EU wants to ban wifi in schools

Gizmodo this morning broke a short story and link to a report by the European Union - specifically European Parliamentary Assembly - in thich they state:

"After analysing the scientific studies available to date, and also following the hearings for expert opinions organised in the context of the Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Local and Regional Affairs, there is sufficient evidence of potentially harmful effects of electromagnetic fields on fauna, flora and human health to react and to guard against potentially serious environmental and health hazards."

Though the committee can not yet substantiate the actual dangers posed, they are recommending a precautionary ban on cellphones, wireless phones, WiFi  and even baby monitors suggesting the ban as a precautionary measure, claiming that waiting for scientific and clinical proof could lead to high health and economic costs, as was the case in the past with asbestos, leaded gasoline and tobacco.

The full report is available in PDF format here.

Hawking HWREN1 Hi-Gain Wireless-300N Range Extender

The new Nook Simple Touch

From Mashable:

Barnes & Noble unveiled a small touchscreen eink ereader at a press event in New York Tuesday. Priced at $139, the Simple Touch Reader is designed to more closely compete with Amazon’s Wi-Fi-only Kindle 3, which is likewise priced at $139.

The Simple Touch Ereader improves upon the Kindle 3 in several ways, however.
First, it sports a touchscreen, reducing the number of buttons to one: a simple on/off switch on the upper back. It also has up to two months of battery life — double that of the Kindle, and greater than any ereader in the industry. And although the device is substantially smaller than the Kindle at 7.5 x 4.8 x 0.335 inches, it sports the same 6-inch screen. Both devices weigh in at 8.5 ounces and have built-in Wi-Fi.

Simple Touch Reader owners can also customize their screensavers.

The device is available for pre-order now in-store and on nook.com, and will ship “in time for Father’s Day” on June 19, says Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch.

Kindle, Wi-Fi, Graphite, 6" Display with New E Ink Pearl Technology - includes Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers

I Threw It All Away by Bob Dylan

Happy 70th Bob! From Nashville Skyline and well worth a listen....



Found via Coudal Partners

Nashville Skyline (Reis)

Microsoft falls to 3rd place in market cap

And what is more stunning, Apple's market capitalizaion now exceeds Microsoft's by more than $100 billion!

Brief story at SF Gate

Investing For Dummies, Fifth edition

Eerie images from abandoned Six Flags New Orleans

Many more at lovethesepics.com

The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld

Playboy puts 57 years of back issues online

Just sayin', not recommending. The link

The "Oprah Effect" on book sales

For an author graced by Oprah’s Book Club, membership translates to new editions, heightened attention and huge sales increases. Oprah’s Book Club—with picks ranging from older classics to lesser known works to Pulitzer Prize-winners—became a coveted and exclusive fraternity founded in 1996, with branded special editions selling more than 22 million copies in the past 10 years. And that 22 million is only "her" editions and does not take into account additional sales of previous editions.

As Oprah prepares to sign off from her daily talk show for good, The Nielsen Company takes a look at Oprah’s Book Club selections from the past 10 years.

Homemade dams ward off flooding

More pics at The Daily Mail

The Dictionary of American Regional English

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To the dictionary

The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy

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Using the World Wide Web to gather and process data from across English-speaking North America, Alan McConchie plots the regional variations in the use of the terms "Pop" and "Soda" to describe carbonated soft drinks.

I grew up in the South and say "Coke" when referring to ANY carbonated soft-drink. Even when asking, "What kind of coke would you like?"

Above map created by Matthew Campbell and Prof. Greg Plumb of East Central University in Oklahoma.

Genuine Coke Coca Cola Glasses, Set of 12

Infographic: The 2011 GeoSocial Universe

Click to enlarge

Found at TechCrunch

51 takeoffs in 2.5 minutes

Chris Eagle, curator of the YouTube channel BostonAirborne, recorded one hour and ten minutes of hectic activity at Boston's Logan International Airport from a fixed Panasonic HDC-TM5 camera and compressed it into two and a half minutes of fascinating footage.

America ReCycled: The best content I have seen in quite a while

At its simplest, just two brothers riding recycled bicycles across the United States and meeting people. Lots of them. On another level it is a Homeric tale of an American adventure.

From their blog, America ReCycled:

But whether they’re devout Baptists who’ve lived in a small southern town for four generations or disaffected crust punks packing themselves into a crumbling squatted building, there is a common thread that ties them together.

