easier for home users than just adding PCs to a home network -- there's only one hard drive to back up, for example, and one PC that needs protecting from viruses. You can even use your old clunker PCs as the clients.

Another good use for them would be in schools. Microsoft and its partners are ripping off many schools, preying on the ignorance of its administrators. Any of the computers at most schools (one per classroom, if they're lucky) can run at least two or three other thin clients. With a powerful PC, you could get something that looks like this, running Edubuntu, the version of Ubuntu aimed at students.

One big hurdle is that Windows is a lousy server for thin clients, compared with Unix-like systems such as Linux. But Linux takes too long to learn, especially for the busy school administrator or home user. It's going to be need to be much simpler.

Several years ago, companies like Oracle and Sun Microsystems were pushing thin clients as a Microsoft killer. They failed, utterly, of course. But I think that's because they were pitching it at the wrong crowd.

Tags: Thin Client, LTSP, Ubuntu

Dude Dancing

I finally managed to get a video of the dance Dude, our boxer, does when we have guests over and have to open the sleeper sofa. Dude considers it his, although it apparently needs lots of softening up before he'll use it.

For those reading this via a blog reader, the embedded video probably won't work. See the Dude Dancing video by clicking here.



Tags: Video, Pets

Lifehacker Considers Dangers of Web apps

Ask Lifehacker Readers: Web apps hosting your info: "Call me paranoid, but what if Gmail goes down, or Google decides to stop being "not evil"? What if angry project management trolls hack 37 Signals and record my every to-do, building a too-personal-for-comfort profile of my every day activities? What if del.icio.us disappears? What if Flickr, who has photos of my baby nephews and the inside of my house, is really in the surveillance business?"

It definitely has occurred to me that we're taking a risk by moving to Web-hosted applications. And I do have a domain name (eamonnsullivan.co.uk) that I'm not using, which could be the home of a Web app of my own, combining the features of Gmail, Flickr, del.icio.us and Writely, assuming one existed or I spawn a new self to create one from scratch. But then you also lose the benefits of scale with those social applications. Other Flickr members help me identify my best photos and categorize them. Gmail's millions of users refine its spam filters. Del.icio.us subscribers recommend sites I never would have known existed.

Perhaps the best solution is to keep a personal copy of all of that data, so that you can go elsewhere quickly.

Tags: Social Software, Web Development

WSJ's Walt Mossberg Gets on the Bandwagon

WSJ.com - Personal Technology: "Companies have a right to protect their property, and DRM is one means to do so. But treating all consumers as potential criminals by using DRM to overly limit their activities is just plain wrong."

The pain of Digital Rights Management has hit the mainstream, with even the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg chiming in. There are many possible solutions that don't involve treating all of your customers as criminals. Why not -- just for an example -- brand (watermark) digital media with the name and address of the purchaser at the point of sale, along with an agreement that says you're responsible if stuff with your name on it shows up on a mass distribution site? I don't think that will happen, however, unless lawmakers step in. And we all know what side they're on.

Tags: DRM, Copyright

John Battelle's The Search

Internet search has made my job a lot quieter. When I first started out as a reporter, newsrooms were loud. If you wanted to know even the most trivial data -- the spelling of an executive's name, who came second in last year's election for the school board or the number of students at the local university -- you had to pick up the phone and call a human being. Nowadays, the phone gets used mostly just to break news that isn't already listed on a Web page somewhere, and newsrooms are almost as tranquil as libraries. Most of that run-of-the-mill information can be found with typing and clicking.

The effect of easy Web searching has been just as dramatic on my kids' homework. Almost every research project begins at Google's Web page and ends at a Wikipedia article or museum Web site. Remember when we had to buy expensive encyclopedias or go to the library?

It is hard to imagine that it has only been seven years since Google started. There were many search engines before it -- I was an enthusiastic user of Archie, Veronica, WAIS and Alta Vista -- but nothing has approached the impact of Google. We've become accustomed to being able to find out almost anything with a mouse click or two.

John Battelle's The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture doesn't focus just on Google, but the company dominates the book as thoroughly as it does the industry. Its origins in a Stanford University dorm room (the same school that spawned Yahoo!), its initial stumbles in the quest for a sustainable business model, its competition with other search companies, and the debt it owes its predecessors, are all well described.

Battelle, however, focuses on the most interesting side effect of searching: it's a gold mine of consumer intentions. By searching for "digital camera" on Google, Yahoo or MSN, we're screaming to the Internet, "I want to buy a camera!" Each search company has used that information in different ways, reflecting their varied origins. Yahoo, unlike Google, was ready and willing earlier to exploit that stream of information for commerce. Google took a more cautious approach, resisting banner ads and paid search placement, for example. But its laser focus on usefulness and staying out of the user's way have paid off.

The book also explores the not-insignificant privacy implications of Google's enormous database of our intentions. Its slogan may be "Don't Be Evil," but that means nothing in the face of the Patriot Act in the U.S., even more draconian laws in China and elsewhere or the mindless, remorseless march of commerce.

One potential failing of the book is that it's in danger of overstating its case. As impressive as search is, I'm not sure it has had the same impact on people outside of journalism, research or the technology industry. Even a tech geek like me found the latest Google Desktop software less than essential. I uninstalled it a few weeks after trying it out because I found I never used it. And there are limits to the usefulness of search, such as when you're not sure what you're looking for. For that, recommendation engines, blogs, tagging systems like Flickr and Del.icio.us and even product suggestions on Amazon are more useful at ferreting out interesting information that I didn't even know I wanted, based on the collective judgment of people with similar tastes.

All of these challenges to Google's dominance are covered, but there isn't much discussion about how the company has been clumsy in its attempts to expand out of search. Blogger has changed hardly at all since Google purchased it, for example. Google Talk and the company's new blog reader are rudimentary at best.

The book is so current (just a few months out of date) that it's like a long and good article in Wired. You better read it fast. It may be as obsolete as last month's issue if the industry keeps changing at this pace.


Tags: Google, Books, Review

Internet Stamps as Solution to Spam

ongoing � Internet Stamps: "When you allow people to add content to the Net for free, the economic incentives to fill all the available space with spam are irresistible, and fighting back is difficult, maybe impossible. This works because, while the payoff per unit of spam is low, the cost is zero. Well, we can solve all these problems at once. It wouldn't be free, but it would be cheap and it wouldn't be that hard. It's called 'Internet Stamps'."

This is a very old concept, and I remember it first as an urban myth. Then, if I recall correctly, the U.S. Post Office proposed something similar, maybe in the mid 1990s? It's an excellent idea that years ago faced almost universal opposition. But now even my parents and kids are so familiar with the concept of spam that it just might work.

I'd be willing to pay a small sum to post online. A penny is all that's needed. It would be just enough to take the economic incentive out of spamming and would be a relatively small hassle for individuals. It would be a larger hassle for Internet providers, however, which is probably why we'll never see this.

Tags: Spam, Internet Stamps, Tim Bray