Ray CHOW

Google Print Massively Plagiarized

What beats everything about the Google Print project:

1.       On one side - Google is sued for massive copyright infringement  by an “horde” of (conservative ?) authors and publishers, and

2.       On the other hand – Google is now “smartly aped” by its main competitors Yahoo and lately Microsoft with the announcement of MSN Book Search.

It's the biter bit !

Thanks to Google Print many other massive digitization projects will flourish here and there while it was a bit nuts - few time ago - to claim to digitize tens of thousands books and more just in praise of the modern communication (i.e. Internet).  It’s a long apprenticeship, almost 15 years for the (Internet) revolution to become reality.

In the current debate about different strategies for making the world’s knowledge “searchable” on the Internet nobody (or very few) talk about next coming technologies that will prevent copyrigh infringement.

Some people don’t want to see all authors’ works stored somewhere in online databases for fear that hackers manage to massively embezzle these content mines. It implies that we would stagnate with the same html,txt,doc,pdf unsecured viewer a while again. What about next DRM tools supposed to normalize content distribution? (many tools expected before all those long years required to digitize the planet)

Although Microsoft don’t want to help Google in any circumstance, as a pioneer in the DRM development the Seattle firm will have now to convert reluctant authors and publishers within the scope of their DRM evangelisation mission.   

Lap tip-top

With a laptop you could already get rid of your:

ü       PC

ü       Phone, fax & Switchboard

ü       CD, DVD player

ü       HiFi

ü       Dedicated (photo, Video) Studio

ü       … etc…

The next step is to get rid of your:

ü       TV & Video Sat tuner (or cable stuff)

ü       Video Projector (my latest dream)

ü       Tivo

ü       IPTV set top box

When video projector features will be integrated at the back of the laptop (as suggested above), then laptop will be a true multimedia personal mobile station fully self-contained and capable of home cinema .

I liked my SGI ex-colleague TIVOs (among top 10 innovations over last decade) and I thought Microsoft was doing a good job in developing the IPTV “factory”. I now think both will purely and simply be useless in less than a 4/5 years period. There are much more flexible ways to get TV and Video over IP without the need of an additional set top box as well recording TV shows on demand will be soon just few clicks on the Internet.

Video projector feature inside the laptop can definitively relegate TV screen and all its peripherals to museum.   

There is room for only ONE box apart from online (remote) features and services. Remember, only 1 terminal and it’s called LAPTOP !!!