We sense a growing movement in this country that rises above race, region, and subculture. Americans are yearning to rebuild space, community, and local culture, each in our own way. And it’s going to take a lot of blood, sweat, and ambitious insanity.

It will mean different things for different people. Some are rethinking business models to facilitate more intimate and local exchange. Others reinvent living spaces to allow for more community at home. It’s coming from all different angles and from all sorts of people. Fuel and transportation, energy use, urban/suburban planning, building construction, farming and food production, public space and civic art.

And it’s already started. All across the country, people are finding innovative ways to come together and make revolutionary change on a local level, to regain control of their lives, rediscover independence, and recycle the American Dream.

We’re finding them. And we’re telling their stories.

If the world ends tomorrow what will be your last read?

Terry Gross over at NPR's Fresh Air is asking the question: If the world ends this weekend, what book would you want to read, for one last time? Let’s make a list.

Reblogged from Libraryland

Image: Collecting books for readers in the reserve stacks, 1964 (by LSE Library)

After sifting through hundreds of nominations, our blog judges (of which I am one!) have spoken and their votes have been tallied. Forty outstanding blogs, five in each category, came out on top. We now need your help to narrow down the list of finalists. View the nominees and vote here.

At the link you will also find dozens, if not hundreds, of links to the very best library related blogs on the web.

Changing the look of The Centered Librarian

You will notice over the next few days that I am playing with the design and layout of The Centered Librarian. It has been several years since a makeover and I am in the mood for change. The content will always be here, but the design will likely change. Bear with me....

Secure your computer with NSA

The National Security Agency has published guides for securing Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris operating systems using methods that "are currently being used throughout the government and by numerous entities as a security baseline for their systems."

Nathan Myhrvold's Modernist Burger

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I am craving a good burger and remembered this. Sounds like a lot of work, but I would love to try it.

From the top down, here's what's in it:

• A top bun, made from scratch, toasted in rendered beef suet.


• Burger glaze made from an emulsified mix of suet, stock, tomato, and smoked salt. Something like meatonnaise.


• Maitake mushroom, sliced into a burger-sized round, sauteed in beef suet.


• Romaine lettuce, sliced into a medallion and infused under pressure with condensed hickory smoke.


• Heirloom tomato, compressed in a vacuum bag to concentrate its flavor and texture.


• Cheese slice made by emulsifying Emmental and Comté cheese into a base of wheat ale, then pouring onto silicone, and slicing. This is an idea cribbed from Heston Blumenthal's playbook.


• The burger, made from short rib ground and formed into a log so that the grain aligns vertically (another Blumenburger technique). Though the patty picture appears to have been grilled, Dr. Myhrvold described a different cooking method: The patty gets cooked sous-vide in suet, dropped in a liquid nitrogen bath, then immediately deep fried to crisp the exterior without overcooking the center.


• Crimini mushroom ketchup flavored with honey, horseradish, fish sauce, ginger, and allspice.


• The bottom bun.

From Serious Eats

Books are like that

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Via: demotivation.us

Slideshare: Amazon, Sleeping Giant

More than you ever thought you could learn about Amazon
(best in full-screen mode)

Infographic: What is your worldview?

Click to enlargeImage by Cameron Blair

The San Francisco Public Library in its Own Words

A beautifully drawn reminder of why libraries really do matter

Infographic: Map of World Language Families

Click to enlarge

Found at Libraryland

The scale of the universe

This is a fascinating visual depiction of the scale of the universe. From the smallest particles that make up matter (and reality), to the largest scale currently imaginable, this fantastic interactive visual is well worth your time to explore.

http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

Enjoy!

Amazing use of space

and

The end of computers and I feel fine

Via: OnlineComputerScienceDegree.com

Silly, but amusing graphs

Click to enlarge
Many more at Ben Greenman's Museum of Silly Charts

The National Jukebox from the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings.

At launch, the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Jukebox content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels, including Columbia, OKeh, and others.

Found at The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian

Infographic: Sitting is killing you

Via: Medical Billing And Coding (larger version here)

Found at lifehacker

Images of the Mississippi River flood

Via The Boston Globe. More at the link.

