Stanford's renowned Graduate School of Business is energetically incubating a new generation of Web businesses, now focused on vertical search, defined as "providing essential search content and related tools for people who have a passion, need or repetitive task". Four experienced Web entrepreneurs and a venture capital entrepreneur-in-residence talked about opportunities at this recent MIT/Stanford Venture Lab event on the campus. The audience (about 150 attendees) was about half business school students and the rest an assortment of software engineers, search engine executives, headhunters, potential entrepreneurs and venture capital seekers. And yes, about half the audience was working with a vertical search business plan--the business du jour!

Overall, the emphasis was on business changes from the previous dot com boom and bust, in both revenue models and technology, as well as a better understanding of consumer search. Scott Rafer, former CEO of Feedster, was the main speaker describing the new opportunities for vertical search, which I knew in previous iterations as niche websites, aka niche publishing, aka specialized applications, and even local search. The key is finding a "community of interest" with known demographics, aka audience in the publishing world, and adding "editorial" to provide a destination, as he described a Pet-Web, which has information on what to do if your dog is sick along with referrals to local veterinarians (lead generation is valuable!), with ratings from dog owners, free content generated by site visitors! Revenue from listings of local services (does this sound like yellow page advertising?), plus advertising from national brands (buyer's guide?) provide the revenue, while many of these sites can be run on "Google boxes" using open source software, while using blogs and RSS to build traffic. So the future of many viable search businesses looks a lot more like the specialized publishing industry rather than multi-million dollar tech startups, a refreshing change from the past!

Barney Pell, of Mayfield, provided the context for this next generation of search businesses, with the increase in broadband access, wider acceptance of credit card buying on the web, the surge in search advertising and profitability in the long tail of search. Dion Lim of SimplyHired describes their business as providing the best possible experience for job hunting, a discouraging task at best, with a light touch, including well-done forums to share "Pink Slip" experiences. Reid Hoffman, of LinkedIn, has built a community of professional connections, used by recruiters and other professionals. Paul Flaherty, of Talkplus, spoke of becoming the trusted intermediary between authors and readers--familiar concepts in the publishing industry, but new to this audience. When I queried the panel about opportunities for business publications, it was clear the established commercial publishing industry was unknown territory for them, which spells opportunity for innovative publishers who do understand their audiences, and are willing to explore new models.

With CEO Swap, CMP Switches Focus From Integration To Growth
VNU reportedly mulling sale of business media unit to do IMS Health Deal
The Democratization of Content
Joy: Future of the Web is mobile devices
PDAs facing extinction
Online Product Information is More Influential Than Price to New-Vehicle Shoppers
Feds Unable to Search Own Anti-Terrorism Database
Publishers Settle Unauthorized Copying and Selling Lawsuits Against Two Individuals
Cantor Fitzgerald and Telescope, Inc. Launching Premium SMS-Based Content for Financial Markets
MediaBay and OverDrive Partner to Accelerate Adoption of Download Audiobooks and Spoken Word Content
Hostway Partners with Intellext
EMC Drives Content Management Standardization Through Joint Effort with Adobe
Verizon Signs Agreement for America's Top Two Weather-Information Networks

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I sometimes think of the Microsoft Research Task Pane and wonder what it would have been like if Redmond hadn't been trying to prop up its Office Suite as the core objective of this somewhat ill-fated tool. The answer comes in some degree in the form of Watson 2.0, a desktop search tool from Intellext that does a nifty turn on getting content in the context of what matters most to us at a given moment. Watson is a piece of software that sits on a PC and can find content that matches whatever one is viewing in common desktop applications such as a browser or word processing. Watson uses the current desktop document as "training data" to target searches on content residing on local drives (compatible with Google Desktop), the open Web, premium content from HighBeam and other sources, including sources on an intranet when it's configured for enterprise use. The Watson tool can sit as a sidebar next to your main desktop area or be undocked for background use.

