A Google employee didn't like the pay and griped it about in his blog. The posts vanished. But guess what? Yahoo's cache came to the rescue. (Found via John Battelle Searchblog.)...

The Rothman Librie is due to arrive next week. The cost in Japan was 29,800 JPY, around $290, and at that price I couldn't care less whether the E-Ink marvel is new or a refurb. Good thing, too--for the latest scuttlebutt, via my new pal Morpheus at MobileRead, is that 29,800 is what a refurb seems to cost. Is that what I'm getting? Just why the R word--and I don't mean "Rothman"? Could Sony be about to intro a new model without such heinous DRM? Alexander, a MobileRead contributor, is thinking that, and he could be on to something.Also...

If you enjoy corporate Newspeak, you'll love an interview with Adobe COO Shantanu Narayan, complete with a few musings related to the U word. Oh, this is just what we need--proprietary craziness and the Tower of eBabel as the eternal norm on portable devices. Heck, Adobe can't even get PDAs right. (Via NewsScan as spotted by Rick Barry.)...

Don't believe that Adobe is poison for the e-book industry? Well, check out this Gothic-intense nightmare from Beth Young, which is just one of many Adobe-related horror stories. She writes: I needed Robert's Rules of Order in order to deal with a problem on a faculty senate committee. My copy was at home, I was in the office, and I didn't have time to travel to the library or bookstore, obtain a copy, travel back to my office, and deal with the RRO problem before my meeting. No problem, I thought, I'll buy an e-copy....

A gem from Techdirt:You may recall that we somehow got involved in a bizarre battle over Wikipedia, when I got into a discussion with a reporter who told me that Wikipedia was "outrageous," "repugnant" and "dangerous," mainly because it's not reviewed by "professionals." Despite a valiant effort, I was unable to ever convince the reporter, Al Fasoldt, that regular encyclopedias, complete with their experts, make mistakes too--and, in fact, the problem is that those encyclopedias can't then be updated and fixed. In a story that was pretty much written to make Wikipedia fans gleeful, Many to Many points...

Missed recent Meting of the Minds chatcasts? You can now hear audios of recent discussions of Ethan Frome and The Optimist's Daughter....

You already know about the benefits that e-books could bring to the Third World. Too bad that West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee is so clueless about print vs. electronics. Books are books regardless of the medium.Related: Date of Al Gore's e-library quote--and other uppity questions about the Stanford Lud's rant....

Might the typical library be better off without IM and other features of a virtual refrence desk--and perhaps simply beef up phone services? Three articles of interest:--To Chat Or Not to Chat...

One of the mysteries of Microsoft is how so much money can go for R&D with so little to show in the way of true innovation. Part of the problem, of course, is that Microsoft worries about cannibalizing existing products--or not fitting in with various grand visions. Then there's the issue of whether nutty innovators can be compatibly crazy with BillG and those in his cult. But could some of the problem also be Microsoft's hiring methodology? Might there be a little too much emphasis on riddles and puzzles that often have little to do with the tasks envisioned...

This is an excerpt...

Remember our earlier item on social bookmarking? Well, here's a related buzzword--folksonomy, complete with a definition in an oh-so-apt place: the Wikipedia:Folksonomy is a neologism for a practice of collaborative categorization using simple tags. This feature has begun appearing in a variety of social software. At present, the best examples of online folksonomies are social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, a bookmark sharing site, Flickr, for photo sharing, and 43 Things, for goal sharing. Gmail's labeling system is somewhat similar to the use of tags, but it is not a folksonomy because users cannot share their categorizations. Folksonomy is not...

E-books and other electronic media will be able to help boost basic literacy in isolated jungle, desserts and mountainous regions--as wireless technology takes off and hardware costs plummet. But what about the development of genuine literature?The planet is now missing out on the talents of thousands of potential novelists and playwrights in remote regions who have truly lived the lives they describe. E-books and the Net could be one way to help educate them early on, no matter where they lived. The best way to become a good writer, of course, is to be a good reader; and e-books...