This is probably one of the last thought that I’ll be posting on this site until we do the RELAUNCH of Philosophic Allies. If you haven’t heard about it yet, we’re relaunching this website before the end of the year with a few planned improvements:

1. We’re welcoming a 5th and final ally to the group, Oliver.
2. Redesign of the frontpage to accomodate the ally (Khan)
3. We’ll all talk about a common subject in each issue.
4. We all promise to write more often and if we don’t we’ll let you beat us with a stick.
5. And, a few other things I can’t recall right now.

Anyways, back to what I meant to talk about: There’s been a lot of noise recently about Google Print, the Open Content Alliance, and now Amazon getting into the mix by letting users buy pages instead of entire books. There’s virtually no sure way of predicting who’ll become the defacto search engine when it comes to searching printed material. However, Since Google introduced the Pagerank concept into the search engine arena, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seemed to have evolved from a “hobby” into an actual micro-economy where books, magazines, “consulting companies” and websites offer paid advice on how to get you on FIRST PAGE of google results.

But if there’s one thing I will predict, it’s that, however stupid this idea might be, there’ll be a Book Engine Optimization (BEO) economy growing out of this, where there’ll be companies claiming to be able to get YOUR book on the frontpage of Google/Amazon/Yahoo…for a mere $499 of course.

I wonder how many hits I’ll get from Google from people searching for ‘Book Engine Optimization’. Book Engine Optimization, Book Engine Optimization, Book Engine Optimization… There!.. that should make Philosophic Allies show up as number #1 for the keywords “Book Engine Optimization”...