The Human Library: Check out a person instead of a book

Originating in Copenhagen over ten years ago, The Human Library is an ongoing project designed to promote dialogue, reduce prejudices and encourage understanding. The very simple but effective program only requires a space for dialogue and interaction. Visitors to a Human Library are given the opportunity to speak informally with “people on loan”; this latter group being extremely varied in age, sex and cultural background. Think of it as "checking out" a human instead of a book.

The Human Library strives to break stereotypes by challenging the most common prejudices in a positive and humorous manner. It is a concrete, easily transferable and affordable way of promoting tolerance and understanding.

The Toronto Public Library held its first Human Library event at five branches on Nov. 6, attracting more than 200 users who checked out the likes of a police officer, a comedian, a sex-worker-turned-club-owner, a model and a survivor of cancer, homelessness and poverty. They're all volunteers whose lives would make good reading, but even better one-on-one chatting. The library is considering make the program long-term, so a supply of human books will be regularly available to readers.

Found at YongeStreet Media via Pinterest

40 literary terms you should know

1. Aphorism: Short, sweet little sayings expressing an idea or opinion are familiar to everyone — they just don’t always know the technical term for them. Dorothy Parker was a particularly adroit user of aphorisms.
   
2. Apostrophe: Beyond a term for daily punctuation, apostrophe also pulls audiences aside to address a person, place or thing currently not present. O, Shakespeare! Such a sterling example of apostrophe use!
   
3. Applicability: The venerable Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien coined this term when badgered one too many times about whether or not his beloved fantasy series was supposed to be a World War II allegory. It wasn’t, but he thought readers could easily apply such an interpretation to the text without losing anything.
   
4. Bete noire: While not an exclusively literary term, many critics do use it to denote the idea of avoidance found in many narratives. Family dramas, for example, are almost obligated to involve some sort of elephant in the room.
   
5. Bildungsroman: Coming-of-age stories, known as bildungsroman, are the warm, cozy socks of the literary world. Every writer has one, even though some are kind of gross and full of holes. For extra bibliophile points, try tossing out the term "kunstlerroman" when appropriate. That’s a special kind of bildungsroman following the growth of an artist or other creative type.
   
6. Bowdlerize: Because of his numerous silly cuts and edits to Shakespeare (SHAKESPEARE!), Thomas Bowdler has become immortalized as the unintentional founder of yet another word for censorship and needless meddling. When American The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy editions replaced the f-dash-dash-dash word with "Belgium," it found itself on the receiving end of a serious bowdlerizing.
   
7. Byronic hero: Popularized by romantic poet Lord Byron’s life and works, this jaded, flawed hero archetype typically exhibits highly emotional, erratic, disrespectful and self-destructive behaviors isolating him or her from the rest of the world. Basically, Byronic heroes were emo before emo was a thing.
   
8. Caesura: Typically found in ancient Greek and Latin poetry, caesura represent pauses after a word, though not at the end or foot of a piece.
   
9. Death of the author: As hair-rippingly awful as Twilight may be, this literary phenomenon has absolutely nothing to do with clunking Stephenie Meyer’s head onto a pike for her egregious crimes against books (which would be absurd and rather mean). Rather, it stems from Roland Barthes’ argument that an author’s ideologies and life story have little to no bearing on a textual interpretation.
   
10. Denouement: The denouement occurs shortly after a story’s climax, but before its end. This serves to wrap up any dangly bits the author wishes to resolve.
    
11. Didactic: Everyone knows didactic literature, even if they don’t know the fancy term. It takes on an academic tone meant to educate, carrying with it connotations of heavy-handedness.
    
12. Epigraph: Many writers like to include quotes or passages at the beginning of their works to reflect the overarching theme or message. Mark Twain and his warning about shooting anyone wanting to critically analyze Huckleberry Finn (oops) famously parodied this trope. Iron Chef’s use of a George Bernard Shaw quote before each episode is a notable non-literary example. Allez cuisine!
    
13. Epistolary: Frankenstein, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Color Purple may have little in common on the surface, but they all share epistolary structure. Most or all of the narrative comes to readers through letters or other correspondence rather than a more traditional storytelling manner.
    
14. Fin de siecle: Put away the Ramones album and pick up some Oscar Wilde for a fin de siecle fix. Meaning "end of the century," this phrase refers to creative works completed towards the end of the 1800s, reflecting Europe’s social and political mores.
    
