Shel Kaphan Updated 2025-07-16
He looks like an older and more experienced dude compared to Bezos at the time.
Bibliography:
. www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom-employee-1/2/ also mentions that unlike California, there's no sales tax in the state of Washington, which is important for selling books.
. www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom-employee-1/2/ also mentions that unlike California, there's no sales tax in the state of Washington, which is important for selling books.
- a few mentions at: Video "Jeff Bezos presentation at MIT (2002)"
Amazon.com Continues to Grow by NBC 15 (2014)
Source. Features short excerpt of filmed interview with Shel.:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/66308477/175972523.jpg.0.jpg)
Hidden shift problem Updated 2025-07-16
Send free emails from Heroku Updated 2025-07-16
Arghh, why so hard... tested 2021:
- SendGrid: this one is the first one I got working on free tier!
- Mailgun: the Heroku add-on creates a free plan. This is smaller than the flex plan and does not allow custom domains, and is not available when signing up on mailgun.com directly: help.mailgun.com/hc/en-us/articles/203068914-What-Are-the-Differences-Between-the-Free-and-Flex-Plans- And without custom domains you cannot send emails to anyone, only to people in the 5 manually whitelisted list, thus making this worthless. Also, gmail is not able to verify the DNS of the sandbox emails, and they go to spam.Mailgun does feel good otherwise if you are willing to pay. Their Heroku integration feels great, exposes everything you need on environment variables straight away.
- CloudMailin: does not feel as well developed as Mailgun. More focus on receiving. Tried adding TXT xxx._domainkey.ourbigbook.com and CNAME mta.ourbigbook.com entires with custom domain to see if it works, took forever to find that page... www.cloudmailin.com/outbound/domains/xxx Domain verification requires a bit of human contact via email.
HarvardX Updated 2025-07-16
Harvard's e-learning thing. Weak. Related: The Purpose of Harvard is Not to Educate People by Sean Carroll (2008).
Harvard Project Physics Updated 2025-07-16
www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/ex-libris-universum/harvard-project-physics-role-history-science mentions that they have a special focus to the history of physics, as can be seen e.g. on The World Of Enrico Fermi by Harvard Project Physics (1970).
Great doubt, great understanding Updated 2025-07-16
Fuller quote as seen e.g. at: www.hrfjw.com/fjrw/hcrw/ywfs/324750.htmltranslation;k.sina.cn/article_5668613235_151e02c7300100wutq.html attributes it to modern day Chinese "Master Chongci" (崇慈法师).
大疑大悟，小疑小悟，不疑不悟
Great doubt, great underestanding. Small doubt, small understanding. No doubt, no understanding.
Calico (company) Updated 2025-07-16
Google X Updated 2025-07-16
Wikipedia reads:so basically exactly what Ciro Santilli wants to do on OurBigBook.com. Ominous.
Any contributor could create and own new Knol articles, and there could be multiple articles on the same topic with each written by a different author.
Like any closed source "failure", everything was deleted. wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Knol
Sandbox AQ Updated 2025-07-16
www.zdnet.com/article/googles-quantum-focused-sandbox-division-is-being-spun-off/ Google's quantum-focused Sandbox division is being spun off (2022)
Chromebook Updated 2025-07-16
Google Analytics Updated 2025-07-16
I need this for OurBigBook.com!! webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/104241/can-google-analytics-track-url-fragment-in-url
They removed referrer path completely in GA4... OMG WTF are they doing!
Google Books Updated 2025-07-16
They scanned a bunch of books, and then allowed search results to hit them. They then only show a small context around the hit to avoid copyright infringement.
Bibliography:
- www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/ Torching the modern-day Library of Alexandria (2015) by James Somers
- The Google Story Chapter 21. A Virtual Library paints a good picture of the people involved
Google Docs Updated 2025-07-16
Google Photos Updated 2025-07-16
Google Search Updated 2025-07-16
Google Images Updated 2025-07-16
Google Scholar Updated 2025-07-16
Does this contain any structured data? E.g. can you list all papers by a given author besides just searching and hoping there are no homonyms?
Knol Updated 2025-07-16
Very similar to OurBigBook.com!
People who worked on it:
- Udi Manber: project lead
- www.wired.com/2008/07/google-knol/ mentions various engineers. The original page had photos, including the full team photo, but these died, but are visible on the archive: web.archive.org/web/20151220002650/http://www.wired.com/2008/07/google-knol/.
- Ben McMahan: "Developed, launched, and maintained Knol", mentioned at:
- Michael McNally (2007-2009), "project's technical lead": mentioned at: www.wired.com/2008/07/google-knol/,
- github.com/xiangtiandai Xiangtian Dai
[email protected] - Mohsin Ahmed: can't find any online profiles
Replying to a listener phone-in question WNYC radio, mediated by Brian Lehrer.
It was about to launch it seems, and it was not clear at the time that anyone could write content, as opposed to only selected people.
It was about to launch it seems, and it was not clear at the time that anyone could write content, as opposed to only selected people.
Jimmy then corrects that misinformation. He then clearly states that since there can be multiple versions of each article, including opinion pieces, like OurBigBook.com, Knol would be very different to Wikipedia, more like blogging than encyclopedia.
Google Knol: the future of academic journals? by Doug Belshaw (2010)
Source. Bibliography:
- Wikipedia & Knol: Why Knol Already Failed by gwern.net (2009). So there was some kind of monetary payment on the site. Interesting and sad.
Google custom hardware Updated 2026-01-30
There are unlisted articles, also show them or only show them.