“The Open Content Alliance is an unusual alliance of corporations, nonprofit groups and universities who have an ambitious plan to digitize hundreds of thousands of books over the next several years and put them on the Internet, with the full text accessible to anyone. The effort is being led by Yahoo, which appears to be taking direct aim at a similar project announced by its archrival, Google, whose own program to create searchable digital copies of entire collections at leading research libraries has run into a series of challenges since it was announced nine months ago. ” writes Peter DaSilva for the New York Times.
Well I’m sorry Yahoo but WHO CARES, Project Gutenberg has been doing this for over 20 years. Project Gutenberg is the oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet. The collection was produced by hundreds of volunteers. and I suspect that they will be doing long after your press release and “Me too” has long been forgotten.
Instead of wasting time trying to outGoogle Google, why don’t you throw some of your resources behind some of the stuff like Project Gutenberg. You know, earn some cred instead of just buying it.
Update: When I first wrote this they hadn’t released Yahoo! Podcasts,
Yahoo! has made a big splash today with their launch of Yahoo! Podcasts. Yahoo! Podcasts combines Yahoo!’s existing podcast search with a podcast directory featuring “Most Popular” lists, “New and Noteworthy” podcasts,” and tag- and category-based browsing. I went to it I typed in tartan (tartan podcasts is a specialist in Scottish indy music that I have mentioned before) and there it was. User rankings as well. This is much more like it and I dont have to install the iTunes software to use it. Pretty Cool guys.