In December 2001, I started an email distribution list, “Eszter’s List“, with links to what I considered interesting Web sites and occasional musings on whatever I felt was worth a comment or two. I had been inspired by Phil Agre’s Red Rock Eater News Service. Phil sent out great batches of URLs. Of course, today, with millions of bloggers taking part in something similar it all sounds trite. But I continue to maintain the list – granted, the traffic has been extremely low recently -, because many of its subscribers don’t read blogs. There is still something to be said for the push aspect of email. Of course, for all I know, every one of the 500+ subscribers is just deleting my messages. But judging from the feedback, people still find it useful.

I have been trying to figure out a good way to archive the links. I used to post them on a Web page, but that was tedious. Eventually I realized that it would make sense to apply the convenience of blogging software to my list. I have set up the archives of the list using WordPress. Now it’s easily searchable. Previously that feature required a login.

Enjoy. And keep sending me interesting links!

Here’s a nice little online tool to help figure out how much $X from a given year would be worth today in terms of its purchasing power. [Hat tip: NeatNew]

Did you know that you can get excerpts from books and other material otherwise not online by searching on Google Print?

You can search using this feature of Google by adding the following bit to your search query: site:print.google.com.

Example:
site:print.google.com chocolate mousse

This query yields a list of resources with all sorts of excerpts from books that talk about chocolate mousse, including some full recipes.

It’s unclear how copyright owners are/will be reacting to this. You would think as long as the excerpt is just an excerpt and the page includes a link to online book retailers where users can then purchase the book they would embrace it. It may be a bit more complicated with magazines as copies of those for sale are usually not just a click away.