Here’s another whacky trick that Google have quietly introduced, adding to the impression they are fast cementing their role as one-stop portal: Book searching. According to SearchEngineWatch (via the excellent TechDirt), Google Print is an experimental service that “indexes excerpts of popular books, blending the content from these works into regular Google search results”. These… Read More »
I usually agree with Mike of TechDirt, but the trend he points to here worries me: browsing for what you want to buy offline (i.e. in shops) and then buying online. All well and good if you’re talking about big brick and big mortar department stores, megamalls etc, but what about the small corner store… Read More »
Interesting piece on the downside of Amazon’s new book-searching feature, launched last month, which allows customers to do a full-text search on more than 120,000 books. The Register reports that it has quietly disabled printing after researchers managed to print out 108 consecutive pages from a bestselling book. As a failed bookseller, I sympathise.… Read More »
Novel approach to handphone keypads: Intel’s Fastap keypad fits 26 letters alongside the numbers on a handset, doing away with the need to press keys several times to scroll through the letters associated with each number. Here’s what it looks like, courtesy of the BBC:
Japan is now seeling a car that parks itself. Reuters reports that Toyota’s new hybrid gasoline-electric Prius sedan uses electrically operated power steering and sensors that help guide the car when reversing into parking spaces. Rivals General Motors Corp and Ford Motor Co will launch their first hybrids later this year.