I don’t know how things were done 20 years ago pre-Internet. The Internet has made our lives more complicated, overload us with information, and overwhelmed our pocket books. With all those pains comes some amazing advancement. Never before has the world’s collective knowledge easily accessed by one simple search box.

How do I buy a house?

What do I need to save for retirement?

How do I convert a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA?

How do I make an auto insurance claim?

How do I make my own baby food?

Is this a mole or cancer?

These are only a handful of potential questions that could be answered with a few simple keystrokes and clicks. Rather than asking friends and family, we can anonymously ask thousands of people, all who have experienced similar events. On a personal note, I recently brought my car in for tire rotation and the mechanic recommended some work done. I did a quick search on “do I really need to replace my steering tie rods?” Most users in the forums recommended the service, gave price amounts they paid, and shared complications. There’s no ripping me off anymore.

I’m currently shopping around for a home to buy. In the past, we relied on real estate agents to guide us through the process. A simple “how do I buy a house” shows thousands of guides, checklists, and customer experiences. I have home touring checklists. I know the difference between pre-qualification and pre-approvals on my loans. I gained all this knowledge in a matter of minutes and hours rather than weeks of library research.

Here’s a great ad Google ran in the Superbowl.

The Google Bookstore is here. It combines a commercial bookstore with Google Search and Google’s library scanning project. Unlike the other book ecosystems such as Apple’s iBooks, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, Google is attempting to create one massive library. Google isn’t known for releasing perfect software or products. They tend to release things in beta and sometimes alpha stages. It shows that the Google Books isn’t fully polished, but my first impressions suggest that this is a viable product.

While the big players are battling over supremacy over the eBook marketplace, the consumers are the losers. If you have books in iBooks, Amazon, and now Google, your library is spread across competing platforms. Until eBooks are universal and customers are free to move their books from one platform to another, I suggest you don’t invest in an eLibrary or stick with physical books for now. Give this marketplace some time to play out. Don’t commit to just one platform.

Here’s a visual tour of some of the screens.

You have an option of browsing through the bookstore or searching for a topic.

When searching for a topic, in this case “Econometric Analysis,” Google provides book results from all sources. You’ll be able to buy the book if it’s available in the bookstore, find it at another store, or check it out at a library. Since Google is scanning physical books, you’re now able to search through books that were previously not searchable except by title or abstracts.

The bookstore has books similar to Amazon, iBooks, or the Barnes and Noble store. The experience is typical Google simple. There’s not a lot of extras and it’s feels like its built by an engineer. At this point, I think Amazon has the edge on experience.

Books can be read on mobile devices using a web browser, or through mobile apps for iOS and android. You can also read books on a computer, pick it up and finish on another device. Your pages are automatically synced throughout.

My review of the Google ebookstore to come. In the mean time, check out the introductory video below. In full Google fashion, it strips out all the unnecessary fluff such as page turn animations and turns it into a utilitarian tool.

Here’s a neat video produced by one of my favorite companies: Jess3.

Learning by example is one of the best ways to become good at something. It’s one thing to teach basic concepts and principles, it’s another to actually do it.

One of my newly favorite sites is note&point. It’s a wonderfully curated collection of powerful slides and presentations on a number of subjects. Not all suits my taste, but it gives me inspiration on new ways of presenting information.

Communication Patterns via {note&point}

Fast forward a few more years, this entire process will be automated.

Fast forward a few more years after that, the assembly line will be creating machines to “terminate” humans.

This is a relatively old book but I suspect it’ll be on my list of all time favorites. Nancy has taken all that’s been wrong with corporate presentations and summarized it into one short but very comprehensive 275 page book. Although I’ve been on a mission to read more digital books on my iPad, I gotta say that Slide:ology is best read with a conventional book. The illustration and graphics are just beautifully printed. The $23 price on Amazon is a steal, considering the quality of the physical book.

The Golden Rule: Never deliver a presentation you wouldn’t want to sit through.

That is the theme of the entire book. Every recommendation, technique, style, and trick is aimed at creating a presentation that we all want to sit through.

Here is a great trailer video to the book. Also check out Nancy’s blog at blog.duarte.com.

Ironically, you probably can’t watch this commercial because the iPad doesn’t support flash video.