Preoccupations

Magazine Art

MagazineArt.org: a free visual database of magazine cover art from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

For the love of reading

The Children's Laureate has said many teachers are failing to enthuse their pupils with a love of reading. Michael Morpurgo, who was reading to children in Stornoway in the Isle of Lewis on Tuesday, said there were very many good teachers. But he said others made it clear they had no interest in literature, and that could rub off on their charges. ... "You have got to read books as if you love them - in fact you do have to love them.

He and some friends in Stornoway have come up with a list of 10 books they think would make good starting points for enthusing children (his only reservation being that none of his books is on the list). In no particular order:

• The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler (3+)
• George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl (ages 6+)
• The Sheep-Pig by Dick King-Smith (6+)
• Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson (8 to 12)
• Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (10+)
• Montmorency, by Eleanor Updale (10+)
• Goodnight, Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian (10+)
• Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (10+)
• Kit's Wilderness by David Almond (11+)
• The Rattle Bag, selected by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes (0 to 100)

BBC News

FindForward and Wildcards in Words

FindForward now supports a wildcard within a word. Just choose "Wildcard Word" from the menu. You can enter phil to get philosophy and philadelphia, or go*d to get results for gold and godsend. (As you may know, Google itself does not allow you to do this.)

Philipp Lenssen (Google Blogoscoped)

BT and an IP network for the UK

BT is planning to rebuild its phone network in the UK in a radical move that will cost billions. It could change the way people use their phones and allow most people with a BT phone line to plug into broadband using computers, mobiles or other devices. It could also mean that mobiles and fixed lines become interchangeable, with the same number and bill.

BT plans to convert the majority of its customers to the new network by 2009. Dubbed the 21st century network, the technical work requires a gradual closing down of the old Public Switched Telephone network (PSTN) to make way for an internet protocol (IP) network.

BT will spend around £3bn on the project - more than the annual spend on Britain's main roads - and is hoping that a raft of new services will be possible on the back of it. The switchover should be undetectable to its customers. "We anticipate that millions of people will use the phone in the same way," said Paul Reynolds, chief executive of BT Wholesale. "But customers who want to can switch to broadband themselves and plug any device into the network. The strategy is based on the idea of broadband everywhere," he said. ...

For the lucky few BT is also trialling the use of fibre instead of copper, which will offer customers super-fast broadband speeds. Despite speculation about the benefits of a ubiquitous fibre network, BT has no plans to lay it throughout the UK, concentrating instead on areas where new houses are being built. Matt Beal, the man charged with heading up the conversion to the 21st century network, admits that this could create a new digital divide. "There is that risk but complete conversion is not possible," he said.

He outlined some of the advantages of the 21st century network for customers. "They could set up conference calls with their families, have video streaming and voice-activated phones," he told BBC News Online. BBC News

Electronica

via Boing Boing:

D-I-R-T-Y is a very cool experimental music soundsystem/clearinghouse whose Web site features dozens of Real Audio DJ sets and live performances from electronica artists including Cinematic Orchestra, Minotaur Shock, Jazzanova, Kid Koala, and many others. Air's "selection of great western songs" is quite a treat. You can also listen to D-I-R-T-Y's Radio Colette, direct from the hippest design/lifestyle shop in Paris.

FindForward

FindForward: Google with thumbnails.

The Web search engine FindForward lets you create a custom webfeed (RSS or Atom format) based on keyword search terms. FindForward basically regurgitates Google results via Google's own API tool, so in a way this is like getting RSS feeds for Google results.

So what? Well, here's how this kind of service can be useful...

For a one-time keyword search, a FindForward feed offers no benefit. However, it offers considerable potential over time if you want to keep up on new or updated Web content on specific topics. This is useful for ongoing research projects, for ego surfing, and for journalists who follow a beat or particular newsmakers.

How to do it: In order to create a custom feed from a FindForward search query, simply enter your keyword(s) and select "Get RSS" or "Get Atom" from the drop-down list. FindFoward then returns a webfeed URL which you can subscribe to in your feed reader.

The FindForward custom feed service, which draws results from Web sites, is an excellent complement to Feedster's custom search webfeeds, which draw results from other webfeeds.

(FindFoward is a search engine that bills itself as "Google with thumbnails." By that, creator Phillipp Lenssen means that FindForward results include small "snapshots" of Web pages delivered via the open-source free technology of Thumbshots.org. Here's what that looks like.)

WHY ISN'T GOOGLE DOING THIS?

Why indeed? Despite increasing popular demand and obvious revenue potential (via embedded advertising), Google continues to exhibit a baffling absence of webfeed services.

... Contentious

The FindForward search engine leverages Google's Web API as well as technology from thumbshots.org. It's a nifty search engine interface, provides RSS and ATOM feeds from search results, and a whole bunch of other search categories in an easy to use menu format.

The search grid results are a new way of thinking about search for me - interesting.

