Typewriter meet the 21st century. The Hemingwrite, one of 20 new hardware devices entered in the Engadget.com Insert Coin competition, is a prototype that is assured a bright future. What the Kindle did for reading, we want to do for writing,” said cofounder Patrick Paul of Hamtramck, Michigan. “Adam and I are huge fans of the simplicity of a typewriter but using one is tiresome and outdated. We set out to deliver the same distraction-free writing experience of a typewriter with all of the added benefits of modern technology: backups to the cloud, e-paper display, Cherry MX keyboard switches -- and nothing...
Mining newspapers for poetry
What to do you get when you partner up a digital humanities projects librarian with an associate professor of computer science and engineering? Answer: Something good. At the University of Nebraska Elizabeth Lorang, research assistant professor and digital humanities projects librarian in the University Libraries has teamed with Leen-Kiat Soh, associate professor of the computer science and engineering, and a couple of students students to develop software to recognize poetry from digitized newspapers. “Millions of poems were published in newspapers. Looking at them will shift the way we understand poetry in the United States.” says Lorang. Similar to text-mining applications, where specific words and...
The challenge is on: How might we leverage libraries as a platform to build more knowledgeable communities?
The Good Food and Bookmobile This project will take a traditional bookmobile and add kitchen components to bring core community services to people in rural areas, building community, increasing community capacity, and ensuring access for all. The mission of the Knight Foundation is simple: To support "transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged." One way they do this is to pose a challenge to the community at large, sift through the responses and then fund the winners. The latest challenge is: How might...
Ready for Some Finger Reading?
The latest gem to be concocted in MIT's Media Lab is the FingerReader. Billed as "a wearable interface for reading on the go," the device: is a tool both for visually impaired people that require help with accessing printed text, as well as an aid for language translation. Wearers scan a text line with their finger and receive an audio feedback of the words and a haptic feedback of the layout: start and end of line, new line, and other cues. The FingerReader algorithm knows to detect and give feedback when the user veers away from the baseline of the text,...
Kafka’s notebook, the first written evidence of Yiddish and more as Israel’s National Library opens up
13th-century German prayer book containing the earliest evidence of the Yiddish language. The goal is daunting: Undertake "a worldwide initiative to digitize every Hebrew manuscript in existence." To celebrate the project, the National Library of Israel is opening its vaults to give the world a peek and some of the jewels of their collection. The Associated Press was offered "a rare glimpse at its most prized treasures," some never before seen and others that has been locked away for years. The jewels include manuscripts by Sir Issac Newton and Nobel laureate S.Y. Agnon and a Hebrew vocabuary notebook by Kafka, who took Hebrew lessons...