Bookraft

First there were PDAs, then cellphones and then the merger of cellphones+PDAs variously known as Smart Mobile devices or Smart Phones. All are related to what was promised a long time ago - Preferred Information At your Fingertips or PIAF devices. Now after several innovative and ersatz tries by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Palm and others, MIT has come up with its solution, Sixth Sense ... and like the OLPC-One Laptop Per Child, the ideas around the Sixth Sense device will surely shake and shape the market for mobiles and PIAF devices.

One of the arguments on how society got itself into the Boom-bust Business of blowing highly disruptive Financial and Economic Bubbles every 10-15 years is because our collective societal view is far too short. "Next quarters financial results" driven stock markets. Or advertising fashion changing every ratings blitz. Or political stature being poll driven. This idea is the theme of the book by James Gleick, FSTR, which describes how short and therefore disruptive some of the major events and their decision circuits have become in the World. Of course anybody who has done any work in control theory knows how disasterous short, rapid, and yet substantial changes can be for the effective functioning and proper working of a system. Gleick offers no profound solutions to the festering problem of FSTR other than promoting an appreciation for the Long View.

The New York Times is introducing a math and logic game called Ken Ken derived from Sudoku. Its origins are again from Japan. The basics of Ken Ken is that just like Sudioku: the the number from 1-4 ( or 1-n depending on the puzzle size) have to be laid out in all the puzzles columns and rows such that:
a)each column has one each of the numbers (for a 4 square ken Ken that is 1,2,3, and 4) and so too each row;
b)no number may be repeated twice in any row or column.
This is the classic Sudoku rules. What Ken Ken adds are mathematical constraints (linear programmers and math optimizers will be familiar with this notion).

Time magazine confronts the problem which is plaguing the publishing industry now and and has been spreading across all media for some time- the model for charging for your creative work breaks down in the face of computing and particularly the Web's ability to copy just about any work with absolute fidelity at no cost.

Bill Bryson is master of humorous deceit - he poses as a wimp. You know - the one who always loses the argument by declaring a truce. The everyman who can barely cope with modern technology let alone political and social change. The one who gets himself in trouble by taking his family to a Drive in Movie 20 years past its time. The Don Quixote trying to jibe through air travel check in counters without a Pancho Sanchez. The man who revels in the absurdity of government forms and processes. et cetera, et cetera, et cetera - as the King and he would be wont to say.

Today Jeff Bezos is delivering the second version of his allegedly very popular Kindle (I suspect Amazon of Positive Impression Management equal to or better than Redmond in its haze daze, circa 1995). And I keep asking myself why I would want to buy a grayscale-only book (or even a book store) which can read to me but run out of power?? The current model runs for 4 days if you use it to connect to the Web at the same time - two weeks if you just read books. And the connection is via Sprint which is still risky business for connections.

The Metro Toronto Reference Library is having a book sale - well its always having a book sale, $1 per book no matter size, age, nor NYTimes Book Review or BestSeller List Rating. Just follow the sign saying Gallery in the lower part of the picture and you can't miss the Library's Book Store. Now the sale prices I mentioned above may perhaps be only for this Saturday's sale out front as you enter the library, but Heavens know that I do not need any more books.

The New York Times is sponsoring on its very helpful blog , Room for Debate, a quorum on the US job market in the light of the new economy. The invited guests this time are of mixed quality - but not the comments on what is going wrong in the US economy and its job markets. They hit the nail on the head. An example:

“ Spare us the nonstop wailing and teeth-gnashing about the inadequate number of high school and college students who want to study science and engineering. The students are, in reality, merely behaving rationally. In 2009, what right-thinking student would ever consider a job that corporate America holds in such disrepute? Off-shoring, importation of cheap engineers, job anxiety, lack of respect for the profession...the boardrooms have spoken clearly. - Projunior, commenting on Preparing for the Next Job Market ”

The New Yorker has a small story of a couple in Chicago in 1996:

Its from picture taken by New York photographer and artist Mariana Cook.
Have a look here, you will not be disappointed.

All the News Fit to Print has long been the motto of the New York Times. Now it is seeing the very blogs that are its come-uppance coming into its printed paper market but at substantially reduced costs. The bet of ThePrintedBlog is that a targeted, weekly, free but printed newspapers based on blog material can do well despite the demise of some of the biggest newspaper franchises.