My aunt and I have been doing some digging to figure out where exactly in DC this photo of my great-grandparents was taken.
But I’m too easily distracted. In trying to find a match for similar buildings in Google Street View, I came across this gem on a photo of 16th St., NW.
The wife and I just started running. She’s an old hand looking to get back in the habit. I’m just lazy but think, as I do around this time every year, that I can develop that habit.
Several things are different this year as I try to learn to exercise again. I’m running with somebody else; I actually sat down and thought about what I like and don’t like about exercise and will avoid the things I don’t like; and I have an actual plan. All three come together in a tool called MapMyRun.com. Here’s how…
MapMyRun let’s you, well, duh, map your runs. But that means you can share your runs—so Lindsay and I can agree on where we want to go beforehand and know exactly how long it is. And it means I can do what I like when exercising: namely, be competitive with myself (and yes, a little with Lindsay) by repeating routes and improving on previous times…earlier attempts at exercise fizzled almost as soon as they started because I’d go out without any idea of where I wanted to go or if I had a way to measure progress.
Here’s where Lindsay and I went today, using the Couch-to-5k Running Plan. This will be the route for three runs this week.
I have to admit I’m biased in favor of Google. I have friends who work in both the Cambridge and Mountain View offices. I’ve tried, and provided feedback on, every beta Google has produced. I worked for a group trying to get funding from its philanthropic arm, Google.org. And every time I hear CEO Eric Schmidt speak at a conference, he strikes me as one of the most intelligent, well-versed, sober, geektastic corporate leaders I can think of. (If you have an hour, this interview with the New Yorker’s Ken Auletta is definitely worth watching:
.)
So perhaps I’m biased when I don’t see a problem with Google archiving so-called orphan works, publications that have been abandoned by both author and publisher, are out of print, and are effectively if not technically out of copyright. I don’t see a problem with making available works that no one can easily see/acquire, that no one is promoting, and that no one is making money from—but that may, and often do, still have great value.
I’m also biased, however, in favor of one of the great archival minds of our age, Robert Darnton:
Critics say that without the orphan books, no competitor will ever be able to compile the comprehensive online library Google aims to create, giving the company more control than ever over the realm of digital information. And without competition, they say, Google will be able to charge universities and others high prices for access to its database.
The settlement, “takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,” said Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system. “Google will be a monopoly.”
The question for Darnton and others, though, is: is this a bad thing? Google does not somehow become the exclusive copyright holder to orphan works. Other groups and companies are welcome to do the same thing and to also make money from it. And this particular monopoly is, contradictorily, limited and temporary. There will be well-funded competitors. There’s no indication that Google wishes to charge for access—it’s fair to assume Google will monetize the collection through targeted advertising as it does with search results and within Gmail. The original orphan works don’t disappear.
So I don’t begrudge Google its ambition. While experience shows that powerful groups try to control archives as a way of shaping history, experience also shows that seemingly dominant businesses, such as General Motors and Microsoft, are inevitably outflanked. And most important, as Schmidt explains in the Auletta interview, Google thrives only in so far as it is trusted. It’s a business that deals in user data, and that demands trust. Trust broken once is trust lost, so it’s in Google interest to welcome competing ideas, to accept criticism, and to be, above all, open.
The wife and I wanted some tips on how to comfortably file our dog’s nails. Naturally Google is a first destination for “how to” searches, but I’m always a little weirded out at what Google’s autocomplete feature—Google Suggest—presents as the most common searches starting with “how to…”:
And once you type some more, “how to file…” isn’t much more reassuring:
What about you guys? Ever run across creepy suggestions while searching for something totally different?
“Oprah Winfrey, or to be more precise, Oprah’s Book Club, is being sued by the inventor/patent attorney Scott C. Harris for infringing upon his patent for ‘Enhancing Touch and Feel on the Internet.’ So Oprah’s Book Club is now one of many people and entities being sued over this patent because they allow people to view part, but not all, of a book online before purchasing it. Mr. Harris also sued Google Books for infringing upon this patent. He actually was fired from his position as partner at Fish & Richardson for that, because Google is a client of that law firm and they had conflict of interest rules to uphold.”
It would be entertaining to see Oprah give very wide and mainstream publicity to the abuses enabled by our current patent system.
Indeed. She’s still one of the most influential people in the country—I wonder if her audience is getting close enough to a baseline tech-savviness such that they’d understand the implications of Harris’ lawsuit or the significance of Apple’s announcement yesterday that they’re at last removing digital rights management from songs sold on iTunes. I’d wager if Oprah discussed these legal issues on her show, or perhaps invited Eric Schmidt and record company execs and a few college students, that groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation would have a banner fundraising year.
Update: The Federal Trade Commission will look at DRM issues soon, including soliciting of public opinion in a town hall setting. To folks new to these issues, it might not seem like digital rights management (software that controls how/when you use other software, such as code in an .mp3 that keeps you from playing that .mp3 on more than two devices) and copyright are explicitly related. But they both can abuse the intended purpose of intellectual property law: to encourage innovation, but not to guarantee inventors (nowadays companies) a permanent income from their inventions.
I head home to D.C. for Christmas tonight, and I’m hoping, somewhat, that I don’t get the urge to post to FC on my vacation. We’ll see how that goes.
Meanwhile!
