Next-generation engineering of the network to improve the current Internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch".

The Internet Archive has posted its year-end summary of the Highlights of the Year, which include

One million searchable, downloadable books

150 billion web pages

182 employees in 18 facilities in 5 countries scanning 1,000 books a day

145 libraries contributing to the Open Content Alliance

Publishing houses are struggling with tough times and changing technology says Tom Engelhardt

Worlds shudder and collapse all the time. There's no news in that. Just ask the Assyrians, the last emperor of the Han Dynasty, the final Romanoff or Napoleon -- or Bernard Madoff. But when it seems to be happening to your world, well, that's a different kettle of fish.Two weeks ago, a close friend in my niche world of book publishing (at whose edge I've been perched these last 30-odd years) called to tell me that an editor we both admire had been perp-walked out of his office and summarily dismissed by the publisher he worked for. That's what now passes for politeness in the once "gentlemanly" world of books. The sort of books that might actually make a modest difference in the universe but will be read by no less modest audiences -- too modest for flailing, failing publishing conglomerates....

App Developer Strikes E-Book Deals With Major Publishers

ScrollMot ion, a New York mobile app developer, has concluded deals with a number of major publishing houses, and is in talks with several others, to produce newly released and best-selling e-books as applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Publishers now on board include Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Hachette and Penguin Group USA.

Having these big names is a big step forward for iTunes itself in becoming an e-book shop and the iPhone in becoming a legitimate e-book reader and competitor to products like the Kindle and the Sony E-Reader. The first official books will begin to roll out Monday and include titles such as Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight," Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" and a number of others by Christopher Paolini, Brad Meltzer and Scott Westerfeld.

Scarlett Johansson: the reluctant sex symbol

Cameras love Scarlett Johansson’s starlet looks - and so do film directors, from Woody Allen to Sofia Coppola. So why is the 24-year-old actress already looking forward to her next decade? Martyn Palmer meets a reluctant sex symbol in the UK Times.

"Think Marilyn Monroe or Sophia Loren transported through time - the hour-glass figure and sprayed-on frocks - and you have some idea of the cinematic heritage of Ms J, a woman who, at just 24, has men young and old (including Woody Allen and just about every other director she’s worked with), praising her as a siren, a muse and a pin-up for our times. Women, too, can appreciate La Johansson. According to one glossy, she possesses the body that most admire".

Google has published its year-end search figures

"The Google Zeitgeist 2008 looks at the most searched terms on their engine. The most looked for term in the UK (and in a lot of other countries) was, of course, Facebook, with a more surprising BBC coming in second. Google’s President highlighted the fact that social networks were the fastest rising queries, alongside a high demand for the US Presidential election, and Sarah Palin coming up trumps, as the number one searched for term globally - good on her! It seems like social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace continue to be avidly used by the younger generation and will continue to rise in the future".

Welcome to the Australian Google Zeitgeist page!

Searches for technology and internet terms like YouTube, Facebook, iPhone and Google Maps rose rapidly, as did the ubiquitous Sarah Palin and the new TV show about the Melbourne underworld, Underbelly. Australians used Google to find out more about the financial crisis and swimming star Stephanie Rice. It also seems that everyone wanted to find out about the movie 'Australia' as well as stores at which they could find a bargain. Each of these lists shows the most searched terms, meaning they were the top searched terms of 2008. Take a look below to get sense of the zeitgeist, or spirit of the times, in Australia for 2008!"

Barack Obama, perhaps the most literary president-elect of recent years, has chosen his friend, the poet Elizabeth Alexander, to read at his inauguration on 20 January.

The UK Guardian reports "Obama had been spotted carrying what appeared to be a book of the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott's poetry last month, but it is Alexander, a professor of African American studies at Yale University, who will compose a poem to be read at his swearing in as president. She will perform alongside Aretha Franklin, Itzak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma. The participants were chosen based on requests from Obama and from vice-president-elect Joe Biden.

Alexander, who has published four collections of poems, most recently the 2005 Pulitzer prize finalist American Sublime, will be only the fourth poet to have read at a presidential inauguration. A tradition eschewed by current incumbent George W Bush, Bill Clinton invited poets to both of his inaugurations, with Miller Williams reading in 1997, and Maya Angelou in 1993. The only other poet to have read at an inauguration was Robert Frost, who recited The Gift Outright for John F Kennedy in 1961".

You Never Know What You’ll Find in a Book - from the New York Times

We may never fully understand what prompts people to leave unusual objects inside books. I speak of the slice of fried bacon that the novelist Reynolds Price once found nestled within the pages of a volume in the Duke University library. I speak of the letter that ran: “Do not write to me as Gail Edwards. They know me as Andrea Smith here,” which the playwright Mark O’Donnell found some years ago in a used paperback. I speak of any of those bizarre objects - scissors, a used Q-tip, a bullet, a baby’s tooth, drugs, pornography and 40 $1,000 bills - that have been discovered by the employees of secondhand bookstores, according to The Wall Street Journal and AbeBooks.com. Mystery surrounds these deposits like darkness...

Who knows what puzzling items lurk, or soon will, on the bookshelves of the world? Well, Meg Wolitzer gave advance warning of one. In the early ’70s, during her freshman year at Smith, she and a friend got “punch-drunk” from too much studying in the library one night. “To entertain ourselves on a break, we took out a sheet of lined paper and wrote a ‘diary entry’ for one ‘S. Plath’ (‘Saw the most delicate bell jar today in an antique store. . . .’),” Wolitzer wrote in an e-mail message. The pair gave the document a 1950s date, then placed it between the pages of a reference book, “and left it there to age and corrode and finally be discovered.” Wolitzer added, “To my knowledge and to my relief, it has not been.”

Quote of the Week

Notice in a Southport Hotel, UK: "Baths may be had (by arrangement) with the Manageress only".

Odd Book Title

"Collect Fungi on Stamps" by D. J. Aggersberg, Gibbons, 1997

Pun of the Week

In 1945, the first all white Dalmation dog was spotted.