Open Book Alliance, in one corner representing book boffins and bibliophiles. In the other corner Google, in our view, fighting to control all information, through a book master library. Who will win? And where’s the innovation?

REVIEWS, Global – Here’s some quick questions.
Have a book addiction?
Need to get a textbook for school?
Want to sell read fiction or used textbooks?
Want to opt-out of consuming and then shelving books?

The BookMooch website (www.bookmooch.com) allows you to do these things.
How BookMooch works basically
Simply register, make a list of books you’d like to send, and a list of books you’d like to receive.
You get points for everyone you send, and use points for everyone you receive. You can also use points for charities.
The only money you pay is postage for books …

REVIEW, Mag Nation, Melbourne & New Zealand — One of my favorite magazine shops, in late 2007, won a prestigious retail award in Melbourne.

You can often find me browsing the magazines, and occasionally spending more than I planned on European or US magazine titles. I like to support small or independent businesses so I also often grab a coffee here and browse.
Chief Magazineologist (sounds like a 2thinknow title!) for Mag Nation, Sahil Merchant commented:
“There is something about magazines that makes them worthwhile and approachable for all.
“Most of the …

COMMENT, Global — According to De Spiegel, France’s leader, Sarkozy, has made the sad decision to axe the English-Language component of France 24.
“French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced the killing off of the English-language news channel France 24, barely a year after it first hit the airwaves. ”
> De Spiegel: Sarkozy To Axe France 24
This is not how you win others over to your culture. It seems to play into the hands of further cultural homogenization.
The decision to cut France 24, seems a bleak decision for France, and Francophiles globally.

ANALYSIS, Global – Satire has always been a weapon people use when they know most of the news they are watching is untrue or missing the point.
Whilst I applaud many fine Print Journalists, the fact is that the bias inherent in many publications and TV, means that media is increasingly untrusted.
The average person knows on some level that the mass media exists to propagate a message that is not about enlightening debate.They know Rupert’s media on some level is about Rupert…

COMMENT, Global – When I say global I mean English-speaking countries, like USA, UK & Australia. Here there is a rise of info-tainment disguised as journalism.
As an example: In Australia we have a program called Sunrise. It’s morning current affairs, sort of – really more about social issues and controversy.
The 2 presenters are:
Koch: A balding ex-Finance guy, who started as a leading Finance guru.
Mel: And a parochial Canberra reporter who somehow can read an auto-prompter.
And a team of mostly nice presenters who get shuffled around like a deck of cards, …

ANALYSIS, Global: Web Media –
The media has the wrong idea on what YOU and I want to read and watch.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.
News flash for the Media.
People are not obligated to read /watch your media.
Relevance will determine if they do.

Or why the Pen is still mightier than the sword!
COMMENT, USA & Australia — The modern world of business and politics run on words. It has ever been thus.
The importance of words will only increase in a world of information, services, creativity and increasing automation of the means of production.
It has been my experience dealing with governmental and business leaders that the primary separating factor between those who got the ‘good’ jobs, and those who didn’t was self-expression with words. (Remember I have consulted or educated people at all …

COMMENT, Global — Become an Ideas Person Part II: [ratings]
Reading books is one of those few great things that no-one can take away. Ben Franklin used books to raise his intellect and become a great thought-leader and statesman of his day.
Ben Franklin was a lifelong avid reader, having being a tradesman-printer and never attended Harvard the university of the town of his birth.
Ben Franklin started the first lending library in the USA (or at least that is the popular wisdom). He also had a private scheme of a group …

ANALYSIS, Global – The answer is to ‘Stand on the Shoulders of Giants’.
This is the first part of a regular series on how to speak the language of ideas in coming weeks. How to be an Ideas Person.
Ideas and an intellectual education are important no matter how old we are. Both help us make better decisions in terms of positive change in our societies.
How do we personally understand what is positive change and what is not?
We talk incessantly about success, about wanting positive change.
We talk about love, relationships, children, families, …

ANALYSIS, San Francisco – WordCamp 2007 commenced today in San Francisco, at the Swedish American Hall on Market St. This is my second post.Presenter in the second session, was experienced journalist and IT veteran John Dvorak. He was joined by writer from the (sadly rumoured to be defunct) Business 2.0, OM Malik.
Dvorak had two interesting points regarding innovation:
“Bloggers present themselves as bloggers”
“Citizen journalism”
Schedule: http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/blogs-vs-journalism/
Both these allude to the innovation zeitgeist as 2thinknowTM define it.
The innovation zeitgesit in blogging is the upcoming professionalism and redesign of the presentation of user …

ANALYSIS, San Francisco — From WordCamp 2007. Podcasting will be a new media, and will grow in revenues. By then it may not be called podcasting.
It may be called something new and snappy, and will be in some ways more like TV/radio.
Marketing, including naming (eg. iPod is sexier than media player and is now the generic name) is important to product development and adoption (see Apple…)
Thanks to Dan Kuykendall, of www.mightyseek.com for an excellent and well balanced presentation of the what, why and how of pod-casting; and despite being first …

Librarians are having to deal with the vast amount of content that only occurs in web or electronic form. It’s a massive trend. So a term, Library 2.0 and a support network has arisen. One of their communities online is at: library20.ning.com
Organising electronic data: this is a big issue. I predict veteran website snapshots will be a collectors item one day, much like movie merchandise/posters are now.
Social networking innovations: I found this whilst researching on Marc Andreessen’s new venture Ning.com, basically a site that lets you create your own social …

Television drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.
Or so the rap song goes. Which in itself is a backhanded compliment.
The point is what you watch/read/see/hear creates your mind-set. And intelligent, creative people don’t want their head filled with scams, murders, Mormon sectarian love stories, Grey’s Anatomy, fart jokes, a puerile US comedy, more gory murders and more reality porn of ugly nude people (ie. Big Brother). That’s Sunday nights.
You say there’s the off switch. That there is, but at 8.30pm on a Sunday night after dinner it’s easy …

Sir Tim Berners Lee on the next big innovation beyond Web 2.0. That would be the semantic web. Or basically interchangeable data, data from your contact database, talks to data from a website allowing you to file someone you meet online in your contacts. Or an invoice in your accounting system is machine-readable as an invoice on the web.
In other words no more data conversion. This is what XML is all about, but that is one part of it.
If it wasn’t Berners Lee, i’d say perhaps that’s a B I …

Fresh from my posting about university students, I saw this on www.Digg.com the news ranking site.
The world’s oldest blogger… this lady has a very entertaining (and pictorial) blog.
“My name is Olive Riley. I live in Australia near Sydney. I was born in Broken Hill on Oct. 20th 1899.Broken Hill is a mining town, far away in the centre of Australia. My Friend, Mike, has arranged this blog for me. He is doing the typing and I am telling the stories.” 
read Olive’s Blog | digg story
A very entertaining read, and to …