Feb 28, 2001: E-books, etc

Jessica Davis. What's a dot-com to do as click-and-mortars offer real options to customers?(InfoWorld): "What if Amazon.com bought Crown Books? Amazon would immediately gain hundreds of physical store sites where it could set up its kiosks and offer customers another return option. It could better compete with Barnes & Noble and Borders, which both have Web presences in addition to their physical stores. Heck, it might even sell stock or obtain private funding to complete the purchase of a brick-and-mortar." Ahh...the return to the physical.

Ashlee Vance. First peer-to-peer virus hits (Infoworld): "FILE-SWAPPING ON THE Internet hit a sour note Tuesday with the appearance of a virus that attacks users of the Gnutella file-sharing service, and several anti-virus vendors say it is the first virus to affect peer-to-peer communications."

Michael Kelly.The Atlantic | Mar 2001 | 77 North Washington Street | Kelly: "Judging by the evidence all around us, there are far more people in this country who would gladly expose themselves to the world--if only the world cared to look!--than there are those who want just to be left alone....It is no surprise that there are people willing to mortify themselves for money; that is simply part of the natural order of things. But these people subjected themselves to global public humiliation for the sheer pleasure of the experience. Now, those are real Americans. "

John Schwartz. What the Web Means in Tougher Times (NY Times): "Technological change has always led to shifts in the workplace, including layoffs. But what is different about the new-economy environment is that automation is reaching higher up the employment hierarchy than before, replacing workers like stock analysts and purchasing-department employees. "

David D. KirkPatrick Random House Sues Over Rights to Publishing E-Books (NY Times). "Random House, the largest English-language publisher, now contends that except in special circumstances, the print publisher, not the author, automatically owns the electronic rights to a book."

Google's XML interface

Thanks to Dave Winer, I just learned that Google provides an XML interface to its search results. For example,

http://www.google.com/search?q=Interactive+University returns the search results for "Interactive University" as HTML. To get an XML version of the same results, go to http://www.google.com/xml?q=Interactive+University. I wonder whether all the same options are available in both the HTML and XML interface. Do we just replace Search with "xml" in the URL?

Jan Mar

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