Google in Control?

Will Google have exclusive control of Public Domain and/or out of print books? I don't see how it is possible. Anyone who wishes can scan PD books and, with permission, scan and post out of print books still protected by copyright.

The copyright owners (publishers and authors) can themselves limit the kind of access made available—anything from those small "glimpses" (images of a portion of a page) to partial content, to complete books.

What remains uncertain is how Google intends to meter books. To really make money, they must limit user access in a particular way, then charge to remove the limit. Someone—an executive at Random House, I believe—suggested that Google levy a small charge for any look inside a book. I expect this will provoke protests from the public, the reaction being that anyone should be able to browse books online, just as in bookstores or libraries. And, really, reading a few pages can help one make an informed decision on a novel or a non-fiction book.
--Mike

Library Books Don't Get No Respect

Over the past decade I've seen too many library books that haven't been taken care of by borrowers. The problem is not torn pages or writing on the books, though I see that, too. The biggest problem I see (and frequently) is what you might call "foreign matter" on book pages.

Sometimes it looks like food--grease and stains and blobs of unidentifiable substances. (At least, I hope it's food; the alternative is even more disgusting.) Occasionally there will be a dead insect, or maybe a lone wing or portion of a carapace--all that's left of a bug that landed on a page and was crunched by a reader.

And then there are the unpleasant odors drifting from opened books ... I have had to put a few out in the open air before I could read them.

Can you people take better care of the books you borrow? The occasional coffee or soda stain I can understand. But what I'm finding on pages nowadays is the result of sheer carelessness. Try not treating library books like they're your own. Treat them like they belong to someone else--someone you respect.
--Mike

Magazines at Google Books

Interesting resources at Google Books lately:
Billboard (1945 on)
Publishers Weekly (back to the 1880s)
Library Journal

And lots more, including Ebony, Jet, Popular Science, and others that you might not expect. Take a stroll through http://books.google.com.

ABCNews.com and the Internet's Birthday

The lead technology story at ABCNews.com today is about the 40th Anniversary of the Internet. I'm quoted therein; hence, my special interest in this piece. The article begins, "Though it might try to hide its graying hairs, it was 40 years ago today that computer scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, established a network connection between two computers ...."

And, indeed, it is almost as if the origins of the Internet are hidden from contemporary view, though not by any intent. I expect that the facts of the existence of early computer networks (ARPANet, the Internet, consumer online services like CompuServe, and many other types of telecomputing nets) have been displaced in the public mind by the many glitzy developments on the Web in over the past decade and more.

Further, the story is so complicated that the majority of attempts to chronicle it end up focusing on one or two elements. For instance, you can read a half-dozen randomly selected books that purport to tell the history of the Internet and the Web, and come away thinking there was nothing until ARPAnet (online content existed years before that great experiment), the World Wide Web (a johnny-come-lately in 1992), and AOL (whose predecessors go back to 1978) are the full story. It's far from that; get a copy of On the Way to the Web at your local library (or from the publisher, or wherever) to see what I mean. In the meantime, read the ABCNews.com story. In addition to providing the facts and milestones, the story (and those to which it links) offers a handy list of milestones along the way to the Web.

Happy Birthday(s) to the Internet!

Happy Birthday, Internet! September 2, 1969 was the date that the first two ARPAnet computers were connected at UCLA. Those were UCLA's Sigma-7 mainframe and the Internet Message Processor (IMP) that would connect with the network-to-be.

But some mark the beginning of the Internet as the day the first message was transmitted between network nodes: UCLA to Stanford. That was October 29, 1969. So, we have two birthdays. Some media are citing Sept. 2, while UCLA will hold the official 40th anniversary celebration on Oct. 29.

Significantly, Leonard Kleinrock, director of the project, says of the transmission on Oct. 29, "That was the first breath of life the Internet ever took."

But, he also notes, it was on Sept. 2, 1969, that data bits first moved between two machines—UCLA's Sigma and its IMP. For still more facts, see: http://internetanniversary.cs.ucla.edu/slides/internet35/kleinrock_welcome.pdf

All the details are in my book, On the Way to the Web. Have a look and decide for yourself. (For more blasts from the online past, follow mikebanks on twitter.)

