Douglas Adams
--still providing
"guidance"--
The trilogy started in 1979 with The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
and became five books, but who's counting? His work includes theater, radio, a PBS series
(which is how we first noticed him) albums, a computer game, and numerous uh, literary
offerings. His original Guide has fans all over the net, and rightly so. He's also
noted for his Dirk Gently novels, non-fiction, reporting, barn building, chicken shed
cleaning, bodyguard stints, as well as playing guitar with Pink
Floyd.
Later projects include founding partnership/creation of The Digital Village. He is currently garnering
attention for The Earth Edition of the
Hitchhiker's Guide, which is actually a guide to the web, dear cruisers.
When douglasadams.com (aka h2g2.com) originally appeared, it
was an internet guide, not unlike a search engine, that Adams had to do with this
globally-galactic digital guide, except to lend his name to it. He was certainly not
listed among the staff, nor was there any attempt in writing akin to what we saw in the
er, the original Guide. Now that Mr. Adams has passed, the site is not unlike JFKjr's George, in a helmless limbo, with an uncertain
future.
One more guide? Jeeves is
jumpin' they say, and now cyberberg has 
Ananova,
hopeful for the wireless crowd. Our own 'guide
to guides' was oh so-sorely needing an update because they do come and go so
quickly, as they say in Oz.
We discovered many collaborations and fusions while doing it. Say, anyone remember
how Six Degrees came & went-- since you'd
never hear from anyone you wanted to, on anything you wanted to hear about? You
gotta' read Carl Steadman's hilarious commentary on it.
Thinning of the herd is inevitable, but we'll wait for some stardust to settle
before cleaning up too thoroughly. Only members noticed when Geocities' community
pages went "Yahoo" for
the most part, but the transition for NBCi
(which morphed from NBC Internet and powers Snap)
wasn't quite so graceful for Xoom members-- and now they are retracting.
Hopefully "new improved" and better guidance will be available for every kind
of web user. Personally, we're sticking with Mamma for just awhile longer, although good googly mooglie-- is Google ever getting our attention? Many of
this dot.com's seekers arrive via Google entries, for a wide range of things, and we're
not complaining since we ain't given 'em a dime. Are their users looking for us?
Anything but! We do hope they like what they find, every then
& now.
©2004 R K Puma rk@rkpuma.com
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