Google's digitized classics spark online ding-dong

Google's latest move in making classic out-of-copyright texts available for free online has sparked a war of words between Richard Charkin and The Times' business editor, James Harding.

The latest offerings from Google Book Search include a range of classic texts in full PDF format that have been made available as part of its digitization project with the likes of the New York Public Library, Stanford University and University of California libraries.

Texts range from Aesop's Fables and Hamlet to Dante's Inferno and Ferriar's The Bibliomania. A Google blog posting states: "Before the rise of the public library - a story chronicled in this 1897 edition of The Free Library – access to large collections of books was the privilege of a wealthy minority. Now, with the help of our wonderful library partners, we're able to offer you the ability to download and read PDF versions of out-of-copyright books from some of the world’s greatest collections."

The announcement prompted Times Business Editor, James Harding, to write an opinion piece supporting the search engine company: "Google may have just done for book-reading what e-mail has done for letter-writing," harding wrote, adding:  "The service makes available to everyone the dusty pages of old tomes that once were reserved only for those with privileged access to the likes of the Bodleian library in Oxford and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

Harding's argument is that book publishers who oppose Google's efforts are being unnecessarily worried, as he feels they will adapt to the internet revolution in the same way that the music and film industries have evolved to turn the threat into an advantage. He writes: "Google’s service will be a boon to researchers and students. It will enable people to browse bits of books and, it must be hoped, cultivate more interest in reading. For the publishing industry, it will ultimately foster demand."

His views were not, however, shared by outspoken Macmillan ceo Richard Charkin, who launched into stirring personal invective against Harding on his blog, describing the piece as "garbage"

Charkin writes: "The industry has no quarrel at all with Google over the digitisation and searchability of out of copyright works. We quarrel with them over the use of the copyright material produced by authors whose copyright we are obliged to protect. They wish to usurp that copyright without prior permission. That is our argument and it is straightforward to understand."

<Ding> End of Round One. Watch this space.

BEA to demolish social/traditional computing barriers?

BEA is, or was, a 'middleware' company which quietly got on with making different systems communicate with each other effectively. Unsung heroes, BEA products liberated siloed information and sped corporate IT processes. Acquisitions, such as Plumtree, widened the company's brief right up to the user/consumer of information.

Meanwhile, some enterprising information professionals were implementing  new 'social computing' systems to get people communicating and collaborating, independently of email and the IT department. Such systems are usually regarded with deep suspicion by IT and management alike. In technological terms they are beyond the pale - outside the existing IT system. In human terms, they are quite the opposite - connecting communities of practice within, and sometimes beyond, the organisation.

The trouble with separated systems like this is that some of their embedded information needs to get into the corporate knowledge base, and vice versa. At the moment, the two environments are like oil and water - coexisting but rarely mingling.

Now BEA has started to demonstrate some new services which aim to demolish that barrier. It is close to releasing a blog/wiki tool called Builder. The important thing is it can surface 'legacy information' such as a SAP table right there in the wiki. (Thanks Rod Boothby for the tip-off.)

Another service called Runner, will take care of back-end security stuff such as access control and audit trails. This is a vital element in these days of close regulatory scrutiny.

There's more, of course, and we'll have to wait a few months for this to see the light of day but this strikes me as a very smart move by BEA.

New age dawns as Outsell purchases Worlock's EPS

Consultancy services and market analysis for the $358 billion global information industry entered a new age today, as Outsell announced it had acquired its major competitor in Europe, London-based Electronic Publishing Services Limited (EPS).

"The acquisition makes Outsell the only research and advisory firm covering all aspects of the information industry on a worldwide basis," said a spokeswoman for the firm.

The merger may see the name EPS disappear in the near-future, but it will not see the disappearance of David Worlock (left), the industry giant whose name and face have become synonymous with the company since its inception in 1985.

Worlock, who owns 51% of the shares in EPS Holdings, the parent company which owns EPS Ltd, will remain as Chief Research Fellow in the merged organisation. The 14 staff working for EPS will be merged with Outsell's employees and consultants to create a new team with "60 industry analysts and professionals". No information has been given on possible redundancies.

Both companies claim strong client bases in the STM sector, but also unique strengths in other areas - EPS in legal, education and training, while Outsell claims expertise in B2B trade, market & IT research and Search & Aggregation.

Worlock said, in a statement: "EPS has built its business in Europe, and latterly in the US, by analyzing the evolution of the information marketplace and advising participants and investors on current status and future prospects. We have immense respect for the contribution of Outsell in parallel to this, and in particular their unique contributions to the study of user behavior in these emerging new marketplaces."

The terms of the deal between the two privately-held companies have not been disclosed. The last filed accounts for EPS Ltd at Companies House, for the year 2005, showed it made profits of £84,699 on an income of £674,684; down from £100,090 profits and billings of £686,948 the previous year.

San Francisco-based Outsell was co-founded by Anthea Stratigos, currently its CEO, and Greg Chagaris, currently its chief sales officer, in 1994.