Korean Daily Newspaper: Interview and Video about Blogging Heroes

Interest in Blogging Heroes continues. A couple weeks back Young Choi, a journalist from The Seoul Shinmum Daily (South Korea's oldest newspaper) came to interview me about the book and blogging.

The interview is here:
http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20090725500005

Scroll down for the video interview. It's in English (Korean is one of the languages I do not speak) and has Korean subtitles. If I look odder than usual, it's because I'm squinting into the afternoon sun. The interview and video were conducted at the United States Air Force Museum (highly recommended, by the way).
--Mike

Letter-Writing for Writers

Remember when you wrote real letters--hardcopy sent via street mail? I imagine there are some younger people who have always used E-mail, but at some point in their lives nearly everyone has written letters.

I became a prodigious letter-writer in the 1970s, staying in touch with fellow science fiction fans, model builders, and other friends across the U.S. and Europe. This continued through the 1980s and for part of the 1990s, until nearly everyone got on the E-mail bandwagon. (I think about 25 percent of my correspondents were using email by 1985.) By the turn of the century, I wrote only the occasional hardcopy letter to older friends and relatives.

Several years ago I went back to writing letters regularly to people who also use E-mail. It's a nice break, printing out and mailing missives the old-fashioned way. Sometimes I write them by hand.

Interestingly, I find myself using all of my writing skills and technique, even dialogue, in letters. The vocabulary is adjusted to the recipient and/or subject, but I get as much satisfaction from a well-crafted letter as I do from a good article or short story.

In addition, writing letters gives me something to fall back on when I'm temporarily stuck and can't get into one of my commercial projects. It gets my mind off being frustrated over the block, and keeps me in the writing groove. Try it.
--Mike

Mr. Ken's Wild Ride

Ken Moore, a well-known Nashville SF fan and art expert, passed away last week. He was one of those people who is a real "character" without knowing it. When a thought hit him, he acted on it and (sometimes) thought about it later.

Here's a remembrance of Ken, just one of hundreds of tales that those who knew him can tell.
A family vacation in 1980 took us through Nashville, and we stopped over to visit Ken Moore, a science fiction fan friend who lived there. He wanted to take us to lunch at a restaurant in town owned by a friend of his, so we drove there from his house in my 1977 Chevrolet Nova. Once we were seated in a spacious booth, the owner made a point of coming out to greet Ken and meet the rest of us. The only other diners in the place were a couple over in a far corner.

As we were finishing the meal, Ken ordered a screwdriver (at least, a drink that looked like a screwdriver). The girl waiting on our table brought it out, then returned to the kitchen. The couple left at some point, and several minutes later my son, who was 5 at the time, tried to call our attention to two men running across the parking lot. “Look at those guys,” he urged. “They look like they’re on a wild goose chase!”

We adults were busy discussing important science fiction stuff, and just said, “Oh, yeah. They’re running, aren't they?”

About that time the restaurant owner and waitress burst out of the back room. “We’ve been robbed!” the owner said, voice trembling. “They had a pistol, a .38! Made us lay down on the floor. I thought they were going to shoot us ... but they just took the money ... came out here!”

“God damn!” Ken yelled. He jumped to his feet. “Gimmie your keys, Mike.” Caught up in the moment, I just handed them over, like a fool. Ken darted out door.

It took a couple of seconds for me to realize what I’d done—and what Ken was thinking of doing. I trotted out to the parking lot just as he was starting up the Nova’s engine.

“This is my car,” I thought, “with an over-excited Ken Moore at the wheel!” Like most guys, I was kinda partial to my car, and figured I ought to go along so I could at least witness its fate.

I yanked open the passenger door and hopped in as he put it into gear.

“They went that way,” Ken said, pointing with the half-full glass in his right hand. With his left, he steered us out of the lot and into the middle of the street. Then he took a drink and waved the glass in my direction. “Here—hold this!”

I took the drink. There followed what I’ll always remember as “Ken’s Nashville Thrill Ride.” Scarier than the fiercest roller coasters at Opryland!

