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 »
British users are finding broadband isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, if it means confronting spam and other detritus of the Internet. According to a report by the iSociety project at The Work Foundation to be launched today: ”Ordinary people are promised that broadband makes the internet better; in fact it sometimes leads to… Read More »
More on disguised branding, this time with newspaper-related sites. Steve Outing points out on Poynter that newspapers are putting up bloglike sites to appeal to the younger crowd, while playing down the site’s connections to the owner. Steve cites the Arizona Daily Star’s AZNightBuzz, where “there’s no indication on the home page that the site… Read More »
A longish piece from Slate on our old friends RFIDs — Radio Frequency Identification Devices — which are feared and admired for their ability to hold all sorts of data about what you’re doing, buying, washing or eating. Earlier this month Hitachi announced the release of a tiny wireless ID chip that can be “easily… Read More »
AP reports that the State Department’s electronic system for checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history failed worldwide for several hours late Tuesday because of a computer virus, leaving the U.S. government briefly unable to issue visas. The virus crippled the department’s Consular Lookout and Support System, known as CLASS, which contains more… Read More »