Saturday, March 29, 2008

Chap Mixes Music Track Using Only Windows Sounds

Caption Competition Part II


Photography by Cosmin Bumbut
"So my best friend was looking really beautiful in her new dress today, was she?"

Technology Gets Truly Scary

Another leap forward for technology and thus for humanity. It's incredible to watch how almost lifelike & conscious this robot is. But these inventions will be used both for good and for evil. There is not one piece of technology created in humanity's history that is not first pressed into the business of making war more efficient & violent. I can quite imagine how this could become a tool for the worst kind of apocalyptic repression & terror.

Still, enough of the doom and gloom. It really is incredible isn't it? But just think, only now are we beginning to make things that merely mimic the technology hidden in the codes of nature for millennia.

Truth Gatecrashes Clinton Campaign

Carl Bernstein, one of the Watergate journalists, has been writing recently about Clinton's 'difficult relationship with the truth' and his insights have been proving increasingly prescient. A key plank of the campaign team's strategy is to stress her political experience over the 'inexperienced' Obama. Inconveniently, her initial foray into politics during Bill's presidency had been a disastrous health bill. However the challenge remained to paint Hillary as the experienced candidate.
When Clinton claimed she was instrumental in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, quite a few people begged to differ. Reporters eagerly beavered away to look at the extent of her involvement and found it distinctly underwhelming. When David Trimble, former Northern Ireland First Minister, commented otherwise, one of Clinton's staffers heaped insults on him and had to be unceremoniously dumped by the presidential campaign team. Clinton however persisted in this conceit and, disastrously, got bolder still.

Her reminiscences grew more fanciful when she recalled making a dash for cover under gunfire at Tusla Airport while helping to spread her peace-making abilities to Bosnia. This proved one step too far when CBS uncovered footage of Clinton supposedly 'dodging the bullets' at Tusla Airport. The reality looked far different, and Clinton rather less than honest.



These gaffes are not without effect. The Clinton Campaign Team had been running ads trumpeting Clinton's reliability, asking 'Who would you like to see in the White House answering calls at 3am?', the inference being Clinton as the heavyweight choice so Americans could sleep easier in their beds at night.



Clinton realised the Bosnia story was damaging her campaign and was forced to admit that, contrary to popular belief, she was only human at times and had been tired on the campaign trail. Perhaps she had been taking too many 3am phone calls.

The Clinton Team fight to keep the wheels on their bandwagon.

It hasn't helped that the girl in the 3am advert (assisted by the Obama team) has come forward saying she 'doesn't approve the message'. Internetters have been mercilessly lampooning both the 3am advert and the claims of 'War Leader Hillary'. You can see the responses below.





Following is the clip according to Hillary.




To try to be fair, Clinton claims sniper fire was possible as the plane was coming in and the risk genuine. She hadn't wanted to hang around long but felt she should greet an 8 yr old girl who had been patiently waiting on the tarmac.
In great danger, presumably.

World's Earliest Recorded Voice Prompts Fit of Giggles

When Radio 4 Presenter Charlotte Green, usually a bastion of composure as a voice of authority at the Beeb, was presenting about the world's earliest recording of the human voice, a facetious comment from one of the other Today presenters provoked a very uncharacteristic fit of giggles. The recording that provoked the BBC meltdown, made on a device called a phonoautograph, was made 17 years before Thomas Edison's 1877 phonograph introduced the world to recorded sound. At the time the world's first audio clip could be recorded but not played back. Only recently, with digital technology, has it been recovered.
Neither James Naughtie or Ed Stourton would admit to whispering it sounded like a bee buzzing in a bottle but it was enough to crack Ms Green's famous layers of reserve. Immediately the BBC switchboard was inundated with callers and then went into meltdown... with people asking, not to hear the world's earliest recording again, but to hear something far more unusual: Green losing her reserve.
You can listen to the broadcast clip here.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Human Body Parts You Have But Don't Need

From wisdom teeth to ear muscles to male nipples, the human body has a number of apparently "useless" parts - according to evolutionists, leftover remnants giving evidence of prehuman existence. What do you think?

