Sorry About That Cease and Desist Letter...

…or, the return of Michael S. Cox…

Remember that post I wrote a while back about how I asked Michael S. Cox if he was a spammer, and his response was (basically), "You're ugly"?

That got me irritated and put up a rant entitled Michael S. Cox is a spammer. A number of you (according to Google, a large number of you) linked to it.

Now, he's sending out cease and desist letters, not just to me, but (so far as I can tell) to everyone he can find who linked here and whose email address he can find. I've written up the current status at Michael S. Cox is a spammer, Part 2.

My apologies for anyone who got dragged into this, and although I am not a lawyer, my best guess is that you can just ignore his email.

Update: sadly, here's Michael S. Cox Is A Spammer, Part 3.

Still Smells Like Crap

I never liked Nirvana. I thought (still do) that Kurt Cobain was a pathetic excuse for a musician and songwriter, not to mention a drugged-out loser. Bad singing, stupid lyrics, mostly unmemorable music. So when he achieved Rock Apotheosis by the cowardly act of blowing off his head, I was unaffected by the wailing about the "tragedy." Plus he unleashed Courtney Love upon the world, which is right up there with war crimes, in my book.

For Nirvana, parody (by Weird Al and others) was, I thought, a fitting tribute. The latest one I've seen is the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain with their rendition of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I commend it because you can now actually understand the lyrics. Which doesn't make them any less stupid or incomprehensible.

(Via that Paul Music guy. Again. Jeez, someone show this guy how to set up a blog of his own.)

Welcome to the Cult of Apple

All hail, my Apple brethren and sistren: iCryptex.com. See it before it gets the Apple cease-and-desist letter!

Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers

I really enjoyed this video on YouTube: Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers. "Ever wonder what it would be like if the cast of Stomp lived in your apartment? This short will give you some idea."

(Via Paul Music.)

Apple "accidently" releases "Dashcode"

Via DashboardWidgets.com comes the news that Apple accidently released "Dashcode".

Like others with an interest in Dashboard Widgets, I'd been hearing rumors about this app for most of the last year. Based on my quick look, it's (1) a very cool little development app that makes creating widgets extremely easy, and (2) buggier than hell.

Hey, Apple: ever thought about inviting some people who know something about the technology to be part of a beta program? Just a thought…

The Scanning Scam

First off, let me say that I for one am thrilled that Nancy Ruenzel has written her first blog post. Go read it. We think that anything and everything she says is worth paying attention to (and not only because she sends us checks from time to time) and we're looking forward to reading a lot more posts from her.

But, on to the meat: I'm sick and tired of this whole "We'll scan the entire printed book world and then we'll have access to all knowedge" crap that too many smart people are buying into.

A lot of authors are against the Google Book Search (aka Google Library) because they believe that it infringes on their rights. While I can understand that, that's not my issue; far from it, in fact. I agree with both the goals and the theory. The problem is the practice.

A recent article, Scan This Book! by Kevin Kelly in the New York Times Magazine, just displayed the problem again. It's all about the theory with no regard for how things work here in the real world.

You want a real world test of how it works? Let's say that I'm trying to create a list of all books in English that reference us or our books. Here you go:

• Search Google Book Search for the terms dori negrino.

That search returns four books: "JavaScript for the WWW: Visual QuickStart Guide," "Mac OS X Unwired," "Mac OS X Panther Hacks" (in French), and "Frontpage 2002: Kompakt, komplett, kompetent" (in German). Useful results: zero.

Now, try this search:

• Search Google Book Search for the terms don negrino.

Sixteen books returned: the two of ours above, neither of the foreign language books, plus "HTML for the WWW: Visual Quickstart Guide," "PHP Advanced for the WWW: Visual QuickPro Guide," "Head First Java," "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual," "Mac OS X Panther Hacks" (in English this time), "Learning Web Design," "Online Broadcasting Power!," "Dreamweaver 4 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide," "QuarkXpress 5 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide," "Internet for Macs for Dummies," and "Web Development With Sas by Example." Useful results: eleven.

So, what's the difference, besides that the second search was useful and the first useless? The answer is that scanning sucks. The best OCR software available looks at the word "Dori," and says to itself, "I don't know this word. My best guess is that it's a first name, and 'ri' is often confused with 'n,' and 'Don' is a common first name, so I'll just use 'Don' in place of "Dori." That makes perfect sense, in theory. In practice, if you notice, it doesn't work.

No, this isn't just about finding me. It's about how the OCR software and/or its dictionary just isn't good enough for real world use. Here's a search for books that mention HTNL: over 1000 results. Twelve books show up that mention 'right-dkk'. And so on.

The big problem is that there's no motivation for Google to go back and re-scan all those books periodically. So, if you have an uncommon name, or the scanning process didn't work well for your text, or you want to search on a word that's almost like something in the dictionary… well, you're out of luck. And so are your grandchildren.

Tags Don't Work, #3 in a series

Okay, this is probably more a Flickr bug than a general "tags don't work" issue, but can someone tell me why none of these photos (all tagged 'webstock') show up in this search for all photos tagged webstock?

And yes, this does mean that I've made it to Webstock, so if you read this blog, please keep an eye out for me and say hello!