In memory, it’s cinematic blur of squealing tires and hard leans to the left and right. Ken took as around corners and through U-turns without slowing. He stopped every half-minute or so to ask someone on the street whether they’d seen two black guys running in this or that direction. There was a lot of bumping over railroad tracks at high speed, and swaying in and out lanes to pass or narrowly miss hitting other cars.

Caught up in Ken’s determination to do whatever he thought he was going to do if he caught these guys (run over them, I guess), I literally clung to the dashboard and hoped he didn’t catch them. After all, we were chasing two guys with a gun—and all we had was a 6-cylinder Nova!

Ken gave up after ten minutes, and we limped back to his friend’s restaurant. To this day I don’t know whether they caught the crooks. But I left Nashville with a bona-fide souvenir of Ken’s wild ride: a broken shock. And I didn't spill a drop of Ken's drink.
--Mike

Fiction Tip

Fiction Writing Tip #438: Don't take your characters anywhere your readers wouldn't go.

Visual Research Online: Article in The Writer

When researching biographies, I find information in strange places (like eBay listings). I've written about my research techniques in the past, in The Writer and Online magazine.

I'm back at it in the August issue of The Writer (page 36) with a piece about finding photos and videos from which you can extract information that you might not be able to find anywhere else. It's out there--but don't forget to have a second source for everything!
--Mike

Signings in Dayton

I'll be signing Before Oprah at two Dayton-area libraries this coming Saturday, and again in August. Books will be available:

Saturday, June 27, 2:00 PM
Wilmington-Stroop Public Library
3980 Wilmington Pke, Kettering, OH 45429

Saturday, August 01, 2:00 PM
Huber Heights Library
6160 Chambersburg Rd, Dayton, OH 45424

Click here to see a calendar of my signings, updated as new events are scheduled.
--Mike

A Rich Repository of Computing History

Did you ever own an Atari computer--400, 800, ST? How about a TRS-80, or Apple? Or a less common sort of machine? If so, you'll find The Classic Computer Magazine Archives of more than passing interest. This site hosts content from these 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s computer magazines:

Compute!
Antic
Compute II
Compute!'s Gazette
Creative Computing
ST-Log
Video Arcade
Whiz Kids (Tandy Whiz Kids comic books)

I wrote for ST-Log (as well as Analog Computing) and, at some point for Creative Computing. It's a real informative trip down memory lane to browse these magazines! You can look through indexes, or browse by subject, authors, and other criteria. (Whiz Kids has full-page color scans.)

Not every article from every issue is available yet, but the quantity of information is gratifying.
Have a look!
--Mike

Book Launch Video

I promised earlier to write about the April 29 launch of Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV. There were two events that day, one at 11:00 AM, the other at 6:00 PM. You can see a portion of the morning event (which included WLWT announcer Bill Myers, singer Colleen Sharp, Ruth's former secretary Mickey Fisher, and producer Dick Murgatroyd) here:
http://www.wlwt.com/video/19335128/index.html

There's a partial interview with me in that segment, too. Also, a longer video of the reenactment of "The 50-50 Club" that we did for the evening signing is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh2qiLKpYG4

The actress who portrays Ruth Lyons is Shelley Bamberger Bailey. Her performance was outstanding!
--Mike

20 Percent of South Korean Population Blogging?

As I reported some time back, Blogging Heroes is out in a Korean edition, shown here. It's also available in Brazil, in Portuguese.

I can't tell how it's doing in Brazil, though there are many positive reviews. But in Korea the book has really taken off. Sales quotient numbers indicate that it's outselling the bestselling iPhone book in Korean. A reporter from Seoul's daily newspaper is traveling here to interview me next month.

The demand seemed odd at first. Then I learned that 95 percent of South Korea's 50 million citizens have access to broadband. Plus, South Korea is said to be the most-connected cellphone nation on the planet, too. SMS messaging has influenced the outcome of elections. Back to blogging, in 2005 there was an estimate of 11.7 million as the number of bloggers in the country. This is not difficult to believe, even though it means 20 percent of the population are bloggers.

(Update, 6/15: As holterbarbour astutely pointed out, the iPhone is not offered in South Korea. I stupidly did not stop to consider that. The iPhone book is offered there, however.)