Mum, Can I Go Up to the Cockpit and See the Controls?

Back in the days of innocence, curious little children, if they asked nicely, might be invited up to see the controls of the aeroplane taking them on their package holiday. But now, thanks to a certain inappropriately-named religion, the cockpit door is now firmly locked, with guns stowed at the ready and Secret Service agents riding shotgun incognito. Just how are little boys & girls going to want to become airline pilots if they can't see all the knobs & buttons they get to press?
Step up the Internet: here's the next best thing for little people who love seeing buttons & controls: the cockpit of the Airbus A380 with a full 360 degree view:
Absolutely stunning.

Caption Competition Part I


Photography by Cosmin Bumbut
"All I said was, 'I think George Bush was a good president overall.' I'm sorry, darling! I'm sorry!"

World's Worst Uses of Metaphor

These egregious uses of metaphors were compiled from essays written by high school students. Read them and weep!
__________________________________
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man."

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

Multimedia is Changing. Have You Noticed?

Do not adjust your set: TV is about to blow apart
Andrew Sullivan
Is television over? I don’t mean the technology of course. Television, in many ways, has never been better. High definition – although pretty brutal on Republican frontrunner John McCain – has applied Windolene to the televised world and made nature documentaries as riveting as the latest block-buster. CGI effects have made even Doctor Who as cool as Hollywood.

By television being over, I mean the classic television experience: the ritual of coming home after work, flopping on the couch and simply allowing “what’s on” to flood over you. We still do it of course. As an avenue for the moving image, however, the passive, network-driven model has clearly changed beyond recognition and will soon change still further.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Some Dogs are Easily Pleased

7 Quick Tips To Using Google You'll Wonder How You Ever Managed Without

I remember when Google was a little sprite of an idea. While most other search engines could be manipulated so that all the big corporate websites were listed at the top, Google appeared with a new way of listing sites using complex algorithms, including such data as how many other websites were linking to it, thus ensuring that when you searched for something it would always return the most relevant pages.
And it worked brilliantly. The rest, as they say, is 'a multi-billion dollar turnover' history.
It's amazing to think that technology now gives you the ability to search through all the billions of pages in cyberspace to list all the pages (in the most relevant way) on whatever topic you care to be interested in, in just fractions of a second. But did you know that you can make Google even more useful? Here are some little tricks to make you into a Google expert. And not a lot of people know these.
1. You can search for specific phrases not just for random words. Suppose you wanted to search for Jane Smith. If you just put Jane Smith into Google then Google will very obediently return all the pages with
Jane Smith
Jane and then Smith somewhere else in the page.
As you can imagine, that would be a lot of pages: 4,750,000 in this example actually. But what if you just wanted pages specifically with the name 'Jane Smith' in? Well Google allows you to search for that too. Just put Jane Smith in quotes like this:
"Jane Smith"
And voila! Now Google returns only those pages specifically with "Jane Smith" in . Now you have only 771,000 pages to look through. That saves you looking through 4 million pages you didn't want. Isn't that useful! This little tip also extends to any combination of words you might be wanting to look for including famous quotes or phrases. That one tip alone can make you an expert at cutting through the cyber-jungle & finding just what you want using Google. But there's more.
2. Suppose you want to find all the pages on the Internet with specific words in but the words don't necessarily have to be together. You do that by putting a +sign in front of the words. You are in effect telling Google that it must return only pages with those words in. Let's stick with our Jane Smith example for now. Suppose you have just watched Doctor Who on television and you actually only want to find pages to do with the "Jane Smith" who appeared on Doctor Who. This is how you would do it.
+"jane smith" +"doctor who"
That means that Google will return only the pages from your original 770,000 which also contain the phrase "doctor who" (notice how we force Google to keep the words 'doctor' and 'who' together). Now with our clever use of the +sign and speech marks we have only 82,900 pages to look through, all of them more useful to the intention of our search.
But here's another thing. Suppose you are looking for a particular episode of Doctor Who with Jane Smith in, you know, the one about the Tardis. Then you search like this:
"jane smith" +"doctor who" +tardis
That refines your search even further, down to 36,000 pages. Hmm. Good, but could be better. So you remember the episode was one with red-haired people in:
"jane smith" +"doctor who" +tardis +"red-haired"
Google will now show you all the pages on the Internet that mention only all of the above in the exact way you specify. 36 actually. So now using Google in a more targeted fashion you can specifically hone in on exactly what you want to search for rather than looking among all the 4,700,000 original pages containing Jane Smith. Not bad. Not bad at all.
3. But get this. On Google you can exclude words or phrases you don't want, and so refine your search even more. Supposing you were searching for "Jane Smith" but the 'Jane Smith' you are looking for is nothing to do with Doctor Who and all those references are getting in the way of you looking. Easy. Just put a -sign next to "doctor who" like this:
"jane smith" -"doctor who"
Now Google will return only 'jane smith' pages without the phrase "doctor who". How brilliant is that?
Funnily enough, while I was looking, I noticed that taking away "doctor who" from "jane smith" actually returns more "jane smith" pages than before. That may be because a lot of people searching for "jane smith" are looking for a reference to the Doctor Who character and clearing 'her' out of the way opens Google to return more generic references to 'jane smith'. It just goes to show how complex those Google algorithms really are.
4. You can search specific websites by specifying the website you want Google to search. Then Google only searches that website. Suppose, for example, you want to search for the show, Dragons' Den on the BBC website. Put the site in the Google box and your phrase, like this:
site:www.bbc.co.uk "dragons' den"
And voila! There are actually 11,600 BBC pages on Dragons' Den. Wow, that's a lot of pages, BBC!
5. You can find out what a word or phrase actually means using Google. Here's how. Type the word 'define' followed by a colon, then the word you want to know about, like this:

