http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress Timely, relevant, thought-provoking "nimble" books about current affairs, geography, history, popular fiction, science, and more ... Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:19:40 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Feh.Are they talking about 15% of the catalog retail price for the e-book, or for the printed version? Either way, 15% is fair... Doesn't matter much to me, because I see no evidence that e-books are going to take off anytime soon.Authors Guild Warns on S&S e-Book Royalty Proposal ... http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/18/authors-guild-on-e-book-royalties/ I see the leading apostropphe as a potential source of typographic inelegances and syntax explosions and would rather refer to them as bots.  there are quite a few books with the word "bot" in the title in Amazon (see http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=bots&x=0&y=0) but none of them use the leading apostrophe. http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/18/bots-no-bots-yes/ Official Google Blog: Introducing our European 2008 Anita Borg ScholarsA few months ago we had the great pleasure of announcing the fifth class of Anita Borg Scholars in the U.S. and our first class of Scholars in Canada. Now it's the Europeans' turn. http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/17/and-from-delta-quadrant-seven-of-nine/ But maybe Google will do a better job of providing an actually interesting variety of templates.Official Google Blog: Templates bring Docs to lifeWhat do wedding planners, gas mileage calculators and photo albums have in common? They're all examples of templates available in the Google Docs Template Gallery that Sarah Beth ... http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/17/google-docs-matches-one-of-my-least-favorite-msft-office-features/ Not in my book.The official update feed from the Google Apps team: Gmail adds 'My Contacts' and 'Suggested Contacts'Gmail now ads people you email with to your contact list after several correspondences, rather than after you email someone for the first time. Contacts you add manually or through an import ... http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/17/does-gmail-fixing-a-poorly-designed-feature-adding-2-new-ones/ Because, having solved urban blight, crime, drug awareness, corruption, inefficiency, segregation, and all other social problems, the time is ripe for city employees to be making 3-D models?Idiots.Google LatLong: Our city in 3DThe District of Columbia government has submitted more than 84,000 3D models to Google Earth via the Cities ... http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/16/dc-gis-busy-solving-the-wrong-problems/ What I want from personalization in the future is ...multiple profiles that become, over time, avatars. my searches correspond to the many roles and specialized domain knowledge bases that I've accumulated over time -- product manager, lawyer, publisher, analyst, project management professional, climate change researcher, Harry Potter fan ... I ... http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/16/what-i-want-from-search-personalization-multiple-profiles-that-become-avatars/ Wow, this is horrible news for Borders shareholders. What a sad, desperate company it has become. Sell.Borders Hopes for 8th Day Film Deal - 7/15/2008 12:48:00 PM - Publishers Weekly[Borders pr] said CEO George Jones and executive v-p of merchandising and marketing Rob Gruen "are managing the film ... http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/16/borders-showing-movies-on-the-deck-of-the-titanic/ Isn't Web 2.0 over yet?Launch Pad: Web 2.0 Summit 2008 - Co-produced by TechWeb & O'Reilly Conferences, November 05 - 07, 2008, San Francisco, CAAt this year's Web 2.0 Summit, we are once again changing up the Launch Pad program. http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/16/isnt-web-20-over-yet/ This nugget was buried in an otherwise pointless essay by Maureen Dowd whining about how hard it is to mock Obama.Op-Ed Columnist - May We Mock, Barack? - Op-Ed - NYTimes.comThe Wall Street Journal reported that the planners for Obama’s convention have hired the first-ever Director of Greening, the environmental ... http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/2008/07/16/red-foods-at-the-dnc/