Google expansion speaks volumes
Online search leader Google Inc. is becoming more bookish.
Expanding a program introduced last year, Google is inviting publishers to include entire books in its index, enabling people to peek at the contents before making a decision on whether to buy.
Although entire books will be scanned in, the new feature won’t let people read them entirely online. But participating publishers must allow people to read at least 20 percent, said Susan Wojcicki, Google director of product development.
Book listings, which include title, author and number of pages, will appear at the top of Google’s main search results page.
Books already have been submitted by more than a dozen publishers, including Penguin, Wiley, Hyperion, Pearson, Taylor & Francis, Cambridge, Chicago, Oxford, Princeton and Scholastic.
As it broadens its book-search capabilities, Google may become more of a threat to online retail giant Amazon.com Inc., which offers a similar service.
Sony markets TiVo system
Sony Corp. will begin selling a computer and home server system that makes a midget of TiVo. With 1,000 gigabytes of hard-drive storage, it can record six TV channels for nearly a week straight.
Vaio Type X, set to go on sale Nov. 20 in Japan, will cost about $4,700, Sony spokesman Shinji Obana said. There are no plans to market it elsewhere.
Recorded programs are displayed as a thumbnail TV guide that Sony calls Time Machine View. The television content can also be grouped by categories such as sports or sitcoms, Sony said.
To make room for new programs, the oldest recordings are automatically deleted unless they’re specifically saved.
Memory cards developed
A leading Japanese electronics company is developing memory cards that can be used to make cashless payments, open locks and read identification with a simple flick.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic-brand products, said sample shipments will begin in December, with commercial shipments to follow by late next year.
The special memory cards will contain computer chips must as so-called smart cards do, enabling them to be read wirelessly by a special reader device.
Many Japanese people already flash their smart cards at station gates to get on commuter trains.
Rethinking the future
Many moons ago, the Net cognoscenti gathered and made proclamations or indulged in rhetoric about the future of the Internet.
Now they’re back, after taking a respite during the bust — a period in which $7 trillion in market cap vanished. But rather than being drunk on Kool-Aid, they were sober.
” ‘Hard work ahead, but rewards if we do this right’ was our way of capturing the tone vs. the ‘low-hanging fruit, sky’s the limit’ attitude that we remember from 1999 and 2000,” wrote analyst Mark Mahaney.