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Deja Googled by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. http://groups.google.com/ http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce.html The Internet may have started as the fervent brainchild of DARPA, the US defence agency – but it quickly evolved into a network of computers at the service of a community. Academics around the world used it to communicate, compare results, compute, interact and flame each other. [...]
E(merging) Books by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. A novel re-definition through experimentation of the classical format of the book is emerging. Consider the now defunct BookTailor. It used to sell its book customization software mainly to travel agents – but this technology is likely to conquer other niches (such as the legal and medical professions). It [...]
The Idea of Reference by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. http://www.britannica.com There is no source of reference remotely as authoritative as the Encyclopaedia Britannica. There is no brand as venerable and as veteran as this mammoth labour of knowledge and ideas established in 1768. There is no better value for money. And, after a few sputters and [...]
Maps of Cyberspace by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. “Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkablecomplexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and [...]
Jamaican OverDrive – LCD’s in LDC’s by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. OverDrive – an e-commerce, software conversion and e-publishing applications leader – has just expanded an e-book technology centre by adding 200 e-book editors. This happened in Montego Bay, Jamaica – one of the less privileged spots on earth. The centre now provides a vertical e-publishing [...]
An Embarrassment of Riches – Part I by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. http://www.doi.org/ The Internet is too rich. Even powerful and sophisticated search engines, such as Google, return a lot of trash, dead ends, and Error 404′s in response to the most well-defined query, Boolean operators and all. Directories created by human editors – such as [...]
An Embarrassment of Riches – Part II by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. http://www.doi.org/ The DOI Foundation has unveiled the DOI-EB (EB stands for e-books) Initiative in the Book Expo America Show 2001, to, in their words: “Determine requirements with respect to the application of unique identifiers to eBooks Develop proofs-of-concept for the use of DOIs with [...]