Inventor Targets College Students With Smart Pen

Not to be confused with the Reading Pen that our profession sees marketed here and there and has mixed reviews --- and even its own research article (PDF) -- the hype informs us that this pen, "which looks like an ordinary ballpoint, is embedded with a computer that photographs whatever is being written. The pen is also equipped with a microphone that records what is being spoken, so that people using the pen to take notes can later play back the recording and elaborate on their notes. In a docking station, the pen can transfer files to and from a PC."

You might be digitzing books on the Web without knowing it thanks to this stealthy anti-spam technology | NetworkWorld.com Community

Again with the Carnegie Mellon where a scientist is looking to create a new type of security check that will assist in a project meant to digitize and make searchable text from books and printed materials. Above and beyond that, the offering would probably be more secure than most current systems. You know those CAPTCHA's we all dislike so very much --- thanks to them (and some behind the scenes stealth) you may be helping to digitize books on the web.

According to NetWorkWorld:

"Instead of requiring visitors to retype random numbers and letters, they would retype text that otherwise is difficult for the optical character recognition systems to decipher when being used to digitize books and other printed materials. The translated text would then go toward the digitization of the printed material on behalf of the Internet Archive project."

This reminds me of a Google Tech Talks lecture by Luis von Ahn (Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon) on the topic of Human Based Computation. This talk (available via Google Video):

introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. [von Ahn] advocate[s] a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game -- many people play over 40 hours a week -- and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it. I describe other examples of "games with a purpose": Peekaboom, which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense knowledge.

While poking around the Google Tech Talks site I discovered the Authors [at] Google site and the following lecture by Daniel H. Wilson discussing his book "How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips On Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion". I highly recommend this book as a combination of fact, fantasy and humor. I especially recommend the audio version as read by Stefan Rudnicki and available through Audible.com. By the way -- the video is captioned.

'$100 laptop' sparks war of words

Also known as competiton in the marketplace --- OLPC should feel proud of the fact that a commercial entity believes they are on to something enough to market their own version. So much for Open Source being sacred!

Disk Drive Failures Worse Than You Realize ...

Speaking of Carnegie Mellon --

"A Carnegie Mellon University study indicates that customers are replacing disk drives more frequently than vendor estimates of mean time to failure (MTTF) would require. The study examined large production systems, including high-performance computing sites and Internet services sites running SCSI, FC and SATA drives. The data sheets for the drives indicated MTTF between 1 and 1.5 million hours. That should mean annual failure rates of 0.88%, annual replacement rates were between 2% and 4%. The study also shows no evidence that Fibre Channel drives are any more reliable than SATA drives."

What does this mean the ATHEN membership --- back up , Back Up!, BACK UP!!. Not only that -- but invest in the best that your dollar can buy. The higher the quality, the better the survival rate. How much do we rely upon internal and external disck drives for E-Text production, DNS voice files, server based AT, student files, and more? Think about it.

The study (presented at 5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies) does note that the spike in failure rates occurs early in drive life. If a drive does not fail withn the first 6-9 months of operation it is quite likely you will get a good 5+ years out of it - but there are no guarantees. Any drive older than 7 years is likely going to fail and just like anything else in life - you get what you pay for. the cheap drive your Dean makes you buy today may end up costing you much more in time, money and lost productivity in the nearer rather than later future.

Ceiling Height Alters How You Think

From Live Science.com comes a story that should be of interest to anyone running (or developing) an E-Text production facility or computer labs of any sort.

A recent study at the University of Minnesota suggests that ceiling height affects problem-solving skills and behavior by priming concepts that encourage certain kinds of brain
processing.

Typically such back room production is quite literally assigned to a back room (should you be lucky enough to have such luxurious extra space) and typically not enough thought is given to ergonomics and worker comfort.

A related story on the Intelligent Workplace provides a look at research (experiments?) being conducted at Carnegie Mellon University Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics. Housed (quite literally as it is the 'house') at the Robert L. Preger Intelligent Workplace, with the mission "to research and demonstrate advanced building systems and their integration for total building performance." This may be a bit much for a simple AT or E-Text production lab, but there is always something to be learned. For example, within the IW all workers are within a certain distance of natural light and ventilation. In my E-Text lab one of the things my staff appreciates is windows that actually open and the fact that on a sunny day there is no need for the overhead fluorescents.