Could the Web 2.0 tide be turning?

With the summer silly season in full swing, our thoughts have turned to why Web 2.0 has started to get a bad press. Has it reached the point where the cynics are now beginning to outnumber the true believers?

We're particularly amused by wonderchicken's excellent Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator at emptybottle.org. The man has shown true genius in building a simple Web 2.0 vocab masher-upper, in order to randomly generate great-sounding Web 2.0 applications, like:

• beta-test podcasting communities


• design long-tail mashups


• create embedded folksonomies


• reinvent blogging wikis


• syndicate social tagclouds


• remix rich-client life-hacks


• disintermediate rss-capable synergies

Arch cynic Andrew Orlowski also takes the mickey on The Register, using a very Web 0 HTML "mailto:" command to get readers to vote on what Web 2.0 is made up of – answers range from Badger's Paws to JavaScript Worms. Utter El Reg rubbish, but of course beautifully crafted.

The Wikipedia entry reminds us that Web 2.0 does owe a lot to O'Reilly Media and MediaLive, who had a big hand in events and books that effectively invented the phrase to market a "second coming" for the web.

Currently the Criticism section of the Wikipedia entry on Web 2.0 is proving a battleground between defenders of the faith and their detractors. Generous servings of [citation needed] tags are appearing on any statement of criticism.

The entry notes that Josh Kopelman estimates that Web 2.0 is exciting only for 53,651 people – the number of subscribers to Techcrunch, a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new internet products and companies.

Could the Web 2.0 tide be turning?

Apple's Leopard pounces into social computing

"Early in 2007" (it says here) Apple will start shipping its OS X Leopard Server. "So what?" I hear you ask. And the answer is that it will incorporate a wiki. What an incredibly sensible idea - a freeform collaboration medium built right in to the operating system.

Details are sparse, but it claims it will be easy to activate and easy to use. It will be part of the intranet but without the negative connotations. Teams will collaborate from their browsers and gain all the usual advantages of wikis: reduction of email; full version history; information resources on tap; a permanent record in the event of people leaving or for people joining... You can probably compose the list better than me.

It works with calendars, chat and blogs and gives reach into the wider intranet. It also avoids the need to remember the peculiar mark-up that used to be associated with wiki use. The smarter wiki companies, like Socialtext, have already realised what a huge barrier this was to wiki usage and have moved to an optional dual mode, like blogs, where you can work in wysiwyg or mark-up, to suit your needs/personality.

This might invite the usual hate-comments but it has to be said: it's an Apple server. And this may not sit at all well with your company policy. If access is through a browser, this suggests that it doesn't matter what client machines are in use. But my guess is that Apple users will benefit more  than non-Apple users, especially when using stuff like shared calendars or chat. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

Ch-ch-changes is key theme for CIG Open Day

Making and managing change at work is the key theme of the seminars at this year's City Information Group (CIG) Open Day. The event is being held alongside the group's AGM on Tuesday 26 September at the St Bride Institute, just off Fleet Street.

The first seminar, "Managing Change in the Workplace", will be chaired by Intelligent Resources joint MD, Julia Hordle. Panellists include Kate Arnold, head of content at NHS Direct; Kim Horwood, a consultant at PTSC; and Fidelity Investments International's head of knowledge and content, Jane Heenan.

Former head of KM at the BBC, Euan Semple, will lead a discussion on "Changing Technologies: Working in a Wired World", and RM Online chairman Manny Cohen will talk on "Changing Relationships: Who is a Buyer and who is a seller?"

Between seminars, consultant Lesley Robinson will chair the "product advertising" segments - a series of 3 minute opportunities for companies to pitch their products in a "review" format to attendees, with a maximum of 10 product reviews in each slot.

The ever popular evening drinks reception and dinner will be held at Press House Wine Bar (left) nearby.

Full timetable here.

PAOGA to secure personal information

How do you feel about other people holding information about you? Do you think that the details are perfectly synchronised and up to date? We're talking here about your company, government departments, banks, the NHS, etc
When you are downloading information for sharing with your colleagues, how much trust do you put in it being accurate? What is the basis of that trust? Is it the publisher? The author?
And, in these days of genuine experts writing in blogs or on websites, mightn't they be more authoritative than conventional journalists?
But how do you separate the blog wheat from the chaff? Let me guess: you don't. You avoid this potentially rich source of information because you're not expert enough to judge what can be trusted and what can't.
In Q1 next year PAOGA, a deeply technical company, plans to start giving its customers the opportunity to store their personal identity information securely and control how that information is shared with the outside world. This could contain their credit, health, career and qualification information, for example.
Imagine if you could include an automatic authorisation check with searches for material from blogs and other unknown sources. PAOGA-using authors might say, "information managers can look at my name, my qualifications and my career history."
Wouldn't that take away the risk of dodgy sources?
It won't happen overnight, but expect companies like PAOGA to securely centralise personal information on our behalf, and put us in control of who sees it. This promises to transform our personal lives and introduce higher levels of trust into our business activities.