On a 4-page proposal I was working on in Word I fired up Watson and got an interesting and pretty relevant range of search results in the "Top Results" window and good results in some of the other results folders for desktop and other content sources. Once you've found Watson results for a document they pop up in the Watson tool every time that you display the document - instant context. Conceptually this is exactly how the "portal" of the future is going to work: not forcing users to "go" to a Web site and to ask for things that might match a need and that may or may not fit a user's workflow but instead for the library of content that's most relevant to a given task or focus to be always ready and refreshed at our fingertips, like a bookshelf that changes with every document that I pick up. It's also an excellent way to have local resources instantly available to those who love to use a Web search tool as a "go-to resource: users can still do that but their other references will be right there along with the search results.

But as with any search tool using training data, the focus of results is only as good as the source being used. Using smaller documents may yield less perfect results. I tried opening up a blank Word document and typed in the beginning of a familiar story: "Once upon a time there were three bears: a momma bear, a poppa bear and a baby bear." Instead of Goldilocks-style results I got a lot of documents about real-world bears and even the home page of Bear, Stearns, an investment bank. Using a Web page for the story "The Story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears" as Watson input brought back similarly general ursine results. Yet a search on Google without Watson using the "Once upon a time" sentence brings up some pretty accurate fairy tale results. So for some people used to accurate searches with short phrases or keywords Watson may not be the ideal tool.

Watson is a well-designed tool that offers a lot of useful context for content resources and seems to shine best with relatively finite desktop collections; presumably it would do fairly well with enterprise resources also. With PC screens becoming wider by the day there's going to be plenty of screen real estate for this kind of sidebar tool in many environments. For companies trying to pull together internal resources for "Google-ish" users Watson offers an interesting alternative to lengthy and expensive portal rollouts that can fit in easily with established work habits. Tools like this may be easily absorbed as features into wider offerings, but for the time being Watson offers a good way to try out desktop-contextualizing your content for a fairly modest investment.

I will try to write this one as politely as possible, but I have to chuckle a little bit at a posting that shows how Silicon Valley terminology can make the oldest of concepts sound like they're worth their weight in VC gold. "Standard news readers organize feeds into groups, and then under each feed are items...But there's another kind of reader, an aggregator, that works differently, and I think more efficiently for the human reader. Instead of having to hunt for new stories by clicking on the titles of feeds, you just view the page of new stuff and scroll through it. It's like sitting on the bank of a river, watching the boats go by. If you miss one, no big deal. You can even make the river flow backward by moving the scollbar up."

Geez, I must be Rip van Winkle - I thought that was called a...NEWS TICKER??

Pardon my sarcasm, but it is funny at times how a whole new generation of content producers has come along and sometimes takes such pride in their (re)invention of the wheel. At the end of the day I suppose it's more of an indication of just how early and primitive are the tools being used in today's user-generated media. We'll look back on this era in a few years the way that less-young people such as myself chuckle at the Baudot tickers from the early days of financial data feeds. There is so much yet to come...

Many vertical search services leave me cold - they're either far too narrow in their content sets or far too broad in their search capabilities. GlobalSpec is a nice example of how vertical search can service a broad array of focused needs within a given community from a common interface. Focused on engineers, the single-box search for GlobalSpec can be tuned to look for products, companies, materials properties, patents, application notes and other key filters that fit in with specific types of needs that engineers have in a product development lifecycle. GlobalSpec provides a hybrid of databased, structured content and outbound links to highly filtered Web sources that seem to match very well to specific queries. For registration you get to drill down into the deepest levels of their database and enter their sales lead generation and newsletter regime, a TechTarget-like model for effective monetization of traffic. With the announcement of access to additional sources from leading SciTech publishers such as John Wiley and Knovel GlobalSpec provides even more layers to its open aggregation model to add value to its one-stop engineering content shop. It's not the most attractive or well-designed site but hey, we're dealing with engineers here: homely and functional kind of works for this crowd in many ways. If you're thinking of what a good vertical search tool and business model would look like in your sector, GlobalSpec should be on your short list of visits for some good hints.