define: palaeontology

Notice that that Google returns not only a definition but also
  • links to the explanatory pages
  • and related phrases it can also define for you.

6. Use Google as a calculator. Type your numbers using +, -, / for division, * for multiplication, etc, then press search. Hey presto. As sure as 1+1=2, Google just got more useful.

7. Google offers lots of other fascinating tools. Follow this link to look at what all the uber-geeks are working feverishly on at the company that is one of the most sought-after companies to work for in the world.
Google is hoping to become a one-stop shop for all types of knowledge. One of the most interesting to me is that Google has been scanning in thousands upon thousands of books, many copyright-free, from some of the biggest libraries around the world. So it is becoming easier and easier to access information of all kinds using Google. You can search all the books Google has captured so far at http://books.google.co.uk/. Some are limited view but many of the copyright-free books have full-view available.
There are quite a few other neat little tricks that Google does. But these seven tips will help you search the Internet like a true professional. Now all you need to work out is exactly what you're looking for. Happy Surfing.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Sometimes I'm Tempted To Despair

Seeing photos like this, while depressing, is a reminder that we still have a long way to go in combatting anti-intellectualism within the church. Anti-intellectualism manifests itself just as strongly in subtle ways. For instance, whenever you hear the word 'theology' or 'theological', in church just take note as to whether it is being mentioned in a positive or negative context. If my unofficial straw poll is to be believed then you will find almost 90% of references to theology to be pejorative. Theology is the bedrock of our Christian faith. Yet people who spend their time studying to deepen the roots of their faith are decried from the pulpit over and over again.

Another test for anti-intellectualism is when a false distinction is set up between being led by the Spirit and using one's intellectual faculties. (There should of course be no distinction. If you are truly led of the Spirit, this should mean that all your intellectual faculties are engaged in the process of being led of the Lord.) This is particularly dangerous because, very subtly, leaders in the church who feel threatened by those who engage their minds encourage their flock to be unthinking sheep. It's a recipe for disaster.

So for the record, my faith is totally inherently reasonable. In fact, that's why I believe in Christ. I am unashamed to be a thinking, Spirit-filled Christian because God gave me the brain I use to know him. I will never check my brain in at the door of the church.

Reason is the bedrock of my faith in God. So there.

What Do You Get When You Ask A Computer To Design You a Maze?



