Image Source: Mashable/Opera
Opera, which released its first browser in 1995, has quietly been innovating its products over the last two decades with features like built in ad-blocking and VPN. Now, the company has launched Neon, a new concept browser. REDA MORE: Neon is an experimental web browser that’s filled with glorious content bubbles
Image Source: Lifehacker
Amazon may be convenient, but nothing beats free. So, when you’re shopping for books on the site, [Google Chrome] Library Extension will find those same books at your local library. You can even drive to pick them up faster than Amazon can ship them. READ MORE: Library Extension Finds Books At Your Local Library While You Shop On Amazon | Lifehacker
Ms. McKean started a campaign last month on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site, to unearth one million “missing” English words — words that are not currently found in traditional dictionaries. To locate the underdocumented expressions, she has engaged a pair of data scientists to scrape and analyze language used in online publications. Ms. McKean said she planned to incorporate the found words in Wordnik.com, an online dictionary of which she is a co-founder…Before her analytics project gets underway next month, Ms. McKean is crowdsourcing a list of missing words for possible inclusion in Wordnik.
READ MORE: Scouring the Web to Make New Words ‘Lookupable’ | The New York Times
The massive digital faucet feeds the ecosystems of Connected Worlds, a cutting-edge installation that aims to teach youngsters about environmental science by immersing them in it. It’s an interactive simulation big enough to walk around inside—virtual reality that’s not piped into a headset but projected onto a real physical space.
Kids can shape the environment through a clever combination of physical and digital interaction. READ MORE: The Key to Digital Learning? Bring It Into the Real World | WIRED.
IPads, maker spaces, 3-D printers, and coding skills top the tech wish lists for 1,259 school librarians across the country, according to School Library Journal’s (SLJ) 2015 Technology Survey. Educators are hungry to bring their students even more—whether that’s robotics classes or Arduino kits.
“New computers, tablets, video equipment, all digital tools, instruction on usage, [and] enough bandwidth” count among the must-haves for Andrea Oshima, a school librarian at Aviara Oaks Elementary School in Carlsbad, CA. Currently, 64 percent of school librarians consider themselves tech leaders in their schools—and 28 percent feel that their tech skills afford them increased job security. READ MORE: School Librarians Want More Tech—and Bandwidth | SLJ 2015 Tech Survey | School Library Journal.
I love this story! Librarians are definitely superheros. The outcome of the trial will certainly be interesting.
We here at Above the Law appreciate law librarians. Staci attended the AALL’s recent conference and it was the law librarian community that kickstarted the Twitter phenomenon #lawlibpickuplines. But for all their invaluable support, it’s rare that law librarians get to play the hero in a litigation. If anyone out there harbored lingering doubts over the importance of a top-notch law librarian, know that the most abusive copyright troll on the planet may have just gone down due to the diligent work of a law librarian. Not bad for a day’s work. READ MORE: Law Librarians May Have Killed World’s Biggest Copyright Troll | Above the Law.
Deep linking has become one of the hottest topics in mobile over the past year as dozens of startups have launched around using, improving and discovering deep links. All of the big platform companies also have projects to own “the deep linking standard” or the search index for mobile. So, what are deep links and where did they come from?
READ MORE: A Brief History Of Deep Linking | TechCrunch.
Although the First Book Marketplace is for educators (to purchase books and educational materials at low prices for children in need), the resource highlights books for children and youth that showcase topics of diversity and inclusion. You can explore books by themes that include African American Interest, Asian American & Pacific Islander, Global Stories, Immigrant Experience, Latino Interest, LGBTQ, Muslim American, Native American, Religion and Special Needs & Abilities. Browse the themes to discover books within each interest area. There are also resources recommended for other topics and themes such as STEM and Me & My Feelings, etc.
“Through the Stories for All Project™ First Book strives to provide all kids with diverse books that act as mirrors and windows. Kids feel valued and validated when they see their own experiences reflected on the pages of books, and they develop curiosity and empathy when they read about experiences different from their own. To help your kids grow as both readers and global citizens, [view] our ever-expanding selection of diverse books.”
Documentaries aren’t just informative; they’re also fun to watch. And if you’re a fan, Documentary Heaven has thousands of titles to choose from. The website doesn’t host any movies itself, but it curates and embeds free titles from sites like YouTube and Vimeo. You’ll find both the popular and the obscure…Topics range from politics to economics to biographies, and some topics are a bit more specific: gangs, conspiracies, evolution. You can browse these topics from their list, or use the search tool to find something specific.
via Watch Thousands of Free Movies at Documentary Heaven | Lifehacker
In March of 2012, the Guardian announced a major literary and cultural discovery: more than 500 new fairy tales had been unearthed in Germany. The haul of stories was vast, impressively so. It contained in its pages a new world of enchanted animals, magic and romance, legend, otherworldly creatures, parables about nature, and wild exaggeration. But there was something else. These tales had been collecting dust in a bunch of old boxes for more than 150 years. This dating is significant: it confirms that the tales are roughly contemporaneous with those of the Brothers Grimm. To be sure, this was an historic and unprecedented discovery. The woman who made it, a cultural curator and folklorist named Erika Eichenseer, compared the collection to “buried treasure.”
But before Eichenseer found this treasure, before she undertook the truly invaluable work of reading, sorting, and transcribing these tales, she had to discover them in a municipal archive in Regensburg, Germany. And before they were placed in this archive, they were the property of one Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, a high-ranking government official and amateur folklorist of the mid-nineteenth century, who, inspired by the Brothers Grimm, took it upon himself to travel around the Upper Palatinate region of Bavaria, to collect and interview and record the stories he heard from the people there. Schönwerth’s hard work did not go unnoticed. Jacob Grimm, in 1885, declared that “Nowhere in the whole of Germany is anyone collecting [folklore] so accurately, thoroughly and with such a sensitive ear.”
The fruits of this labor of love, of Schönwerth’s (and later Eichenseer’s) hard work, have now been expertly translated, introduced, and commented upon by Maria Tatar in a volume titled The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales.
READ EXCERPTS: Two Never Before Seen Fairy Tales by the Grimm’s Favorite Folklorist | Flavorwire
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