Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Bookcrossing's UK launch looks to turn Manchester into a library.

I know that people in the UK have already used the system to register books - have they actually had any responses?

I'm unlikely to use it , I'm a book pack rat. If I do get rid of books I'll sell them on to folks like Brian Ameringen if they may be worth something, or just donate them to charity shops...

The tracking idea is good though. Perhaps we need a "Where's Charlie?" to go with the US "Where's George?" and "Where's Willy?"...

[link found via The Guardian]

...by model plane.

38 hours across the Atlantic, weighing less than 5 kilos (including fuel). An impressive feat by a multinational team. You can see photos here.

...just when you get used to the way a favourite site works, someone makes a major change...

Play.com now splits Region1 DVDs off into a new site, PlayUSA.com.

Now, that shouldn't be so bad - it makes sense to show Region 1 in a different area - it's what they've done the the shopping cart that doesn't make any sense. There's no continuity between the two sites. Search for a Region 1 DVD on Play.com, and you'll get dropped onto a placeholder page, with the irritating message "please note that your shopping basket will not be transferred to PlayUSA". It won't run your search, either...

It's not that's difficult to handle the session transfer between sites. Off hand I can think of two, possibly three, secure mechanisms that wouldn't mean using cookies to transfer information between sites.

Another lyric post, this time my favourite Peter Gabriel track. Written long before Vinge's essay, but it captures the essence of change, of dissolution, of transcendence that lies at the heart of the idea of the Singularity.

( Here Comes The Flood )

And this week's Guardian piece is a semi-exclusive, where Macromedia tell me some more about the future of Flash in the shape of their Universal Canvas product, Central, and just how they think people will make money from it...

(It's been published a week later than originally planned, but no one scooped me on the Central business model in that week, so I'm still happy.)