Brainstorm: NetFlix for books

I received some books in the mail today from Intel on IA-32 Assembly language development and the sheer weight of these books reminded me that I was likely to never actually read them, let alone leaf through them when I actually needed some reference. I tend to just go to Google and search for the topic before I ever pick up a book anymore. In spite of the ease of reading stuff on the web, it is still less satisfying and intuitive (and in many ways, less informative) than actually reading the book. I like Google Print, but that is a teaser without a carrot at the end of the stick. I know that there are eBooks and there are a variety of other electronic publication services, but could one of the big poobahs (Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc.) come up with a searchable online library of books that could be […]