    
15. Foil: Foils are characters meant to play off one another’s tics and quirks, like Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus in Ulysses or Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. Or Batman and Robin.
    
16. Hamartia: Aristotle coined this word to describe tragedies, particularly those brought about by an aristocrat’s ego, gluttony or silly mistake rather than outright sin.
    
    
17. Heresy of paraphrase: New Critic Cleanth Brooks believes in the impossibility of discerning meaning in poetry, and that it’s entirely possible to just enjoy its mere existence at a specific point in space and time.
    
18. Hubris: Hubris, or raging ego with a heaping helping of overestimation on the side, oftentimes brings about hamartia — and not always in Greek drama!
    
19. Humours: Ancient Greeks and Romans believed the human body to be comprised of four humours — blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm — that corresponded with different personality types, seasons, organs and elements. It’s pretty much accepted as complete scientific doodie by now, but the concept has left an indelible impression on literary history all the same.
    
    
20. In medias res: More than literary narratives use the in medias res device, which drops audiences straight into the middle of the action and builds upon the recent past as the tale unfolds.
    
21. Intertextuality: Literary critics comparing different works to one another, especially as they relate to retellings and references, practice intertextuality — as do the writers using the device. Adapting religious or traditional stories remains popular in almost every nation’s canon.
    
22. Irony: It’s not about rain on wedding days, free rides after payment or 10,000 spoons when a knife is needed. Look at it as a situation where the outside and the inside exist in a dissonant state, though there exists a couple other interpretations Read O. Henry’s short story "The Gift of the Magi" for a particularly bittersweet, memorable depiction of irony.
    
    
23. Literary agent hypothesis: Bookworms with a postmodern bent will find the literary agent hypothesis fascinating. It posits that authors of fiction serve as "literary agents" to real events, changing around the reality to make for a more compelling narrative. Like the philosophy from which it stems, this critique style enjoys playing around with the nature of the known and unknown world.
    
24. Magic realism: Like the best surrealist paintings, magic realism blends the wholly terrestrial with the wholly oneiric to form one frightfully beautiful, emotional atmosphere. Anyone fortunate enough to have read Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel will know exactly how much it can punctuate a novel and make it something memorable and special.
    
25. Malapropism: When used properly, deliberately replacing words with different ones (usually homophones) can really make a humorous scene pop. This technique comes from the character Mrs. Malaprop, created by Richard Brinsley Sheridan for his play The Rivals, whose verbal quirks reflected such things.
    
26. Meiosis: Satirical works, particularly those hailing from Britain, will oftentimes use understatement to greatly hilarious effect. Impress or (more likely) annoy book club friends by using the technical term "meiosis" instead.
    
27. Meta: Though meta as a word and a prefix usually means an abstract offshoot of a concept, many critics today use it to mean a self-referential text. This list is meta because it’s aware of its list status. Also, it’s kind of scared of this newfound awareness, and its lack of maturity may cause a lashing out at those trying to help. Please teach it to love.
    
28. Mise en scene: While mostly used in cinema or theatre critique, literary aficionados can still (and often do) use "mise en scene" to describe the setting, mood and atmosphere of a text.
    
29. Picaresque: Swashbucking adventure stories with a scrappy, ne’er-do-well scamp of a protagonist are a beloved narrative staple. Known as "picaresques," they’ve heavily influenced a diverse selection of authors and spawned some of the world’s most lauded works.
    
    
30. Purple prose: Authors oft-utilizing egregiously eloquent, ornate prose possessed of sterling caliber and astronomical romanticism may indubitably find themselves indicted for their "purple prose." There’s a time and a place for eloquence and SAT words, but it definitely isn’t every time and every place. Any text referring to eyes as "orbs" without any sort of irony is automatically guilty of this linguistic sometimes-offense. No matter what. No exceptions. Also, every romance novel ever written. Even if a long-lost manuscript attributed to Bukowski ever materialized and proved a romance novel, it would still be made of purple prose.
    
31. Roman a clef: Real-life figures and adventures oftentimes end up thinly and not-so-thinly appearing as fiction in a device critics like to call roman a clef because it sounds fancy and stuff. Hundreds of examples exist, but some of the most popular can be found in Jack Kerouac’s oeuvre.
    
