Internet

Mar. 1, 2010

Google’s Buzzbomb

I thought I would love Google Buzz. Really. I am a Google fan. I adore Gmail, and in all the other Google products I’ve used — Calendar, Maps, Documents, the iconic search page — the company has gotten things mostly right. Also, I try to maintain as many portals as possible for readers to find [...]

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Feb. 5, 2010

Stock and Flow

From a blog called Snarkmarket, sorting the 2010 web using economic principles: There are two kinds of quan­ti­ties in the world. Stock is a sta­tic value: money in the bank, or trees in the for­est. Flow is a rate of change: fif­teen dol­lars an hour, or three-thousand tooth­picks a day. Easy. … But I actu­ally [...]

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Dec. 16, 2009

Dickens vs. the Snarks

To a reader, Dickens absorbs, the web distracts.

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Oct. 28, 2009

Philip Roth on the novel’s “cultic” future

More clips from this interview here.

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Sep. 21, 2009

A cabin made of hours

“Like so many of the key skills of the writer’s life, the solution [to being distracted by the Internet] comes down to (groan) self-discipline. I came back resolved to break my habit of checking email and the Web (even to handle essential, chore-like tasks) whenever the urge strikes. I’ve converted to the ‘no email before [...]

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Aug. 14, 2009

Lawrence Lessig on the Google book search settlement

Will Google Books, the audacious attempt to digitize every book ever written, have the perverse effect of making books — and ideas — less available, less ubiquitous, less free? Will copyright laws require that most of the books written in the last century be excluded from the new digital online library? Is this progress? This [...]

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Jul. 27, 2009

“Free” and the Future of Publishing

An internet entrepreneur suggests book publishers take a lesson from web start-ups.

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Jul. 14, 2009

E-Books and Distracted Reading

Author Steven Johnson on e-books and linear, deep-focus reading.

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Jun. 29, 2009

Fred Wilson on Social Media

Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist with a knack for explaining the power of social media in plain English. I am a junkie for the latest developments in the web, and I’ve become addicted to his blog, called A VC. In this interview, he talks at length about the rise of social media — Facebook, [...]

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Jun. 15, 2009

Kickstarter

Kickstarter.com is a cool new web site that provides “a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, bloggers, explorers…” Think of it as DonorsChoose for creative types: artists post descriptions of projects they would like to do; visitors pledge donations to support them. The artists might offer any sort of reward they can [...]

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