Good news for the average consumer netizen – Google have announced an expansion of functionality to the Booksearch service, largely aimed at making the interface a little more friendly and the displayed pages more enjoyable to read. However, there may be a small section of the population who are somewhat more alarmed by the increased ease with which the text of books can be searched – namely authors who have plagiarised in the course of their work.

Thanks to an explosion of mainstream media coverage, Second Life has been experiencing a population boom in sympathy with its raised profile. The question is, what sort of effect is that having on the virtual world? Steve Rubel (whose employer Edelman PR has its finger in a lot of SL pies) would have us believe that there is still vast marketing potential to be scooped up by savvy investors. However, Warren Ellis (whose interest is far more street-level-cultural) paints a very different picture – one of rampant discontent from the paying residents towards the freeloading n00bs and corporate interests. I’m guessing they’ll both be right, and that SL as it is now will be a distant memory in a year or so.

Space exploration advocates often encounter scepticism in many forms from the man on the street. See how many old favourites you recognise – Darnell Clayton at Colony Worlds has compiled a list of Ten Reasons Not To Build A Space Elevator, and I’m pretty sure his tongue must be sore from being jammed so firmly in his cheek…

It looks like the participatory panopticon is nearing the early stages of hardware proliferation – eight London beat coppers are to be issued with head-mounted cameras that can record twelve hours of footage from the point-of-view of the wearer. As a British citizen, I can only hope that this technology will be used to prevent and solve crime, rather than providing material for those tedious yet inexplicably popular “world’s most stupid criminal” programs – I’d rather have more street crime than more reality television.

The physics scene is in high spirits today, following the final green light for the ITER experimental fusion reactor project to be built in France. Not everyone is that impressed by the idea of chasing the tokamak model though, most notably Robert Bussard – one of its inventors – who intends to give away a better design to anyone who has $200 million to develop it (form an orderly queue, folks). I just don’t understand what’s taking us so long – after all, if a college student can build a fusion reactor in his basement, it can’t be that tricky, right?