Lots of fun ways to search here. Makes me wonder about what the future of search engines will be. When will news, email, instant messaging, web content, everything on my hard drive, and other bundles of info all be instantly searchable, and customizable to my tastes instantly and in real time?

greg hughes - dot - net

NoteTaker, Ecto and TypePad

This weblog is designed to be a proof-of-concept with regard to using AquaMinds' NoteTaker application and Ecto for directly posting entries to TypePad blogs. Additionally, it is intended to be an index of possiblities, tricks, tips, work-arounds and enhancements in terms of working with these three applications.

The concept of blogging has resonated with the general public because, paradoxically, it's seen as the easiest way of creating a website--even though the real revolutionary breakthrough is that a weblog is a cheap, effective and scalable content management system.

Blogs have proliferated across the Internet with almost viral speed. But even though they are ubiquitous, there has so far not been a simple, powerful and flexible front end to the blogging experience. At one end of the spectrum, professional blogging clients undermine the idea of blogs as "easy websites" by demanding significant levels of HTML knowledge and experience. At the other end, there are simplistic, WYSIWYG diary-based blogging clients that do little more than put a friendly face on weblog input screens.

But what if blogging could be pursued with a virtual notebook? A notebook that has the power to clip and save items from the Internet? A notebook that allows content searchs of itself? A notebook that could be structured to mirror the organiztion of the user's weblog? A notebook with entries that are transformed into blog postings with the click of a mouse?

What if this blogging notebook enabled a user to search the Internet from inside of entries, enabling her to gather information that can then be used in a blog posting? What if this notebook could also clip passages from other documents on the user's hard drive that could similarly be used in entries that are then seamlessly posted to a weblog?

This is what the blogging enhancements of AquaMinds NoteTaker promise to do. These capabilities are now made possible by an AppleScript that allows NoteTaker and Ecto, the premier blogging client, to interact with each other. That draft you feel is the sudden arrival of increased weblog ease and possiblities.

Blogging with Aquaminds's NoteTaker

Gmail news

From The Gmail Team:

You might be interested to hear that we are announcing these upcoming features:

- Automatic forwarding of your email to another account
- Plain HTML version of Gmail
- Import/export Contacts

We hope you enjoy Google’s approach to email.

via engadget

English Literature and Religion

This Web site offers a large bibliographical database about religious aspects and backgrounds of English literature, from the Middle Ages to the present century, with primary (though not exclusive) emphasis upon writers within the Anglican tradition. The database has been conceived on an ambitious scale, and it covers a large number of persons and subjects. I upload new material from time to time. — William S. Peterson

William S. Peterson, Professor of English at the University of Maryland, created, designed, and maintains English Literature and Religion, which first appeared on the Web in March 1997. It was combined with another site, Little Gidding: English Spiritual Traditions, in March 2002.

Music industry — first to be genuinely transformed by the internet

John Kay, writing in the Financial Times:

Lawrence Lessig's new (downloadable) book on intellectual property has created a predictable furore. In an angry letter to this paper (24 May) David Munns, vice-chairman of EMI, accuses the Stanford University law professor of condoning theft. Mr Munns is wrong. English law, following common sense, requires that a thief have an intention of permanently depriving an owner of his property. File sharers have no intention of depriving anyone of his property. Nor do their activities meet the further test that the reasonable man would think them dishonest. Parents who would be appalled if their children stole records from the Virgin Megastore condone their music downloads. The most that can be said is that file sharing deprives record companies of sales they might otherwise have hoped to obtain. The everyday word for that process is not theft, but competition. ...

The claim by the music business to maintain control of every subsequent exploitation of its product has no more moral basis than the claim of a think-tank to control every subsequent expression or development of its ideas. Or the right of Trinity College, Cambridge, to approve every application of calculus, the invention of Isaac Newton, its late employee. Far from stimulating creative effort, such restrictions would paralyse it. The unreasonable nature of the assertion and its unenforceability reinforce each other. This pretty much describes the music industry's situation. So it will be the first industry to be genuinely transformed by the internet.

The consequences are hard to foresee. The reductions in revenue that follow from the loss of control by publishers will be partly offset by increased demand stimulated by the lower costs of distribution. The very wide differentials between the successful and the less successful in creative industries will be eroded. It is Tom Clancy and Eminem, not writers of academic monographs and would-be rock stars, who stand to lose most from unauthorised copying. The high costs of marketing and distribution through traditional channels have made it hard for minor artists to establish themselves. But an online retailer can easily stock far more titles than even the largest shop. So it is likely that lower distribution costs will mean a smaller royalty pool shared between many more artists. ...

The purpose of these economic rights - and this is the essence of Prof Lessig's argument - is to strike a balance between the various public interests in promoting innovation, stimulating creativity and achieving the widest possible dissemination of new material. It is on these grounds, not sanctimonious moralising or false analogy, that publishers need to argue their case. After a decade in which media conglomerates have sought to block innovation they did not control and proliferate imitative material at the expense of genuine originality, they need to improve their performance substantially to justify their claims to the legal privileges denied to think-tanks and Isaac Newton.