I kind of liked Tony’s idea of writing a book on Google collaboratively. However, the NYT took a negative slant on this with the headline “Collaborative Book Idea Gets a Nasty Review” and a photo of Tony looking really slyperhaps evil.

Amazing how the Grey Lady can spin things. This story is so one-sided I gotta think this is old media beating up new media ideas or simply the continuation of Nick Denton’s crew piling on Tony because he is a commercial blogger (of wait, Nick’s doing porn, the most commecial thing ever!).

Regardless, I salute Tony for pushing the envelope and I don’t hate him because he is super connected, driven and successfuland neither should non-commercial bloggers. He’s contributed a lot to the tech media space and one of the reasons bloggers and indie media is doing so well is because of the projects he’s worked on.

Something about the proposition struck Brian Dear, a software entrepreneur and writer, as being a lot like Tom Sawyer’s inviting the other boys to paint the fence. Mr. Dear found the posting especially galling, he said, because he has been grinding away for years on a history of the user community that grew up around Plato, an early computer network. “It just kind of rubbed me the wrong way,” he said of the Perkins proposal, “and I thought, You know, I should denounce this.’ “

So on his own Web log, brianstorms.com, Mr. Dear ridiculed Mr. Perkins’s e-mail message line by line.

Mr. Perkins had written: “Writing a book is a very painful experience. And frankly, the only way I can pull this off under a tight deadline (I want it out before Google goes public), is to write it with AlwaysOn members.”

Mr. Dear replied: “Writing a book is so painful, I find it easier if someone else does all the hard work. So I’m asking you, members of the AlwaysOn network, to give me all of your ideas.”

Mr. Perkins wrote: “As we say in the world of journalism, This is a story that needs to be told.’ ”

Mr. Dear responded: “As we say in Silicon Valley, There’s never enough money. Make more.’ “

The blast has been widely circulated online. Mr. Perkins, for his part, said, “I thought it was pretty clever, and have referred it to many people, including my wife, for laughs.”

But his online readers have generally been supportive, he said. “I can’t imagine not blogging all my books into existence.”