What was the InfoX event at the New York Hilton? It was a common vendor showcase for five separate but related conferences focusing on business intelligence, content acquisition and deployment, collaboration, search and taxonomies. It's an interesting concept, but taken as a whole its focus was perhaps ahead of some of the implementers in the 400+ audience. The value of content services is indeed moving to new levels within many major institutions, but it appears as if many of the people saddled with creating that value in evolving work roles are still on a fairly steep learning curve to understand what it means to be at the intersection of open Web content, library sciences and institutional I.T. platforms. On the other side of the coin many of the seasoned information professionals in attendance seemed to be very on top of the issues but finding themselves caught in traditional roles in which they're not necessarily empowered to make the kinds of decisions about deploying content services that are really going to make a difference for their organizations.

InfoX was in some ways a relief from the oftentimes self-reinforcing and non-productive drivel churned out at some Knowledge Management conferences, but at least KM benefits from people who profess to have some thought leadership in a marketable sector. Information Today is on to something with the mix of tracks and topics and vendors provided for this event, but the next iteration of this event will benefit from helping this audience recognize that they really are a part of a common community that benefits from sharing their missions in this evolving common ground. Perhaps it's time for Institutional Publisher to make its debut as a title for InfoToday.

The announcement of Factiva's beta program for Factiva Mobile represents another stride on their behalf to sock in some loyalty from subscribers to Factiva.com, Factiva SalesWorks(SM) and Factiva Companies & Executives(SM). With Factiva's focusing on business intelligence and sales support tools, mobile access to tracking folders will certainly help the sales exec on the go to impress their clients and prospects when the walk in the door with up-to-the-minute information. But it's also another example of publishers and aggregators using channels with more restrictive "choke points" for content access to make it harder to walk away from a service that contains a good amount of replicated content. The fragmentation in U.S. mobile media has been the savior of many dealmakers this year as mobile network operators find ways to shore up their own revenue streams with content service exclusives. But as noted by Dorrian Porter, founder and CEO of mobile startup Mozes, Inc., the desire of mobile operators to use a confusing lack of standards to gain scattered proprietary advantages is going to frustrate users in the long run and confuse them as to who in the value chain is responsible for what. On a PC we know that Microsoft is not responsible when our network connection is down; on a mobile device exclusive to a given network do we really know who's to blame when we're not getting our Factiva alerts?

Dorrian Porter recommends network providers sticking to what they do well - building and providing great connectivity and support for communications networks and helping content suppliers to find their own way through their networks. An imperfect analogy is the jetBlue model used in air transportation. jetBlue does a great job in providing excellent transportation systems at reasonable prices with just the right mix of services that people are willing to pay for, but they're not dictating technical standards to DirectTV to pump content into their TV sets. Google's emerging network is likely to provide a compelling example of how mobile content services can be both open and profitable, challenging mobile operators much in the same way that jetBlue's "focus on what you do best and merchandise the rest" model threw the airlines industry for a loop. Content providers need to build markets through existing mobile channels while they can still build some product loyalty through them. But they should not get too comfortable with their exclusives and think carefully in setting up terms as to what impact the inevitable opening of mobile services is likely to have on their ongoing revenue strategies.

Yahoo Desktop Search Out of Beta
Internet Grows as Factor in Used-Book Business
VNU Weighs Big Moves To Get Its Prize
One Internet to rule the world: starting to wag the mobile dog
Google and NASA join forces
Esquire wikis article on Wikipedia
Current TV Tries Democratizing Ads
Commission to smooth the way for EU publishers
Bittorrent gets financial support
Factiva Upgrades Mobile Capability
firstRain(R) Creates Search-Driven Business Intelligence
FAST Partners With SISIS to Enhance Search Functionality of Leading Library Management Solutions
infoUSA to launch databaseamerica.com
Pfizer Launches Novel Resource to Enhance Quality Cancer Care and Improve Patient Outcomes

