John Menick

Scott Kirsner — columnist, blogger and author of Inventing the Movies — speaking to the folks at Google. I’ve been meaning to read Inventing the Movies for a couple of weeks now. It’s one of the few books I know of tracing the technological advancements in the movie industry. More accurately, it looks at Hollywood’s frequent inability to understand those advancements. Kirsner, in both the talk and the book, gleefully points out that most technological advancements were resisted by the industry: first sound, then color, VCRs, digital editing, and now digital projection and online video. It’s worth a look.

I’ve rarely blogged about code-related technology here, but in an effort to break with my own insignificant tradition, I want to add to the chorus of voices decrying the discontinuation of the Google SOAP search API. Not only is the SOAP API going bye-bye, but it’s AJAX replacement is abysmal. Please, Google, bring it back. I’ve installed the SOAP API on every Web site I’ve worked on since Google released it, and now, when I was about to do so again, you’ve gone and discontinued it.

Why is the new code inadequate? Oh, let me count the ways:

1) I love the ads. Cute. My non-profit clients will love them too. How can we turn them off without a clumsy CSS solution? Can someone get back to this guy? He asked his question in October of last year.

2) Formatting? Anyone? Is anyone there? Can someone please update that “Coming soon” in the developer’s guide.

3) Most clients want text (i.e. web) searches of their sites. They couldn’t care less about video or news. Why does it seem like all the developer documents foreground everything except web search.

4) And, oh yeah: Why AJAX? AJAX is wonderful, if you surf the Web with javascript enabled, and if you can install any browser you want on your machine… but these two things aren’t always possible, hence, a broken search page. Why is this thing only in AJAX?

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to spend some time fooling around with an AJAX-based API for search. I would even spend some time messing with one in alpha let alone beta version, but please, Google, if you are going to replace a great product, replace it with one that at least has a complete instruction manual. Otherwise, Yahoo beckons…

While researching something in the OED today, I noticed a posting to the hallowed publication’s site informing us that the editors have, well, updated the English language.

It’s a weird bunch of updates overall. Some triumphs for tech: nanobot, Google, Chowhound, and hacktivism. Some bizarre omissions: Italian-American, usual suspects, codec, close-caption, and fucking (adj., adv., and int.). Some just bizarre: bouncebackability, autobiopic, and, um, rug muncher. Yeah, okay… here is the rest of the list, for the complete list (including word types) follow the link above:

401(k), adware, agri, air kiss, amaretto, Amarone, anacronym, andropause, animateur, anoraky, asylee, autobiopic, automagically, backlist, backlisted, backlisting, bad taste, bashment, Biosteel, bivvy, body-surf, body-surfing, bouncebackability, bourgie, brewmaster, Brillo, broker, Cadbury code, calzone, canyoning, carpet muncher, catfight, chav, chavvy, cheesesteak, chib, chib, chile mulato, chip and PIN, choanderm, chowhound, clocked, clocking, clocking, close-caption, close-captioning, codec, counterterrorism, counterterrorism, crunk, Cullen Skink, cybrarian, cybrary, diddy diddy, digicam, distractability, distractable, doobrey, dotcom, dromaeosaur, dromaeosaurid, DVD, ecotoxic, ecotoxiicity, Energizer bunny, engine room, euonym, fakelore, faux, feel-bad, flat-share, flat-sharer, flat-sharing, flightseeing, focaccia, freakazoid, free energy, fucking, FYI, geno-, geocache, geocaching, Gibbs, Google, go-to, grinch, gut-buster, gynocentric, gynocentrism, hacktivism, hacktivist, Hall of shame, halloumi, ho-bag, Hold ‘Em, houseshare, housesharer, housesharing, iconify, infantilize, inner sanctum, irie, Italian-American, J-cloth, just war, Kalamata, keepy-up, keepy-uppy, limited-over, love-struck, Macarena, Mackem, mash-up, mesohyl, nadger, nanobot, off book, on book, out of place, PG, reimagine, resveratrol, rewriteable, route one, rug muncher, screenable, self-storage, semi-skimmed, skatepunk, soirée musicale, Speedo, squoval, Stanley knife, Subbeteo, super-max, super-maximum, tee, texting, text message, Tripitaka, uninstall, usual suspects, Utahraptor, Velociraptor, vert, vibe, vice grip, voddy, Walter Mitty, Walter Mittyish, wazoo, win-win, yada yada

Since finishing The Disappearance three years ago, I’ve been casually collecting all things related to the city of Nuremberg. Also a fan of Google Earth, two interests intersected today with this bizarre post from Google Earth Hacks. It seems that there is a massive model car racetrack near the rally fields that is so large it’s visible 1373 feet. An essay on architectural scale waiting to happen.

Kevin Kelly’s article in the Times spends a refreshingly long time considering the epistemological consequences of Google Book Search before skidding headlong into the inevitable brick wall of US copyright laws. Yes, as Brewster Kahle exclaims, “This is our chance to one-up the Greeks!” But, as Kahle would be the first to admit, the Greeks didn’t have our copyright laws, and they definitely didn’t have our multinational corporations.

Google isn’t the library of Alexandria either. It’s a massive, publicly-trade corporation, and, depending on how one looks at it, Google is at heart a tech workshop, but at pocket an advertising company. Despite the mountains of money, Google’s business philosophy continues to be confused with that of a non-profit corporation. For some reason, journalists have taken its unofficial-official slogan, “Don’t be evil,” seriously, and projects like Google Book Search are gauged by their ethical, not economical, merits. Whether it was intended or not by Google execs, this pared-down ethical mantra is perhaps the greatest marketing move of the last decade. Journalists of all backgrounds genuinely seem to believe that the simplistic ethical intentions of a few highly educated executives will drive a company away from, say, censoring its search engine in China, or blackballing the journalists at CNET. Google? Evil? But they said they wouldn’t be…

Everything makes sense though when one accepts the basic fact that Google is a for-profit, publicly traded corporation. Google is not mission driven. It’s profit driven. Avoiding profit for the sake of the tastes of a few individuals would most likely be illegal, just as in the case of a non-profit making a profit from a means outside its mission statement would threaten its existence. That’s not to say that Google has adopted the rapacious practices of its predecessor Microsoft. But it sure looks poised to do so. And although the intentions of publishers who have taken Google to court can also be questioned, even the most extreme fair use advocates can’t help but see their point. If one understands that Google is out to make money, why should it then have a right to scan another corporation’s books, even if those books are ‘orphaned?’ Similarly, the relation becomes troublesome even if one takes into account the proposal by Google to only use a ‘snippet’ of a text. The entire book still sits scanned, indexed and ready to use on hard drives in some vast server farmer, and could potential be used or misused at any time in the future, regardless of what this year’s contract says.

A similar argument can be made concerning the information Google stores on each of its millions of users. No mission statement will prevent the Google privacy statement from being changed (all can be), or the data from being stolen, sold, or secretly slipped to the authorities. Many commentators believed that Google’s denying of their search stats to Congress had more to do with protecting the secret formula than their user’s privacy. And that’s if you trust Google. If they are anything like the airline companies, they could be telling their customers one thing, and the authorities something very different.