The Nimble Books Blog

This is one of the better days in the history of Nimble Books. Today we have reached a final agreement with Hugo and Nebula-award winning science fiction author, futurist, and commentator David Brin, and we will be publishing his THROUGH STRANGER EYES, a collection of “Reviews, Introductions, Tributes & Iconoclastic Essays” in the U.S. and U.K. We will be working in partnership with Robert Stephenson of the fine SF publisher Altair Australia who be publishing a simultaneous edition for his markets. THROUGH STRANGER EYES will include essays on figures as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, John Brunner, George Orwell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Charles Sheffield, Richard Feynman, and Ayn Rand.

More to come …

Tags: About Nimble Books, Forthcoming from Nimble Books, Intergalactic Roll of Honor, What's New for Book-Lovers by admin
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Hillary’s Math Problem | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008 | Newsweek.com

Hillary Clinton may be poised for a big night tonight, with wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. Clinton aides say this will be the beginning of her comeback against Barack Obama. There’s only one problem with this analysis: they can’t count.

I’m no good at math either, but with the help of Slate’s Delegate Calculator I’ve scoped out the rest of the primaries, and even if you assume huge Hillary wins from here on out, the numbers don’t look good for Clinton. In order to show how deep a hole she’s in, I’ve given her the benefit of the doubt every week for the rest of the primaries.

I love definitive articles like this one. Tip of the hat to Jonathan Alter.

Tags: Hillary, Obama, SHOULD BARACK OBAMA BE PRESIDENT?, U.S. & Local Politics by admin
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Photo Matt » Percentage of Splogs

As for percentage of the total blogosphere, reported by Technorati as north of 100 million, which are splogs, I’d say the number is much higher - probably 80%. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, I just think spammers are very effective at creating hundreds of thousands to millions of blogs, they tend to stick around, and I feel like Technorati’s number doesn’t doesn’t adequately scrub these out.While I’m making data-less estimates, I’d say there are about 25-30 million non-spam blogs, and about 8-14 million of those are active in terms of getting traffic or new posts. You could cover a meaningful portion of the blogosphere by just indexing 4 or 5 million blogs.

Splogs and blogger attrition are two problems no one really talks about, but that’s okay because I don’t think either is hindering anyone’s growth as measured by metrics that matter, like pageviews or uniques.

Nonsense. Splogs are a significant burden on search quality. They waste a lot of everyone’s time.

Tags: Tech Fun by admin
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