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I spoke at the Buying Digital Content conference today, part of Information Today's new multi-track conference held together by their InfoX vendor showcase. While the conference format could use a little tuning, it was interesting to see the cross-section of vendors participating in the event. Most were spot-on in the center of the developing market for institutional content that is bleeding away from the traditional SLA/ALA set and yet still far from the I.T. focus offered by other venues. Yet conflicts with older business models still exist. An interesting example of this was Cadmus' 3Path content packaging and delivery solution. 3Path sets up a private delivery channel for a publication to a user's electronic desktop via software that pulls news content down from a publisher's site into a rights-protected local library. Using Cadmus' dPub software a publisher can move beyond simple "emagazine" page-flipping and embed links, audio, video and Web-like presentation to their desktop presentation. A browser-like interface allows interchanges with the publisher's customer service capability. Great stuff for print publishers trying to adapt to an electronic environment in a way that makes sense within well-established print business models.

But does this really make sense from a content consumers' perspective? 3Path gives each publisher a presence on a desktop via a branded icon within which lies the body of the desktop publication. In other words, each publication appears as a little island of content, cut off from any ability of the user to collate it, assemble it into a larger library of useful personal and external content objects, to enhance it or to share the content with others within the bounds of licensing and reuse standards. In their strident efforts to maintain existing methods of capturing and maintaining subscribers within established performance measurement metrics publishers are missing out on opportunities to use desktop presences as new leverage points for providing value to both their subscribers and their advertisers. What if, for example, an article from that desktop presence in the hands of an implementer could be forwarded to a person with purchasing authority? What an opportunity to slot in a whole new ad regime and marketing approach. What if the content in downloaded digital payloads could be revisited and refreshed regularly with new content, interactivity and functionality as a core element of the subscription package? What if, as with RSS, publisher feeds could be easily re-syndicated to new audiences in rights-restricted formats that could be activated on the recipients' desktops as more full-blown digital services?

Cadmus and other services such as Zinio are doing a good job of servicing publishers trying to leverage more value from their print model on desktops, but they'll be far better served by moving to flip their models and to help publishers to deliver "electronic-first" premium payloads to users that are well-adapted to the power of individuals as agents in the publishing process. Out of those payloads can come print-friendly presentations and even custom print products (want to have a finger in the bidding for a self-designed magazine before it's printed?). We see hints of this in Cadmus' 3Path, but the hints need to become less subtle for publishers to catch up with the shifting value of user-managed content.

If ever there were some doubt that the open source movement will have an impact on the publishing industry one need only take a look at Wikibooks, a project spun off by the founder of Wikipedia, the open source online encyclopedia. Using the same technology and post-posting jurying of submitted content as Wikipedia, the Wikibooks project intends to build courseware for K-12 curricula in multiple languages over the next several years. As noted in CNET News there are only about 11,000 articles in the database so far, but it's a strong start to what promises to be a significant alternative for school districts trying to stretch their tax dollars effectively. Wikibooks would in effect become a "generic brand" competing against major text publishing houses, much as inexpensive generic drugs compete against major pharmaceutical companies that churn out slightly different and patentable (read: copyrightable) treatments to boost their margins. The difference in publishing, of course, is that there are only so many ways to learn third grade math that would justify all-new textbooks on any regular basis.

Does this harbinger the death of profits in textbook publishing? Hardly so, yet the roads to profit may involve new angles. Open source textbooks may offer smart textbook printing services an opportunity to provide packaging for Wikibooks content to supply school systems wanting hard copies. Then again, if Answers.com can leverage Wikipedia content in a stable of reference materials, who's to say that Answers.com cannot become clever repackagers of open source and copyrighted course materials that complement their reference product - a product that is already popular in school systems. There's nothing wrong with healthy margins, but it is going to become increasingly hard for textbook publishers to design those margins focused on older content production, packaging and monetization regimes. Yet again, copyright is not going to be a protection for content that's not truly unique or cost-effective.

