Robots digitizing books at Stanford according to this John Markoff report. And the Internet Archive has sent 80 tons of books form the Kansas City Library to Hyderabad to be scanned manually. It now costs as little as $1 to scan in books, and Stanford reported a 50% increase in circulation when it digitized its card catalog. Digitizing old books is a no-brainer: the big drawback is not scanning costs, it's newly-onerous copyright legislation like DMCA… [www.gulker.com - words and pictures from Silicon Valley]

This is a great idea, i wonder if we could get something happening here. hmmm….

Melbourne DAC. The 5th International Digital Arts and Culture Conference blog has been tracking presentations. In the blog, Torill Mortensen has some good posts and Deena Larsen has been taking lots of notes, but they take some time and effort to wade through. [Purse Lip Square Jaw]

Yah, it looks like a great conference, Thanks Deena and Torill.

The steam-powered drum machine. The steam-powered drum machine – an astonishing extract from the journal of Charles Franklin, the founder of the London Museum of Techno. Written in 1894, Franklin describes a steam-powered drum machine and what may have been the world's first rave. “Driven by the thunderous rhythms of Hoovenaars tremendous “drum machine” the crowd – academics and dockers, architects and cobblers – were whipped into a frenzy, dancing and screaming like savages until sunrise, when the Machine finally ground to a halt with a suffering hiss.” [MetaFilter]

hah, this is great! human's don't change much

Oxford University Job: Educational Interoperability Standards Specialist. Quote: “We are looking for someone with proven experience in XML, open standards and e-learning. If you have these plus the drive and initiative to make Oxford a leading world-player in this field, we should like to hear from you” [Serious Instructional Technology]

well i applied to a different oxford job, and i do have my mysql2xml or mysql2anything converter, maybe I'll apply to this one

nice work!. Just love this photolog from Brisbane by Neil Cook. This is a great shot. I just love the Brisbane architecture… [Junk for Code]

i like the river taxi personally, brisbane is a cool city