Walt at Random

My wife, the wise person and actual librarian in our household, asked me the other day why I was doing this at all—since libraries surely aren’t buying new CD-ROM titles. I gave her a response similar to what I said back in July 2010 (Cites & Insights 10:8), and I think that’s still valid. Briefly, since libraries don’t automatically discard books from the late 1990s, and since many of these title CD-ROMs were “expanded books” in one way or another, I thought it would be worth seeing whether they still run on contemporary computers, whether they still seem worthwhile, what’s replaced them and so on—along with some notes from when I first reviewed them.

On the other hand…the first six CD-ROMs I tried out this month wouldn’t install at all. Period. In no case was this terribly surprising, but in some cases it was disappointing. After writing up earlier notes on three of them that had been quite interesting (if flawed) “virtual museums,” I realized I no longer had the heart to track down possible web alternatives and that, indeed, recounting how these titles used to work was mostly a history of things lost and a trifle depressing. Remembering when title CD-ROMs were touted as the Next Big Thing, possibly even replacing books, I will note this: Any book I purchased in 1995-1999 is still readable—but many title CD-ROMs purchased in that period are now entirely useless. [I was going to qualify “any book” with “except mass-market paperbacks”—but all the mass-market paperbacks I have from the mid-90s are entirely readable, as are ones that date back to 1965, cheap acid paper and all.]

For the rest of the story… or read The CD-ROM Project as part of Cites & Insights 11:6

The first couple of Google TV products emerged in early 2011—Logitech’s Revue set-top box and a Sony Blu-ray player with Google TV built in. A fairly long writeup in the February 2011 Home Theater is interesting—including an odd little slap at both devices for requiring wall-wart power supplies, which—for devices that are always plugged in—“always screams cheap, off-the-shelf design to me.” The main conclusions: Google TV isn’t there yet, partly because none of the three main networks will allow streaming of their shows, partly because in the process of passing your other TV signals through the Google box, you lose surround-sound capabilities. We do get a sideswipe from a writer who’s clearly an Apple fancier—as made clear in this passage: “If you’re one of those staunch opponents of all things Apple, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, and you’ll forever be subjected to complex hierarchies and poorly integrated UIs…” Wow. Nobody but Apple is capable of producing good UIs!

For an amusing contrast, there’s “Kill Your Cable, If You Dare” by Jeff Bertolucci in the December 2010 PC World. Bertolucci was spending $85/month on his cable service, and of course the only solution was to get rid of cable entirely. (Since, you know, moving to limited-basic is clearly out of the question.) He concludes that “Google TV…is the best way to find content online.” He also discusses lots of other options…and admits that, well, “if you live in an area where the over-the-air broadcast channels are difficult to receive through antenna,” maybe you shouldn’t cut the cable. What I notice consistently throughout the article: There is never any discussion of video quality. None. (At the very end, he does mention limited-basic cable.) So on one hand, Google TV is the way to go; on the other, it’s not ready for prime time.

For the rest of the story (21 other products & ideas)… or read Interesting & Peculiar Products as part of Cites & Insights 11:6

Time for another Random Roundup, part of an ongoing effort to offer quick notes on interesting things. When I did a catch-up edition of T&QT in October 2009, I noted that—with my switch in March 2009 from printing leadsheets for interesting source material to tagging items in Delicious—I was up to 50 items in September 2009 tagged “tqt” (the tag for this section) out of 643 items altogether, far more items than I ever had “on hand” prior to Delicious.

If you’ve been keeping track, you’ll be aware that I gave up on Delicious after Yahoo! basically issued its death warrant and, after asking for advice and doing some exploring, switched to Diigo, taking my Delicious-tagged items with me (evaluating many of them along the way). I’m not thrilled with one specific aspect of Diigo (the alphabetic list of all tags is clumsy to use because it’s not a list), but otherwise it’s just fine—but boy, do I have a lot of stuff tagged, even after wiping out a hundred items in one recent essay.

The count as of April 21, 2011: 1,294 items in all. Take away GBS (Google Book Settlement, which I may scrap entirely) with 230, and you still have more than a thousand, including 106 tagged tqt. So, well, this roundup in an issue full of roundups is another attempt to do a little catching up, five thousand (or so) words at a time.

For the rest of the story… or read as part of Cites & Insights 11:6