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Google Betas Google Print
Chronic Infection writes "Google is beta testing a book search service called
Google Print. Here is a list of books included to date." Quick spot checking turned up excerpts like this one for The DaVinci Code, a great book if you haven't read it.
Quote from Google Print FAQ: During this trial, publishers' content is hosted by Google and is ranked in our search results according to the same technology we use to evaluate websites.
Now I wonder how this is done. Google's PageRank uses links from other pages to rank results - but in usual books there aren't any "hyperlinks".
Could anyone offer me insight into this? - thanks!
"...a great book if you haven't read it."
I cant resist asking:
So how great is it if you did read it?
This is simply amazing. First it's amazing that publishers are allowing such a thing. It's also amazing to imagine what we only be in the immediate future for all of us. Knowledge at our fingertips, from web sites, and now from online books whose publishers realize that many, many people will read parts online but will want to purchase a dead tree to read the whole book.
I know Amazon did this first, but I love to see Google taking up the idea. Google is simply my favorite company in the world. They don't take crap from (mostly) anyone, and they run Linux across the board. They are an undeniable force.
It may be risky, but I for one will be investing in Google the moment they release their stock. This is a terrific company and the people that are running it are terrifically smart!
This is definitely a step in the right directions, but it's just that - a step. I'd really love to have access to a digital library (d.l.) in much the same I have access to one in the real world. I wonder if Ben Franklin came under as severe commercial pressure as those who are trying to push for a digital library available to all?
"If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit." - Mitch Hedberg
Most of the alleged "excerpts" are nothing of the sort. They're just bibliographic entries.
This would be a really useful service if they could distinguish between the books that have *actual* excerpts and those which just had descriptions, TOCs, etc.
Not really related to Google directly, but still useful. In a user .css file (you can specify it in IE's accessibility options or Opera, or use userContent.css in your Mozilla/Firebird profile chrome directory): .readerImage {
display: inline !important;
}
That's it. Really simple.
Currently there are 52 books in this database. (Use this google search)
But it is an interesting idea. And might yield more useful results for information seeing as the bar for publishing a book is a little higher than getting a webpage listed in google.
...another step to sentience. Don't tell me I didn't warn you when Google starts taking over the world and starts creating robotic assassins...
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
At this point, we all know Google uses pigeonrank technology.
While your post might have been valid a few years ago, ever since Google told us the real secret, it's hard to believe some people still think they use all those fancy algorithms and hyperlinkers.
Wow, you obviously haven't read the book. It has absolutely nothing to do with the so-called "Bible Code," which I'll agree is utter rubbish. "The daVinci Code" is fiction...so I suppose you're right, it's not true.
Head down, go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums...
The DaVinci Code is not really all that good. The basic premise is fascinating, and the euthor may or may not be very knowledgeable about his subject matter, but the story itself is just too full with very tired thriller cliches - I mean, a six-foot tall Albino as the immediate villain? Please. /Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I just looked at the excerpt of "The Partner, Large Print Edition" but unfortunately the font was the same as for all the other books.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
They were not as detailed as this or as comprehensive but if this actually gets going, it will be an incredible aid to researchers. Currently, only about a small percentage of the information I use is on the web. Most of it is in libraries and research collections and is difficult to access.
This will provide information on which books and papers (if periodicals are included) I need to start getting a hold of for my research.
Man, students these days have it easy!
Out of all the wonderful passages in the Bible, they only included the Inside Flap. Although everyone I know always has a copy somewhere, but - come on - give us more!!! Holy Bible Excerpt
============
Mathematics will always come back to hunt you down, in so many ways
is available with a particularly phrased Google search.
Um, ok 'The Bible Code' and 'The Da Vinci Code' are very different books. The Da Vinci code is not a book that claims that the bible holds secret messages about the future. It is more of a michael crichton-style murder-mystery that brings up a lot of ideas about the bible and religion that most people have not thought of. It does not claim to be a book of facts, more a new spin on topics that really cannot be proven one way or another. It is definatly a worthwhile read, if you are open to the posibility that maybe, just maybe the bible is not a completly factual record.
I have, and really, it's not that great of a book. What makes it a bestseller is that it provides new insights into the Catholic Church, and, in the course of the fiction story, weaves in a good nonfiction tale.
It really is fascinating reading, like proclaiming that the Holy Grail, long thought to be a chalice (see Monty Python and the Holy Grail) is actually the remains of Mary Magdalene, and the quest to find her remains and to pray by them. It also says that with Mary's remains, there are boxes of old documents with proof that the Church was involved in a conspiracy, made Mary out as whore when really she might have been Jesus's wife.
IMHO, I think this book was designed as a nonfiction book first (the story of Mary, etc) and then the fiction part was made up, so to help burn away the ire of the Catholic Church. I hear this book caused quite a stir in the Vatican. The thing that might have saved it was probably that it was styled as a fiction book.
If you want to read some interesting insights into the Catholic Church, read this book. If you're looking for a good fiction title, forget it. You're better off acquiring a copy of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen or something else from the classics.
soon I'll be able to find that lost sock after washing clothes on google.
I have read every Dan Brown book and many Jane Austen books. I don't know why I feel like a pussy when I tell people that I love Jane Austen stories, probably because they are all pretty much the same chick-flick kind of story: a lower-middle class adolescent woman in fear of becoming a spinster finds the right man but he does not reciprocate the interest, so she suffers in silence rather than confess her love for him and when proposed marriage from another well-to-do man, even if it puts her, undeservingly, in the right spot of society, rejects it because her principles do not allow for her to enter into a loveless marriage but it all ends up okay, because the man she loves comes around in the end. Tweak a few details, like in P&P, and you have a Jane Austen story to be sure.
Dan Brown's best book, IMHO, is Digital Fortress. I read it one night between 11:30 and 6:00 AM. I couldn't put it down. It will DEFINITELY cater to this crowd - it's really a great book. If you want to get into DB, I recommend you read them in order - Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons, Deception Point, and Davinci.
If you're looking for Grail lore - check out Holy Blood, Holy Grail. If you're looking for incredible stories about the Catholic Church, check out The Christ Conpiracy.
All, of course, my two cents.
Questia does somthing similar--they've digitized ~60,000 books, chosen by a panel of librarians for their scholarly value (mostly liberal arts titles), and allow full-text searches of the entire library. Questia is marketed as a tool for writing research papers--the service keeps track of what books you've looked at and will automatically build a bibliography and do your citations for you in the format of your choice.
They use an indexing system similar to Google's to keep full-text searches of the library in the sub 1 second range, and the whole thing is pretty slick. Searches are free, and they show the book, publishing info, and the page number of the search result. To actually see the text, though, you have to be a subscriber.
Footnotes and citations are live-linked to their referenced sources, if those sources are in the Questia library, and every book is stored in XML, which keeps the original pagination (including illustrations). A neat side-effect of the XML tagging is that you can search for implicit things (like themes or genre or subgenre) as well as explicit things (keywords). Questia spent the better part of two years securing the rights of each and every book on the service, but it really is a cool idea.
Disclaimer--I worked for Questia for a couple of years, although I left in 2001.
It's hard to tell yet, but the first book I looked at had less information than a libraries card catalog entry would.
That qualifies as advertising. If that happens often, I won't bother to look at them.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Here's a good review and critique that goes into some detail of what's wrong with the book.