32. Scene a faire: Not all scenes a faire are always cliche, but all cliches are scenes a faire. This critical phrase refers to idioms and tropes audiences expect of a narrative and authors feel obliged to provide, particularly when it comes to genre fare.
    
    
33. Sobriquet: Sobriquets are nicknames almost everybody knows when they encounter them in speech or text, such as "The Big Apple" for New York City, where every American novel ever written takes place. Even the ones set in Texas.
    
34. Syllogism: Rhetoric buffs amongst the bookworm set need to know the definition of syllogism, lest the Ghost of Aristotle arise and get its poltergeist on. It involves a 3-part deductive, logical reasoning structure comprised of the major premise, minor premise and conclusion.
    
35. Synecdoche: When readers encounter a part meant to represent a whole, they’ve come face to face with the synecdoche who sold the world. Moby Dick’s iconic albino tail, for example, symbolizes the entire cetacean.
    
36. Tranche de vie: Use "tranche de vie" in place of "slice of life" to sound all sophisticated and French when discussing Raymond Carver’s Cathedral.
    
37. Trope: Tropes actually have a few definitions, but are frequently used to refer to familiar literary devices, events and archetypes. A great many of the vocabulary words listed here, for instance. They can also be metaphors or other types of figurative language.
    
38. Ubi sunt: At some point in their lives, everyone reads a literary work (or its corresponding Cliffs Notes) about the transience of mortality and how people are really just ants, man, ants in this big cosmic soup. At some point in their lives, everyone reads an ubi sunt, they just didn’t know there was a Latin phrase for it because that language is dead.
    
39. Unreliable narrator: Humbert Humbert, that scumbag around whom Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, is one of literature’s most notable unreliable narrators. Readers can’t exactly trust everything these speakers say as what exactly transpired, especially since they usually only get one side of the story. Try layering an unreliable narrator on top of the literary agent hypothesis for hours of mind-bending metaedutainment!
    
40. Verisimilitude: An easy way to remember "verisimilitude" involves noting that unreliable narrators don’t practice it.
    

Found at OnlineClasses.com

And 100s more at Wikipedia.

Cinematic Gifs

I have been noticing these recently and was fascinated by the images and the techniques used to produce them. MyModernMet has a great interview with Jamie Beck and her partner Kevin Burg discussing their "cinemagraph" technique where they combine still photographs and video to create these fascinating images.

Many more here... Thanks, Jerom!

More than you want to know about toilet paper

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Via: Engineering Degree

The best 100 opening lines from literature

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

The other 99 are here.

Dark Matter Matters

From PHD Comics

When we tested Nuclear Bombs

The Atlantic has a fascinating and frightening collection of photographs shot from the late 1940s through the 1960s depicting America's many nuclear tests - above ground, below ground, aerial and under water. As a child of the 50s I can remember some of these images. The animated gif shown above was etched in my young mind as a constant reminder of the fragility of those times. We all expected to be incinerated at any moment and "duck and cover" was all the rage.

There is also a collection of essays asking, Can we unlearn the bomb?.


Found at Coudal Partners

Mesmerizing Pendulum Balls

Letters to the Children of Troy

From the Troy Public Library site:

In March 1970, Marguerite Hart became the first children’s librarian at the Troy Library. She was hired to plan children’s activities and to develop a children’s collection for the booming youth population in the City. Hart was a native of Detroit. Before arriving in Troy, Hart was the children’s librarian at the Madison Heights Public Library for three years.

In early 1971, Hart wrote to dozens of actors, authors, artists, musicians, playwrights, librarians, and politicians of the day. She asked them to write a letter to the children of Troy about the importance of libraries, and their memories of reading and of books. Hart received 97 letters addressed to Troy’s young people from individuals who spanned the arts, sciences, and politics across the 50 states, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, the Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.

Those writing included First Lady Pat Nixon; Michigan Governor William Milliken; then-Governor of California Ronald Reagan; Michigan State University President Clifton Wharton, Jr., the first African-American president of a major U.S. university; first-man-on-the-moon Neil Armstrong; Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown; authors Isaac Asimov, Hardie Gramatky, Dr. Seuss, Dr. Ben Spock, and E.B. White; and actors Douglas Faribanks, Jr., Vincent Price, and Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.

The full collection of letters in PDF format.

