Quest to make handwritten manuscripts "googlable"

For all those googlers out there.......

Dublin City University's (DCU) (www.dcu.ie) Adaptive Information Cluster (AIC) is to take part in a project with Google (www.google.com) and two American universities as part Google's quest to make all information in the world searchable.

The project will focus on making rare documents like the Book of Kells or George Washington?s personal diaries available on the web for scholars. Participants believe that the techniques developed in this project could lead to handwritten manuscripts being available for searching through the Google search engine within a couple of years.

Click here for the full story >> http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single6032

Apple moves into university podcasts

Apple Computer has introduced a free service that enables colleges and universities to put course lectures online using Apple’s iTunes software (http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/) and allows students to skip class. The maker of iPod portable players and Macintosh computers has worked with six US universities on the pilot project for more than a year and has recently invited other universities to participate. “So far the response has been really good,” said an Apple spokesman. ITunes U allows students to download podcasts and ‘vodcasts’ (audio and visual files) onto their computers and iPods so they can listen to and watch the recorded lectures anywhere, any time.

Story from The Financial Times