Online Drinks

First there were online hugs. Now there are online drinks. Two graduate students at MIT have invented drinking glasses that allow two people in separate locations to feel as though they are drinking together. As reported by Boing-Boing ("The Directory of Wonderful Things") and the magazine New Scientist:

When either person picks up a glass, red LEDs on their partner's glass glow gently. And when either puts the glass to their lips, sensors make white LEDs on the rim of the other glass glow brightly, so you can tell when your other half takes a sip....The technology could also be used to check that hospital patients or elderly people are drinking enough water.

Now one never need drink alone.

New Web Site Helps Readers Find “Cozies”

For those who have not yet seen it, former WNPL trustee Diana Vickery has a great new web site, the Cozy Library. This site helps readers who like their books “cozy” (“chocked-full of kind-hearted characters, with a terrific story masterfully told, and a satisfying – and generally happy -- ending. No explicit sex or violence, no wall-to-wall profanity”) identify new titles to read, or find out more about their favorite authors. Be sure to take a look!

Writely Bought by Google

I first learned of Writely, an online service that lets you create documents and edit them online, kind of like an online word processor, back in February, when Stacy wrote about it in her News Sun article "Getting Connected". Now, not surprisingly, Writely has been acquired by Google.

Right now, Writely is closed to new registrants as it completes its migration to Google, so I haven't been able to try it. Those who have, however, say that

[Writely] is a very functional word processor with most of the bells and whistles you’d expect - a range of fonts and styles, embedded images (up to 2 megs each), spell checker, etc. It has a fantastic wysiwyg editor. It also has an option to upload and/or save in Word format. (from TechCrunch 8/31/05)

Writely is made possible by new web development technique called called AJAX, which stands for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML". Says Wikipedia (which, I have to admit, is often useful for understandable explanations of technology):

The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.

Here's another good explanation of AJAX: Why AJAX Matters Now by Jesse James Garrett.

Another example of AJAX in action is Google Suggest, which suggests terms you may want to search for as you type. Those in the know also say that Gmail and Google Maps make use of AJAX as well.

If Writerly is something that interests you, you can find out more about it on the Writely Blog , not surprisingly hosted by another Google acquisition, Blogger.