More from Google Print
The official Google blog has just posted about Google Print preserving public domain books saying that
The world’s libraries are a tremendous source of knowledge, much of which has never been available online. One of our goals for Google Print is to change that, and today we’ve taken an exciting step toward meeting it: making available a number of public domain books that were never subject to copyright or whose copyright has expired. We can show every page because these books are in the public domain.
If you haven’t been by Print.Google.com, you should visit (see my post on Google Print and/or their about page.), it is a great resource for libraries and schools and anyone who is interested in checking out a book before buying it. Their new additions only add to the attractiveness of this project.
One thing I am curious about is if there has been any dialogue between Google Print and Project Gutenberg (see their site or the Project Gutenberg Wikipedia article). Project Gutenberg‘s mission is to “To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.” They have cataloged over 16,000 books in flat HTML text files. Project Gutenberg essentially transcribes books into text format whereas Print Google scans the physical pages (while also making them searchable). While their formats are different, it seems like they could gain from some sort of collaboration as their goals seem similar and they tend to have the same copyright issues.
I am one to believe that publishers would be well served to add their productions to Print Google as it can only add awareness to their products. Imagine that no one has ever heard of your book on relativity, well a simple search will turn up books on that subject that can then be searched for further content. I can understand that if you book isn’t good enough, you may not want this because people will find out that it is crap before they buy it. But if your book is of any quality, people will purchase it because reading it online is not any fun. Any thoughts on this?
Also, the official Google blog is reporting that Google Desktop has moved from beta stages into a full release. Google Desktop is a great tool (they even have their own blog now), especially in its sidebar format. The basics will let you search files on your desktop’s harddrive which is nice, but the sidebar has many more features (although best used with a decent size screen and broadband internet). Indexing of your Gmail, news articles, photos, maps, and many more plug-ins. One of the better plug-ins is the RSS feed reader that will keep you updated on all your favorite blogs by using ther feed, like my own. 
Google Desktop is quite the handy tool! Check it out!
-Matt Jones
לְחַיִּים
Wow…you really are the king of Google!
Yeah, Google owns me. I just wish I had the money to buy stock in that megacorp!
I do like google - just got gmail, I just started using froogle and adwords for The Gitmo Cookbook (I still have 3 boxes of these things to sell, and can’t donate the profits until there are some!) but the desktop tool seems to crash my machine. But I just upgraded to a SATA drive and 2GB RAM, so after I reinstall everything this weekend I may take another crack at it.
I still remember back in the days of Gopher, Archie, and Veronica were, aside from your favorite BBS, all the internet consisted of. If we dreamed back then - aside from the dream upgrading to a 1200 BAUD(!) modem - of what the internet would be like, Google would have been beyond our imaginations. To have that much info at your fingertips… truly amazing.
Ooh, I missed that one.
Gmail rocks my world! I imagine with 2GB of RAM you should be able to run Google Desktop. What is the Gitmo Cookbook?
I remember BBSs, good times. I remember how cool I thought it was when we got a 9600 baud modem. I could download a picture of the Enterprise (or something way cool like that) in like 10 minutes. It was so worth it!
About the cookbook: A few of us didn’t like our soldiers being compared to Nazis, etc. back when Sen. Dick Durbin did it last spring, so I called the public affairs office on Gitmo, got the menus, got into the Navy recipe database to get the recipes, and we put together a cookbook with quotes and facts about Gitmo. All profits go to the USO - we figured that would be morale-building for the troops, kind of a counterbalance to what some people called them. We got national media coverage at the time, but news months are kind of like dog years, so at the moment it’s a pretty low profile project. Although with the hunger strike, this issue may come up again…
Disclaimer: Yes, we understand that a few troops in various parts of the world did things that were wrong and/or illegal - but as a group, it was grossly unfair to suggest that troops at Gitmo are running a concentration camp. And all of us that worked on the cookbook don’t agree that Gitmo should even be used to hold these prisoners, for how long, whether they ought to be released, have American trials, tribunals, be summarily executed as in past wars, etc… but we all did agree that our troops had been slandered and we wanted a snarky way to protest that.
I remember the 9600 baud upgrade - we were **flying** baby!! Whooohoo!!!
> I could download a picture of the Enterprise (or something
> way cool like that)
If you still do the Star Trek thing, you might enjoy these sound files.
My email notification sound is, “Priority one message from Starfleet coming in on secured channel.”
That sounds like a very clever, humerous, and useful cookbook!
Thanks for the sounds, I pretend I am not any more, but I really am still a Trekker.