Great Google Goes from Search Engine to Mural Conservancy

Personal details of world leaders accidentally revealed by G20 organisers Guardian. Schadenfreude alert. ABC News, The Top Tax Question on Google Will Surprise You Another blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

Google Goes from Search Engine to Mural Conservancy How the internet giant is helping to catalog thousands of pieces of street art before they disappear forever “Billed as a ‘go-to daily source for all the news, ideas, and richness of contemporary literary life,’ Literary Hub promises curated and original content such as interviews, profiles and essays.” Its founder, Grove Atlantic president Morgan Entrekin, wants LitHub.com to be “salvation rather than competition for the numerous literary Web sites already grasping for eyeballs.” Washington Post  “Now that amateur autobiography and its detractors are everywhere, autobiographical writers are increasingly invested in defining and defending the value of their work. How can it escape the gravitational pull of solipsism? For a growing number of essayists, memoirists, and other wielders of the unwieldy ‘I,’ confessional has become an unwelcome label—an implicit accusation of excessive self-absorption, of writing not just about oneself but for oneself.” The Atlantic  “The rise of corporate capitalism, and the astonishing, almost exponential rate of its recent acceleration, I would argue, present a huge challenge to the writer, forcing him or her to rethink their whole role and function, to remap their entire universe.” The Guardian  Finally, we know how many bloggers live in their parents’ basement Washington Post. I have to tell you, this is one of the lamest analyses I’ve seen in a long time. I assume it is meant to be tongue in cheek but the writing is so flat that it comes off as serious. It bizarrely assume very intermittent tweets and the use of Facebook is blogging. Plus a pet Google factoid (from Blogger) is that the average number of readers of a blog is….one. As in the overwhelming majority of blogs that set out to be blogs (and Blogger is such a feature-poor tool that it is unlikely that someone would use it for anything other than blogging) never reach an audience beyond their creator.