Pictures of Exbiblio Demo
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Here are a few pictures from my Exbibilio demo at the DAS conference. Thanks to Phillip Pearson for sending me the photos!
DAS Conference, New Zealand
Monday, February 13, 2006
The first speaker at the DAS Conference was Ian Witten (who literally wrote the book on Data Mining). He spoke on the creation and access of digital libraries in developing countries. During his talk he said something that rings true with our mission at Exbiblio:
"If the book would have been invented after the computer, it would have been hailed as a great advance."
I am going to get a chance to speak about Exbiblio for 3 minutes on Thursday and I'm thinking of starting with Ian's quote. After my 3 minutes of fame (saving the other 12 for later), I'll set up a couple laptops to show off our ideas. The Exbiblio team built a cool demo showing how you can scan a few words from a book using a handheld scanner and then you can see the digital version of the page along with dynamically generated links and reference information.
Speaking of Exbiblio. We posted a new and improved web site last week. Check it out and send me your comments.
Technorati Tags: DAS2006, Digital Library, Exbiblio
Exploring Nelson, New Zealand
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Here are a couple pictures from my first day in Nelson, New Zealand. There are many parks in Nelson, thick with twisty trees, flowers, and loudly chirping crickets.
The photo on the left is a view of the 150 year old mansion that I am staying at. It was taken from the path that I walk on to get to downtown Nelson.
The other photo is from Queen's Garden which is a bit further down the trail. The river is much wider by the time it runs through the Garden park it totally looks like the river boat ride from Disney land. I keep looking for killer hippos but I haven't seen any yet! Speaking of wildlife, there are pictures of Kiwi birds everywhere you go in New Zealand but I haven't seen the real deal yet. Do they run around wild in this part of NZ? Does anyone know if I'm likely to run across one?
New Zealand Trip
I am currently in New Zealand attending the IAPR Workshop on Document Analysis Systems. Today I am recovering from my 22 hour travel day and walking around Nelson, NZ to get my bearings and see the town.
The flight from San Francisco to Auckland, NZ was on one of Air New Zealand's new 777 planes. It was nice, every seat had choose your own movies, music albums, and video games (even in coach). The seats were fairly comfortable too, at least compared to the Seattle to San Fran leg where people were crammed in like cattle.
The jump from Auckland to Nelson was on a cute little Saab plane. I enjoy my Saab 9-3, so it was fun to try out one of their planes too.
My first impression of Nelson is one of these perfect small towns full of parks and friendly people. I got stopped on my walk by an elderly lady who saw me taking pictures and welcomed me to Nelson. There were more walkers than drivers today, which always scored points for me, though it is Sunday, so maybe that has something to do with it.
More photos from Nelson to come in the next post. Stay tuned...