Jon Udell of Microsoft recently referred back to a quote from Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, who stated the following in response to a question about RDF and the Semantic Web:
“Look, putting angle brackets around things is not a technology, by itself. I’d rather make progress by having computers understand what humans write, than by forcing [...]

I’m still getting used to corporate lingo and ways of doing things. Frankly I often try to suppress the instinct to roll my eyes with a lot of it because there is quite a bit of nonsense in it. Or else corporate types run around looking earnest and thinking they’re inventive by using [...]

Several times over the past year or so, I have offered up criticisms of OCLC. OCLC is a staple of the library world, especially here in the U.S., but its reach is global and it is expanding all the time. The simplest or most concise way of expressing my criticisms is to say [...]

A few people including Sarah Houghton-Jan (Librarian in Black) and Carol Ou commented on a recent post I wrote comparing OCLC to Microsoft. Roy Tennant responded to this post on the hangingtogether blog, written by former RLG - now OCLC employees. Roy also responded to Carol Ou’s idea about FRBRizing local library catalog [...]

I have yet to standardize on one, single way to post to this blog. I never seem to find the perfect fit — if there is such a thing. And maybe it is ok to use multiple ways to post. Some of the editors and/or posting methods I’ve used include the following:

Log [...]

Recently Roy Tennant joined OCLC and explained his reasons for taking this step in a post on the Library Journal: Digital Libraries blog. Roy is someone whom I admire and respect, a visionary and great communicator about technology and libraries. He has done, and continues to do, a huge amount of great things.
When I saw [...]

I just came across an insightful article by Michael Calore of Wired News that describes his attempt to transition away from desktop-based office applications in favor of Google’s web-based applications. Mainly this involved switching from tools like Microsoft Word in favor of Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets web application. See the link at the [...]

A belated note that UKSG has a conference blog open for their annual conference and they are already reporting some good summaries of conference presentations from today’s session (today is the start of the conference). Check it out at http://liveserials.blogspot.com/index.html. I was particularly interested to read the summary of the opening session featuring [...]

From the Joel on Software Blog comes an interesting quote comparing Microsoft to Google:
“A very senior Microsoft developer who moved to Google told me that Google works and thinks at a higher level of abstraction than Microsoft. ‘Google uses Bayesian filtering the way Microsoft uses the if statement,’ he said. That’s true. Google also uses [...]

I couldn’t agree more with David Pogue’s description in his New York Times column of the “stealth benefit” of the new iMac G5, OS X, as “rock solid.” Mentioned in MacMinute. It really amazes me that more people aren’t clued into the fact that OS X, as Pogue says, is “100 percent free [...]