What do eBay, Amazon, and Google all have in common?

Besides being the most sucessful, these are also the sites that give the most power to the users. adaptive path ? how i learned to stop worrying and relinquish control: "How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Relinquish Control"

How do you preserve the digital past?

Our government produces trillions of digital files. Digital information decays much faster than paper because formats change and the media itself (magnetic film, hard drives, tapes, disks) physically break down and replacements are no longer made. 2 companies are bidding on a permanent solution that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But it is worth every penny. The Fading Memory of the State: "The Fading Memory of the State "

Last Name Meaning and Origin of Shoemate

Last Name Meaning and Origin of Shoemate: "Americanized form of southern French De la Chaumette, a topographic name for someone who lived on a chaumette, a high, arid plateau with very little vegetation, derived from a diminutive of chaume 'bare land' (a specialized sense of Latin calmus 'calm', 'unruffled').
Dictionary of American Family Names, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508137-4"

I have also heard it mean "straw mountain" which I like somewhat better...