Tracing the history of the library through call slips

The New York Public Library’s Beaux-Arts Stephen A. Schwarzman Building celebrates its 100th anniversary this month on May 23. The Centennial offers a wonderful opportunity to reflect on Library use from the past 100 and uncover stories that can serve as inspiration for another century. One unique way to trace the history of the Library is through call slips. In order to use books in the research collection, patrons request specific titles by filling out a call slip, which includes the following information: author, title, and call number. Not all call slips have been saved over the years, but some have been preserved for posterity. Here are their stories.

How to open a book.

Found at Pinterest

Brilliant!

Infographic: Where to live to avoid natural disaster

Click to enlarge
From The New York Times

Gelatin cubes dropped onto solid surface High Speed Video 6200 fps

Just because it is fascinating:


Found at Coudal Partners

Robert E. Lee - May 5, 1861

"If it came to a conflict of arms, the war will last at least four years. Northern politicians will not appreciate the determination and pluck of the South, and Southern politicians do not appreciate the numbers, resources and patient perseverance of the North. Both sides forget that we are all Americans. I foresee that our country will pass through a terrible ordeal, a necessary expiation, perhaps, for our national sins."

Robert E. Lee - May 5, 1861

As I am reading Shelby Foote's Civil War Trilogy and simply can not put it down.

25 Everyday Things You Never Knew Had Names

Tittle, lunule, muntin, petrichor and more here!

Infographic: The four stages of "getting" Twitter

Click to enlarge

Tatoolit: The word made flesh

Celebrating the emerging subculture of literary tattoos Tatoolit features

"...photographs of human skin indelibly adorned with quotations and images from Pynchon to Dickinson to Shakespeare to Plath. Packed with beloved lines of verse, literary portraits, and illustrations — and statements from the bearers on their tattoos’ history and the personal significance of the chosen literary work."

Students love Kindles? Not so much....

The University of Washington has released summary results of a study undertaken to look at how graduate students integrated an Amazon Kindle DX into their course reading. The study is the first long-term investigation of e-readers in higher education. Some of the study’s findings were expected – students want improved support for taking notes, checking references and viewing figures – but they also found also found that allowing people to switch between reading styles, and providing the reader with physical cues, are two challenges that e-readers will need to address in cracking the college market.

From the study:

“There is no e-reader that supports what we found these students doing,” said first author Alex Thayer, a UW doctoral student in Human Centered Design and Engineering. “It remains to be seen how to design one. It’s a great space to get into, there’s a lot of opportunity."

“Most e-readers were designed for leisure reading – think romance novels on the beach,” said co-author Charlotte Lee, a UW assistant professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering. “We found that reading is just a small part of what students are doing. And when we realize how dynamic and complicated a process this is, it kind of redefines what it means to design an e-reader.”

They also found:

• Students did most of the reading in fixed locations: 47 percent of reading was at home, 25 percent at school, 17 percent on a bus and 11 percent in a coffee shop or office.


• The Kindle DX was more likely to replace students’ paper-based reading than their computer-based reading.


• Of the students who continued to use the device, some read near a computer so they could look up references or do other tasks that were easier to do on a computer. Others tucked a sheet of paper into the case so they could write notes.


• With paper, three quarters of students marked up texts as they read. This included highlighting key passages, underlining, drawing pictures and writing notes in margins.


• A drawback of the Kindle DX was the difficulty of switching between reading techniques, such as skimming an article’s illustrations or references just before reading the complete text. Students frequently made such switches as they read course material.


• The digital text also disrupted a technique called cognitive mapping, in which readers used physical cues such as the location on the page and the position in the book to go back and find a section of text or even to help retain and recall the information they had read.

More info at the UW website.
Photo credit: Andrew Shurtleff

Intro to QR codes (video)

Rocketboom has published a very concise and demonstrative video about Quick Response (QR) codes.

Dead Authors on Twitter

@TheMark Twain

Typical tweet: If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.

More at The Atlantic

Creased paper illustrations

From Simon Schubert



Found at BoingBoing

Find your lost/stolen camera

Almost every digital camera encodes its photos with Exchangable Image File Format Data (EXIF). The data might include camera type,camera serial number, date/time of the shot, exposure, geolocation data, etc. StolenCameraFinder extracts this data and looks for that same serial number data elsewhere on the internet. If it finds it, you can find photos taken with that camera and potentially locate the thief (or lucky finder). This is very useful - and free!