Tag Archives: writing

Et tu, Watson? IBM’s Supercomputer Can Critique Your #Writing | Engadget #tech #IBMWatson

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It’s bad enough that robots are writing professionally (albeit badly), but now they’re criticizing, too? IBM has unveiled the Watson Tone Analyzer, the latest tool in its “cognitive computing” suite of cooking, health, shopping and other apps. Once you input a piece of text, the system will perform a “tone check” to analyze three different aspects of it: emotional, social and writing style. Each of those is divided into further categories — for instance, it can tell you if your writing style is confident or tentative, and whether the emotional tone is cheerful, angry or negative. From there, it can give you a breakdown of the overall tone and suggest new words to “fix” it. READ MORE: Et tu, Watson? IBM’s supercomputer can critique your writing | Engadget

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43 #Free Career-Advancing #Courses You Can Take (And Actually Finish) This Summer | Mashable #skills #education #MOOCs

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Yes, summer is the perfect time to relax and recharge. But, it’s also the perfect time to pick up a few new skills. Put that relaxed brain (and work schedule) to good use! How accomplished would you feel if, when September rolls around, you could open up your resume and add another skill to it? Very, we’re guessing.

Before you start stressing, know that we’re not asking you to sacrifice your summer nights to a droning professor. Instead, we’re suggesting devoting a few hours every week to advancing your career with an online class. (Online equals your couch and your sweats and an optional glass of wine.)

To make the process easier for you, we did two things. One, we only chose classes you can complete in less than 10 weeks (with some that can be completed in an hour). Two, we hand-curated this list to ensure it’s only courses that are valuable and interesting. The best part? All of them are free. So, without further ado, here are 43 classes you can sign up for today.

READ MORE: 43 free career-advancing courses you can take (and actually finish) this summer | Mashable

A Pen For People With Parkinson’s | Co.Design

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A Pen For People With Parkinson's | Co.Design | business + design

Lucy Jung never thought much about designing for sick people. Then she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She recovered, and the experience has driven her toward what she now thinks of her calling: to use design to help improve the quality of life of hospital patients and those with chronic conditions.

It drove the 27-year-old designer to create the Arc, a pen for people with Parkinson’s disease. Along with three fellow students (Hwan Soo Jeon, Tian-jia Hsieh, and Danny Waklin) from the UK’s Royal College of Art and the Imperial College London who took part in the Innovation Design and Engineering joint masters course, Jung designed the pen to not only make it easier for people with Parkinson’s to write legibly, but to actually loosen up the muscles of their hands after they’ve put the pen down.

READ MORE: A Pen For People With Parkinson’s | Co.Design | business + design.

The Story of Lorem Ipsum: How Scrambled Text by Cicero Became the Standard For Typesetters Everywhere | Open Culture

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READ: The Story of Lorem Ipsum: How Scrambled Text by Cicero Became the Standard For Typesetters Everywhere | Open Culture

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Margaret Atwood Ruins a Marriage, Talks Memes, Politics in Reddit AMA | Jezebel

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Just from reading some of Atwood’s answers to the reddit AMA, I feel I have been enlightened and transported to a surreal world!

Margaret Atwood, high priestess of an oracular temple deep in the digital Canadian woods, did a Reddit AMA Monday. Its great: she was asked all of the questions you might expect (Where do you see political dystopia today? Whats your ~process~?) and some you might not (Who is your fictional boyfriend?). Read on for the best bits. READ: Margaret Atwood Ruins a Marriage, Talks Memes, Politics in Reddit AMA | Jezebel

Love Comic Sans? Then This is the Typewriter For You | Engadget

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Hey, sometimes actions speak louder than fonts. And if you really, really like Comic Sans, then you’re going to love this. In the name of art, a gentleman named Jesse England has designed the “Sincerity Machine,” a Comic Sans typewriter.

READ MORE: Love Comic Sans? Then This is the Typewriter For You | Engadget

British Library gives teachers tools to inspire | Books | The Observer

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Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians from British Library Learning on Vimeo.

While Discovering Literature is an important cultural resource that can be enjoyed by all ages, it has been carefully tailored to appeal to GCSE and A-level students. The British Library’s research among teachers showed that original manuscripts, with their edits and revisions, dodgy grammar and messy handwriting, can be a powerful way of engaging pupils. Contextual material can also be a source of inspiration, and the site is packed with items such as letters, diaries, dictionaries, newspapers and illustrations that illuminate the historical, social and political contexts of classic works.

READ MORE: British Library gives teachers tools to inspire | Books | The Observer.

See Also: The British Library Launches New Online Collection of 1,200 Romantic and Victorian Literary Treasures | InfoDocket

Absolutely fabulist: The computer program that writes fables | CNET

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Forget a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, researchers have created a computer program that writes fables by itself.

It might be a long way from “A Tale of Two Cities”, but researchers at Australia’s University of New South Wales have developed a computer program that is capable of writing its own fables.

The Moral Storytelling System, known as MOSS, has been developed by Margaret Sarlej, a PhD candidate at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW, led by Australian Research Fellow and artificial intelligence expert Dr Malcolm Ryan.

While humans are capable of creating simple or complex stories without a second thought, Sarlej said this is a skill that computers can’t easily emulate.

READ MORE: Absolutely fabulist: The computer program that writes fables | CNET.

The Genesis of Genius [Bronte Mini Books] | Harvard Gazette

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Flames of childhood passion often die. How many astronauts and ballerinas are among us? Yet some talent is so profound that even early efforts signify genius. The tiny, hand-lettered, hand-bound books Charlotte and Branwell Brontë made as children surely qualify. Measuring about 2.5 by 5 centimeters, page after mini-page brims with poems, stories, songs, illustrations, maps, building plans, and dialogue. The books, lettered in minuscule, even script, tell of the “Glass Town Confederacy,” a fictional world the siblings created for and around Branwell’s toy soldiers, which were both the protagonists of and audience for the little books.

READ MORE: The genesis of genius | Harvard Gazette.

Wow, this pen can write in any color on Earth | CNET

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Like the color of that flower? Your friends tie? With this new Scribble pen making a run on Kickstarter, all the hues of the world could be yours.

Read More: Wow, this pen can write in any color on Earth | CNET.