Hasta La Gadget!

We love looking to the future here at Engadget. And while real, paper books hold a special place in our heart, we’re fairly certain no one will accuse us of being Luddites for scoffing at a recent development at a Boston prep school. James Tracy, the headmaster of Cushing Academy, says that he sees books as an “outdated technology,” and to that end, he’s taken the drastic and expensive step of ridding the school’s library of every single one of its books. Replacing the books will be a high tech “learning center,” housing three flat screen televisions, laptops, 18 e-readers, and a coffee bar. The project — which is costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000 — is one of the first of its kind. So, excuse us for our cynicism, but unless there are only 18 students at Cushing Academy, we’re pretty sure the e-reader supply is going to come up short.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Handhelds

Boston prep school nixes all the books in its library, replaces them with 18 e-readers originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The deal may have first been announced somewhat quietly last month, but now that Sony’s come out with what’s arguably its most attractive e-reader to date, the availability of over a million public domain books in the Sony-friendly EPUB format is sure to garner a fair bit more attention. As Google announced on its Inside Google Books blog, those books are now all available for download starting today and are, of course, completely free and able to be used on the EPUB-supporting device of your choice. The move also takes on a particular prominence in light of Google’s recent fight with Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and the Open Book Alliance, who have taken issue with Google’s settlement with book publishers and authors that would give it the right to digitize orphan works and make the now out-of-print (but non-public domain) books widely available.

Filed under: Handhelds, Software

Google makes over a million public domain books available in EPUB format originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

No matter how fly or flashy modern scanners become, there’s no getting away from their page-by-page assembly line style of operation. Or so we thought. The Ishikawa Komuro Lab at Tokyo University has demonstrated a prototype scanner capable of recording the contents of pages as they turn. Using a laser range projector to estimate page geometry, the camera adjusts for light and movement distortion as necessary and retains faithful copies of the original. At present it’s more a proof of concept for the underlying vision processing unit than a commercial venture, but all it needs is one major manufacturer to pick it up and the paperless revolution can finally get started in earnest.

[Via Plastic Pals]

Filed under: Peripherals

Book scanning gets a 1,000 fps turbo mode originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Remake It is a book on a subject dear to us at Gadget Lab: hacking. Not the computer kind, though, but the make-do-and-mend kind we do every day. The book, written by design-geek and Wallpaper editor Henrietta Thompson, gives illustrated, step-by-step instructions on turning old CD spindles into bagel-holders, old Macs into aquariums and garden hoses into, well, you’ll find out.

If some of those sound familiar, that’s because they are. Henrietta is an old friend and hit me up for some suggestions. Apparently there’s a project to do with old inner-tubes in there, my signature material. Even the book itself can be transformed into something else. Henrietta says that “You could buy it. We hope you will like it. But even if you don’t you can always repurpose it as a trivet.”

I’m looking forward to seeing it when it comes out in November, and it’s nice to see this kind of home-style hacking going mainstream with some decent design instead of the usual blurry photos. The most ironic thing is that this new repurposing craze is exactly the kind of thing your grandparents would have done when they were young, every single day. $20.

Product page [Amazon. Thanks, Henrietta!]
Product page UK [Amazon]

For preschoolers who love books but haven’t quite made the leap to reading on their own yet, the Tag Junior from LeapFrog (which we had a preview of earlier this year, along with other upcoming LeapFrog toys) is a terrific toy that allows them to explore and enjoy books on their own, discovering new words, numbers, characters and rhymes along the way. It turns story time into a fully interactive experience.

Using the Tag Junior book pal, which is perfectly shaped for the grip of 2- to 4-year-olds, a child can make Tag Junior board books come alive. The Tag Junior reads aloud the words of a page and identifies animals, colors, and shapes.

LeapFrog’s lineup of board books is impressive, including perennial favorites such as “Dr. Seuss’s Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?” as well as books featuring popular characters like Winnie the Pooh, Dora the Explorer, and Curious George. Each book focuses on a different learning skill, such as action words, numbers, colors, rhymes, and opposites and has more than 150 audio responses.