These mazes are computer-generated image-guided maze constructions and so have amazing complexity built in. There is something rather compelling about a really complex maze, And apart from that it would keep a bored child engrossed for quite a time. Click on the minotaur above for a link to the original, which can be downloaded, resized and printed online, along with some other breathtaking mazes and a scientific paper on how it was all done.
But whatever happens, don't get lost in there.

Never Lost, but Found Daily: Japanese Honesty

Anywhere else perhaps, a shiny cellphone fallen on the backseat of a taxi, a nondescript umbrella left leaning against a subway door, a wad of cash dropped on a sidewalk, would be lost forever, the owners resigned to the vicissitudes of big city life.

But here in Tokyo, with 8 million people in the city and 33 million in the metropolitan area, these items and thousands more would probably find their way to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Lost and Found Center.

Read More

Sunday, March 23, 2008

In Honour of the Snow Today


Reporter Owned By Sled - Watch more free videos

The moral of the tale is threefold. Firstly, when timing a sled race, don't stand at the bottom of the hill; secondly, if you are going to flip out, leave yourself just enough headroom; and thirdly, always, always sign off your reports. It's only professional.

Here's a Time to Pull the Speech of your Life

When video clips of Barack Obama's church pastor, Rev Jeremiah Wright surfaced recently with angry rhetoric about whites, and speeches in which he curses America, it would have been an easy thing for Obama to distance himself politically from his church leader. While unequivocally renouncing his words, Obama could not in good conscience disavow himself from a continued association with his soon-to-be former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ who married him and inspired his faith. However, Obama's rejection of his pastor's words was not enough and his stance soon began to have a serious effect on his poll ratings. He quickly realised he would have to give a fuller explanation of his position, highlighting issues of race & patriotism as seen from a black point of view.
The only trouble is that politics and the media don't do shades of grey. It prefers black & white. Nuance is easily missed even in these days of vast swathes of column inches & 24 hour media commentary. But just a few days ago, Obama pulled out his pen and wrote the speech of his campaign, taking a real risk in trusting voters to listen carefully.
The speech appears to have been very well received, evoking comparisons with Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and being called one of the bravest and most eloquent speeches on race given by an American politician. You can listen to it below.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

How to View the World 80x Slower


Take a few seconds to watch this super-slow motion camera shot of a man bursting a balloon. Fun.

Kinematic Typography - Very Very Vivifying


Believe it or not, there is a sub-section of humanity that enjoys typography (fonts to you & me) as a hobby. And although I am not a typophile myself, having been involved in Web design over the years, I do enjoy considering the relative merits of different font types. There's even a society, SOTA, The Society of Typographic Officionados. Can you believe that?
But the latest in-thing to hit the radar is called Kinematic Typography, where people produce stunning textual font presentations to audio movie clips. I particularly enjoyed the above clip, both as an example of this new artistic fad and also for the deliciously well-written speech of the protagonist in the film, V for Vendetta.
For more examples, you can visit alwayswatching.org but beware because most of the clips are fairly brutal in content.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Good Friday is an Unusual Day

It's not a day one celebrates; but is still so key in the Christian Calendar. It's a day of paradox - a bittersweet day. We remember the love of God in giving His Son, but also remember the sin of humanity that put him on the cross. We remember the love of God seen in Christ but also remember His justice & righteous anger at sin & evil. As believers we rejoice in forgiveness but ponder the sacrifice that pays the price. A day of paradox & mixed feelings.

In the UK today, Good Friday can seem to merely pass by even for Christians, particularly if they are not from a liturgical tradition. This year, there has been a BBC drama series called The Passion, showing at key times during the week and they have really made an effort with it.

So in loose acknowledgement of Easter Week, here's a post of an article from the Telegraph that should encourage you to get in church and stay in church.
________________________________

'Believers are Happier than Atheists'

People who believe in God are happier than agnostics or atheists, researchers claimed yesterday. A report found that religious people were better able to cope with disappointments such as unemployment or divorce than non-believers.

Read More



Thursday, March 20, 2008

Sometimes It's Just Not Your Day. Part II


How Not To Roll Cable Up Stairs

Brevity Key to Good Writing

Want to be a good writer? Keep it brief, keep it simple, keep it clear. That's the overwhelming message of Essential English, for Journalists, Editors and Writers by Harold Evans.

