I always felt like computers were meant to be used with at least a hand poised on the home row, because without that arsenal of verbs things just take too long. As a power user, watching someone who isn’t familiar with all the shortcuts can put your patience under observation. To some folks, everything about…
I’ve checked into the hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, in order to read the AP English Literature exams. People on the shuttle and in the dining hall are very friendly. I’ve nothing to do for the rest of the day, and am just chilling in the hotel room. My laptop logged into the hotel’s WiFi network…
The Library of Congress has nearly 150 million items in its collection, including at least 21 million books, 5 million maps, 12.5 million photos and 100,000 posters. The largest library in the world, it pioneers both preservation of the oldest artifacts and digitization of the most recent–so that all of it remains available to future…
Seton Hill University was recognized by IvyWise, a New York-based counseling company, in its “Top Five” list created to assist college applicants in choosing schools that leverage the power of mobile devices to store and deliver recorded lectures, syllabi, homework, tests and a host of other information that can be accessed anytime, anywhere on campus.…
In 2001, I posted a brief item on “The Last Page of the Internet,” a meme that was already well-established at the time. I did a quick Google search, posted what I found, and added a few comments. knowyourmeme.com used my page as a starting point for a recent item that traces the meme much…
Very cool little story that also involves a Frederic Church painting and newspaper archives. Following a trail that began with a 19th century painting and led to hundreds of newspaper reports, the researchers discovered that the “strange huge meteor-procession” mentioned in Whitman’s noted collection “Leaves of Grass” indeed refers to a rare procession of earth-grazing…
In the past, I have used the first day of my literature survey classes to define the big-picture, to have the class bond with each other, to watch a movie version of the first assigned text, and to jump right into literary analysis. Since I usually teach this course in a 2.5hr block, I can do many…
06 Jun 2010 (updated); by Dennis G. JerzUsability Testing: 8 Quick Tips for Designing Tests If you already have a prototype and you want to conduct a usability test, and you’re eager to learn how to make the most of your opportunity to learn from your users, then this document is for you. Keep the…
In theory, technology lets people make and distribute perfect copies of digital artifacts. In practice, we compress our media, which introduces imperfections. YouTuber canzona recorded a short video, uploaded it to YouTube, then downloaded it and uploaded it again. Here’s what happened on the way to 1000 iterations. (Apparently, he turns into a Tholian.) …
In the history of print, we got erotic novels 100 years before we got scientific journals, and complaints about distraction have been rampant; no less a beneficiary of the printing press than Martin Luther complained, “The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure of limit to this fever for writing.” Edgar…
I’ve been on Seton Hill’s summer reading committee for the past couple years. (My suggestion a couple years ago of Little Brother did not make it, and I was rooting for another colleague’s recent suggestion of Ender’s Game. This year we considered The Kite Runner and The Last Lecture, but rejected them as downers. So…
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I am still looking for a good iPad ebook app. I was frustrated that neither Apple’s iBook app nor Amazon’s Kindle app let you do all of the following: Highlight in multiple colors Type annotations Look up words in a dictionary The B&N app lets you highlight in a single color (gray), and permits both…
One of my students, who is double-majoring in new media journalism and creative writing, is spending a few weeks on a dinosaur dig in Wyoming. She’s turned her academic blog into a travel journal. So far she has written: Thermopolis in Black and White What’s in my Dino Pack? dinoTravel Time dinoTaxi-ing dinoTravel I like…
Let’s begin not with humanity’s love for games, but rather its love for stories. Certainly we can see a trend in certain kinds of art toward the telling of stories in ever deeper and more immersive ways. A few hundred years ago the novel came along, introducing the interior monologue; as time went on, novels…
http://i.imgur.com/P0qkj.jpg Via Jason Scott’s Facebook page. Similar:At Computers and Writing #cwcon for the weekend.Am I wise now? At an event for encouragi…AcademiaInternet Archive puts classic 70s and 80s games onlineClassic video games from the 1970s and 1…CultureJust a handful more of these elegant #steampunk control panels and I can move on to the ne…AestheticsHere are…
Authors and publishers have besieged Google’s plan to digitize the world’s books, accusing the company of copyright infringement. The legal limbo that has tied up a settlement of their lawsuits is hanging a question mark over universities’ plans to build centers for research on the books Google scanned from their libraries. Another complication: Worrisome questions…
“We’re trying to detect a crime before it has occurred.” OK, roll the sci-fi thriller “Minority Report,” in which Tom Cruise and other “pre-crime” cops use psychic visions to arrest murderers before they kill. Or maybe “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” a George Clooney comedy inspired by real military experiments with supposedly psychic soldiers.…
I’ve been using a Kindle DX for about a year, and an iPad for about a month, with both Amazon’s Kindle app and Apple’s iBook app. (Update, June 2: I posted about the Barnes & Noble iPad app, as well.) I’m excited that all full-time SHU students will have iPads next year, though I’m frustrated that…
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