Tea with Mr. Tumnus
It snowed about 8 inches this weekend and aside from the hazardous driving conditions, it was quite nice. I had a chance to see the Lion , the Witch and the Wardrobe this weekend and overall, was pleased with the film. I did read the books as a child and I revisited the noble Aslam and his battle with the White Witch with a bag popcorn on Saturday afternoon. My favorite character was the fawn -- Mr Tumnus, and the story resounded themes of courage in the face of adversity , accepting one's calling in life, and boy becoming a man. The special effects were decent as well. Overall I'd give it 3 1/2 stars and that is only because nothing can compare to the film that played in my mind as a boy when I read the book. I also wish they had a bit more character development for Aslam.Do you know that in 1972, researchers put 4 atomic clocks on an airplane and flew it around the world and after the journey, it was found that the times were slightly behind identical clocks on earth. That is one way of proving there is no universal time that permeates the universe. What does exist is relative "time" frame of references associated with observers. Does that mean I can be late for work and blame it on my manager's frame of reference ?
Someone recommended Ram Dass's book "Be Here Now" as a good primer for the awareness movement. I always associated it with the 60's but will certainly put it on my reading wish list.
I read an article on an internet forum about Microsoft forming some sort of alliance with AOL to promote thier search and indexing technologies collaboratively. Currently AOL is using google's search technology and I was considering the implications of just such an alliance to what was left of Netscape ( an AOL holding). If you follow the industry at all -there is alot of irony in Microsoft partnering with the parent company of Netscape Communications considering thier history and the browser wars of 90's. I was patricularly curious what would become of the Open Directory Project and what part, if any, the world's largest human indexed directory of the web (maintained by Netscape-AOL) had to do with all of this. I have been a fan of the project for a long time and am anxious to see how everything develops.Update : Google has released an update regarding the AOL partnership ..
About the AOL announcement
The recent announcement of the AOL partnership has been the source of a lot of rumors and misconceptions. We'd like to clear some of those up.
- Biased results? No way. Providing great search is the core of what we do. Business partnerships will never compromise the integrity or objectivity of our search results. If a partner's page ranks high, it's because they have a good answer to your search, not because of their business relationship with us.
- Indexing more of AOL's content. Our goal is to organize all of the world's information. When we say "all the world's information," this includes AOL's. We're going to work with the webmasters at AOL -- just as we work with webmasters all over the world -- to help them understand how the Google crawler works (with regard to robots.txt, how to use redirects, non-html content, etc.) so we don't inadvertently overlook their content.
- AOL will receive a credit towards advertising purchased through Google's ad program. You might wonder if this will affect the ad auction. It won't. We don't offer preferential treatment on advertising (in either the auction or the display) to any of our partners.
- We have a service called "onebox" for which we provide some additional links separate from ads (sponsored links) and search results. (Try searching on [new york transit strike] and look for the news section.) AOL and its products have always been a part of onebox, along with many other providers, and will continue to be.
- There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.
Our service and our business works because of you - our users. You're important to us and something that we think about all the time -- as we build new products, negotiate deals, and think about what our future holds.
We're looking forward to what AOL can help us do for you, and believe that our new agreement with them will only create a better experience for you in 2006 and beyond -- one where you can continue to trust that we're giving you a result because it's the best one we can possibly provide.
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