Classified Intelligence Announces That Google Shops for Classified Providers
Wikibooks takes on textbook industry
Media Firms Dig Into War Chests For Latest Assault on the Internet
Informative Announces Brand Advocacy Blogs That Transform Weblogs Into Valuable Feedback Channel
Internet not eating into TV as it remains the '800lb gorilla' in age of media multi-tasking
PR professionals find blogs threatening: survey
Fairchild Says It Will Close 2 Magazines
Proquest Offering 2000+ Medical e-Books From MyiLibrary
FAST Selected by FirstGov.gov to Bring Enterprise Search Functionality to Content Management
CCH Capital Changes to Provide IRS With Research for Verifying Taxpayer Capital Gains and Losses
Loudeye Teams With Qpass on Integrated Mobile Media Services
Elsevier MDL Logistics 1.0 Manages Chemical Reagent Procurement and Inventory Tracking Needs
FAST Technology to Bring Superior Search to Amp'd Mobile

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Marshall out as CMP CEO; Weitzner takes over
A Consolidation at Condé Nast Gives Magazines One Overseer
Google says size matters less, drops search boasts
Google Video Integrates Media Player
Corporate bloggers act as online outlets for company information
Pharma and Biotech Companies Turning to Content Management for Compliance Needs
Johnston explores future of digital journalism in new partnership
What is a 'River of News' style aggregator?
Alacra Adds Newstex Newsfeeds with PeopleTickering to surface news stories about people in the news
Wilcox & Wilcox, P.C. Announces New Divorce & Family Law Blog
Dow Jones Launches Dow Jones Wealth Manager Direct to Serve Branch Offices & Independent Advisers
JupiterResearch Finds Only 7% of Mobile Subscribers Willing to Pay for Local Search on their Cell Phone
Handango Unveils InHand v2.0 for BlackBerry and Palm OS Phones, Announces New Licensees
GlobalSpec, The Engineering Search Engine, Indexing Millions of Pages of Research and Reference Content
Interwoven Delivering Most Advanced Social Network Discovery and Content Categorization Capabilities
TMP and ReachLocal Partner to Offer ReachLocal's Turnkey Advertising Platform to TMP's Customers
Blast Radius Accelerates XML Adoption with Launch of XMetaL(R) Author DITA Edition Authoring Solution
Thomson Names Managing Director for Global Accounts

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News: Moreover picks a suitor . . .
Online local advertising forecast to surge 26% this year
Microsoft Plans to Sell Search Ads of Its Own
Search and Sell: Google Training Ad Agencies on Using Sponsored Links
China tightens noose with new Web rules
PC Law is bought; CompuLaw is sued
Six Apart "Ups the Ante" for Weblogging
TechTarget Debuts Branding and Measurement Programs
PubSub launches new LinkRanks service
New Release of Factiva Public Figures & Associates Provides Enhanced Anti-Laundering Compliance
Mirror Image Brings Rollover Pricing to Content Delivery Industry
mophone(TM) Introduces Peer-Driven Discovery Platform for Mobile Content
Yahoo! Finance Introduces Exclusive Columns From Nation's Leading Financial Experts
Autonomy and NetLibrary to Provide Libraries With an Improved Learning Environment
Handmark(R) Partners with Tele Atlas for Wireless Services Map Data
Thomson Launches MMD Trade Tracker for the Municipal Bond Market
StoredIQ Joins Google Enterprise Professional Program for Classification and Management Solution
Vignette Launches Enterprise Learning Unit to Help Clients Meet Compliance, Regulatory Requirements

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As Google prepares to assemble and test a new content distribution network the content industry is caught like a deer in the headlights trying to figure out the implications of this initiative. Is this the beginning of the "Google Grid," that omnipresent publishing environment foreseen in "EPIC 2014", the online sci-fi multimedia presentation that emerged last fall? It could be that and much more if Google succeeds in deploying a network environment that creates a new world of highly localized content monetization. Be prepared for publishing business models to take yet another bumpy ride along the road of change as the "there" of content moves ever further from central control.