For readers
The Institute for the Future of the Book just released a robustly commentable version of the Iraq Study Group Report. Come for the report; stay for the brilliant commenting system, which I’m sure they hope will catch on for other long-form writing online. Basically it lets you comment on individual paragraphs. They’re still writing the code to allow user to more easily find and read new comments, but it’s a heck of a start. Imagine using something similar to workshop a fiction piece electronically.
For writers
Stumped for information on a topic you’re writing about? Need a new avenue to explore? Try Google Scholar. Not only does it index and link to full-text research papers on anything you might be writing about, it also links out to related research via keywords—so there’s always inspiration for what to investigate next.
Google offers a surfeit of applications for the information it organizes. There are the practical ways to find things like blogs, driving directions, deals on cameras, your own search history, your own files on a remote computer. But Google also offers ridiculousness: bet-settling, stalking, the illusion of working hard. . . . And I’d like to suggest one more, this one based on a classic sports superstition.
Spectator superstitions are well-known, if not yet fully cataloged. They include periods of not shaving, refusing to change underwear, strange malleamations of hats on heads, incantations at regular intervals, avoidance of certain foods, totems, insistence on listening to a radio broadcast with the television broadcast muted, a team’s performance being dependent on a favorite individual player’s performance, jersey-wearing, ingnoring the urge to relieve oneself, viewing only specific portions of games, and enforcing absolute silence.
However, a most common superstitious conviction across all sports and countries is the belief that a particular person—yourself, a friend, a family member—simply by virtue of their watching the game is enough to guarantee your team’s victory.
With Google, now, we can find out who that person is.
Over the last year or more, Google has been acquiring media assets—unused “dark fibre”, possible interest in TV relationships including personalized ad brokering, etc. We’re not far off from Google’s being able to customize TV advertising so that you only see the ads for products you’re interested in—which means two things: you would have to make your preferences known by providing up-or-down feedback on the commercials you view, and Google would be storing both your preferences and viewing habits.
The latter is key. Say you watched a Red Sox game; Google would know. And since the result of the baseball game is public knowledge, Google knows that too. Thus, Google has viewing history tied to an individual, and over the course of a season Google can provide “win/loss” records for viewers. Willing persons could then allow their records to be published, thereby creating an accurate ranking of the best viewers. Not to stop there, statistics could also be generated to show what groups or combinations of viewers were the most prolific. Should SuperstitiousSoxFan watch alone or with her sister? Should they watch together but on two different TVs? Should SuperstitiousSoxFan stay at home on Saturday evenings but be certain to watch at her sister’s on Sunday afternoons? The answers are there for the knowing—and SuperstitiousSoxFan could hold the fate of the Red Sox in her hands.
In other words, sports superstitions may always be just that, but with Google+TV there’s no need to leave superstitions to chance.
Overview: Allows anyone with a microphone to hum, sing, whistle, or
play a melody and promptly view a list of songs, complete for the
history of the world, that use that melody.
Features:
- Supports audio input from multiple voices, any instrument, and most
music software, such as Apple’s GarageBand.
- Focuses as much on rhythm as pitch, creating acceptable results for
off-key searches.
- “I’m feeling lucky” replaced with “It’s driving me nuts” button.
Drawbacks:
- Can be used to prove that every #1 song since 1964 was based on the
Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” except for Billy Ocean’s “Get
Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car,” which was lifted whole-cloth from
Mongolian throat-singing.
- Jinglists union concerned that Google will use search data to create
world’s catchiest tune.
GoogleWar
Overview: First engine to incorporate both search and destroy functionality.
Features:
- Finds, targets, and bombs enemies. Essentially an integration of
Google Earth, Google Sets, and Google Ride Finder.
- Using the popular MAD (Mass Analytics and Division) plugin, can
identify hostile targets within a friendly population. Perfect for
separating extremists from moderates. (Works in Firefox and IE6+ only)
- “I’m feeling lucky” replaced with “Do you feel lucky, well, do you?” button.
- Downloadable sourcecode allows for easy GoogleWar mash-ups with
CraigsList apartment listings.
When folks defend the Google Print model, often they say helping people find no-longer-promoted books is win-win-win: publishers sell books they thought were dormant; authors get a few more bucks in royalties; and readers get a book that was otherwise hidden. All true, if it weren’t for the problem of inventories. . . .
These older books—where are they supposed to sit?
So long as print copies, as opposed to electronic copies, are the norm, publishers will need warehouse space, and what publisher is going to hold onto tiny stocks of a few books, taking up space and money, just in case a Google Print user stumbles across it? That user may even buy the book used, cutting the publisher and author out of the loop. (Although most 5000-print-run authors I know would much rather someone read their book than themselves receive the $2 in royalties.) A colleague of mine once said, when I asked her why our textbook company wasn’t also in the used book business, “We probably should be. But to do that, we’d have double the books to manage—and where are they going to go? Where are we going to get the million dollars to build the extention to our warehouse?” It’s something that may change, but it won’t soon.
And then another problem. Once a publisher stops actively promoting a title, it’s only a few years before the rights revert to the author. If a book published in 2000 didn’t find an audience in its first (promoted) years, the right to publish that book will likely go back to the author around 2006, and then the author has no way to print new copies or manage stock. Once a publisher sells out of its stock of a rights-reverted book, there are zero new copies left anywhere.
So while, yes, Google Print will help people find hidden books and will probably be a net positive for authors, this potential sea change will have losers, copyright debates aside. And those would-be losers are going to be fiercely defensive of their interests, as the AAP is showing with its lawsuit against Google.
