Those who got excited about the idea of a washable keyboard (which I wrote about in a WSJ.com column a few weeks back — sorry, subscription only; a version appeared on the BBC World Service, and is available as a podcast) can now get excited about Washable Computer Mice, from Unotron: Unotron’s pioneering mice design… Read More »
Another cool NewsMap, this one in the form of a treemap from NewsIsFree: NewsKnowledge and The Hive Group have joined forces to bring you News Maps, visual maps of the NewsIsFree headline database. News Maps allow you to quickly scan dozens of news articles and instantly understand what’s being reported all over the world. Each… Read More »
Further to the previous post, honouring the fact that Jef Raskin passed away last month, I thought I would post a little essay he sent me a year ago to illustrate some of his thinking in his last year: Genesis and Goals of The Humane Environment Our increasing knowledge about human behavior and mental processes,… Read More »
Did Google check first with publishers before announcing its digital library initiative. Nature reports that publishers are irritated because they weren’t: Late last year, Google, based in Mountain View, California, announced a decade-long project to scan millions of volumes at the universities of Harvard, Stanford, Michigan and Oxford, as well as the New York Public… Read More »
Just in case we journalists get too depressed about recent cases of invention and plagiarism, consider scientists. Nature’s website quotes the annual report of the Committee on Publishing Ethics, which it says details misdemeanours that “cover a wide range of unethical activity, from attempted bribery to potential medical malpractice.” Two complaints concern cases where researchers… Read More »