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Saying that search engines are not perfect is a bit like saying the sun rises every day: as if we didn't know. But there's oftentimes a tendency to think that Google is the be-all and end-all of search, when most content professionals know that oftentimes there are far better tools for specific purposes. A recent article by Mary Ellen Bates in EContent Magazine disses Google in favor of a new search engine from exalead, a French development team deeply steeped in search sciences. Exalead has a lot of very interesting state-of-the-art features to assist searchers. In honor of a French favorite I tried the term "baguette" as a search with interesting results: screen grab samples of pages, a "related terms" thesaurus that offers some interesting potential search refinements (French baguette? Toasted baguette? Baguette diamond? Sun-dried tomato?) as well as related categories, Web site locations and document types. Lots of "best practices" thinking is evidenced in the very friendly interface. But the search results themselves...?

First up out of 176,825 results on exalead is a site "baguette.com" that is just a domain name up for sale, second is an article in German on baguettes, third is an article on putting Stilton, an English cheese, on a baguette, fourth is an article on salade nicoise, fifth a baguette handbag, and so on. Why am I not impressed? On the other hand, Google's search on "baguette" turns up first out of 2,470,000 results a nifty article that defines and gives the history of baguettes with lots of facts and statistics. Second through fourth are popular restaurants and bakeries using the word, fifth is a site focusing on baguette diamonds. Google ads feature bakeries, diamond merchants and handbags. Try a similar search with the more American term "French bread" and exalead returns lots of recipes using baguettes, while Google returns great photos of French bread and a great article on French bread, along with the original article on baguettes down the page after a few recipes for baking and using French bread.

Exalead has a very well designed product whose strengths may become more evident once they crawl more content, but this little test is a simple example of how best practices in design don't always yield best results with search products. Search navigation tools remain very important, especially for finite collections of content that can be traversed more easily via a taxonomy. But in the relatively infinite environment of content on the open Web, search becomes less of a tool for researching possible answers from known high-quality sources and more of a tool to find out how other researchers have found the best "good enough" answer out of that infinite pool of possible answers. Put simply, most people don't like browsing and fiddling to get answers, no matter how sophisticated the interface. This is why the link evaluation methodology and other aspects of the Google search algorithm remain important factors for tuning us into the intelligent opinions of other searchers. No algorithm frozen in time is more intelligent than people who understand the context and use of content in its full dimensions that shift with the evolving human experience. It's a concept that powers everything from search engines to weblogs to stock rating services. Congratulations on exalead for a great Beta product - that hopefully becomes aligned with the content sets and users most suited for its strengths.

The Web as a Platform: Microsoft's nightmare inches closer to reality
Google Launches Enterprise Partner Program
Ad Spending in China Grew 20% in First Half
Mary Meeker on China's Online Future
U.S. News & World Report to Shift Focus to the Web
We the Bloggers...
Aha! Video Straight to a Computer
Google WiFi hints are on Web
Primedia announces management changes in content division
MetaMatrix Joins Google Enterprise Professional Program
Endeavor Voyager 5.0 library management system increases patron-facing functionality and privacy
Safari Books Online Adds Chapter Downloads to Corporate E-Reference Libraries

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Google builds an empire to rival Microsoft
TimesSelect value adds...with blogs?
Web Giants Face Issues In Content
The Media World Will Never, Ever, Be The Same
Breaking Views Taking The Wall Street Journal route to crack America
New Search Engine From Microsoft Gets Cool Welcome
NetSnippets: A New Approach to Sharing Web Research
Have you StumbledUpon this?
Tool aims to ease academic file-sharing
To Find a Doctor, Mine the Data
Internet deals: A tangled Web
Paid Search Expected to Outpace Display By 2010
Data Depth Launches iCopyright Conductor
Gather.com Website for Public Radio Listeners Introduces Earnings-based Model for Posters
Thomson Legal & Regulatory Appoints New CEO for Australia, NZ
Thomson Financial Introduces Secure Online Communication Tool for Corporate Board Members
Stellent Extends Content Management To Non-Records Information

