¤ jetless heights

makin’ tea in your underwear

+ Tue, December 14

Your Library, Google

In case you were still unsure, the revolution won’t be televised.  It’ll be Googlized.  As if 8 billion webpages aren’t enough, they announced today that they’ll be digitizing and indexing the full contents of some of the world’s largest libraries.

The news broke for me by the Michigan Daily headline from the newspaper stack atop the drop-off box in Michigan’s Graduate Library lobby.  Fitting, I guess.  Walking through the stacks on my way to class after that, you go through countless rows, stretching away on your sides farther than you can see.  Floor to ceiling, leather-bound books with fading text.  To think that these 7 million books with who knows how many billions of pages are all going to be available in the public domain, for free forever – there’s a certain beauty in that.

I read it when it came out and you can still read an older opinion on Google’s role as the digitized deity of this day at CNN. It’s an interesting point, made all the more strong with Google SMS, this effort to digitize such a weighty chunk of our academic knowledge, the white pages, the maps, the calculator, the whole weight of their 8,000,000,000 page index.

If there was one company I’d want orchestrating this massive collection of our history and knowledge, it’d be the good guys of Google.

1:28 PM  ×  1 Comment  ×  0 Trackbacks

+ Sat, October 30

Fallen Where They May Lie

In the morning, with wrecked blood red bodies and still-gleaming silver instruments of war fallen where they may lie, it was clear to the locals that a mighty battle had befallen the countryside during the night.

818 Oakland: Why the frat across the street can't throw a decent party

2:19 PM  ×  9 Comments  ×  0 Trackbacks

+ Wed, September  8

<tap tap>

Since last time, I’ve started a new school year and forever moved out of the shelter of my parents.  This is it kid, I’m on my own now.  This also has much to do with my recent silence, what with all the moving and lack of internet connection and throwing pudding parties in my backyard and not the eating kind.

Ah, life.  Ah, college.

Regular posting is here again for all you and your insatiable demands.

7:14 PM  ×  4 Comments  ×  0 Trackbacks

+ Mon, August 23

UMich & The Standards Game

A friend of mine, working on bringing the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering site into compliance with W3C standards, notified me that the main University of Michigan site had beaten them to it and unveiled their fully compliant redesign.  Using approved methods, they nearly perfectly retained their previous look and feel, both with Flash and pure XHTML variants.  As a UMich student and a web designer, I fully applaud their effort and the wisdom behind the project, it’s much too bad their return key was broken while they were writing the code.

(Hat tip, Yaniv)

10:07 AM  ×  3 Comments  ×  0 Trackbacks