Recently, Netflix released some anonymized usage data in order to seed a technical challenge (on recommending algorithms).
Bruce Schneier, a well known security expert, reports that a team of University of Texas researchers successfully de-anonymized a subset of the data through correlation with public IMDb (internet movie database) entries.
Bruce extends this by analogy to point how [...]

Joe Wikert of Publishing 2020 talks about the potential for having subscription-based ebook vending models, with page-view based economics.
“Could you imagine a model where you pay $X/month for access to an unlimited number of books? It’s never going to happen in the print world but I think this could be the killer app for [...]

Cory Doctorow has some interesting things to say about the Amazon Kindle in The Guardian. Doctorow doesn’t like it much, as it doesn’t conform to his view of the Internet, which includes the ability to move files around without restriction.
What Doctorow doesn’t say, however, is that if the Kindle [...]

Over the past week or so, I’ve been watching my daughter, who is a high school sophomore, doing research for a history paper on Danton and the French Revolution. The teacher told the kids to find, as sources, at least two books, two arcticles, and two reputable website (which, by his definition, doesn’t include wikipedia). [...]

In an essay at Ars Technica, “Nobel winner blames cultural decline on ‘blogging and blugging’” Nate Anderson discusses the near-loathing that the esteemed SciFiction writer Doris Lessing pours out on Internet communications, generally speaking.
Lessing is quote as saying:
And just as we never once stopped to ask, How are we, our minds, going to change with [...]

I flew across the country this Sunday to attend a conference, on Virgin America. It’s my second flight on VA, and I largely enjoy it, at least as well as JetBlue.
But looking at their “Red” in-flight entertainment system today, with a menu button marked “Read” along with Music and Games and Chat and other [...]

… will be the Next Big Thing, which principle underlies Nick Carr’s post, but I’m not fully convinced.
While handhelds may be the Next Big Thing, they’ll be a transitory Big Thing, I suspect.
I tend to think of handheld devices — whether iPhone, BlackBerry, or Kindles — as intermediary devices, things which suffice for now, [...]