Saturday, June 26, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Google releases 500 scans of Ancient Greek and Latin texts for research

Posted: 25 Jun 2010 12:26 PM PDT

Inside Google Books: Google releases 500 scans of Ancient Greek and Latin texts for research

Posted by Will Brockman, Software Engineer

As an undergraduate I dabbled in Classics, and I remember being surprised by the term hapax legomenon (ἅπαξ λεγόμενον). That's "written once" -- a word that occurs in only one place in the written record. It seems impossible, but happens surprisingly often: over 300 words in the Iliad appear nowhere else in Greek. So much has been lost (all but 7 of Sophocles' 123 plays, for instance) that every text that survives is precious. They communicate the self-understanding of their cultures -- which helped shape the modern world -- and have commanded scholarly attention for centuries. For these artifacts of a long-vanished world, passed down by generations of hand copying, merely establishing the text requires careful study of crabbed handwriting and critical comparison of divergent copies.

Modern scholars of Ancient Greek and Latin, continuing in this tradition, are working to create comprehensive electronic editions of these texts. For anyone who remembers studying Latin the old way, constantly paging through a dictionary, these electronic texts are a revelation. Now we have Caesar's Gallic Wars (Perseus Digital Library) with every word parsed and translated, along with linguistic commentary and a collection of references to the text from other works. We can read about Sophocles' 123 plays in the Stoa Consortium's electronic edition of the Suda, a 10th-century Byzantine Greek encyclopedia. And scholars around the world can now consult a high-resolution digital scan of Venetus A, one of the best manuscripts of the Iliad, at the Center for Hellenic Studies.

I'm pleased to announce that Google Books is now assisting this work by sharing high-resolution digital scans of over 500 volumes of Ancient Greek and Latin, dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. (Of course, downloadable versions of over a million volumes in all fields are available from books.google.com, in a more compressed form.) Jon Orwant and I created this collection using a list of several thousand important Classics volumes identified by our collaborators Professor Gregory Crane and Alison Babeu of Tufts University. We are analyzing additional volumes and expect to be able to release more high-resolution scans in the future.

These scans will aid the development of accurate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) algorithms for Ancient Greek, and provide the basis for electronic versions of important editions of these Classics texts; but perhaps their greatest value will be for the development of new methods in this emerging field. We're honored that Professor Crane called this donation "a major contribution to what scholars can do."
URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-releases-500-scans-of-ancient.html

[G] Paul McCartney: On YouTube Playing Hyde Park For Born HIV Free

Posted: 25 Jun 2010 12:19 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: Paul McCartney: On YouTube Playing Hyde Park For Born HIV Free

This Sunday (June 27) Paul McCartney takes to the stage to headline Hard Rock Calling in Hyde Park and YouTube will be hosting a stream from the event at the BornHIVFree channel.

Starting at 8.30pm in the UK (12.30pm Pacific Time), visitors to the channel can enjoy an exclusive broadcast of McCartney's performance, donated by the former Beatle to The Global Fund's Born HIV Free campaign, which has another high-profile patron in the form of France's First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Born HIV Free is urging people pledge their support to The Global Fund's efforts to eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV by 2015 by adding their names to the organization's Support Wall. At present, 45% of HIV-Positive pregnant women have access to the drugs they need to block transfer of the virus to their babies, with Global Fund-supported programmes reaching 790,000 to date… 340,000 in 2009 alone. The goal is clear and your voice could make the difference.

So, as you are listening to Paul McCartney work his way through what – with The Beatles, Wings and his solo recordings – must rank as one of the best sets of songs of all time, spare a minute to find out more about Born HIV Free, The Global Fund and maybe even add your support. YouTube will be updating live on Twitter this Sunday via @youtube, and you can add your comments to a planned Twitter stream on the channel using #bornhivfree.

Have fun,

Jamie Dolling, YouTube UK, recently watched "Rehearsal Footage – 19th May 2010".



URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/6A8FAOYR2XU/paul-mccartney-on-youtube-playing-hyde.html

[G] View .doc attachments right in your browser

Posted: 25 Jun 2010 10:22 AM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: View .doc attachments right in your browser

Cross posted on the Gmail blog

If you receive Microsoft® Word files as attachments in Gmail, you can now view them with a single click -- no need to download, save, and open files with a desktop application when all you want to do is have a peek. The Google Docs viewer that allows you to view .pdf, .ppt, and .tiff files in your browser now supports .doc and .docx formats too. Just click the "View" link at the bottom of a Gmail message and the viewer will take it from there.

If you decide you want to edit the file, clicking "Edit online" will open it in Google Docs, or you can download it to your desktop from there.

Posted by: Marc Miller, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/06/view-doc-attachments-right-in-your.html

[G] New Share Buttons

Posted: 25 Jun 2010 08:59 AM PDT

Blogger Buzz: New Share Buttons

Posted by Jiho Han, Software Engineer

Sharing is an important feature for bloggers. When your readers find an interesting post, they probably want to share it with other people; this in turn brings more traffic back to your blog.

Blogger now offers new share buttons. The new buttons can be placed under each post and let your blog readers easily share your post via email, Blogger, and popular social networks—we now support Google Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook, and we plan to add more services in the future.

Blogger also has a Share link in the navbar, but for improved convenience you can now have share buttons below the post (we also gave them nice rollover icons). For Twitter, we've also integrated the goo.gl URL shortener to give you the maximum space in the Tweet to add your own remarks.

You can start having the new share buttons show up under your posts by editing the Blog Posts widget and enabling Show Share Buttons in Design | Page Elements. Go ahead and turn the new sharing buttons on, and let some fun sharing begin!

URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/06/new-share-buttons.html

[G] View .doc attachments right in your browser

Posted: 25 Jun 2010 08:51 AM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: View .doc attachments right in your browser

Posted by Marc Miller, Software Engineer

If you receive Microsoft® Word files as attachments in Gmail, you can now view them with a single click — no need to download, save, and open files with a desktop application when you just want read them. The Google Docs viewer that allows you to view .pdf, .ppt, and .tiff files in your browser now supports .doc and .docx formats too.

Just click the "View" link at the bottom of a Gmail message and the viewer will take it from there. If you decide you want to edit the file, clicking "Edit online" will open it in Google Docs, or you can download it to your desktop from there.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/view-doc-attachments-right-in-your.html
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