Other gems from this former Sunday Times Editor include editing out all superfluous & repetitive detail, and getting to the key point first - very important, particularly if you are writing a news story. This has helped me enormously. I used to double-up on all my adjectives, for instance. Why use one when two will do? So before, when I was completely and totally flummoxed, now, I am merely completely flummoxed.

It's a bit of a geeky read but it's making a substantial difference to my writing. That's the mark of any good book: it changes what you do.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Chicago at night, from 36,000 feet

Not all roads lead to Rome. Click on image to enlarge.

Sometimes Even If It Is Your Day, It's Not Your Day!

Student disciplined after stopping out-of-control school bus

A 15-year-old girl who stopped her out-of-control school bus was hit with a Saturday detention because she was supposed to be in class when the accident happened.

Marina High School student Amanda Rouse was on a bus with 40 elementary school students Wednesday morning when the driver fell out of her seat after a turn and hit her head.

Rouse jumped up and applied the brakes, bringing the bus to a halt after striking two parked cars. No one was injured.

But Rouse said she was punished because she wasn't supposed to be on the bus in the first place.
Rouse said she fell ill on the way to school, but instead of calling in sick, she asked the bus driver for a lift back to the bus yard before the accident happened. She must attend Saturday school as punishment for failing to call in sick that day.

"She is in trouble with school because she made the wrong decision," said Rouse's grandmother, Sally Correll. "But I can't help but believe that she was where God wanted her to be."

A spokesperson for the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District could not immediately be reached Saturday.
___
Information from: The Monterey County Herald, www.montereyherald.com

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Good Cop, Bad Cop

This video clip of a policeman has become an Internet phenomenon in a matter of a few days. It is unusual apparently in two ways. Firstly because it shows a policeman being respectful and polite to protesting members of the public. Secondly, because people have been so blown away by how well-mannered and caring he was that, since it was recorded on the 15th April, it has been viewed over 350,000 times, commented on 1,700 times and added as a favourite clip to watch by 1,146 people!

Either this chap is extraordinarily brilliant in the way he deals with people or he is standing out from the usual behaviour of the rest of his colleagues, which wouldn't be so positive from a police-force point of view.

Either way, isn't it nice when people resurrect old-fashioned principles such as concern for others and good manners? Well done, that man.

I Have Pets


Photography by foreversouls

I keep birds in my garden... wild birds. The only trouble is, because they fly free, I don't always see them. But I have lots of different varieties and they are all very beautiful. The good thing is, they are as happy as larry, flying around, breeding like crazy. I feed them. I have a good bird feeder up in the garden. The other day I saw Flighty & Sprint, two beautiful blue tits. What wonderful colours! It's not only in South America & Africa where multi-coloured birds can be found. As I speak, I can see Coo, one of my pigeons sitting on the neighbour's chimney. He's looking at Poop, who's sitting on my fence. Quite happy, my birds are. Quite happy.

Monday, March 17, 2008

I Wouldn't Say I've Bought You the Most Compact of Cameras, but it takes a Good Quality Picture...

A fascinating article on the world's first ever photograph, first ever captured human portrait, first photomontage, giving the origins of the word camera & photography, etc, etc.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Taking it Literally: A Year of Living Biblically?



