Good article about Google in today’s Observer.

Ladybird books have just digitised lots of their children’s books and put the illustrations online (following renewed interest in the illustrations over the last few years – they’ve become collectors items.) Naturally, you can buy prints, etc – but a fascinating collection of digitised material. Check out how the computer works…

http://www.cuil.com/ is a new search engine – set up by former google employees… one to watch. Claims to be the biggest on the web – lets see if Cuil (Irish word for knowledge, prounounced “cool”) gives Google a run for its money.

… I’m loving this set of digitised pictures, courtesy of Cursive Buildings, which has taken stereograph pictures from New York Public Library and created simple animated gifs from them. This one shows a buffalo creating a stir in Chicago, circa 1890. More here. Original stereograph here.

Due to other house-bound duties (involving a small friend and nursery rhymes) I’m not able to go to the dig at sunny Silchester this year, to see how the VERA (Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology) project is coming along, but the Blog seems to suggest things are doing really well, with good uptake of digital pens and the like on site.

There’s an open day on site on Wednesday 23rd July in case anyone fancies checking out what the project is trying to achieve:

To showcase the VERA project actually working on site! The excavation itself is probably the best place to show how the technology in the VERA project is actually being used. There will be the opportunity to see real life contexts being recorded and the data uploaded into the Integrated Archaeological Database.

More details here, if you feel like heading down to the dig. Weather forecast is sun! (have I just jinxed it?)

The Luminous Landscape has a really good overview of the recently announced Phase One P65+, with its massive 60 Meg Sensor, including how and why it may be useful…

Multicolr Search Lab have produced a nifty little app that lets you search through 3 million “interesting” Flickr images by colour. Fun to play with – and could be useful for those colour-themed lecture slides…

Uniformed Letter Carrier with Child in Mailbag
Originally uploaded by Smithsonian Institution

Got to love this picture from the Smithsonian’s Flickr Pool. Apparently:

After parcel post service was introduced in 1913, at least two children were sent by the service. With stamps attached to their clothing, the children rode with railway and city carriers to their destination. The Postmaster General quickly issued a regulation forbidding the sending of children in the mail after hearing of those examples. [link]

Which one of them is thinking “Do Not Want” the loudest?

It’s official. I’m no longer the Lecturer in Electronic Communication at UCL SLAIS.

I’m the Senior Lecturer in Electronic Communication at UCL SLAIS.

Been a hectic couple of weeks here!

Anthony Robert Terras Ostler, born on Friday 27th June. That’ll be me on maternity leave then – will start posting again when I catch up on the zzzzzzzzzzs……