ISPs have pushed blogs heavily, along with other kinds of social networking. One company, Navar.com, was said to have included a massive TV campaign. Business blogs appear to be popular and on the rise.
--Mike

I've Been Busy

Being the guy who wrote Blogging Heroes, I really should post more. frequently (check back on Saturday for some interesting news about that book). However, the outside world has kept me and my thoughts away from blogging for a time. I've done over two dozen signings since the launch of Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV, on April 29. Plus, three television appearances, several radio shows, and a bunch of newspaper and magazine interviews.

John Keisewetter of the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote two very nice pieces about Ruth Lyons, the book, and the reenactment of "The 50-50 Club" that Shelley Bamburger Bailey and I did at several of the signings. You can read those here and here.

(If you would like to see our version of "The 50-50 Club," click here. It's not Ruth, but Shelley--in period Ruth Lyons costume--did a great impression!)

Cincinnati Magazine ran an interview with me about Ruth Lyons in their May, 2009, issue. And that's an artist's rendering of Ruth above, decorating a tea towel. I found this in 2007, and knew nothing about it. I assumed it was a premium stuffed in boxes of Tide or Fels soap powder (ala the Porter Wagner and Dolly Parton in a laundry soap commercial--Rinso?) An elderly Ruth Lyons fan brought the same towel to a signing I did at Books & Company in Dayton, and told me that she sent off for it in 1954, but couldn't remember the product with which it was associated.
--Mike

Japan's Bestselling Book

This reminds me a bit of Dan Quayle: The number-one bestselling book in Japan for the past six months has been a guide to reading Chinese characters correctly. The book's huge sales--one million copies since January, 2008--churned upward when Prime Minister Taro Aso made a number of mistakes in reading Chinese characters in public statements last fall.

Ruth Lyons and the 50-50 Club Replay!

I still have to post a full report on the launch of Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV, along with some comments on signings. However, I've been too busy doing signings, giving talks, appearing on television and radio, doing print interviews, and writing articles.

Fortunately, you can see part of the book launch! As you may have heard, publisher Orange Frazer engaged actress Shelley Bamberger Baily to do her impression of Ruth in a mini-reenactment of "The 50-50 Club" at the launch and a number of signings. Shelley scripted an excellent show, with songs, a commercial, a quiz, prizes, and an interview with me. Click here or on the image above to watch the show!

As long as we're over-using "myriad ..."

It looks as if "myriad" is about to become as overused as "pair-uh-dig-em" (as always, why not say "pattern" or "template?") That being the case, do try to use the word appropriately. "Myriad" is an adjective. As in the title of Larry Niven's short story collection, All the Myriad Ways, and not as in "Would you like to buy a half-myriad of adjectives?"

The 50-50 Club's Ruth Lyons in Person, April 29!

Actress Shelley Bamberger will portray television pioneer Ruth Lyons in several upcoming signings for my book Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV. Shelley, who is also a presentation coach, will perform in character at five signings, beginning this Wednesday, April 29, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in eastern Cincinnati, at 7:00 PM. A complete list of her appearances is on this University of Cincinnati Web page.

Dressed in a period costume that includes Lyons' trademark white gloves and flower-bedecked microphone, Shelley will conduct a recreation of "The 50-50 Club," Lyons' long-running TV and radio program.

During the show, she will sing, interact with the audience, do an unscripted commercial for the host (a Lyons specialty), interview the author, and present prizes to the audience. This promotion is probably unique in book publishing.

Shelley's media career has been long and interesting. Among many other roles, she was the first Wendy for Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers. Shelley blogs here, and you can learn more about her at I-Cue (Intelligent Communications, Unsurpassed Exection).

Ruth Lyons Tops Talk TV's Family Tree

John Kiesewetter penned an excellent article about Ruth Lyons for the Cincinnati Enquirer's Sunday, April 12, issue. Not incidentally, it talks about my biography of Miss Lyons, Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV (Orange Frazer Press, April 15, 2009).

The story (and the book) includes several previously unpublished photos.

The book is now available from Orange Frazer and Amazon.