Mediagazer: How Google Counted The World's 129 Million Books (Mark Brown/Epicenter)

6:10 PM ET, August 8, 2010

Top News:

TBD.com making its move into the crowded market of local news — TBD.com — odd name, but let's move on — is a new all-local news Web site that seems to be the answer to a question that no one has really been asking: Do media-saturated Washington and its environs need yet another source …

Discussion: The Solomon Scandals and Romenesko

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

10 Reasons to Watch Next Week's TBD Launch — For a multimedia site, TBD showed some media savvy, lining up a media briefing today, complete with visuals, numerous staffers and a sampling of local bloggers who've joined the TBD Community Network. — You'll find several good write-ups on TBD today.

Discussion: BuzzMachine, paidContent and Romenesko

Steve Myers / Poynter Online:

Four Key Questions that TBD Could Answer about Online News — TBD, the new local news site run by the company that brought you Politico, and led by ex-Washington Post online head Jim Brady, will launch next week. On Friday, Brady and other top staff outlined their editorial and business strategy …

Jim Harper / Wall Street Journal:

It's Modern Trade: Web Users Get as Much as They Give — If you surf the web, congratulations! You are part of the information economy. Data gleaned from your communications and transactions grease the gears of modern commerce. Not everyone is celebrating, of course.

Discussion: Technology Liberation Front and Rough Type

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Inside the Numbers: How Demand Media Will Pitch a Billion Dollar IPO — Demand Media is a money-losing company. How will it convince Wall Street to value it at a billion dollars or more? — By directing investors' attention to a set of numbers which say it's a very profitable company.

Discussion: Beet.TV and MediaPost

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

Demand Media's IPO: The Google & SEO Aspects — Demand Media has filed for an IPO. The company, known as a content farm to some, produces much of its content on sites like eHow and others in direct response to what it determines people are searching for on the web.

Discussion: CNET News and All Facebook

Chris Thilk / AdAge:

Is Hollywood Suffering From Clip Overload? — Studios May Have Unwittingly Created a ‘Freemium’ Model With Extended Looks at Releases — Have you seen the seven or eight extended clips from “The Sorcerer's Apprentice”? Did you watch the seven or eight that were released in advance of “Despicable Me”?

Discussion: NewTeeVee

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg / Wall Street Journal:

Mass Paperback Publisher Goes All Digital — As digital books continue to gain market share, one of the country's oldest mass paperback publishers is abandoning its traditional print books and making its titles available in digital format and print-on-demand only.

MG Siegler / TechCrunch:

Nicholas Negroponte: The Physical Book Is Dead In 5 Years — Today at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA, CNBC's Maria Bartiromo sat down with a panel including Bill Joy, Kevin Kelly, Nicholas Negroponte, and Willie Smits. The topic was basically the future of technology.

Discussion: TeleRead, The Next Web and Future Tense

Mark Brown / Epicenter:

How Google Counted The World's 129 Million Books — In a blog post published this week, search mammoth Google explained the deep and thoroughly elaborate algorithm used by its literary offshoot, Google Books, to count just how many books exist in the world, right now.

Discussion: Brave New World and Publishers Marketplace

Newsweek:

Farewell, Libraries? — Amazon's report that e-books are outselling hardcovers means book collections—personal and public—are about to get a drastic makeover. — Books vs. E-Books: Click here to read related content — Amazon.com's recent announcement that sales of e-books …

Discussion: TeleRead and Personanondata

Aaron Cohen / kottke.org:

Kurt Vonnegut's advice to young writers — “Don't use semicolons. They stand for absolutely nothing. They are transvestite hermaphrodites. They are just a way of showing off. To show that you have been to college.” — Did you know Vonnegut's daughter was divorced from Geraldo Rivera in 1974?

Discussion: Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog