I need Tom Peters to start a blog so that he can fill-in-the-blanks for me on such issues as the Open Access Initiative. Unfortunately, I don't have time to track this one, and it's tangential to my job.

"Napster for academics My entry in a Chicago business plan competition was software that helped academics share their research with each other. Academic journals make obscene profits (libraries are very price insensitive) and I wanted to shift some of that surplus to consumers (the scientists -- who also happened to produce the content). The judges were not impressed by my idea, but it lives on as George Soros's Open Access Initiative.

The whining you hear in the article is the handful of academic journal publishers moaning about their profits (maybe) going down. But they shouldn't worry -- refereed journals bring prestige because they are hard to access, and thus are valuable to academics." [winterspeak , via Will]

How does all of this relate to Docster, and what do I need to know about all of this? C'mon, Tom!

Confessions of a Book Club Outcast

"I'm literate and articulate, and I make delicious finger food. But I can't get into the good book clubs because I'm a guy." [Salon.com]

Obviously Peter hasn't checked to see if his local public library has a book club....