Still, people are creatures of habit, and change doesn’t always come easy. Did you know that many feared the invention of the printing press? Previous to the press, books were unique hand-written works of art which were most commonly read aloud in performances and sermons.

The Bible was the first “pressed” book. It was most commonly read and interpreted by religious figures and scholars. A predominant fear of its mass production was that the layman would begin to consume and interpret its meaning without the guidience of church officials and draw their own conclusion about the content. Not good as far as the church saw it.

Regardless, books became common enough that they were not just for public performance or religeous sermon any more. Everyone knows books are for everyone and are an excepted way to pass on knowledge, learn facts, document history, and entertain us. More recently, we have the evolution of the book, the e-book, and some have anxiety about its role in society.

Let’s look at what book lover’s are thinking on both sides of the coin: For and against e-books domination of the market.

Pros For E-Books:

1). Real books are heavy and cumbersome. Often it is hard for them to stay open on their own and readers have to fidget with them to get comfortable.

2). Real books are expensive. Not only for consumers but also to manufacturers. The books have to be printed, packaged, and distributed. These processes consume materials and resources not to mention what the consumer has to go through to get it from the retailer.

3). Real books can easily be lost or damage. While an e-reader is expensive at first, many books can be read and saved on the device. Even if the reader was damaged, the contents of the publication can be accessed by a replacement reader more easily than a water damaged box of books can be replaced.

4). An e-reader offers much that a book cannot. A dictionary, a clock, internet access, the list goes on. A book is just a book. It has more uses than just reading however; those uses are relatively limited.

5). Privacy. People cannot see what book you are reading. In fact, you can have one e-reader and be reading several books at once. also, if your e-reader is password protected, no one else can even open your book.

Pros for Real Books:

1). A physical book is yours to own and use as you see fit. Make notes in the margins, write your name in it, display it on your bookshelf, cut out pictures from there pages, ect. You own the book.

2). You can loan a book in physical form and not have to worry about infringement of any kind on the authors intellectual property or right to be payed. Physical books allow you to “by hand” pass on the information inside of it and share the experience with others.

3). Physical books offer an experience that extends to more senses than just sight. Well worn books especially might have this effect. The smell, feel, weight of a book offer a feast to more of the senses. Perhaps the pictures offer more in physical print than those of digital format.

4). A book is a single purpose object. You won’t be distracted by clocks, software updates, or other tasks you can perform on the book. For those hoping to escape reality for awhile and enjoy a good book, this may come as a comfort.

5). A book can be purchased used. Used books offer an opportunity to access material at a discounted cost. Digital versions remain pristine forever and may never be discounted or the opposite, disappear from servers altogether. This could be a disadvantage for readers of older publications.

Conclusion:

So a lot of what fans are saying about the pros and cons of e-books are in direct opposition of one another. I guess it really just comes down to what you need the publication for, where you plan to read it, and what kind of budget you’re on. The same debate could take place for digital versus cd or record format music. A lot of hardcore music lovers still swear by the record for sound quality and overall listening experience.

We first documented Blackle’s existence about a month ago.  At the time, it was believed that CRT monitors would require less power to display the site’s black background, and new testing has confirmed that principle.  But the savings aren’t that impressive, and they’re lost when LCDs are in use.

“We applaud the spirit of the idea, but our own analysis as well as that of others shows that making the Google homepage black will not reduce energy consumption,” writes Bill Weihl, Google’s “Green Energy Czar,” on the Official Google Blog.  “To the contrary, on flat-panel monitors (already estimated to be 75% of the market), displaying black may actually increase energy usage.  Detailed results from a new study confirm this.”

Yet throughout the post, Weihl stresses the importance of efficiency, and he goes on to give several more effective tips (“turn down the brightness on your monitor” might be the least obvious of them).  And lest we all forget – saving energy helps the environment and your pocketbook.

It seems that Blackle’s not the best path to those savings, however.  A good searcher shouldn’t spend much time at the engine itself, anyway, and Blackle’s text is annoyingly difficult to read.

‘Ask, Dell Do Some Gardening

Ask.com announced it will be the first corporate customer of Dell’s ‘Plant A Tree For Me’ program. The program aims at creating an environmentally friendly response to electricity usage by planting thousands of trees to offset carbon emissions.

The new energy efficient servers should not affect the performance of Ask’s datacenters. Ask touted a 30 percent lower rate of energy consumption that does not compromise the performance of their systems.

Tree planting happens as part of a partnership Dell has with a couple of organizations. The non-profit groups Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org plant trees in managed reforestation projects to sequester carbon, Dell said in a statement about the project.

Ask and other major search players like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have all made advances toward building up datacenter operations in Eastern Washington. The availability of clean, and cheap, hydroelectric power is a necessity for an industry that consumes as much in resources as any company can willingly commit to it.

At first glance, this looks like something of a hollow victory.  After all, with a population of less than 30,000 people, Hastings would probably remain beautiful regardless of its citizens’ actions.  Then again, that fact shows Yahoo wasn’t favoring more well-known sites – the biggest city on its top ten list is Topeka, Kansas.

And it turns out that Yahoo wasn’t just looking at the amount of grass in any given area, either.  “Current initiatives [in Hastings] include conversion of methane to energy at its pollution control center, local production of Ethanol E85, extensive networks of parks and hiking and biking trails, and installation of energy-efficient street lighting,” reveals a Yahoo press release.

Yahoo’s “Greenest City in America” challenge is only the latest in a series of conservation projects.  Google has also gone green, and made announcements about a fleet of hybrid cars and some solar panel arrays just last week.  Even Microsoft is getting on board . . . it appears that the corporations are vying for the title of “Greenest Company-With-A-Search-Engine in America.”

For today, however, the spotlight remains on Yahoo and Hastings.  Also – I’m kind of hungry at the moment – let’s not forget that Nebraska-style BBQ.

Checking out the WebProNews home state of Kentucky in the 18 Seconds site, I found that the state ranked eleventh in “enlightenment.” Our Lexington home rates 55th out of 358 metropolitan areas tracked on the site.

As part of the effort, Yahoo brought on Lawrence Bender to post at the official Yahoo blog, Yodel Anecdotal. The producer of Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, wrote about the project and some of the behind-the-scenes work that brought it online:

By the way, I have to give a shout-out to the amazing engineers who were given a sabbatical from their day jobs to pull it together. 18Seconds.org is a great feedback tool to see how we

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