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Search is rapidly evolving beyond the HTML pages indexed by Google, Yahoo and the other general purpose search engines. This well attended presentation at the first Search SIG (Special Interest Group) for the SDForum, a leading nonprofit for the technology community in Silicon Valley, highlighted emerging companies providing the infrastructure for audio search. Appropriately enough, the program, with the usual tech pizza, was held at the Sunnyvale campus of Yahoo, which released Yahoo Audio Search in August, to mixed reviews, primarily related to issues of available metadata, not the technology. Unlike text which already contains words, audio needs tags to be "findable" and and it's that process that is in its infancy. Audio music needs artist, album and lyrics at the very minimum, while podcasts need dates, station and show identifiers just as a radio program would be cataloged.

Doug Kaye, the Poderator, led the panel in discussing the companies and their business models, as well as issues inherent in the media. Doug's organization is ITConversations, a non-profit based on volunteers who do the sound engineering and editing to provide "listener supported audio programs, interviews and important events", a worthy cause recruiting experienced assistants. Eric Rice, founder of AudioBlog has a positive cash flow by providing basic tools--for $4.95 a month, anyone can be a blogger, pundit, podcaster or rockstar, requiring minimal time, equipment and technical skills. Equipment is as simple as a telephone or mobile phone, plus a blog! Business models were not as clear for the other two startups, since they intend to become advertising based, but do not yet have a defined audience. Loomia , represented by David Marks, Founder/CEO is an aggregator of podcasts and videocasts. Their model is the community of interest, which has recommendations and personalization features, to be supported by future advertising. Odeo, represented by Ev Williams, Founder/CEO is still in beta and focused on podcasting, for both aggregating subscriptions and Odeo Studio to provide tools for creating podcasts.

The good news in audio is that the production costs are dropping rapidly, more tools are becoming available, and the compression is better. Coupled with the increase in broadband access in homes, user generated content is growing rapidly. Yet, there are still thorny intellectual property issues, such as music licensed to NPR that can't be included in ITConversations audio. Jeff Harms, Yahoo Audio Search, clearly articulated the challenges of aggregating audio from different sources, each with their own metadata scheme, if it exists at all. There is already a relatively orderly set of identifiers which exist for books and print publications, so utilizing the resources of the highly regarded institution just down Highway 101 at San Jose State University School of Library and Information Sciences would greatly benefit the world of audio searching!

Writers Sue Google, Accusing It of Copyright Violation
New York Times to lay off 500
Microsoft reorg a bulwark against Google?
RSS Users Visit Three Times as Many News Web Sites as Non-Users, According to Nielsen//NetRatings
Google's Own Private Internet
MobVision Launch Promotional Tool - Push!
Comtex SmarTrend(SM) Alerts Selected by Track Data for Business Research Engine
Wolters Kluwer Health to Package New Therapeutic Insights & Review with Hospital Pharmacy
Vivisimo and RAND Offer Clustered Enterprise Search
Siemens Uses 3M Medical Necessity Content to Boost Medicare Compliance and Reimbursement
Knovel Enhances Semiconductor & Electronics Subject Area with Valuable New Content
LexisNexis Accurint Business Provides Due Diligence On Small Business Customers, Vendors and Partners
LexisNexis(R) Martindale-Hubbell(R) Makes Available Free Marketing Toolkit to Help Small Law Firms Grow
Reed Smith Deploys LexisNexis Market Intelligence to Improve Business Development & Client Service

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In the latest confrontation with Google's library scanning efforts, The New York Times reports on a new lawsuit against Google that includes as plaintiffs The Authors' Guild, which claims "massive" copyright infringement by Google through their Google Print program. Here we go again. The questions on Google's program continue to revolve around "fair use" guidelines for permitted copying without prior a