Photography by the Telegraph

Presuming it would make him a truly fundamentalist Christian, A J Jacobs, a comedy writer decided to try to follow the Bible literally for 12 months. Other than appearing to completely misunderstand that it was more likely to make him into an orthodox Jew than a Christian (for which a certain understanding of the nature of sin, the need for faith in God's saving grace effected through Christ on the cross and an experience of inner renewal would be required), it is still an amusing diversion from which a book can be written.
One of the funniest reflections that Jacobs has is that of the frustration his wife felt while Jacobs tried to follow ceremonial purity regulations during his wife's time of the month:
'He persevered with not touching his wife, Julie, while she was menstruating. This went down as well as can be expected. The ban extended to sitting in chairs she had used, prompting her at one point to ring him at work to say she had just sat on every seat and chair in the apartment.
Jacobs bought his own collapsible chair. Julie, who isn't religious either, says she still "felt like a leper". She adds: "When it comes down to it, the Bible is very sexist. It was written a long time ago and to follow it literally now is crazy." '
Perhaps Julie has a bit more sense than her husband. Jacobs claims to have read the Bible to extract all the rules he could. Perhaps he didn't quite grasp the message of Christ. That the law merely highlights our sin, our lack of ability to live right in God's sight. And that Christ has made an end to the law by taking the law and putting it to death in his body on the cross. That Jesus' sacrifice makes it possible for us to be made righteous in God's sight through faith in his blood.
Christians don't seek to cherry-pick which parts of the Bible they will live by; rather, by a proper process of right interpretation (the long word for this is hermeneutics) Christians seek to live in a faithful way before God, making careful judgement as to what the Bible as a whole is really trying to say. It isn't about taking the Bible literally, it's about taking it seriously.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

How Do You Describe the Glory of Creation?

This beautiful montage from the BBC Motion Gallery is a stunning representation of creation & reminded me of the reason for both this verse in the story of creation:

And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

And this one in the Gospels (link goes to the same place):

For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.

Friday, March 14, 2008

How to Keep The Woman in Your Life Happy (Apparently)

I'm one of the guest speakers at my first ever women's conference soon and one of the potential topics is 'What Men Wish Their Wives Knew'. So I just came across this article from pooma.com giving ten ways to keep the woman in your life happy.


________________________


Since the dawn of mankind, men and women have boggled their minds trying to understand one another. Moreover, men have struggled to figure out what it takes to make the women in their lives happy.
Honestly guys, while women can be very complex, most don’t require much to keep them happy. I asked both single and attached women alike, “What does it take to keep you happy in a relationship?” In no particular order, here’s how they answered in the form of ten helpful tips.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

There Will Be Blood

Went to see this Daniel Day Lewis film at the cinema yesterday. Excellent acting by Lewis and more human than I had been led to believe from the reviews, until the end, of course. But I don't think that the film adequately explained the character progression. They attempted to but there were no real tipping points by which one understood why 'Daniel Plainview' came to be who he was in the end.


And as for the slimeball preacher. Excruciatingly embarrassing although another great performance by Dano (Little Miss Sunshine). I think the writer & director must really have something against religion to give such an awful rendition of a church leader.


An excellent stage for a tour-de-force by Daniel Day Lewis although the story development doesn't quite match up to the strength of Lewis' peerless performance.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

I'm so amazed by this. Just think of the possibilities in terms of content! I can't wait to get hold of one.

Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge™ Data Storage Reader

BOOK™ is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology; no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use even a child can operate it. Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere, even sitting in an armchair by the fire, yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM disc.

Here is how it works: BOOK™ is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of ordinary recyclable paper, yet each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. Pages are then locked together with a custom-fit device - a 'binder', which keeps sheets locked in their correct sequence. Opaque Paper Technology (O.P.T.) allows manufacturers to use both sides of the sheet, doubling the information density and cutting costs. Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of your finger takes you to the next sheet. BOOK™ may be taken up at any time and used merely by simply opening it.

BOOK™ never crashes or requires rebooting. The Browse feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Many come with an Index feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval. An optional "BOOKMARK™" accessory allows you to open BOOK™ to the exact place you left it in a previous session, even if the BOOK™ is closed. BOOKMARKS™ fit universal design standards; thus, a single BOOKMARK™ can be used in BOOKS™ by various manufacturers. Conversely, numerous BOOKMARKS™ can be used in a single BOOK™ if the user wants to store numerous views at once. The number is limited by the number of pages in the BOOK™.

You can also make personal notes next to BOOK™ text entries with an optional programming tool, named: "Portable Erasable Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus"-or-"PENCILS™."

Portable, durable and affordable, the BOOK™ is being hailed as the precursor of a huge entertainment wave. BOOK'S™ appeal seems so certain that thousands of content-creators have committed to the platform and investors are reportedly flocking to the new phenomenon. Look for a flood of new titles soon.