It's no secret that these are tough times for the publishing industry. We've been discussing the precarious position of the publishing industry for some time now, and the current economic crisis certainly isn't making things any easier. Meanwhile, new, mostly free Web 2.0 technology is flourishing, its popularity growing at an astonishing rate.

Stephen's Lighthouse has some fantastic coverage of this dynamic, particularly the contrast between the sharp decline in newspaper sales and the recent explosion in the popularity of twitter and other social networking tools. Read more »

In the culture of the Internet, the sound byte and 24/7 cable news networks, as soon as something is praised, it gets torn down and trounced. This process has accelerated so quickly that it sometimes seems like the two things are happening simultaneously.

This has definitely been the case with Cuil As soon as Cuil developed a mainstream media buzz, the mainstream media was there to kill the buzz, declaring it “No Threat to Google”. As anyone who watches cable news knows, it can be tough to have a conversation when all you’ve got is two diametrically opposed sides screaming their heads off at one another. Read more »

You don’t have to Ask Jeeves to know that a lot of search engines have come and gone since the web went mainstream. While in the past we may have yahooed, hot botted or altavista’d our way around the web, today there is no question that Google is king. Even if Google isn’t your preferred search engine, it’s hard to deny that it is the most popular engine, an industry standard and an unparalleled innovator. Google has been on top of the world for some time, but the race for something newer, bigger and better never stops.

Enter Cuil. Designed by a group of engineers and programmers who were instrumental in developing Google itself, this new search engine was launched today with the goal of “solv[ing] the two great problems of search: how to index the whole Internet—not just part of it—and how to analyze and sort out its pages so you get relevant results.” Cuil claims to index 120 billion web pages--3 times more than Google. It also boasts an innovative, customizable search results interface that is markedly different from the interface on Google or anything seen on previous search engines. Read more »

My dog Jake, the Internet, and I grew up together.

I've been doing some year-end reflecting. It's that time, as resolutions are made and the fresh, shiny New Year beckons with promise. If you follow my "lifestream" -- Flickr photos, the TTW blog, Facebook, etc. -- you know this year had some ups and some downs. Losing Jake to old age was rough -- and losing my other Labrador Charlie one month later still hurts.
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For the past few days I've been an early morning denizen of the Denny's restaurant at the corner of Munras and Fremont in Monterey, California.  It's close to my hotel and always open.  If you're an early morning person in the Midwest, you're a REALLY early morning person on the West Coast. Read more »

While in Denver for LITA Forum recently, I read an article in the Denver Post entitled “We are our friends, our friends are us: MySpace and its offspring have transformed our link' thinking.” I found this article interesting for two reasons.

First, the author, John Wenzel, stated that MySpace will make $1 billion in ad revenue this year. One billion dollars. I had no idea, but I am not surprised. With all of the money we spend on things everyday, why wouldn't MySpace's 200 million members be clicking on those ads?

The second reason, and the one that really caught my attention, was this line:

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A post from the field of Computers In Libraries 2007.

Lee Rainie, from the Pew Internet and American Life Project was the first speaker at this year's Computers in Libraries conference. His talk, as expected, was bursting with numbers that illustrated how people use and interact on the Internet. On Thursday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a new study called “Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace”. As a result, much of Rainie's talk focused on young people.

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